Radio Script #10
Little Talk On Common Things
January 16, 1949
Let us turn again tonight to that familiar subject of words. They are tricky things, aren’t they? How wonderful it would be if the same word meant the same thing to all people. That is one of the barriers in the way of world peace. There can be no peace without understanding, and there can be no understanding without words.
I was talking a few days ago with a man who represented the United States last summer at the meetings of UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Social and Cultural Organization) held at The Hague in the Netherlands. He told some amusing incidents concerning the translation of the speeches into English. A Spanish speaker had urged that the address be short. The translator put it: “The length must be as brief as possible.” When a speaker from Czechoslovakia spoke of university professors of long service, the translation read, “professors in a state of advanced use”.
When the Americans read a translation from the Chinese, which the translator had rendered into English by “a need to vulgarize the material”, they might have been shocked had they not remembered the oldest meaning of the word vulgar. It comes from the Latin vulgus, meaning the crowd, the common folks, and only in recent centuries did it come to have the meaning of cheap, nasty, in bad taste. What the translator meant to say, of course, was “a need to popularize the material”.
Now these instances provided a laugh; they did no harm. But they serve to show how slippery a thing is language, and how easily it can lead to misunderstanding. We woefully need an international language, free from the national prejudice of anyone tongue.
It is a common thing for us to want other people to do things for us rather than to do these things ourselves. We are not so foolish as to think we are going back to the old days of the self-reliant pioneers, those days when there was no WPA to help the hungry settlers at Plymouth. But it does no harm to recall that solely by their own efforts those early colonies kept alive, grew and prospered.
The fundamental core of American democracy is the town meeting, and the farther we remove decision and action from local government, the less real democracy we have. Yet we know we are a big country, with vast inequalities of wealth and opportunity in different parts. Because many a local community simply cannot afford to pay for the services demanded by modern civilization, it has turned more and more to help from wealthier communities — help from the pooled resources of towns and cities that make a State, and then to the big pool of all, Uncle Sam’s treasury in Washington. Now much of this is good, and a lot of it is inevitable. But it has two great inherent dangers. It leads us to lean too much on the other fellow’s help, and it undermines democracy by the creation of a great bureaucracy in Washington.
Remember that the labor which keeps us alive is productive labor. Every person who works as I do, in services rather than goods, is not a productive laborer. For all of us who are teachers and doctors, lawyers and insurance men, merchants and brokers, there must be many, many men and women, getting crops from the soil, minerals from the mines, lumber from the forests, and many more turning out the products of thousands of factories. In spite of improved machinery and speeded assembly lines no nation can permanently let its service workers increase at the expense of its productive workers, and we must wake up to the fact that the alarming increase in these services or non-productive workers is in the field of government. So many people are already working for local, state or national government that it takes an enormous amount of productive labor merely to pay their salaries.
What are the facts? More than two million men and women are employed in the executive branch of the federal government alone. The Army has 400,000 civilian employees, the Navy 350,000. The post office has half a million, the Treasury a hundred thousand, Interior 60,000, and Veterans Administration 200,000. Then there are the numerous independent agencies we never heard of a few years ago. The FSA employs 36,000, FWA 22,000, RFC 5,000, War Assets Administration 17,000, TVA 15,000. There seems to be no end. Like Topsy, these things just grow — or perhaps a better comparison would be Jack and his beanstalk. When everybody works for the government, we won It have to worry about who will wash the dishes — for then there won I t be any food to get the dishes dirty.
Last Tuesday it was my privilege to attend a meeting of the Security Council of the United Nations at Lake Success, New York. It was a thrilling experience to see the representatives of 37 nations, to eat ina huge cafeteria surrounded by persons talking numerous languages, to see the system of instantaneous translation at work, and most of all to observe the directness and frankness with which world problems are faced.
We are inclined to underestimate and belittle the United Nations. The world is so far from peace, the horrors of a third World War seem so imminent, that we wonder whether the U. N. can ever be more than a debating society. When the Charter was drawn at San Francisco, we probably expected too much. That is human nature. When Congress or the Maine Legislature passes a law, we too easily suppose the job is done. Living together peacefully is not so easy as that. Even the city ordinances of Waterville are sometimes flaunted and neglected. Most of us value doing as we please more than we value harmony in the community. We will go a long way to protect our own rights, but we don’t intend to give up anything to let the other fellow have his rights.
It is the same way with nations. Even for them to agree to sit around a council table and talk openly about complaints and grievances is some gain. When world problems can no longer be settled by secret diplomacy, by the old bi-1atera1 agreements between two nations, with the rest of the world in the dark, when now the nations that disagree with a majority decision must Show their hands, even if it is by the pernicious veto, the whole world at last has information about what is going on. And in the long run an informed public opinion is an acting public opinion.
We know it works that way in the United States. A few days ago I attended a dinner at which Harold Stassen, former Governor of Minnesota, candidate for presidential nomination, and now head of the University of Pennsylvania, made a thrilling speech. He gave a pointed instance of the power of public opinion in America. He said that two weeks before Secretary Marshall made his memorable address at Harvard, every responsible official in the government believed we had reached the end of foreign aid spending, that with the Greek and Turkish loans to help those countries stop the sweep of Communism, we had had enough. The American people would not stand for pouring any more money down the drain. Then Secretary Marshall spoke, announcing the now-famous Marshall Plan. Allover the country press and radio took it up. It was talked about, not only in the swanky clubs and at business luncheons, but also in barber shops and groceries, on busses and commuter trains, at the grange hall and the country store. Messages poured in upon reluctant Congressmen. The nation had become convinced that the Marshall Plan was not merely a humanitarian and charitable way to help war torn Europe; it was enlightened self-interest, the surest way in the long run to save ourselves.
So, at those meetings at Lake Success, one gets his eyes open to rising peaks of world opinion. On the day I attended the Security Council was discussing the Dutch-Indonesian dispute. Now I ask you, a dozen years ago what would any of us have cared about actions of the Dutch in the far-off islands of Java and Sumatra? If we took notice at all, it would be either to say, “This is a white man’s world; the Dutch had better teach these funny little brown men their place”, or to say “Those Indonesians want their freedom; more power to them”. But, whichever side our emotions took, a dozen years ago we would have been very sure that it was none of our business. Today we are equally sure that this trouble in far-away Southeast Asia is the whole world’s business.
So, as an American, I was proud of the straight, unambiguous words with which our delegate, Dr. Jessup, stated the American posibion. He accused the Dutch government of defying the cease-fire order passed by the Council and said, “AI though Dutch armies have seized the capitol of the Indonesian Republic and have imprisoned its president and prime minister, we serve notice on the Netherlands government that the world cannot accept the result. It is still a matter of international concern.” Then he gave this powerful warning: “Instead of establishing order in the islands, the Dutch government has let loose forces of terror, chaos and sabotage. The united states Government cannot associate itself with any aspect of the Dutch military action. In the opinion of the Government of the United States, the Netherlands Government has violated the charter of the united Nations.”
Nor did Dr. Jessup let the attitude of Russia go unquestioned, for the Russians had not supported the Council’s cease-fire order, preferring to offer a resolution of their own. “The Soviet Union does not want an independent Indonesia”, said Dr. Jessup. “It wants an Indonesia under the control of a communist minority taking orders from Moscow. II Then he uttered these blasting words: “Anywhere in the world when a communist government climbs in the window, independence is kicked out of the door.”
While Dr. Jessup was talking I was watching faces — the expressionless poker face of the Russian delegate, the occasional sly glances toward him of his Ukrainian satellite, the enthusiastic smiles of the Indian and Burmese observers, the scowling countenances and the sometimes hectic conferring in the Dutch delegation, the nods of approval by the British delegate, and, most of all, the deep concern of the small nations, Syria and Cuba, Belgium and Chile, Liberia and Pakistan. For this aggression of the Dutch in the Indies was everybody’s business. If one nation could do this, any nation could do it.
No one anywhere in the world was safe.
If you get a chance to visit Lake Success, make the most of it. It will give you new faith in the greatest venture of our time, faith that in spite of tremendous obstacles, men of good will can yet make this a peaceful world.
Year: 1949