Radio Script #21
Little Talks On Common Things
April 3, 1949
Doubtless many people sincerely believe that Negroes are a permanently inferior race. But any anthropologist, any serious student of racial groups and race histories, will tell you that there is no such thing as a superior race. So far as blood strains are concerned, they are just like morals — there is so much bad in the best of us and so much good in the worst of us that it little behooves any of us to talk about the rest of us. But when a member of the Negro race makes outstanding, unprecedented achievement, when he succeeds where white men have failed, he deserves being talked about with publicity and praise.
After the assassination of Count Bernadotte, who had again and again been frustrated in his zealous, sacrificing attempts to bring peace between Jews and Arabs in Palestine, his place as United Nations mediator for the Palestine dispute was taken by Ralph J. Bunche, an American Negro. His own nation — to say nothing about the rest of the world — knew little about Dr. Bunche. Newspaper reporters hurriedly dug up a few biographical facts. Dr. Bunche, it seems, was an anthropologist, a scientist who deals with mankind as a biological and social being. He holds the Doctor of Philosophy degree from Harvard, has been a professor at Howard University in Washington, and served first the Office of War Information, then the State Department during the war. In 1946 he became director of the division of trusteeship of the United Nations.
Bunche did not seek the job made vacant by Count Bernadotte’ s death; he took it reluctantly as a high duty. Now the whole world knows him as the man who brought about the most successful feat of peace-making statesmanship in modern times. Single-handed, and against powerful opposition, he persuaded the Egyptians to enter on peace negotiations at Rhodes. Though they threatened to walk out more than once, Bunche’s patience and persistence kept Egyptians and Israelites conferring when the whole press predicted the conference would go on the rocks.
Only a few months ago we all expected long, bloody warfare — a terrible Holy War — in the Middle East. We were told the entire Arab World would rise to the desert nomad’s blood-thirsty cries. We looked to see the River Jordan and the Sea of Galilee stained red with blood. But now Jew and Arab are making peace, ready to turn swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks, to make a Middle East in which both can live and let live. All because an American Negro led the way.
It has frequently been noted that the achievements of Negroes in this country, however spectacular they may be, are usually confined to matters which concern their own race. Perhaps only George Washington Carver accomplished much on other than a racial basis. But not so with Ralph Bunche. His achievement is entirely outside his own Negro people. He has proved himself a statesman of the first rank. No wonder the Christian Century, the great religious weekly magazine, suggests that Dr. Bunche be awarded the Nobel peace prize.
Perhaps Drew Pearson’s suggestion is even better: that Dr. Bunche be named American Ambassador to Moscow. Russian propaganda keeps pounding away at American intolerance toward black-skinned citizens. It claims that Negroes, allover the United States, north as well as south, are daily lynched from the nearest lamp post. To send Bunche to Moscow would be open disavowal of the Soviet’s claim that the U. S. Government itself mistreats American Negroes.
As for this little weekly broadcast in Central Maine, we have more than once contended that tolerance and understanding are little things, but mighty important things. So we have been glad to devote ·several minutes of this program to the praise of Ralph Bunche, colored Ambassador of good will and maker of peace.
This broadcast had to be prepared before any except the earliest returns had arrived in response to our request for information on covered bridges in Maine. Because your speaker had to make a business trip out of the State, earlier preparation than usual of this week’s program was in order. Therefore our promised detailed comment on covered bridges must go over until next week.
There’s plenty of time for any listener to get in his contribution before next Sunday. Our question, repeated from last week, is this: Where in Maine are there covered bridges still in use on traveled highways? If you know of such a bridge, jot its location down on a post card and mail the card to Ernest Marriner or to Station WTVL or to our sponsor, the Keyes Fibre Company.
Do you recall the story of the hired man who did such a fine job digging post holes that the next day the farm owner set him to sorting a truck-load of potatoes into three piles — big, medium and small. When the farmer went into the barn at noon, he found the hired man gazing vacantly into space, with three tiny piles of potatoes in front of him, not more than a peck in each pile. “Why!”, said the farmer I “I thought you were a fast worker. You put in those post holes mighty fast yesterday. What’s the matter with you today?” “This is different”, replied the hired man. “When you dig post holes you don’t have to make those darned decisions.”
That hired man might have liked to live in Russia. There the average citizen has a lot of decisions made for him. He is told what to like in music, painting, literature and the other arts. He is not bothered with conflicting schools of economic thought. Nothing is tolerated which does not follow the party line. That’s all he has to do if he wants to keep alive and out of the forced labor camps. Life is pretty simple for people who don’t feel obliged to do their own guessing.
But strangely enough, if we can believe the official Soviet press — and Pravda is that official press the wisdom of the master guessers is not unanimously accepted even in Russia. With bitter denunciation, calling it a crime against the State, Pravda recently ranted against the automobile workers in Moscow who were taking seven hours to perform a certain operation which the master guessers had set at four and one-half hours.
In the same issue Pravda asserts that production figures in the United States are capitalist means of sweating workers and lowering their standard of living. How much better is the lot of the Russian worker where the laborer works joyfully to meet production figures set by the people’s government.
Well, to say nothing of the mental gymnastics necessary to reconcile those conflicting statements in the same issue, just how does Pravda answer the question of a Russian worker who sees photographs of the parking lots around American automobile factories? For that question is sure to be: “Do you mean to tell me those American laborers can actually afford to buy the things they make?”
Last week the Trustees of the Waterville Public Library gave a testimonial tea to artists. Those artists had just donated to the Library a series of their own paintings, depicting scenes from well-known children’s stories, and the artists were all pupils of Mrs. Muriel Ragsdale at the Waterville Senior High School. One painting showed the sisters in Little Women; another showed Robinson Crusoe with his big palm-leaf umbrella; a third was an exquisitely done transparent water color of the dog Lassie; a fourth presented the boy and his pet deer in “The Yearling”. One girl a lover of horses and a constant saddle rider had done a striking picture of Black Beauty. On a single panel another girl had painted several characters from Alice in Wonderland; another had put Hansel and Gretel into a fascinating candy house. There were lots more of those pictures: King Arthur forging the sword Excalibur, the white snow queen, Tom Sawyer whitewashing the fence, the Jungle Book, and others we cannot at the moment recall.
Every one of them is worthy of mention and praise. All of the pictures will be placed on the walls of the children’s room at the Library, an inducement to present and future generations of little folk to look inside the books that tell about these wonderful characters.
How many of you have seen the striking mural that decorates the wall at the head of the stairs leading from main building to gymnasium at Waterville Senior High School? It is a real mural, not a single scene, but a composite painting showing various summer activities at Lakewood. Striking is the word that describes it. It stops you in your tracks. Its vivid colors, its life-like scenes, its balanced assembly, make it a work of which a professional artist could be proud. Yet it was done by Mrs. Ragsdale’s pupils at the school.
Under Mrs. Ragsdale’s guidance the pupils are now working on a very ambitious project. They are doing murals to decorate the entire main corridor at the school. These murals will be a series depicting scenes and symbolism from the legends of King Arthur and his Round Table, especially as that legend is treated by Tennyson in “Idylls of the King”.
Waterville is exceedingly fortunate to have a teacher of art like Mrs. Ragsdale, one who has not been bitten by the bugs of cubism and surrealism, who encourages her pupils to depict scenes and people from life or fiction, rather than daub on canvas the insane splashings of disordered minds. We may be old-fashioned, but we prefer a picture like Lassie or Black Beauty, done frankly as illustration, rather than distorted watches hanging on trees or females with radio towers for limbs.
Rather common on this program has been reference to workers and employers. I wonder if members of the u. S. Congress ever consider themselves as employees of the people, sent to Washington to produce legislation for the people’s good. If factory employees turned out production the way the Eighty-First Congress has thus far been turning it out, they would be discharged with the consent and approval of the unions.
The filibuster was bad enough; and to the credit of all the New England senators, save the stubborn and contrary stiles Bridges, be it said the New Englanders did all they could to break it. But of all the farces seen thus far in the current Congress, the worst was the House debate on the Rankin pension bill.
Railroaded through committee by the high-handed tactics of the most bigoted and intolerant Negro-hater in the Congress, this bill designed to cost the nation untold billions saw heated debate on the floor of the House, as one would expect. But the final vote is what makes one despair of reason and logic in our Congress. The amended bill failed of passage by only one vote, and surely very few Congressmen voted on it the way they really believe.
Certainly we must not forget the veterans, and plenty of existing legislation, like the G I Bill of Rights, testifies to the fact that we have not forgotten them. Indeed we have done so much more for the veterans of World War II than we ever did for those of the First World War that few people object to increased benefits for those older service men. But to provide for all veterans, even for those dishonorably discharged, the pensions suggested by Rankin’s spendthrift bill was unthinkable. There can be reason in all things. Let us have constantly improved veterans’ legislation, but let it be reasonable.
Has anyone lately cautioned you to relax? Doubtless we all need the caution. We do live at high tension. But there is another side to this matter. Take the tension out of the mainspring of a watch and you have relaxed steel; you also have a useless piece of junk. A person can become so relaxed, so free from all disturbance, that he too is a useless piece of junk.
This is the Lenten Season, the time of year when, of all times, we are most often reminded of the words and deeds of the Man of Nazareth. What a disturbed and seemingly unsuccessful life Jesus lived. Even when alone in the Garden, he seemed not to be relaxed, but moved with compassion toward harassed and bewildered humanity. He carried tension to the end. And he died on a cross. Perhaps relaxation is not life’s greatest prize.
Year: 1949