Tomorrow Is Forever (19 page)

“But it comes into existence anyway?” Dick asked eagerly.

“Yes, Dick, it does. When a new idea is about to be born, nothing under heaven can stop it. Sometimes the fire-and-sword opponents can put it off a generation or two. Jefferson did lose his fight to get slavery out of this country, you remember. It was one of his hardest defeats. But looking back on those days, we moderns can see that even in Jefferson's time slavery was doomed and no power on earth could have kept it there much longer. Incidentally, you might remember that the proponents of slavery didn't go to war to keep it until a time when machinery was making it not only morally wrong but economically impossible. It would have gone without a war, conquered by tractors and push-buttons. When a particular change is on the way, not even a war can do more than delay it; sometimes as in the case of American slavery the war speeds it up, because the side of the future destroys the side of the past.”

“And sometimes,” Dick suggested thoughtfully, “the side of the past destroys the side of the future?”

“Yes, as the Persians destroyed the Greeks at Thermopylae. But they never did succeed in establishing Oriental despotism in Greece, because while Greek democracy was a long way from what we call democracy now, it was still the side of the future. We're up against something of the same sort today.”

Dick nodded, thought a moment, and asked, “What would you call this current that's coming in now?”

“We call it by a lot of high-sounding names—the Four Freedoms, the dignity of the individual, postwar security. But essentially it's the idea that nobody is born with a natural right to beat up anybody else and take over the products of his labor. It's the idea that everybody—not merely the persons of your own family, or your own race, or your own nation, but everybody—should be allowed to develop whatever brains he was born with and do whatever sort of work he's capable of doing. That's the new idea, the one you and I believe in. Our opponents are fighting to re-establish the past.”

“Gee, don't stop!” Dick exclaimed when Kessler paused. “Just how do you mean—re-establish the past?”

“Well, as the Nazis worked it out in Germany, and as the Japanese have set it up too, it's the resurrection of feudalism. The Nazis' purpose is a feudalism modernized by having the great industrial corporations take the ruling place that used to be held by the great landed estates. Those not born to power are to work as servants of the rich, regardless of what intelligence and energy they might be born with, just as in the Middle Ages the peasants served the lords, regardless of the fact that a peasant might be brighter, more honest and more excellent in every way than his lordship. Is that clear?”

“Holy smoke, Mr. Kessler—but that won't work! It doesn't make sense in these days—it won't
work
.”

“It did work for a long time,” Kessler reminded him.

“But that was years ago,” Dick protested. “You can't do that to people now. They're too smart. They won't take it.”

“No, they won't take it. There's your answer. And there's the war.”

Leaning on the back of his chair, Dick studied the wall in front of him. “Do those bums really think they can get away with that?” he asked after a moment.

“Of course they do. If they didn't think so they wouldn't be fighting for it.” Kessler regarded him almost apologetically. “I know it sounds absurd to you, living in a country where every child is taught that his chance to rise in the world depends on what he can do, and not on his family's social position.”

Shrugging, Dick gave Kessler a faintly cynical glance. “That's the idea, Mr. Kessler, but don't fool yourself that it always works. Being a foreigner, maybe you don't know it, but it's not true that all Americans have a chance. I know they're supposed to, and they ought to, but they don't.”

“Why no, they don't, Dick.” Kessler smiled at him earnestly. “I never said there weren't any backward thinkers in this country, did I? Or that there weren't any liberal-minded persons in the Axis countries. But the prevailing ideal of the United States is individual freedom, and that is not the prevailing ideal in Germany or Italy or Japan. Your ideals in this country are better than you are—what would be the use of them if they weren't?”

Dick frowned, thought, and nodded. “I get it. You mean it's like what the boss always told us kids—if a fellow tries to do the right thing he doesn't always do it, but he does better than if he wasn't trying. You mean it's like that with countries.”

“Exactly. Don't get too discouraged about your country, Dick. The United States has a standard it's trying to live up to—of course you haven't reached what you're aiming at, but you're closer than you used to be. Look back and you can see the idea coming—slowly, painfully, cruelly, but always on the march. The American Revolution was part of it and the French Revolution another part. They went as far as they could, but not as far as the idea was destined to go. The American Revolution was a war for liberty, but it didn't finish the fight—haven't you ever read about the howls that went up in this country, long after the Revolution, at the suggestion of free public schools for all children?”

Dick shook his head. “I thought they always wanted schools in this country.”

“Not for everybody. There were opponents who said compulsory schooling would break up the home by taking children away from their parents and putting them under control of the state. There were others who said it would destroy the ordained order of society by making the working classes dissatisfied with the position in which God had placed them. But the schools came, because they were part of the current toward human equality.”

“Gee,” said Dick. “You know, you're encouraging. The place is getting better, isn't it?”

“Of course it is. Whenever you're tempted to believe it isn't, you might remember that it was in 1870, a good deal less than a hundred years ago, that the State of Massachusetts was hailed as an enlightened leader of progress when the legislature passed a law that children under twelve should not be allowed to work in factories
more
than ten hours per day.”

“Good Lord,” said Dick. “Is that true, Mr. Kessler?”

“It's absolutely true. Some day when you've nothing better to do, look up some of the expressions of horror that greeted the notion of universal suffrage, in this country.” He shifted his position to face Dick squarely. “Every proposal leading toward more freedom has been opposed, and defeated again and again. But we have come forward, Dick. It's been a long hard march and it isn't over. People who believe in the idea go down. But the idea moves on.”

Dick nodded slowly. “I'm beginning to see it.” He wrinkled his forehead, and exclaimed, “But right now, I don't mind telling you, that big idea sure is up against a lot.”

Kessler nodded too, in agreement. “Suppose I try to tell you why it's up against so much right now. Shall I?”

“I wish you would.”

“Well, you see, a few years ago the idea had gone so far that in several of the most powerful nations of the world, people were actually asking one another if any commonwealth was benefited by keeping part of its citizens in compulsory degradation. In cases where they were still doing so—as with the Negroes in this country—they were ashamed of it and made excuses for it. The march toward human freedom seemed to be going along very well. But then, certain persons, more farsighted perhaps than their neighbors, looked ahead and saw what we were headed for. The result was a long, long way ahead, so far ahead that most of us never thought about it, but for those who did visualize it the very suggestion was so dangerous, such a threat to all nations and all established institutions, that something simply had to be done to stop the march, and quick.”

“Gosh, go on!” exclaimed Dick. “What's that suggestion you're talking about?”

“Can't you see it? It's very logical—simply the suggestion that if a country could be improved by releasing the talents of its people, might not the world be improved by releasing the talents of
all
its peoples? That's a terrible idea.”

“Why?” Dick asked with ingenuous defiance.

“Don't be so simple-minded, Dick! Why, that contradicts everything we're used to. It takes away our colonies. It drives us out of places where we've invested our hard-earned money. It means that the coolies no longer have any respect for their betters. It makes us acknowledge we are no longer called of God to meddle with the private lives of the heathen. It turns us upside down and flattens us out and leaves us no better than anybody else.”

Dick considered this, slowly and soberly. At length he said, “I believe I get it.” He turned it over in his mind again, then ventured, “It means—‘
all
men are created free and equal, endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights—' it means
all.
Not just us. Everybody.”

“Exactly,” said Kessler. “You do get it, don't you? Those are beautiful words, inspiring words, until you stop to consider what they mean. That's what has happened in the world—some of us have stopped to consider what those words mean. Just when human freedom began to look like a desirable goal, those farsighted persons we were talking about got a glimpse of what that goal would really be. They felt something had to be done to stop the advance right now. So they set out to stop it. They are called fascists.”

“Whew!” Dick gave a long whistle. Settling his elbows on the chair-back, he looked across at Kessler with a broad comprehending grin. “So that's what it's about!”

“I don't pretend to any super-knowledge,” said Kessler. “But as I see it, that's what it's about.”

“And you mean they can't win!”

“I don't mean anything of the sort,” Kessler returned sharply. “They can win. They can't win through the next six thousand years, but they can win in this generation, and this is the only one we have a chance to live in. If they win in this generation they'll push us back to do it all over again.”

“If we lost this war, they'd have to fight it all over? People in the future, I mean?”

“Yes, they would. The conflict is here, you see; the current of human freedom is pushing along the flow of history, and we'd better stay on the side of history if we want peace. Do you remember when Chamberlain came back from Munich with ‘peace in our time'?”

Dick nodded.

Kessler got up and started to walk toward a low bookcase on the other side of the room. Dick sprang to his feet.

“Let me get it, Mr. Kessler.”

“No, I can manage. I know just where it is.” He sat down in a chair before the bookcase, and his hand being thus freed, he took out a volume and ruffled its pages. “Did you ever read this?” he asked, and without waiting for an answer he read aloud. “‘I once felt that kind of anger which a man ought to feel against the mean principles that are held by the Tories. A noted one who kept a tavern at Amboy, was standing at his door, with as pretty a child in his hand, about eight or nine years old, as I ever saw, and after speaking his mind as freely as he thought was prudent, finished with this unfatherly expression, “Well, give me peace in my day.” A generous parent would have said, “If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.” '”

Dick spoke eagerly. “Who wrote that?”

“Thomas Paine, during the American Revolution.”

“Gee, I like it. It's reasonable, I mean, it comes out even. All you've been telling me comes out even.” He said in a low voice, as though to himself, “We're fighting for the liberation of everybody.”

Kessler returned to his former seat. He said, “We're fighting toward recognition of the simple fact that we don't know where the next genius is going to turn up. Toward finally realizing that good minds and noble characters are not so abundant that we can afford to waste them, no matter where they happen to be. That's all.”

“Holy cats,” said Dick. “That's terrific. That's big. That's worth doing, Mr. Kessler! But why can't they see it?” he demanded. “The fascists, I mean. It's so simple!”

“Most of the important facts of life are very simple, once you make up your mind to look for them, but they're often very hard to accept. Like that business of loving your neighbor as yourself, for instance—it's very difficult to admit that he's as much worth loving as yourself. Most of us hate nothing so much as an idea that threatens our good opinion of ourselves. We don't like owning up to it that if the earth belongs to us, it also belongs to the Chinese coolies.”

Dick began to laugh suddenly, then he sobered again. “Cherry said once that Mr. Wallace thought this war was being fought for the coolies. We laughed when she said it. It sounded preposterous. But you mean it really is?”

“Why yes, though not many of us are willing to admit it. But that's what we mean when we say we're fighting for human freedom.”

“That's
terrific
,”
repeated Dick. “That's what I'll be fighting for in the Marines.”

Kessler hesitated an instant, then shook his head. “No. Not precisely.”

“Then what will I be fighting for?”

“For your country.”

“But isn't it the same thing?”

“No. I almost didn't tell you this, but I might as well say it. It's not the same thing. You see, Dick, one of the great tragedies of the human race is that history moves too fast for us to keep up with it. Our ideals are always somewhat behind the facts. Right now our ideal is that each army shall fight for its own nation. We'll co-operate just as much as we have to in order to keep safe. Go ahead and fight for your own flag, you've got to, because if you don't crush the fascist nations your country will go down to barbarism with them, but don't forget—or forget it if you want to—that you're fighting toward a time when you'll have no flag to fight for.”