“No! No, I…”
“Bodies in motion just don’t age as fast, that’s what it boils down to. America, by stayin’ off its ass, was stayin’ young! No surprise Albert come to live here when he got his chance! This here’s a country of beginnin’s, of projects, of vast designs and expectations! It’s got no past; all has an onward and prospective look! The fountain of youth! Lookit me!” he’d cried, and had rolled off a few lively cartwheels, flipped over his golf cart, and done a handstand on a putter, while clicking his boot heels so hard he drew sparks.
“What’s that, John?” I asked.
“I said, there’s supposed to be twelve thousand of them here today, Mr. Nixon,” my chauffeur said.
I realized we’d been slowed to a crawl, and there was a terrific traffic jam up ahead of us around Dupont Circle. I clutched my newspaper. “Twelve thousand what?”
“Demonstrators. You know, the atom spies…”
I saw them now, moving down Connecticut toward the White House. “Can’t we — can’t we do something—?”
“I can try to cut north up toward Howard University, then down Capitol…”
Howard was a Negro university and there were a lot of those people in the pro-Rosenberg movement. I felt a sudden twinge of distrust: was John leading me into a trap? “We don’t have time to go to the office now,” I snapped. “We’d better get straight to the White House!”
“Yessir. I’ll try to cut down to the Mall.”
But at Washington Circle on Pennsylvania, seven blocks from the White House, there was no movement at alclass="underline" a solid mass of traffic, people, placards, and photographers. John swerved left, and left again, but all the cars were bumper to bumper, and people were running back and forth in the streets. I was nervous, so I decided to distract myself by working the Times crossword puzzle. I found it on a back page, nested among book ads. My eye fell on the first clue, I Across: That’s easy, I thought with a shudder: GOOF. I suddenly saw the puzzle as a kind of matrix, a field of play which mirrored the structure of the newspaper and thus history itself, the paradigmatic range of “news” and possibility, crossed with real “time-arrow chain-of-events,” I felt like Alice lost on her chessboard. I read the clues: why all this business about plays, food, cartoonists, rats, God, women, and cosmetics, I wondered? AHAB was there, SAN ANTONIO, NEGRO, and ROAMERS. 23 Down: HEAT. I dragged my eyes away from the crossword puzzle to the book review: it was about an “atomic thriller,” Atom at Spithead. Even before I saw it, I knew it would be something like this. Adlai Stevenson’s Campaign Speeches were being advertised, and a novel called The Singer Not the Song: “He could not resist using the girl as one last diabolic weapon….” From all over the page, words jumped out at me: SOCIALISM … BUCHENWALD … EISENHOWER … FRANKENSTEIN … BLOOD … TENEMENT … REVOLUTION … CHECKMATE — we were stopped dead. “I’ll walk, John!” I cried. I ripped the crossword puzzle out and stuffed it in my pocket, jumped out of the limousine.
Once on foot, I found it much easier to keep moving. Not so many people as it had seemed inside the car. Just enough, together with the sightseers, to bottle up traffic at the intersections and make it seem worse than it was. It also helped that they were mostly moving in the same direction. At first, I supposed they were headed for the White House, and I decided to circle around behind them, past the Treasury and in by the East Wing, but once I reached the back side of Lafayette Square, I could see they were all moving on east. It look me a panicky moment to realize that their objective was not my Senate Office Building, but only the Supreme Court. But though I felt relieved by that, I had to recognize that the worst, nevertheless, was still before me: crossing the park and Pennsylvania Avenue through all this lawless rabble to the White House gates. I began to regret leaping out of the car so impulsively like that.
A mob, you see, does not act intelligently. Those who make up a mob do not think independently. They do not think rationally. They are likely to do irrational things, including even turning on their leaders. Individually, people in a mob are cowardly; only collectively, goaded on by a leader, will a mob appear to act courageously. A mob is bloodthirsty. A taste of blood will whet its appetite for more violence and for more blood. Nothing must be done which will tend to accentuate these characteristics. A mob has lost its temper collectively. An individual dealing with a mob must never lose his or he will be reduced to its level, and become easy prey for it. He must be as cold in his emotions as a mob is hot, as controlled as the mob is uncontrolled, concentrating entirely on the problem which faces him and forgetting about himself, keyed up for battle but not jittery. Since those who make up a mob are basically cowards, one must never show fear in the face of a mob, blocking out any thought of it by a conscious act of will. Since a mob is stupid, it’s important to confront it with unexpected maneuvers: take the offensive, don’t panic, do the unexpected, but do nothing rash. I knew all this. Nevertheless, I was scared shitless and could hardly think.
Intuitively, I just kept moving. I put the U.S. Chamber of Commerce at my back like a big brother and plunged straight ahead, into the park and toward the White House. I saw it, I knew it immediately: this crowd is all unfriendly — the Phantom has touched them, I thought, he’s invaded them, they’re all contaminated, we will have to liberate them all, as we’ve done with the Rosenbergs. I kept my head ducked and bulled hopefully ahead — so far they hadn’t noticed me. Just a block, that damned square, but it seemed endless — I felt like I was crossing all of Gettysburg. I prayed to God to get me through safely. I prayed to Uncle Sam, I prayed to Pat. “In the name of Jesus Christ!” I whistled softly between my clenched teeth. What troubled me most was the complete unreasoning hate in their faces: this mob, I recognized, is a killer mob! I suspected some of them were even doped up, and I feared that, if they saw who I was, they’d get out of hand. They carried placards, shouted, and seemed to be picking up things they might throw. It made me almost physically ill to see the fanatical frenzy in the eyes of those teenagers; anyway, something was making me quite ill. I felt absolute hatred for the tough Communist agitators who were driving children to this irrational state, and I wanted to shout at them, or scream, or bite them or something, but somehow I kept a grip on myself, knowing that above all I had to control my emotions and think calmly. The test of leadership is whether one has the ability, as Kipling said, to keep his head while others are losing theirs. By this time, I was virtually running, shoulders hunched like a fullback, snorting desperately.
I slowed. I noticed I was drawing a lot of attention. I worried I might have a heart attack. Or some other kind of seizure, I could hardly breathe. The mob turned toward me and started to close in. It was essential, I knew, that I bust right through: if I turned back now, it would not be simply a case of their bluffing out Richard Nixon, but of the United States itself putting its tail between its legs and running away from a gang of Communist thugs. For an instant, the realization passed through my mind: I might be killed! — and then it was gone, mind and all. They were nearly on me. I stopped abruptly. Then I lurched forward. Everybody must have been surprised: as I plunged on, straight at them, amazed at my own impetus, the mob stumbled backwards. In a larger sense, I recognized, this was another round in a contest which has been waged from the beginning of time between those who believe in the right of free expression and those who advocate and practice mob rule to deny that right. I might have calmed myself with such a thought, but there was no time — one of the ringleaders, a typical case-hardened Communist operative, stepped into my path, blocking me off, a look of cold hatred in his eyes. And I realized then, as this was going on, that right here was the ruthlessness and the determination, the fanaticism of the enemy that we faced! That was what I saw in his face. This was Communism as it really is. He opened his mouth — I felt like I was back in the lion’s cage with Sheba. Oh my God—!