“Suppose,” said Mr. Wilson, “you’re wrong? Suppose the war does peter out.
Suppose it has to end in a deal? I think it will.”
“No. As long as it was about money, living space, raw materials, empire-envy—things, in other words—it could end in a deal. It’s not, now. It’s about something you can’t make deals over. Something that’s a lot more forceful than political boundaries or money.”
“What?”
“It’s about—hate. Just hate, Wilson. The hate of millions upon millions for the eighty million who have undertaken to betray, kill, and enslave them. Every Pole who lost his woman, every Czech with a tortured relative or friend, every Italian whose Mussolini has brought him to shame and hunger, every red Russian, every tormented Dutchman, every bleeding Belgian, every indignant citizen inside the sickly failure that is France—every one of these millions hates, night and day, with a hatred that we in America don’t yet know anything about.
There are men by the million who have sworn on their lives that, when the time comes, they will take knives and firebrands and avenge the butchery they know with a butchery so appalling that the memory of it will instill centuries of dread for conquest in those who are left. These men mean this. They will not forget. They are living for this alone.
“The people of Germany can feel, burning all around them, the circle of fire which—if they lose—will close in upon them and scald even their children without mercy.
That is why they will carry on to inhuman length. Not to do so would be to face inhumanity. And the gravest part of this thing—this thing that had to come alive in men when the monster notion of force was expanded to its uttermost size—the most dire index of this cauterizing horror against horror is the hatred of the English.
“You can’t make deals with that thing, Wilson. It has to run its course, like an incurable disease. It isn’t good for mankind, but the thing that gave rise to it was worse, because it was wholly wanton. Hate is the natural reaction to wantonness, the ultimate distillation of the passions of responsible people for those who will be responsible for nothing. Now, lighting up in the world—in China for the mutilating laps, the yellow rapists, the sackers of Nanking, and elsewhere for the mud-faced Huns—like the yellow glow of a sun too hot to bear, is this hatred.
“The Germans under Hitler have done a frightful thing; they are Frankensteins and their monster grows against them, day by day. In ten years—or, if they succeed, in even a thousand—it will be big enough to consume all of them. You can’t buy hatred, Wilson. When it exists, you can’t buy it off, either. Real hatred—the elemental force these Nazis have created—is as sacred to the hater as love. It is the same thing as love, Wilson.”
The banker said nothing.
Mr. Corinth cleared his throat. “All over America, beginning many years ago, were the small, brave voices of alarm. We called them ‘militarists’ in the early days. ‘Jingoes.’ Get ready, they said. Stop the Japs in Manchuria. Stop Ethiopia. Don’t let the Germans reoccupy the Rhineland. On and on the voices went, repeating the warning—to a nation that was dedicated to peace, prosperity, and an undefined asinine thing they called ‘normalcy.’ The voices rose as the crimes increased. Bigger navy, they said. Put the boondoggle money in rearmament. They were right. We were wrong.
“We filled our magazines with wishful advertisements for peace. War, we said, was murder. War, we told ourselves, was a money game. An economic matter. And, while we insisted all war could be prevented by negotiation, we also refused to sit at a table for any negotiation—thereby exhibiting the essential flaw in our own lulling argument. On went the voices. Nations fell. At Munich, America relaxed, as did Britain, with an eloquent sigh. Peace was assured. Hitler was a barrier against Communism—and no more. In the sigh was a note of humiliation—a decent people had been ‘sold,’ but the price was worth the gain. Anyway—it cost America nothing. The Paul Reveres kept riding, though. Poland next, they said. The Balkans. And then France.”
Mr. Corinth looked around at the faces. A few conversations had started at the other end of the room. Jimmie was sitting with his eyes shut, frowning. Mr. Wilson lay back in his chair, staring scornfully down his nose. The others kept making little motions, as if they wished to interrupt the old man. But his voice plunged ahead of them before their arguments could crystallize; he spoke with such assurance that many of his listeners—even those who stopped a while and went away—were evidently persuaded of his point for the time they listened. They would go back, for the most part, to their convenient views, when the memory of what they had heard became dimmer. The old man paused as if he were trying to summon some sort of idea, some point or topic, which would rivet his attitude irrevocably onto their brains.
“When France fell—fell so fast—a lot of Americans were frightened. By a lot, I merely mean a relatively large number. Most Americans think France is a dirty, remote, semi-civilized country where a second-rate people converses mainly about sexual perversions in an incomprehensible language. Even the majority of veterans who have been there think that. So its fall didn’t impress the national opinion much. The common people still thought one marine could lick a panzer division.
“But history, if future history is to be written in English, will talk about the Paul Reveres of this recent age. At the head of them will be Roosevelt—who saw and understood. Next will come Willkie. And, after that, a few hundred men and women. A few hundred—if America survives the coming years-will be responsible! Maybe it’s always a few hundred—who save things. They were all sorts of people, these few.
Reporters who had watched the sinister crusade set fire to the sullen Germans. A statesman here and there—a very few statesmen—who, like Churchill, had seen the misshapen things to come. Some scientists and refugees, a handful of college presidents, a few Jews, a few editors and publishers, by God’s grace, and a number of writers. If you think I mean Walter Winchell among ’em—I mean Walter Winchell. His rabid memoranda may have a bigger place in history than you think. The realist often looks shabby to the reactionary—and always survives his social superior in the annals. William Allen White, and Pierre van Paassen, Van Loon, Sinclair Lewis, John Gunther, William Bullitt, Henry Luce, and so on. You could name ’em all, if you’ve read anything except the propaganda of your own crowd. Different sorts of people. Dorothy Thompson and Thomas Mann and his kids. Pearson and Allen and Clapper and Alsop and Kintner. They wrote. They published. They formed committees.
“Do you think that’s all they did, Wilson? Do you know what has opened the eyes of your fellow Americans? These people. They met in New York and Washington and Chicago and Miami and every big city. They formed, not two or three, but thousands of groups. And they were not interested in trying to sell the American people a notion—as you are. They were interested, very simply, in trying to put before their fellow citizens the facts of what was happening. They talked till dawn. They lectured; they begged the microphones. They beat their typewriters when they could barely sit up straight enough. They made their living somehow, ran up bills, raced across the nation at their own expense-and they did not preach, like you. They said to all the people that they could reach: Here’s what’s going on; make up your own mind.