242 Nehru: 'The light has gone out of our jives'
to innumerable hearts. For that light represented the living truth . , . the eternal truths, reminding us of the right path, drawing us from error, taking this ancient country to freedom.
All this has happened when there was so much more for him to do. We could never think that he was unnecessary or that he had done his task. But now, particularly, when we are faced with so many difficulties, his not being with us is a blow most terrible to bear.
A madman has put an end to his life, for I can only call him mad who did it, and yet there has been enough of poison spread in this country during the past years and months, and this poison has had effect on people's minds. We must face this poison, we must root out this poison, and we must face all the perils that encompass us and face them not madly or badly but rather in the way that our beloved teacher taught us to face them. The first thing to remember now is that no one of us dare misbehave because we are angry. We have to behave like strong and determined people, determined to face all the perils that surround us, determined to carry out the mandate that our great teacher and our great leader has given us, remembering always that if, as I believe, his spirit looks upon us and sees us, nothing would displease his soul so much as to see that we have indulged in any small behaviour or any violence.
So we must not do that. But that does not mean that we should be weak, but rather that we should in strength and in unity face all the troubles that are in front of us. We must hold together, and all our petty troubles and difficulties and conflicts must be ended in the face of this great disaster. A great disaster is a symbol to us to remember all the big things of life and forget the small things,, of which we have thought too much.
Joseph McCarthy: 'Ihave hi my hand. . .' 243
Joseph McCarthy
Wheeling, West Virginia, 20 February 1950
'Ihave in my hand. ..'
Joseph McCarthy (1'90S--57), the junior Republican senator from Wisconsin, began his career as America's leading Red hunter on 9 February 1950, when be made this speech at the McLure Hotel hi Wheeling.
McCarthy's accusation that fifty-seven members of the State Department were card-carrying members of the Communist Party instantly became national news andprovoked denialsfrom the President and the State Department,
Controversy about what McCarthy really said raged for years. This version of his infamous speech is taken from the statement he made on the Senate floor on 20 February, when he put into the Congressional record a copy of what he really said at Wheeling.
Today we are engaged in a final, all-out battle between communistic atheism and Christianity. The modern champions of communism have selected this as the time. And, ladies and gentlemen, the chips are down — they are truly down ...
Can there be anyone here tonight who is so blind as to say that the war is not on? Can there be anyone who fails to realize diat the Communist wodd has said, 'The time is now" — tiiat this is the time for the show-down between the democratic Christian world and die Communist atheistic world?
Unless we face this fact, we shall pay the price that must be paid by diose who wait too long.
Six years ago, at the time of the first conference to map out the peace - Dumbarton Oaks — there was within the Soviet orbit 180 million people. Lined up on the antitotalitarian side there were in the world at diat time roughly 1,625 million people. Today, only six years later, there are 800 million people under the absolute domination of Soviet Russia — an increase of over 400 percent On our side, the figure has shrunk to around 500 million. In other words, in less than six years the odds have changed from 9 to 1 in our favour to 8 to 5
244 Joseph McCarthy: 'Ihave in my hand.. .'
against us. This indicates the swiftness of die tempo of Communist victories and American defeats in the cold war. As one of our outstanding historical figures once said, ^When a great democracy is destroyed, it will not be because of enemies from without, but rather because of enemies from within.'
The trudi of this statement is becoming terrifyingly clear as we see this country each day losing on every front.
At war's end we were physically the strongest nation on earth and, at least potentially, the most powerful intellectually and morally. Ours could have been die honour of being a beacon in the desert of destruction, a shining living proof that civilization was not ready to destroy itself. Unfortunately, we have failed miserably and tragically to arise to the opportunity.
The reason why we find ourselves in a position of impotency is not because our only powerful potential enemy has sent men to invade our shores, but rather because of the traitorous actions of those who have been treated so well by this Nation. It has not been the less fortunate or members of minority groups who have been selling tiiis Nation out, but rather those who have had all the benefits that die weakhiest nation on earth has had to offer — the finest homes, the finest college education, and the finest jobs in Government we can give.
This is glaringly true in the State Department. There the bright young men who are born with silver spoons in their mouths are the ones who have been worst...
I have in my hand fifty-seven cases of individuals who would appear to be either card-carrying members or certainly loyal to die Communist Party, but who nevertheless are still helping to shape our foreign policy . ..
One of the important reasons for die graft, the corruption, die dishonesty, the disloyalty, die treason in high Government positions — one of the most important reasons why this continues is a lack of moral uprising on die part of the 140 million American people. In the light of history, however, this is.not hard to explain.
It is die result of an emotional hang-over and a temporary moral lapse which follows every war. It is die apathy to evil which people
Joseph McCarthy: 7 have /// my hand. . .' ' 245
who have been subjected to die tremendous evils of-war feel. As die people of the world see mass murder, the destruction of defenseless and innocent people, and all of the crime and lack of morals which go with war, diey become numb and apadietic. It has always been dius after war.
However, die morals of our people have not been destroyed. They still exist. This cloak of numbness and apatiiy has only needed a spark to rekindle them. Happily, diis spark has finally been supplied.
As you know, very recendy the Secretary of State [Dean Aches on] proclaimed his loyalty to a man guilty of what has always been considered as the most abominable of all crimes — of being a traitor to the people who gave him a position of great trust [Alger Hiss]. The Secretary of State in attempting to justify his continued devotion to the man who sold out die Christian world to the adieisric world, referred to Christ's Sermon on die Mount as a justification and reason therefor, and the reaction of the American people to this would have made the heart of Abraham Lincoln happy.
When this pompous diplomat in striped pants, with a phony British accent, proclaimed to the American people that Christ on the Mount endorsed communism, high treason, and betrayal of a sacred trust, the blasphemy was so great that it awakened the dormant indignation of the American people.
He has lighted the spark which is resulting in a moral uprising and will end only when the whole sorry mess of twisted, warped thinkers are swept from die national scene so that we may have a new birth of national honesty and decency in Government.
The smear tactics of McCarthy and his phHistim contempt for intellectuals did untold damage to the American tradition of freedom of thought. He even denounced General George Marshall as a front man for Communism.
McCarthyism, the practice of accusing individuals of belonging to Communist front organisations with little evidence for the accusation, destroyed the careers of many men and women and created a sense of Rid menace which won the 1952 election for the Republicans.
Tljen McCarthy sought to discredit the Army. TlieArniy demonstrated'that McCarthy had sought preferential treatment for one of his aides. A Senate motion of censure
246
Faulkner: 'The agony and the sweat'
Faulkner: 'The agony and the sweat'
247
condemned McCarthy's conduct in 1954 and he discredited his cause a few days later by attacking President Eisenhower by name.
WILLIAM FAULKNER Stockholm, 10 December 1950
'Tbe agony and the sweat'
When William Faulkner [1897—1962), the creator of Yoknapatanpha County and author of As I Lay Dying and The. Sound and the. Fury, won the Nobel Pri^e, he bought his first dress suit for the occasion and decided to go to Stockholm for the pri^e-givhig.
At the state banquet, the quietfarmer from Oxford, Mississippi, appeared before a microphone and television camera for the first time and said that he declined to accept the end of man.
I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work — a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnac|e from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already tiiat one who will someday stand here where I am standing.
Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: when will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and die sweat.
He must learn them again. He must teach himself diat the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed — love and honour and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labours under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope, and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.
Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure; that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about diese things. It is Ms privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honour and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man; it can be one of the props, the pillars, to help him endure and prevail.