H.A.
the diligent scientist has been transformed into a wild eyed mystic. The letters are out! Those stupid letters to Nicholas Roerich from
H.A. are being published by Westbrook Pegler, a reactionary columnist for the
Hearst newspapers. Pegler said, “The
voters of this country are entitled to know whether or not those letters were
written to a Russian whose followers regarded him as Almighty God and to member
of this Russian’s Oriental political and pseudo-religious cult” were indeed
written by H.A. What an idiot – and I
mean H.A. not Pegler, although he is an idiot too. Pegler added, “The man who wrote those
letters was, by American popular standards, as dizzy as a dervish. These letters are revolting in their idiotic,
juvenile prattle of esoteric jargon.”
Pegler is demanding that H.A. confess that he wrote these letters. At press conferences the issue keeps coming
up. H.A. simply replies, “I never
comment on Westbrook Pegler.” When
Pegler showed up at the press conference and asked the question, H.A.
responded, “I never engage in any discussions with Westbrook Pegler.” At the next press event, the question arose
again. H.A. answered “I will not engage
in any discussion with a stooge of Westbrook Pegler.” H.A. was confronted by H.L. Mencken, who is
nobody’s stooge, asking, “Mr. Wallace , do you call me a stooge of
Pegler?” Fortunately, the entire room
including H.A. burst into laughter. But
Mencken was not done, “If you won’t answer the question as to whether you wrote
those letters, tell us, at least, the reason you won’t answer it.” H.A.’s reply was “Because it is not
important.”
The
reporters and newpapers are not convinced.
The story makes for good headlines, that is good for them – bad for us. A typical article that ran in the Chicago
Daily News, exclaimed that if H.A. is the author of these letters in
addition to president, we will have the “Master Guru,” who will be “in tune
with the Infinite, vibrate in the correct plane, outstare the Evil Eye, reform
the witches, overcome all malicious spells and ascend the high road to health
and happiness.”
[August
- Disk 2 – A.S.]
We
just finished a campaign tour in the South – what a horror. I can’t believe I wanted to go, but I was
just so proud of H.A. for his courage and his principled stance to refuse to
speak before segregated audiences, sleep in segregated hotels, or eat in segregated
restaurants. No candidate for president
has ever made this commitment.
For
his efforts, we were constantly harassed and under threat of violence. We saw lots of signs saying “Drop Dead” and
“Peddle Your Junk in Moscow.” In Dallas,
we received a Western Union telegram at 2 A.M.
reading, “Get out of town.”
Although the president was relatively safe, even with supposedly
enhanced security, his supporters were on the receiving end of the white-hot
hatred. Car windshields were smashed and
our supporters were jostled and harangued by mobs. In Durham, North Carolina a supporter was
stabbed when a mob went wild. At most
events, when H.A. began to speak he was greeted with boos and jeers and eggs
and tomatoes. Eventually the most
aggressive rabble-rousers were cleared and H.A could continue with his
speech.
“You
can call us black, or you can call us Red, but you can’t call us yellow,”
exclaimed one of our campaign workers [Clark Foreman a native Georgian who
worked in both the Roosevelt and Wallace New Deal Administration] However, twice,
in once in Alabama and again in Louisiana, the threat of violence was deemed
too great and the speaking event had to be cancelled. When the President and his supporters are not
safe to campaign – are we still in America?
The South feels like a foreign country – still in rebellion with the
United States 83 years after the end of
the Civil War.
H.A.
held with temper and dignity during the tour with one exception. At an egg
throwing incident H.A. lost his composure, for just a few seconds, and actually
grabbed a man and shouted “Are you an American? Am I in America?” Quickly
regaining his composure, H.A. then said calmly that “I don’t mind a little good
natured throwing of eggs and tomatoes, but I’d much rather see that food being
fed to children. The faces I’ve seen
distorted by hatred are of people for whom I have in my heart profound
compassion, because most of them have not had enough to eat.”
Naturally,
H.A. blamed the problem on a lack of food, but I knew this was a sickness that
could not be cured by a good meal.
Immediately
after leaving the south we flew to New York and had a rally of 48,000
supporters in Yankee Stadium and H.A. related his experience in the South. “To me, fascism is no longer a second-hand
experience… No, fascism has become an ugly reality – a reality, which I have tasted. I have tasted it neither so fully nor so
bitterly as millions of others. But I
have tasted it.”
Southern
newspapers attacked Wallace. The most
measured, and perhaps the most accurate, response came from Raleigh News and
Observer, “Henry Wallace came into the South not wishing to understand it
but to irritate it. He has left the
South not wishing to understand it but to use his unfortunate experience in it
as propaganda in the North and in the world.”
Although this is true, it has been far too long since the White South
has been “irritated” about it’s treatment of people. There is nothing to understand about Jim Crow
and segregation except that it is evil and it must be destroyed. With the visibility our tour created no
American can now ignore the horrors that occur daily in America.
© 2015 Ron Millar
