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PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES
RECORDED BY FRANCIS GRIERSON
Spiritual Messages from the late General U. S. Grant, on Adequate
Preparation in America; Thomas Jefferson, on the Future of American
Democracy; Benjamin Disraeli, on English and Irish Affairs; Prince
Bismarck, on the Indemnities; John Marshall, on the Psychology of the
Supreme Court of the United States; Alexander Hamilton, on the Forces that
Precede Revolution; Abraham Lincoln, on the Future of Mexico; Robert
Ingersoll, on Our Great Women; Henry Ward Beecher, on the New Puritanism;
Benjamin Wade, of Ohio, on President Harding; General B. H. Grierson, on
Japan, Mexico and California, etc.
PSYCHO-PHONE
MESSAGES
RECORDED BY
FRANCIS GRIERSON
Published by
AUSTIN PUBLISHING COMPANY
Los Angeles, California
Copyright, June 1921
By B. F. Austin
INTRODUCTION
The word "psycho-phone" was first suggested and used by Mr. Francis
Grierson in a lecture I heard him deliver before the Toronto Theosophical
Society, August 31st, 1919, a year before Thomas Edison announced his
intention of devising an instrument which he hopes will serve to establish
intercourse between our world and the world of spirit.
My own experiences as a student in this sphere of psychic research in
Europe and America, covering a period of thirty years, convince me that we
have here a revelation of a new mode of spiritual communication unlike
anything heretofore given to the world, not only different in quality but
different in purpose.
From personal knowledge I can state that the recorder of these messages
has not acted on ideas advanced by anyone living on our plane.
Looking back over the past two decades, I am led to believe that Mr.
Grierson's predictions in "The Invincible Alliance," and in that startling
poem, "The Awakening in Westminster Abbey," forecasting the war and the
tragic events in Ireland, were spiritual and psycho-phonic in character.
From 1909 to 1911 Francis Grierson was the acknowledged leading writer on
"The New Age," of London, which at that time had as contributors, H. G.
Wells, Bernard Shaw, Arnold Bennett, the two Chestertons, Hillaire
Belloc--in one word, all the most prominent writers and advanced thinkers
in Britain, yet not one of them except Mr. Grierson could see the
approaching world upheaval.
Early in 1909 he published a series of articles in that weekly depicting
the coming war, and nothing of so drastic a nature had ever appeared in an
English publication. In the spring of 1913 these articles were published
in book form in London and New York under the title of "The Invincible
Alliance."
In the Westminster Abbey composition, published in "The New Age" in 1910,
the characteristics of four personalities are plainly manifest--Coleridge,
Milton, Shelley and Shakespeare--and I have not forgotten the sensation
caused by this great work in London at the time of its appearance.
Having had occasion to study the social and psychic conditions in France,
Germany, Italy, Austria and England before the great war, and after having
been an eye witness of scenes unique in the annals of musical inspiration
in the artistic and literary circles of Europe as well as the most
intellectual of the royal courts, in which Mr. Grierson was the central
figure, I now have a better understanding of the work he accomplished and
its far-reaching import. The more complex the work the longer must be the
preparation, and we are now confronted with what will appear to many as
the most interesting phase of Mr. Grierson's psychic gifts, for the seer
who ushered in the new mystical movement by the publication of "Modern
Mysticism" in 1899 is now the recorder of messages which must induce
thinking and unprejudiced minds to pause and consider such matters in a
new light, and it is to be hoped that many more messages like these may
be recorded by the same hand.
As I write, I have before me a unique collection of letters written to Mr.
Grierson by men and women eminent in philosophy, art, music, literature
and journalism, in Europe and America. Among the letters that Mr. Grierson
values the most in this remarkable album are eight from members of the
French Academy, with Sully Prudhomme, winner of the first Noble Prize,
heading the list. Which reminds me that I heard him say one evening in
Paris, after hearing Mr. Grierson's music: "You have placed me on the
threshold of the other world. There are not words in the French language
to express what I have felt tonight!" Up to that moment the famous
Academician had been known as an avowed agnostic.
Maeterlinck writes that the first Grierson volume (in French) influenced
him more than any book he had ever read. There are four letters from the
Belgian mystic.
This album is filled with expressions from the most authoritative minds in
literature and art, as well as statesmen, soldiers and diplomats, such as
Jules Simon, the Duc de Broglie, Lord Lytton, British ambassador at Paris;
Lord Reading, British ambassador at Washington; Field Marshall Lord
Wolseley, General B. H. Grierson, U.S.A., leading members of the Bonaparte
family in Paris, Prince Henri of Orleans (son of Louis Philippe), Princess
Eulalia of Spain, and crowned heads who gave receptions in Mr. Grierson's
honor during the past thirty years. There are letters from distinguished
Americans, such as Col. Henry Watterson (who wrote two long editorials on
Mr. Grierson in the Louisville "Courier Journal"), Henry Mills Alden,
editor of "Harper's Monthly," Prof. William James, Marion Reedy, Edwin
Markham, Edith Thomas, Mary Austin, and many leading professors of
Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Cornell, the Universities of Illinois, Wisconsin
and California.
Edwin Bjorkman says, in his "Voices of Tomorrow":--
"To Francis Grierson belongs the honor of having first attained to
prophetic vision of the common goal. In his first volume, published in
Paris in 1889, he suggested every idea which since then has become
recognized as essential not only to Bergson and Maeterlinck but to the
constantly increasing number of writers engaged in making the time
conscious of its own spirit. As we read essay after essay it is as if we
beheld the globe of life revolving slowly between us and some unknown
source of light."
The following remarks from the London "Outlook" seem to me pertinent to
the subject:--
"Grierson is an Englishman, for he was born in Cheshire; Scotland may
justly claim him in that he is a direct descendent of Sir Robert Grierson,
the famous Laird of Lag, who is the hero of Scott's novel, 'The Red
Gauntlet'; that America has had a part in the making of him all readers of
that wonderful book, 'The Valley of Shadows,' know; France can claim him
since he began his musical career in Paris and published his first book in
French; but no special country can claim to have developed his
genius--that is cosmopolitan."
As "Current Opinion" says, in a long study: "He presents a unique
combination of thinker, writer, artist and musician who owes nothing to
any school or any master or system of training; and his experience is
without a parallel in the intellectual world of our day."
LAWRENCE WALDEMAR TONNER,
245-1/2 So. Spring St.
Los Angeles, California.
FOREWORD
These messages were begun in September, 1920, and the last was recorded in
May, 1921. I little dreamed that many of the predictions set forth would
be verified so soon. For names, in themselves, count for nothing. The
subliminal mind may assume different names on different occasions. A
message is of value exactly in proportion to the information imparted.
The first communication from General Grant was recorded September ninth.
It is peremptory in tone, and contains a warning touching the insecurity
of the Panama Canal. In November Mr. Harding made a tour of inspection and
found the fortifications of the Canal inadequate. I then decided on the
publication of these messages.
They deal with the actual. Take, for example, John Marshall's documents,
which are filled with warnings no reader with intelligence will attempt to
refute, Disraeli's indictment of English statesmanship in recent times,
Lincoln's utterances on affairs in Europe and Mexico, General Grant on
Preparation, Benjamin Franklin on the Privilege of Liberty, Bishop
Phillips Brooks on the Coming Ordeals, to name but a few.
As a Judge sums up, regardless of who may or may not agree, a decision is
rendered according to the vision of the one who delivers the message.
Principle, not Party, is the basis of judgment.
Witness Disraeli's remark that the blunders committed by the British
Parliament would have been impossible in an Irish Parliament in Dublin.
In a series of articles in "Nash's Magazine" Mr. Basil King suggests that
"the means of communication with the plane next above us may be through
the everlasting doors which the subliminal opens upward. Through these
doors the mind may go up and out; through these doors the light may come
in and down."
In our group of investigators we have had the perseverence essential for
serious development, and, as in all demonstrations, whether physical or
psychical, everything depends on conditions, so we have had periods of
weeks when no message of any kind was received.
A striking feature of these communications is their freedom from restraint
imposed by popular opinion. They contain neither theories nor appeals.
Warnings are uttered concerning events and their inevitable reactions.
The psycho-phonic waves, by which the messages are imparted, are as
definite as those received by wireless methods.
FRANCIS GRIERSON.
Los Angeles, California
CONTENTS
PAGE
Introduction 5
Foreword 13
Thomas Reed, of Maine, Late Speaker of the House, on the
Peace League 21
General U. S. Grant, on Adequate Preparation in America 24
General U. S. Grant (second message) 27
Thomas Jefferson, on the Future of American Democracy 30
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, on the Future of American Women 33
Benjamin Franklin, on the Privilege of Liberty 43
John Marshall, "The Expounder of the Constitution," on the
Psychology of the Supreme Court 46
Daniel Webster, on "Bohemian" Statesmen 47
Oliver Wendell Holmes, on the New Eden 49
Benjamin Wade, Late Governor of Ohio, U. S. Senator, on
President Harding 51
Don Piatt, Late Editor of "The Capital," Washington,
D. C., on Prohibition and the Blue Laws 55
Benjamin Disraeli, on English and Irish Affairs 58
Prince Bismarck, on Germany and the Indemnities 63
Henry Ward Beecher, on the New Puritanism 70
John Marshall, on Liberty and the League (second message) 74
Abraham Lincoln, on the Future of Mexico 79
Robert Ingersoll, on Our Great Women 82
Stephen A. Douglass, on War Between England and America 83
General B. H. Grierson, on Japan and California 85
Alexander Hamilton, on the Forces that Precede Revolution 89
Phillips Brooks, on The Coming Ordeals 93
Psycho-phone Messages
THOMAS B. REED
(Late Speaker of the House)
Recorded September seventh, 1920.
The formidable imbecility of the Senate rivaled the fantastic irritability
of the President.
Born with a Utopian temperament, Mr. Wilson has a Herculean passion for
generalities and a Lilliputian penchant for details.
You scratched the Teutons at Versailles and found a new species of Tartar;
you scratched the Japanese and found a Pacifist camouflage; you scratched
the Poles and found a pianist with his hair uncut; you scratched the
French and found a tiger with his claws unclipped. Your mania for
scratching other nations will keep your nails manicured without the aid of
scissors.
Never since the Declaration of Independence and the first peal of the
Liberty Bell did a chief executive walk up a winding stair into so pretty
a parlor as when Mr. Wilson, with the naivete of a Princeton president,
faced that cacophony of sectional jazz bands to witness the cryptic
hand-writing on the wall at the peace table. Who was his adviser? Was it a
gentleman with owl spectacles from the oil fields of Texas? And was there
no one who could have cautioned him against the finesse of Clemenceau who
spent sixty years sharpening his wits on the political grindstone of
Europe? Was no one in America aware that the French Premier is a fluent
speaker in English?
Mr. Wilson could speak no French, which reminds me that Jack Spratt could
eat no fat and his wife could eat no lean, and so betwixt them both they
licked the platter clean. But a clean plate does not mean a clean slate,
and the President brought one home filled with the riddle of the Sphinx.
Yet the Peace Conference revealed the secret of perpetual motion and
conferred a timely service, for the hubbub created by the
Wilson-Lansing-House-Party at Versailles kept the Senate from passing into
a trance.
A blind man can tell the difference between pepper pods and apple
dumplings, but who can tell where tweedle-dee ends and tweedle-dum begins?
No one. Then how can your statesmen distinguish between the psychological
characteristics of the Hungarians and the Bohemians, the Bavarians and the
Saxons, the difference between a polka and a polonaise, a pig in a stye
and a pig in a slaughter house?
Patriotism often depends on an influence too subtle for analysis, and yet
they would enact drastic laws to bind all Europe in one bond. They will
hardly succeed in a thousand years.
Some pay through the nose, some through the pocket and some through the
stomach. Americans are paying through all three. Danton declared the
secret of the French Revolution was audacity, and audacity, and again
audacity, but what you need today is vigilance repeated ad infinitum.
I am placing you in communication with some of the most far-reaching minds
of the past hundred and fifty years. The psycho-phone is new and we are
using it for the first time.
THE LATE GENERAL U. S. GRANT
Recorded September Ninth, 1920
The imbroglio started by President Carranza is beginning to influence the
politicians of Buenos Ayres and other centers in South America. They have
secretly repudiated the Monroe Doctrine. Their next maneuver will be a
public repudiation.
I would say to Congress, stop juggling with phrases and attend to the
business of the hour. The majority have been chasing shadows in a sphere
of politics illumined by moonshine bottled in the Blue Ridge. I was more
careful of my brand. When President Lincoln asked for the label, so he
could recommend it to other generals, he was not far wrong in his
surmises. It is not so much the thing as the quality that counts. Most of
you at Washington will have to learn the difference between inhibition and
prohibition.
The United States will be isolated within three years from this date if
the blowhards from the woolly constituencies are not suppressed. You need
a broncho buster in the Senate and a donkey muzzler in the House.
When a boycott is started by the countries south of the Union your enemies
in Europe will begin to act. It is not a question of commerce but of
common sense. I repeat what Lincoln said in 1862: "The times are dark and
the spirits of ruin are abroad in all their power."
My message to Congress is: See that fifty thousand troops are stationed
permanently near the District of Columbia.
My message to the Governors of New York, Pennsylvania and Illinois is: Get
ready! The troops on the borders of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona are
inadequate. The fortifications of the Panama and at San Diego and San
Pedro are inadequate. You are in the same condition the French were in
previous to 1789, when the motto was, "After us the Deluge." The Deluge
came but it did not consist of water.
Our foes of the old Germany and the new Russia count on crippling the
United States through South America, with the aid of Japan; but he who
delivers the first blow will be the victor.
The Germans still believe they can eventually invade France, enter Paris
and cause a revolution, found a new empire to include France, Belgium,
Holland and Switzerland, with Italy later on. This dream includes a
practical understanding with Soviet Russia, which, by that time, they
expect would be weary of futile experiments. Plots will be exposed that
will make it apparent how vain some of your optimistic surmises have been.
Diplomats who are not psychologists will be balked by developments in
Switzerland, that nation having become the rendezvous of disillusioned
wire-pullers without a country.
You are now at the cross roads. Take the wrong turning and you will come
to the skull and cross bones.
I could say much more but we are not yet experts in this new mode of
inter-communication and must be brief.
GENERAL U. S. GRANT.
(Second Message)
Recorded May Third, 1921
I concur with Alexander Stephens when he says: "Congress has never been so
supine and so serpentine."
Millions are sent to the people of distant countries in no way related to
our Government or people, and yet Congress permits thousands of veterans
of the great war to continue in a state of neglect, suffering and
humiliation.
Do the authorities believe that when the day of trial arrives the friends
and relatives of these veterans will hurry to volunteer for active
service? The country is being fascinated by incidents and events in
far-off regions, and the tragic conditions at home have entered a chronic
stage.
There are too many old men in Congress--men who never did more than fight
grasshoppers or watch a game of football from reserved seats.
We do not like the looks of the President's pronunciamento. It contains
too many side issues. He is making Mr. Wilson's mistake of being verbose.
Mr. Wilson tried to hypnotize Europe; the Senate is trying to hypnotize
Mr. Harding. Popularity breeds as much contempt as familiarity. No
President can ever succeed in conciliating all classes, sections and
parties.
The politicians of Buenos Ayres have now spoken as I predicted in my first
message. They have attacked Mr. Harding for his speech on Pan-Americanism,
all which goes to prove that the President is repeating for South America
Mr. Wilson's blunders in France.
Remember what Lincoln said to Judge Whitney:--
"Those fellows think I don't see anything, but I see all around them. I
see better what they want to do with me than they do themselves."
The politicians of South America see better what the President wants to do
with them than he does himself.
The administration will face a critical period in the early fall. There
will be a break in the dominant phalanx. A social and political
readjustment will compel mediation in quarters the most unexpected.
The new political and commercial dispensation for the English-speaking
countries will begin on September twenty-second at two P.M.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
Few politicians understand the difference between scene-shifting and
progress. Things shift, new names are applied, but the vicious circle
continues.
I see no evidence that human nature has changed since my time, in this or
any other country.
If the Republican Ship of State is leaking, the Democratic craft is
drifting without sail or rudder. What your statesmen fail to understand is
that progress is not induced by force but by free will. New political
planks rammed into your platforms against the wishes of the majority are
without significance. The phrase, "The Solid South," which meant something
vital at one time, has no meaning in these days of quick change and
movie-show influences.
Democracy, in some sections, is a matter of climate. If you have come to a
point where science and sentimentality are engaged in a drastic war, then
the Democratic phalanx must undergo some rude changes.
The Democratic tail wagged the Republican dog for some time, but that
curious spectacle has lost its hold on public interest. It is not now a
question of one end wagging the other, but who will wag both. If
Republicans stand for crude force, and Democrats for antebellum
sentimentality, both are doomed together.
In the South, Democracy means politics at the polls, aristocracy in the
parlor. In the North, Republicanism means the aristocracy of wealth.
However, your conception of social equality is undergoing modification.
In Washington's time the slogan was revolution; in Lincoln's time it was
abolition; in your time it is prohibition, which reminds me that laws
passed in haste bring long periods of repentance.
Effective effrontery is the result of courageous ignorance, for millions
are more easily influenced by illusive promises than by the lessons of
experience.
Modern civilization has hurried to meet four deadly things--riches,
pleasures, materialism and war. But the tortoise is a better example of
progress than the hare fleeing before the greyhound.
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON
It appalls the normal mind to stop and consider the criminal blunders made
by the educated Prussian and the educated Englishman prior to 1914. No
statesman had the vision to see what was going to happen to the man-made
world.
Since it is a question of intuition and feeling versus cold reason and
business logic, let us see which side is the more vital and all-enduring.
Let us consider for a brief space what it is that influences people. Let
us consider the influence exerted by the arts. What is music? Emotion
created by sound vibrations. What is dramatic acting? Emotion created by
vocal vibrations combined with gesture and physical movement. Has anyone
ever witnessed automatic acting that left a profound impression?
Orators become famous when they unite deep feeling with knowledge. But
what gives expression? The power of awakening emotion in others. Feeling
is always more convincing than intellect. Intellect is full of theories,
notions and superstitions. But where you find deep feeling combined with
knowledge, you will find reason directed by qualities which pass through
the surface and attain the heart-throbs of the real.
There are many kinds of emotion. There is the hard emotion of anger, the
confused emotion of fear, the painful emotion of jealousy, the
indescribable emotion of despair, the radiant emotion of joy. But the
greatest emotion of all is that of knowledge united to feeling.
Men, as a rule, speak of emotion as a weakness, and they confuse it with
impulse--a very different thing. Impulse is often the result of weak
nerves, uncontrolled by the will; but we must not confuse it with the
emotional quality which underlies all great achievement in art,
literature, philosophy and personality. The more impulsive the individual
is, the more primitive the reasoning faculty.
English and American business men are limited in general knowledge. I have
never been able to discover any distinctive difference between the two.
In France and Italy many business men are able to discuss art, literature
and music on the same level with the masters. The Latin races and the
Celtic races possess a culture that can be traced back for two or three
thousand years, but Anglo-Saxon culture only to the time of the Saxon
invasion. The Anglo-Saxons were the mushrooms of our civilization. They
were a stolid business people who lacked creative genius.
The outstanding intellect of England today is Celtic. The Scotch, the
Irish and the Welsh combine emotion and power with tenacity of purpose,
and it is this Celtic element that keeps America in the front rank of
nations.
What women have been opposing is the primitive monotony of the Anglo-Saxon
trend. It has meant a mixture of politics and commerce so primitive and so
naive that Frenchmen are amazed when they visit America and note the
striking difference between the culture of the women and the mentality of
the average man.
One of your great mystics has said: "The chemical constituents of human
bodies is the same. The ashes of a saint and the ashes of a sinner give
the same chemical results. As human bodies they are the same, but their
functions separate them and make them totally different, so that the
difference cannot by any hocus-pocus of metaphysics or magic be bridged or
spanned."
Two things of the same material are really different if their functions
are different. The real substance of a thing is in its function. We have
to judge people by the things they do, not by their appearance; for there
is no clear understanding between two persons whose aims are different.
This is why there are so many divorces. This is why so many intellectual
women live separate lives from their husbands in the same house.
People seem to be similar and equal but they differ according to their
functions. If we take a philosopher, a hangman and a sailor who appear to
be equal as human beings we shall see that in their functions there is
nothing in common. The souls of these men are different in the very
nature, origin and purpose of their existence.
Thousands of people move in a world of material shadows while their souls,
the substance of which is intellectual and spiritual, inhabit a sphere
absolutely apart. Especially is this the case with many of the cultured
women of our time who are compelled to live a double life. Their
intellects are far removed from the ordinary pursuits of the commercial
world.
A woman of spiritual culture who marries a commercial man has married a
shadow. A woman of high ideals who marries a professional politician has
hitched her motor car to a meteor. A romantic woman married to a
multi-millionaire whose world is bound in liberty bonds loses her liberty.
A metaphysical woman who marries a financier is handicapped by the
physical.
A union of spiritual functions with material formulas is impossible, for
there is no way in which mere sensation can be made to harmonize with the
higher emotions.
The new era of woman, which is just beginning to dawn, will direct
education; and through education, politics; through politics, the progress
of nations. Heretofore, the commercial and political world had a free
hand. The progressive element was confined to a limited number of men in
the colleges and the ministry, together with a remnant of law-makers. But
their influence was negative owing to lack of material support.
Women will now present a formidable force in numbers, backed by a
spiritual power, aided by men who understand the difference between
functions and appearance, sensuous desires and ideal emotions.
For years I maintained that women do not realize the power they possess.
They live so much in a world of their own that they do not regard the
man-made commercial world as worth elevating.
Thousands of men are living in a sphere some degrees below the normal.
They have been surrounded from the beginning with influences that
obliterate all the higher faculties of the mind.
It has taken woman some centuries to rise to power, but the work is only
half done. Never can the commercial instinct and the intellectual ideal be
made to harmonize. The two spheres of consciousness are totally distinct.
The modern intellect has been organized without considering the moral
meaning of its activity. This has caused the delusion that the crowning
glory of European culture is the dreadnaught. Ninety per cent of all
modern inventions are for bodily destruction or bodily comfort. While the
body lolls in luxury, the spirit is soused in lethargy.
As Ouspensky says, we have created two lives--one material, the other
spiritual. I believe this is owing to the fact that man is living and
working in the material and woman in the spiritual. In other words, she is
carrying her own responsibilities on one shoulder and man's baneful
burdens on the other. The figure of Atlas holding up the Globe should be
changed to that of a female.
One would think that in these days, when psychology is taught even to
children, that a man who has lived forty years in the world of action
would know better than to boast of his eternal activities. The word "busy"
has grown to be a veritable fetish with thousands who have little or
nothing to do. The truth is, most men are not half as busy as they seem
and not more than a fourth as wise as they look.
We have to find out by exact analysis just what incentive lies behind
people's actions. What makes the distinction is the quality of our acts.
Everything in the material and the spiritual worlds is judged according to
quality. Gold, diamonds, clothes, bricks, music, poetry, literature, are
adjudged, in the last resort, on the basis of intrinsic value. When people
are engaged in pursuits for the sake of money the results will be on a
plane with the quality of the incentive.
In the work done by women in the past fifty years in this country, the
incentive has been of a higher quality than that shown by men.
While men introduced a coarse realism into the novel, women saved the
situation by new ideals. I do not think there would be much left worth
reading today but for woman's taste and judgment.
In the world of intellect and emotion things hang together. A low plane of
intellect will produce low impulses. The more we know the greater our
control of the different sense organs. Nothing can happen without a
corresponding cause behind it.
The hysteria so common at great political conventions is caused by the
exceedingly limited intelligence of the managers and directors who labor
under the illusion that blind impulse is tantamount to vision. In other
words, where the critical faculties are not developed anything can happen.
And it is not difficult to predict that when political conventions are
swayed by hysterical temperaments the authority at the White House will
have all he can do to steer the Ship of State through the troubled waters
of impulse and confusion.
There is a will to power that is blind. There is another will to power
that brings the higher emotions to bear on the lower impulses, controls
and directs the organs of sense.
The people who elect a President are the ones who will influence his
actions. And when we talk about a President being a good man for business
we are compelled to seek for the reason behind the statement.
If finance lands a President at the White House, women, children, teachers
and philosophers must shift for themselves, since the supreme test lies in
function, and not in manners, words and looks. And finance means finesse.
Do not expect great innovations at the Capitol until a strong woman takes
her seat at the White House; and by this I do not mean one of Barnum's
bearded ladies.
Conservatism is a good thing when it is coupled with vision and judgment,
but bear in mind that monotony and mediocrity start in the same groove,
run at the same pace and arrive at the same grave.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
There is but one mark of patriotism and that is vigilance and enthusiasm.
The cause of your trouble is the sincerity with which your foes think and
act and the lukewarm sentiment shown by Americans. The reason is to be
found in the comfort and luxury of the present day compared with the
pioneer sacrifices of your fathers and grandfathers. Your opponents are
vindictive as well as vigilant. They mean what they say and do what they
will. They are working as individuals, as well as in groups and parties,
but Americans who inherited the land with liberty are exchanging both for
the license of the maw.
When school teachers and farm hands are permitted to leave the country for
the city, the end is not so far off as your sophisticated solons of the
State Capitols would lead you to suppose.
I once stated that three movings equal one fire, and I can say now that
the lack of teachers and farm hands has resulted in a damage equal to one
revolution. No calamity comes and goes single handed. The world, the flesh
and the devil are a triumvirate bound together by ties of consanguinity.
Your school teachers are passing over to the world, your farm laborers to
the flesh, and your ministers to the devil.
You are browsing on the stubble. One delinquency involves another, and
eventually the monetary capital of the nation may be reduced to that of
France. The nation will awake one day to the disillusioning fact that
peace and progress cannot be gauged by commercial prosperity alone. For
without food what avails your steel, your oil and your gold?
If you could witness the mortification poor Andrew Carnegie is now
undergoing because of his lack of vision, you would have a lesson not soon
forgotten. He built libraries but furnished no books to fill them. It was
like building houses without windows. When leading business men commit
such folly what can you expect of the nation at large?
The three things most needed by the people are food, raiment and shelter.
The next three are instruction, religion and discipline. Liberty is a
privilege; it comes after all the others. The individual has no rights
inimical to those of the collective conscience.
Until you learn this fundamental maxim, all your knowledge will prove but
a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.
The nations are rattling over the cobble stones of bankruptcy on a
buckboard of compromise, on the high road to revolution.
JOHN MARSHALL
(The Expounder of the Constitution)
Recorded October, 1920
Some recent decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States are, more
than any other factor, calculated to develop and foster an element of
national unrest. Its deliberations are beyond the intelligence of many and
above the interests of the majority. Its psychology is that of a divorce
between capital and labor. Its rulings remind me of what transpired in
England early in the nineteenth century.
Many who were not socialists are beginning to turn from the older order,
imbued with the feeling that nothing could happen in the future worse for
the country at large than the conditions that are being endured in the
present.
A revolution arrives after a series of connected events which exhausts the
patience of the public, and events are moving with intensity as well as
rapidity.
DANIEL WEBSTER
You will search the pages of history in vain without finding a parallel to
present conditions.
The war gave Bohemia her freedom; at the same time it licensed a bohemian
poet to keep Italy stewing in her own juice, a bohemian journalist from
New York to direct affairs in Moscow, and a bohemian socialist from
Switzerland to rule over Russia.
Added to this a fashionable ladies' pianist has tried his hand, or should
I say fingers, in the science of unfurling the sails of Poland's new Ship
of State, while shop-keepers direct affairs in Germany and pusilanimous
politicians keep the people of America in a state of tepid trepidation and
flatulent turmoil. Can you wonder that the country is being hypnotized by
the sight of so many cantankerous cataleptics?
Macbeth declared he had waded in so far that returning would be as
perilous as going on. Nothing will move them until they are swamped by
the high tide of reaction and flung as flotsam on the rocks of a stormy
opportunism.
A new Damocles has a sword suspended over the National Capitol, and
liberty hangs to the hinges of the Constitution by a hair.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
While a few people are ready to return to first principles, many are
giving expressions to Garden of Eden proclivities. But instead of the old
Eve, you have the new Amazon; instead of the old serpent, copperheads in
Congress; instead of the old Adam, fresh brands of bluebeards.
Agreeable to the apple of the new Adam's eye and the fruitarian diet of
the new Eden, some ladies have adopted the fig-leaf standard. But let that
pass for the moment, always bearing in mind that he who loses his sense of
humor loses his equilibrium.
Millions of people are dancing their legs off to keep their heads on.
Providence is wiser than the moralists.
There was a way out of the trenches and there is a way out of the
pessimism developed by the dying dispensation. It is not so much a
question of keeping your powder dry as it is of keeping your wits from
congealing.
Beware of nebulous notions and theories. Uncanny kinks lead to calamitous
brain storms. A stitch in the side saves nine--kicks behind the solar
plexus.
BENJAMIN WADE
(Late Governor of Ohio--U. S. Senator)
Viewed in the light that shines on the White House, there is no difference
between a man from Ohio and a gentleman from Indiana.
Men from the pumpkin pie districts think and feel alike, judging world
politics by the yard-stick method that prevailed in their villages when
they were young men. They are not always aware that political ruts cause
social ructions.
The all-wool-and-a-yard-wide politician was home-spun and honestly
patriotic, but what you need is a home-spun thinker whose vision has got
beyond the yard-stick measure and can take in the whole world.
An old-school president, at this juncture, will have little more authority
than a Congo king would have at a conference of jurists in Paris.
Has anyone taken the trouble to find out just what distinguishes the
minority from the majority?
While the home-spun politician was eating cookies and buckwheat cakes made
by his mother in the Middle West, some millions in New York, Chicago,
Cleveland, and other foreign centers, were partaking of wienerwurst,
sauerkraut, Swiss cheese and rye bread, and clinking beer glasses,
according to the custom of Continental Europe.
If we say that a statesman represents Americanism, the question arises
what kind of Americanism? The Yankee, the Southerner, each had his place
in the political economy of America from 1776 to the Emancipation
Proclamation in 1863, and even up to the Cleveland Administration, after
which conditions began to change with startling rapidity, when the
children born of foreign parents were beginning to come of age and the
European ferment began to leaven the lumps of sectional dough.
The man who occupies the White House in 1921 should take Time by the
forelock and the profiteer with the padlock, know how to translate "Es
ist verboten" into Russian, and say, "Get thee behind me, Satan," in
Esperanto.
If honesty, alone, is the best and only policy, our country would be safe,
but honesty is only one of the qualities necessary in these days to carry
a President through the mazes of a complex administration. Honesty does
not always imply clear vision or even ordinary common sense. The faculties
of diplomatic tact and political judgment are infinitely more important,
and experience still more so.
In America the roles enacted by professional politicians remind one of a
masquerade where everyone is trying to penetrate behind the masks and
guessing is the rule. If in this heterogeneous ball-room you slap your
partner on the back, you may elicit a grunt from a grouchy bolshevik or a
groan from a disgruntled "bohemian."
And yet Congress enacts laws for Americans who understand no dialect but
their own and who have to engage interpreters when they visit Paris. How
many wealthy Americans realize that these United States have outgrown the
cookie era, the buckwheat pancake era, the corn cob era, the wooden nutmeg
era, and arrived at the root-hog-or-die era?
Young America today no more resembles the young America of thirty years
ago than a butterfly resembles a caterpillar. Young men and women are
sixty per cent cosmopolitan and forty per cent rebel.
During the next five years the number of young people who will insist on
thinking for themselves will increase two-fold, because in that time many
thousands of children born of foreign parents in America will have become
mature enough to have fixed upon some sort of ideal.
Congress will realize the situation when it is too late for regrets to be
of any service. Which calls to mind a story apropos of this pressing
subject: A landlady, having no means of obtaining meat for her boarders,
made a stew out of a litter of kittens. The truth became known in a day or
two. One of the boarders said the very thought made her sick, to which the
landlady replied: "Feeling sick won't do no good; them kittens has all
been digested."
DON PIATT
(Late Editor of "The Capital," Washington, D. C.)
Where are the debaters whose rapier tongues ripped up the rag dolls of
Congress and kept the floor of the House supplied with fresh saw-dust,
whose fantastic fencing and heart-piercing thrusts were the delight of the
gallery and the terror of fire eaters. Gone, gone where the woodbine
twineth. What went they out for to see? A reed shaken by the wind? There
is a difference in reeds. Tom Reed of Maine shook the House, but the House
never shook him. What were his favorite drinks? There was plenty to choose
from in the Washington of his day. But note the difference between the wit
of the Maine Reed and that of the Missouri Reed.
On the other hand, where did Bryan get the "cross of gold" inspiration in
the old days? Did he do it on tannic acid released from tea leaves? Who
will ever know? One thing is certain--he never again rose to the same
level.
Is our planet revolving toward a second edition of puritanism? Probably.
The esprit de corps that animated the body politic begins to resemble a
corpse with the esprit evaporated.
The human mind needs moments of exaltation as well as relaxation.
Brilliant results are not produced by lukewarm sentiments expressed in a
voice that lacks enthusiasm.
Washington is now a resort for celluloid cynics and a refuge for asbestos
patriots whose marmorian snobbery makes me think of the ruins of temples
abandoned by the gods and forgotten by man.
The great blunder of the prohibitionists was made when they condemned beer
and light wine. Nature abhors abruptness. Progress is not made by sudden
jerks and violent laws passed in a hurry.
If a few persons living in an obscure village in Ohio can bring about a
movement like prohibition, the same influence can bring about a return of
the old Connecticut blue laws.
Violent actions are followed by violent reactions. From this there is no
escape.
The fundamental objection to prohibition, as it stands, lies in the cold
fact that provincialism, no matter how sincere, can never compete with
international common sense and cosmopolitan culture.
Village residents are ignorant of the laws that govern society in the most
intelligent centers of the world. What will be the result in the long run?
Antagonism between the people of the cities and the people of the country.
When they prohibit tobacco, a war of cuss words will be followed by a
battle of cuspidors, and the very crows will cuss the crocuses.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI
Some Members of Parliament have lost their reason, the majority have lost
their wits, all are without vision.
Lloyd George presents the curious spectacle of a man of the people who
observes them through the glasses of a Welsh Calvinist. He is a democrat
with the demeanor of a lord, a radical who has fallen between the two
stools of the middle-class and the landed aristocracy. Nonconformist
sentimentality, on one hand, and titled wealth on the other, have blinded
him to the imperative needs of the time and the dangers that confront the
Empire.
The English people of the past twenty years have suffered as much from
misgovernment as the Germans and the Russians, but they cannot stop the
present stream of progress by clatter in the House and appeals to
patriotism.
For years England has been saddled with cabinets composed of professional
humorists and hum-drum moralists.
Augustine Birrell was a diluted edition of Sydney Smith, and Bonar Law
should have been a professor of theology in a Presbyterian seminary. Sir
Edward Carson played the role of an unfrocked priest in the service of
demiurgos. Earl Curzon is a political derelict whose presence in the
Council Chamber prevents unity and impedes progress.
History will record their acts as the most amazing in the annals of Great
Britain. I see nothing for the old order but unconditional surrender. The
hand-writing on the wall was visible in 1909, but no preparation was made
for the change which is now sweeping the country with cyclonic force.
We, from our side, can do no more than utter some words of warning for the
few who have ears to hear, the tidal wave of change not being confined to
particular countries or regions.
I, too, when Prime Minister, was blind to the reality, having been born
and reared in an atmosphere as foreign to that of the masses as the
atmosphere of the Winter Palace was foreign to the peasants of Russia.
We staggered under the load of a wealthy and titled upper class. They
consumed the people's time and imposed infinite misery on some millions of
toilers, and for these things we rewarded the men at the top with fresh
titles.
As you know, I led the Conservative Party in England for many years, but
that Party was, and still is, avid for power.
The Liberal Party was made up of men using Nonconformity as an instrument
of advancement. They placed opportunity above the truth, position above
principle, power above progress. We were all intellectual automatons, set
in motion by springs wound up by leaders who were themselves automatons.
England goes by machinery. Her very existence is mechanical. Now, when a
loose screw stops the evolution of the wheels, the whole nation stops.
In what way can we be said to excel in probity of conduct the people of
Ireland? In what way are we superior to Irish politicians? The scandals
that occurred in London during the war would not have been tolerated in
Dublin under an Irish Parliament. And still England is being led by a
Welsh Calvinist, opposed by a Scottish humorist who says his prayers,
backed by Anglican agnostics and middle-class dissenters overwhelmed with
fear.
We always imitate the French, but while we accepted Voltairianism in
principle, the French had the courage to put it into practice.
While the French became practical pagans in 1789, we became practical
hypocrites.
It is this element that has created the moral indifference of the Anglican
Church and the intellectual apathy of the so-called Nonconformist
conscience. This is why there is no stability behind the old phraseology,
the old ceremonials, the old confessions of faith--now so many catch-words
which the people abhor. And this is why the working men find it so easy to
send their leaders to Parliament. For the same reason Russian radicalism
is certain of a warm welcome on English soil.
It is true that this hypocrisy is subconscious, having had its origin
during the French Revolution. This renders it far more dangerous because
political leaders in England today are mentally incompetent to realize the
danger that lies before them.
We cannot reason with people whose vision is dulled by four generations of
moral apathy. Hence they will continue to "kick against the pricks" to the
bitter end. There will be strife added to strife, confusion to confusion,
and they, themselves, will invite the drastic events which must follow so
much stubborn resistance to the demands of common justice and the progress
of civilization.
PRINCE BISMARCK
Recorded November 3d, 1920
When I imposed an indemnity of five billion francs on the French people in
1870 we knew that the money could and would be paid. But there is no
parallel between Germany in 1920 and France in 1870. The Reparations
Commission has only succeeded in proving its incompetence. The German
delegates have shown that the Allied war claims amount to more than five
hundred billion marks (gold), which is nearly four thousand billions at
the present rate of exchange.
This fantastic sum, one hundred times more than France paid to Germany in
1870, is expected of a country on the verge of revolution and chaos. I
charge this Commission with incompetence, extravagance, luxurious living,
and claims at once absurd and ridiculous.
You punish some of the most dangerous criminals by indeterminate
sentences, which frequently end after a year's imprisonment, but you
expect to hold the German people in financial bondage for more than a
generation to come because of the criminal blunders of less than a hundred
individuals.