PROTEST A. Thi MENAG* of Fabciih 3. the ^R Thfclte ... Any
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CHAPTER VII ORAMA Q- PROTEST A. THi MENAG* OF FAbCIiH 3 . THE ^ R THfclte . any mans death diminishes oe, because I am involved in Mankinds . (John i)onne, Devotions) This nation vill remain a neutral nation out I cannot ssk that every American remain neutral in thought as *»ell. Even a neutral has a right to take account of tne facts. Even a neutral cannot be asked to close his mind or his conscience. (Franklin Delano Roosevelt, rireeide Chat on the outbreak of ’-•.orlei var IT) Writing his memoirs of th« Second ^orld ^ar, Winston Churchill u*ed a singularly appropriate title 1 for one of his volumes, calling it "The Gathering Storm". It described the period between the end of the M rst T orld toar and the closing yea® of the 1930s vhen a disaster of great magnitude loomed over f urope. 1 . V,inston Churchill, The Second WorldJ^ar i The Gathering Storm (Boston : Houghton MiiVIln tJo.j ). *65 266 The most abhorrent and alarming aspect of the International situation vas the rise In Germany of that most virulent form of fascism, Nazism. Hitler's insistence on the superiority of the Aryan race had triggered off waves of persecution of German Jews. Many of them belonged to families that had lived in the country for centuries, contributing in no small vay to commerce, to banking, to the arts and sciences and to the philosophy 2 of the Fatherland. Great intolerance was shovn by the Nazis to other political parties and the Communist Party in particular vas singled out frequently as a convenient scapegoat and blamed for a variety of ills . Germany vas arming itself, building up its military strength on so massive a scale that its ultimate intention was obviously nothing less than the establishment of Aryan supremacy over the peoples of the world. hatching from across the Atlantic, the American nation was torn between sympathy for those who were victims of fascist tyranny and the feeling that it was purely an European affair. America continued her policies of non-intervention and isolationism which frustrated one 2 . Among those fleeing their homeland were such brilliant men as Albert Einstein, Composer Kurt Weill and novelist Thomas Mann, all of vhom found refuge In America. 267 section of Americans including dramatist Robert Sherwood. These men felt that timely interference by the United States would arrest the infamous occupation by the Nazis of smaller European nations. It seemed to most Americans that there were enough domestic problems to contend with 3 at home even though the Depression had lifted. Moreover 3. In December 1937, the gunboat U .S .8. Panay was sunk by Japanese bombers in the Yangtse but, as William Leuchtenburg observes, this failed to arouse martial feelings in American breasts and he adds : "Any thought oi war was ruled out not only by Tokyo’ s willingness to apologize but even more by the mood of the American people, who refused to treat the deliberate sinking of an American vessel by Japanese war planes as a casus b e lli." One direct result of the Panay affair was the introduction into Congress of the Ludlow amendment which suggested that America could go to var only if the people so desired through a national referendum. Only a vigorous appeal by FDR, pointing to the dangers of such an amendment which would impair the powers of the President in foreign affairs and serve as an incentive to other nations to violate America’ s rights, prevented the passing of the amendment, (' illiam £. Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal 193^-1940 (New York : Harper and Row, 1963), p. 229; Jules Davids, America and the World of Our Time i United States Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century (New York : Random House, I960), pp. 160-161 and p. 167). Nevertheless, the Ludlow amendment was a strong indication of popular support for isolationism. 26$ the memory of the war of 1914-18 with all its attendant tragedies vas still fresh. Still, as new reports of the worsening situation cane in froa Europe each day, it became more difficult for Americans to maintain detachment and to shrug off all concern for the alarming situation. Earlier in this study we examined the deep involvement of writers in the thirties with their tines. We noted their concern with the havoc let loose by the Great Crash of 1929, resulting in one of the most shattering economic crises in man's history. As the decade came to its close, some writers reacted sharply in a characteristic way to the menacing international situation and set down their feelings in no uncertain terms. Tneir observations did not necessarily centre around tne situation as it affected America, but in more universal terms, as it affected the oppressed peoples/6f Europe slovly but surely being crushed by the tentacles of the Nazi octopus, and ultimately as It affected all men. Uith this awareness, novelist Ernest Hemingway, no stranger himself to war and conflict, wrote of the young American, Robert Jordan, who joins the Loyalist army against Franco's forces. He is assigned the dangerous task of bloving up a strategic bridge. Against great odds, the task Is completed but Jordan is wounded and unable to escape wltn the ottiers. He can only lie there, waiting for franco's soldiers to 269 come and administer the coup-de-grace. Jordan is ready to lay down his life on alien soil because to him the struggle in Spain symbolises the struggle of the entire world against fascism. Perhaps in answer to those who still adhered to non-intervention and isolationism, Hemingway prefaced his novel with the moving and signifi cant words of John Donne which took on a fresh meaning in the present context. Donne wrote : No man is an Hand, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee vasned away by the Sea, Europe is ttie lesse as veil as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mann or of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am in volved in Mankinds j And therefore never send to knew for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee, y It was only to be expected that the theatre engage, so committed to its time, would be deeply concerned by the rape of Ethiopia, by the rise of Hitler and Mussolini, by the 3nti-Jewish pogroms in Germany, and the threat of a possible war. Typically, many dramatists plunged into the fray. In the course of the decade, plays had been written which centered around socio-economic protest. 4 . Ernest Hemingway, For Vhom the Bell Tolls (Hew York : Charles Scribner^ Sons, i$4o). 270 Nov the dramatists moved to political issues, attacking them with the same vigour and vehemence with which they had treated momentous themes in other years of the decade. Hatred of fascism was shared by most dramatists but their position on war was mucn less dear-cut. Many had preached pacificism throughout the twenties and the early thirties, but now the worsening European situation brought confusion. Edmond Gagey points out : The dramatists of the previous decade had been distrustful of preachment but their Olympian objectivity was disturbed successfully by the financial depression and the rapid expansion of totalitarianism in Europe, taced with unmistakable signs of a crumbling social order and a new world war, the playwright felt a desperate need of conversion to something or other. But years of puncturing Ideals and of conditioning himself and his audience against war were placing him in an uncomfortable position. Then again, to what should he be converted? {[/ What were the alternatives open to a dramatist? Some stand surely needed to be taken. Communism offered an alternative to fascism, but its appeal was limited. It 8 earlier impact, so evident in the first years of the Depression, had already lessened and almost all those dramatists who had once thought of it as an ideal solution 5 . Edmond Gagey, Revolution in American Drama (New York : Columbia University i»ress, 1 % 8 ) , pp. 12^-133. 271 to America’ s ills were disillusioned long before the decade came to a close and were in search of another faith. With the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 24, 1939 the remaining Marxist influence waned. Ultimately there was a retreat, a retracing of steps over a well-trodden pathway. As Qagey explains » "The only solution, sometimes a painful one, was to espouse democracy, a political system whose defects they had long been pointing out, and to hug the once-abused middle classes to their bosoms." In the preceding chapter we saw how Robert Sherwood found himself gradually moving away from the Isolationism and pacificism he had advocated so staunchly for many years. Sherwood was one of the first dramatists to realise that American participation and intervention were absolutely essential if the fascist evil was to be contained. Other dramatists inevitably came to the same conclusion. Like Sherwood, they tried to arouse the conscience of their audiences, to make thea understand that they owed a moral responsibility to the oppressed peoples across the sea. Political issues and the question of war have long been of concern to dramatists. In the twentieth century 6. Ibid., p. 133. 272 which has seen two wars of global magnitude, there is a tendency to forget that the problem of Interfering In some other nation's conflicts and the decision about engaging In hostilities have existed for many centuries. Frank O'Hara recalls the examples of Aristophanes vho laLvslstra poked robust fun on no small scale at the devotees of Mars.