(seq. 8)

Endosure: 21 June 1932

Page Four

The Carmelite
J.A. Coughlin------Editor and Publisher
Printed and published weekly at Carmel-by-
the-Sea (Carmel P. O.) California. Entered
as second-class matter February 21, 1928, at
Post Office at Carmel, California, under the
Act of March 3, 1879. Subscription, two dol-
lars fifty per annum; single copies, five cents.
Office, Dolores Street between Seventh and
Eighth; Telephone 717.

***The views expressed in signed contributions
should be taken as those of the individual
writes, not necessarily endorsed by the Editor.

Lincoln Steffens---continued
son of the missionary in "Rain," the
play of the Community Players. The
audience was made to see that the
good missionary was a blankety-blank;
and why: Because he was so sure he
was right. But do we see that all
righteous people are blankety-blanks in
the degree that they are sure that they
are right? The waste of such pro-
paganda as that of "Rain"
is that it carries us only far enough to
see that some neighbors of ours,--the
missionary, is against God. Artists have
to find some form that will tell me that
I am a blankety-blank; not only mis-
sionaries but all of us, who seeing
some evil, proceed to pass a law against
it. In brief, all prohibitionists, whether
of drink or of trusts. We don't see that
it is the natural economic laws of God
that have to be understood, obeyed or
controlled.

A watchful parents finds that they--
you know who they are--they teach
your child things you would not teach
him; not the way you would do it. My
little boy broke out with "Lafayette,
we are here." He declaimed often at
strange intervals for several days, till
one morning, early--too early--he
woke me up with "Lafayette, we are
here" and, as I lifted to see that we
were, he asked intelligently: "Daddy,
what does it mean, Lafayette, we are
here?" And I had a chance to tell him
about the French Hitler who came
over here during our Revolution to
help us go not too far. Adolph Hitler
is a man who can say "Lafayette, we are
here" the way our kids say it, that
and all the other slogans. He can de-
claim "My country right or wrong,"
"You may fire when ready," with one
hand on his heart, the other in the air,
with a good voice and a perfectly
grand sincerity and no intelligent sense
of what they mean. Just like our little
Pete's. And he moves the infantile
people who are proud that they never
grow up with the senseless emotions
that were planted with those signals.
Then he takes out his citizenship papers
and becomes the leading citizen of his
country, leads all his peers up to the
government and bawls, "Lafayette, we
are here." And there they are.

The Kaiser, like the Czar, is gone,
Bruenig, like Milyoukov, has to go, and
Deutschland enters upon the Minchivik
chapter of Hitler as Russia did with
Kerensky; as Italy did with Mussolini:
--the chapter before the Bolshevik
chapter of revolution. The repetitions of
current history are--to use a Carmel
word--significant. Teachers of children
should teach them this: that grown-ups
never did and never can learn: that all
nations are a procession marching, after
music, along one bad ancient road and
that the backward countries can not
only foresee--they can learn to control
their future.

There are Germans who know this and
will try to save Germany from some of
the repetitions of history, both modern
and ancient. There are Americans who
will watch the immediate future of
Germany as a stage director watches a
rehearsal.

Fremont Older, the ex-reformer and
Jack Black, the ex-burglar and stick-
up man, drove down to the Getaway
early one morning to see the troubled
world from the serene heights of Car-
mel. They possess the radiant serentiy,
those two veterans of the hard, good
life, but they like also to take in quiet-
ude from outside. They checked off the
crimes of business and politics with the
smile of understanding and of humor-
ouse expectation. There are no more
outrages. Jack Black inferred from the
fact that he could not understand the
unprofessional contradictions in the
Lindbergh kidnaping that no regular
criminals had done it, but amateurs for
money, or more likely, nuts for revenge
or spite. He liked it that Miriam Van
Waters had been given absolute charge
of a prison. I wondered how long it
would take to make of her a regular
warden. "Never," he said. "She will
never fall." "How long would it take
to make a warden of you, Jack?"
"About fifteen minutes," he laughed.
"I'd begin punishing, right away--the
stool pigeons."

Older told the story of his visit with
Clarence Darrow to the dynamiters in
San Quentin. They saw Tom Mooney,
too. A remark of Older's was that, "if
Labor were for Mooney, he would have
been free long ago."