John Gunther Quotes

The West Virginia motto is Montani semper liberi, and the state is one of the most mountainous in the country; sometimes it is called the "little Switzerland" of America, and once I heard an irreverent local citizen call it the "Afghanistan of the United States." The precipitous upland nature of the terrain makes naturally for three things: (1) poor communications; (2) fierce sectionalism; (3) comparatively little agriculture. West Virginia lies mostly in the Ohio orbit; all but eight of its counties drain into the Ohio River, and a pressing problem is strip mining, as in Ohio. On the other hand, the state has, it is hardly necessary to point out, little of the prodigious urban development of Ohio, and at the same time no great rural blocs such as those that dominate the Ohio legislature. The pull of Pennsylvania is also very strong, particularly near Wheeling which, like Pittsburgh hard by, is based on steel. Finally, in this geographical realm, one should not think of West Virginia as being "western" Virginia. It is a totally distinct and separate entity. Virginians themselves, as a matter of fact, pay almost no attention nowadays to their craggy neighbor.

A common denominator is, of course, imperialism. The root reason why the colonies exist is exploitation. The British are there to get something out of being there. But exploitation is paid for by a variety of services; the British bribe the natives whom they exploit to enjoy the process of exploitation as a double reward: first, attention to such matters as public health, public order, education; second, by gradual training of the people toward self-government. No British colony is a slave state, though political mastery may be complete. In most British colonies the eventual result of British imperialism is held to be freedom from the strictures of that imperialism. Obviously the process thus envisaged is an extremely gradual one. Development of self-governing institutions is never allowed to interfere with the immediate demands of empire. Ask Mr. Gandhi or Mr. de Valera. They will confirm this view.
One psychological factor helping the British in their imperial rule is their innate, impregnable unassimability. Once an Englishman, always an Englishman. I have met British officials, British merchants, who have lived in Malaya or Baluchistan for forty years; for all the effect on their character, their habits, they might have spent all that time in Nottingham or Bournemouth. The British Empire is the furthest possible remove from a melting pot. The British do not Mix.

Incontestably what runs Virginia is the Byrd machine, the most urbane and genteel dictatorship in America. A real machine it is, though Senator Harry Flood Byrd himself faced more opposition in 1946 than at any time in his long, suave, and distinguished public career. Virginia is, of course, "the mother of states"; it is one of four in the union to call itself a commonwealth, and it has produced eight presidents, more than any other state. Its history goes back to Jamestown, the first Anglo-Saxon settlement in America, in 1607; the colony was named for Elizabeth, the virgin queen, and its citizens established an effective representative government several years before the Puritans in New England. Ever since it has prided itself on aristocratic tradition, a seasoned attitude toward public life, administrative decency, and firm attachment to the regime of law. Virginia breeds no Huey Longs or Talmadges; its respect for the forms of order is deeply engrained. One subsidiary point is that Virginians, it seems, were not so philoprogenitive as their New England counterparts. Boston, as we know, choked with Cabots, Adamses, and Lowells. But there are no Washingtons in Richmond; George Washington, as a matter of fact, left no children. Jefferson had direct descendants, but none with the name Jefferson play any consequential role in Virginia life today. There are no Madisons, Monroes, descendants of John Marshall or Patrick Henry, or even Lees, in the contemporary political arena.

If anybody ever doubted that Roosevelt was a good bluffer, events after Pearl Harbor should set the record straight. For almost a year the United States had no fleet worthy of the name in the Pacific, but no one, least of all the Japanese, ever caught on to how miserably defenseless we really were.

Mr. Gandhi, who is an incredible combination of Jesus Christ, Tammany Hall, and your father, is the greatest Indian since Buddha. Like Buddha, he will be worshiped as a god when he dies. Indeed, he is literally worshiped by thousands of his people. I have seen peasants kiss the sand his feet have trod. No more difficult or enigmatic character can easily be conceived. He is a slippery fellow. I mean no disrespect. But consider some of the contradictions, some of the puzzling points of contrast in his career and character. This man who is at once a saint and a politician, a prophet and a superb opportunist, defies ordinary categories. For instance, his great contribution to India was the theory and practice of non-violence or civil disobedience. But at the very time that non-violence was the deepest thing he believed in, he was supporting Britain in the World War. The concept of non-violence is a perfect example of Gandhi's familiar usage of moral weapons to achieve practical results, of his combination of spiritual and temporal powers. India, an unarmed state, could make a revolution only by non-violent means. Non-violence was a spiritual concept, but it made revolution practicable.

One familiar Southern attitude is, "The Negro is our problem. We have to live with it, and let us solve it." Also Southerners say, "You can never understand it." Indeed, interference or advice from the North is tenaciously resented. Yet, no matter what the South may have done of itself, the record would certainly seem to indicate that it is not enough. Another familiar phenomenon is the "vicious circle" attitude. People refuse to give opportunities to a Negro, on the a priori assumption that he cannot make use of them, blaming him all the while. The pattern becomes, "We cannot train Negroes for this type of work, since they won't be able to do it if we train them!"

To a supreme degree Roosevelt had five qualifications for statesmanship: (a) courage; (b) patience, and an infinitely subtle sense of timing; (c) the capacity to see the very great in the very small, to relate the infinitesimal particular to the all-embracing general; (d) idealism, and a sense of fixed objectives; (e) the ability to give resolution to the minds of men. Also he had plenty of bad qualities- dilatoriness, two-sidedness (some critics would say plain dishonesty), pettiness in some personal relationships, inability to say No, love of improvisation, garrulousness, amateurism, and what has been called "cheerful vindictiveness." Amateurism?- in a particular way, yes. But do not forget that he was the most masterfully expert practical politician ever to function in this republic.

New York is the publishing center of the nation; it is the art, theater, musical, ballet, operatic center; it is the opinion center; it is the radio center; it is the style center. Hollywood? Hollywood is nothing more than a suburb of the Bronx, both financially and from a view of talent. Politically, socially, in the world of ideas and in the whole world of entertainment, which is a great American industry needless to say, New York sets the tone and pace of the entire nation. What books 140 million Americans will read is largely determined by New York reviewers. Most of the serious newspaper columns originate in or near New York; so do most of the gossip columns, which condition Americans from Mobile to Puget Sound to the same patterns of social behavior. In a broad variety of fields, from serous drama to what you will hear on a jukebox, it is what New York says that counts; New York Opinion is the hallmark of both intellectual and material success; to be accepted in this nation, New York acceptance must come first. I do not assert that this is necessarily a good thing. I say merely that it is true. One reason for all this is that New York, with its richly cosmopolitan population, provides such an appreciative audience. It admires artistic quality. It has a fine inward gleam for talent. Also New York is a wonderfully opulent center for bogus culture. One of its chief industries might be said to be the manufacture of reputations, many of them fraudulent.

Another type of mob outrage sometimes occurs in the South; clandestine or "underground" lynching in which a Negro who has broken taboos simply disappears. There is no corpus derilicti, and no scandal. The body is never found, and people say that the victim has "moved" somewhere. For a time members of the Ku-Klux Klan were most distinguished for this kind of affair.

It is a proud boast of New York that, what with its enormous pools of foreign-born, any article or object known in the world may be found there. You can buy anything from Malabar spices to stamps from Mauritius to Shakespeare folios. A stall on Seventh Avenue sells about a hundred different varieties of razor blades. Also it is incomparably the greatest manufacturing town on earth; in an average year it produces goods valued at more than four billion dollars.

Fiorello Henrico LaGuardia, the most spectacular mayor the greatest city in the world has ever had, has characteristics and qualities so obvious that they are known to everyone- the volatile realism, the rubble-supple grin, the flamboyant energy, the zest for honesty in public life, the occasional vulgarisms, the common sense. But the mayor I spent these uninterrupted hours with showed more conspicuously some qualities for which he is not so widely known. He picked what he called a "desk day" for me to sit in on. He did not inspect a single fish market or visit a single fire. What he did was work at his major job, administration of the city of New York. What he did was to govern, to put in a routine day as an executive.

Finally, Pan-Asia is an illusion. One can speak of Europe- even now- as a whole. But not Asia. One can speak of such a concept- at least till recently- as a "European mind." I do not think one would readily use such a phrase as an "Asiatic mind." A war in Spain can send tremors throughout Europe as far as the Baltic and beyond; a war in China is still only of remote, vestigal interest to the Asia of the Near East. Asia is not interlocked, intertwined, as Europe is, though it is interlocked with Europe. The Japanese are on the march- even in Tehran I saw a brand of Japanese canned goods known as Geisha sardines- but Asia is a long distance around. It is too big to be a unit. It is three continents in one.

Roosevelt was a man of his times, and what times they were!- chaotic, catastrophic, revolutionary, epochal- he was President during the greatest emergency in the history of mankind, and he never let history- or mankind- down. His very defects reflected the unprecedented strains and stresses of the decades he lived in. But he took history in his stride; he had vision and gallantry enough, oomph and zip and debonair benevolence enough, to foresee the supreme crises of our era, overcome them, and lead the nation out of the worst dangers it has ever faced. Roosevelt was the greatest political campaigner and the greatest vote getter in American history. Thirty-one out of forty-eight states voted for him each of the four times he ran. His influence, far from having diminished since his death, has probably increased. When Mr. Truman won his surprising victory in 1948, which was made possible in part by the political influence left behind by FDR, it was altogether fitting that a London newspaper should head its story, "Roosevelt's Fifth Term."

It would be naïve in the extreme to dismiss General Francisco Franco as a villain or a butcher. He is a creature of his caste, a product of his moral environment, and a fairly typical example of it. He has been commended for intelligence and courage, and he possesses social grace and charm. Beyond doubt, as he sees patriotism, he is a patriot. He is an idealist too. But let it be remembered that he started the war, and if he loses it, he will be a man like such tragic figures as Wrangel and Deniken, who helped create what they sought to destroy. It is Franco- and what he represents- who knit Leftist Spain into a competent unity; if communism comes to Spain, General Franco will have been its accoucheur.

The effect of World War II is one point worth noting. Almost every victim of lynching since the war has been a veteran. The Negro community is probably more unified today, more politically vehement, more aggressive in its demand for full citizenship- even in the South- than at any other time in history. Roughly one million Negroes entered the armed services. They moved around and saw things; they were exposed to danger and learned what their rights were; overseas, many were treated decently and democratically by whites for the first time in their lives; the consequent fermentations have been explosive. Also since Negroes were presumably fighting for democratic principles on the international plane, it was difficult to keep them from wondering why the same principles were not applied at home. It wasn't easy for an intelligent Negro to accept that he was fighting for democracy- in a largely Jim Crow army. The glaring crudity of this paradox became the more striking as the war went on. One famous remark is that of the Negro soldier returning across the Pacific from Okinawa. "Our fight for freedom," he said, "begins when we get to San Francisco."