Two Hours of Sunshine
By Rex Gunn
(Editor’s note: The following
oration, which took second prize
at the Pacific forensic speech
league contest held at Stockton,
California, April 16 and 17, was
^-presented by Rex Gunn.
Gunn’s after-dinner speech,
“Youth and the Liquor Problem
or the Race for the Bar Room
Door,” was also awarded second
prize.)
Sunshine spanning two consecu
tive hours in Oregon anytime be
tween late September and early
May, comes with all the brilliance
of a renaissance.
It was such a morning I recall.
Sunlight splashed each thing; it
gave each sodden leaf—dropped
and dead six months before—a sud
den breathing quality.
It lit up the hills—they lost their
sulky hue. It made the soil blush
brown, a fertile loamy brown. It
gleamed off the blades of a lawn
mower—cutting through green,
lush grass.
Yes, the season would again be
warm and good, that day was the
promise. It held more of peace than
-any treaty could.
But then—then the talk began:
“Sending wheat to Europe! Did
ya see it in the papers? We’re
sendin’ wheat to Europe! We’re
gonna feed those beggars so’s to
keep ’em alive so they can send
back atom bombs.”
And more talk: “Walked out
they did—every mother’s son walk
ed out—and now on top of steel
an’ wood an’ streetcars, ya can’t
even call your friends to gripe
about it. By God, they oughtta
make ’em work; ten cents a day
and food enough to keep ’em on
the job.”
And more: “War! War with
Russia! Mark my words, we’ll have
it within six months.”
And finally: “Yeah, got a knife
right in the guts he did, but it was
-tfnly a nigger. It’s like I always
said: let ’em kill each other off.
It’ll save us the trouble later on.”
And the black talk dulled the
unfamiliar brightness of the sun
that day in Oregon—just as it does
all over the United States—just as
it does, I suspect, all over the
world.
What does it mean? Where is
the source—all the curses, all the
dogmatic assertions, all the cock
sure damnations of man by man.
Are we really black in soul ? Are
our tongues rooted in venom, our
hearts in hate, our hands in blood ?
Is man, by nature, bad?
Let’s look at the record.
There was a man named Kublai
Khan—and there were men slain
and disemboweled — there were
women raped and babes impaled
and cities burned and afterward
name plagues, and hungry mouths,
and scarred souls—yes, there was
Tfublai Khan.
And there was Charlemagne: a
mighty king, more noted murder
er; Juan de Tarquemada, pious
brute, Spanish Inquisition trigger
man; John, the English killer with
a crown; Isabella—war for royal
whimsy; Pharoah—sword hilts
bathed in infant blood; Herod—he
murdered the first born; Midas—
greed; Beelzebub — cunning; Mo
lach—hate; Belial—hypocrisy; Ju
das—Iscariot.
The list is long and growing.
Many men have followed these,
many more may even now be
drawn that way. We can’t, with
seeing eyes, look back and say the
record lies.
The list is far too long and the
evidence too damning.
The facts are there. Whether
bad or not by nature, man has far
outdone the beast in beastiality.
Man has literally fashioned
scales of human flesh to weigh his
scientific progress.
First, there was naked steel—
means to till the earth, banish
famine, forge machines—but naked
steel was busy tasting blood.
Next came gunpowder: force to
blast mountains, harness rivers,
clear forests—but gunpowder was
busy pushing lead through human
bodies.
The automobile, the tank, the
airplane, the atom—they’re all
busy.
Busy right now resting—but we
know what they’re resting from,
and fear what they’re resting for.
Is man, by nature, bad ?
The record is black, uie facts
are damning; but there are other
facts and the record is incomplete.
There was a man named Abra
ham—and he was enough in soul
for a nation’s faith; Job—the name
still stands for patience; Socrates
—humble wisdom; Sevanoroli—
strength enough to save, none to
kill; Galileo—man first, science
second, and he was a great scien
tist.
But we need not remain in the
past. There are such names among
us now. Louis Pasteur—his shots
kill death; George Nobel—prizes
for peace; Clara Barton—a miracle
on a red cross; William Booth—the
Salvation Army; Will Rogers
simple truth; Walt Whitman—
poems for man; and Franklin D.
Roosevelt—regardless of what may
be said politically, his dimes march
on.
These are tamous names, but
they do not stand alone. There are
unnumbered little names behind
each one—little men who carried
out the big man’s dream.
That list, too, is long. The evi
dence behind it is convincing. Man
has risen above - himself to help
man.
Why, then, with the prevalent
good men have founded in the
world—why is it we hear a bedlam
of hate, spite, mistrust, and malice
for every whisper of faith, rever
ence, and love.
Why this unwarranted abuse of
man—this wholesale cynicism?
We ask and the cynic answers:
knowledge.
Knowledge, he says, breeds
doubt and doubt investigation, and
when we investigate man—we get
the cynic.
Does this explanation really suf
fice ?
Does cynicism begin in knowl
edge ?
No man had more thorough
knowledge of human psychology
than Jesus Christ. Can we call him
a cynic ?
No man has yet reflected more
deeply on government than Socra
tes. And the very government
about which he knew most, under
which he was a citizen, condemned
him to die. Yet, the only bitterness
for Socrates was in the hemlock
he drank. Why didn’t he turn cyn
ic ?
No, the knowledge of the cynic
is shallow—an adolescent, it fan
cies itself a sage. It mistakes a
means for an end. It can know the
body of man, but it can never
know man.
For man is more than his body,
even more than his intellect. He
is more than I can say he is.
He is the great, driving force
behind a consciousness that spans
this earth and makes it but a fac
tor of his life. He journeys
throughout eternity, his body far
behind, a resting place when he
returns; a catapult which he will
leave again.
And he is that because of one
thing—he believes!
Call it faith, call it confidence,
perspective—call it what you will
—man believes. He knows a glory
in his name.
Without that, he is a beast.
That faith extends to all things
and it embraces all things includ
ing man.
And it is the lack of that quality
which today fills this earth, this
state, and (very probably) this
building with abusive nonsense.
This faith answers an emphatic
“no” to our question: Is man, by
nature, bad?
And it is not a blind no for it
sees the blackness in a Daschau
or a Buchenwald—it sees the hell
in men’s hearts—but it also sees
ten million toil-blackSened hands
LITERARY PACE
Paging
You
By Adele Hart
Perhaps you veterans will not
like to read this column. Men re
turning- from overseas have scoff
ed at many of the books which
have been published about them.
They say, “Why don’t people stop
thinking of us as a problem, a
walking enigma which has to be
studied and analyzed before one
comes near it, a potential atom
bomb, a bunch of “dead end” kids
who will kick politics and domestic
life around like a football. Why
can’t people think of us as normal
human beings?”
One veteran said that while in
an army hospital with a bad leg
injury, he pushed himself down
the hall in his wheelchair to the
hospital movie every night, always
hoping some nice nurse or helpful
person would do it for him. People
marched right by him with only
a passing look of pity in their eye.
One night a Grey Lady pushed him
along, but first she said, “Soldier,
according to the books we’ve all
been reading, it is not right for me
to do this. You will be resentful
and that will be terrible for your
morale.” He sighed. “Lady,” he
said, “I wish you’d all quit read
ing books. I don’t care about my
morale, I just want to get to the
hospital movie faster.”
Any Point to Books?
Is there then, in view of the
reaching- into ten million sweat
slick pocketbooks and producing
two hundred million dollars for
one, single purpose: to help men
those hands have never known.
That happened in this nation last
year; the agency was the Ameri
can Red Cross.
How can we measure faith like
that; how can we measure what
sways rational men to die for their
friends; how can we measure what
enables a mother to smile at the
mystic pain in her womb; how can
we measure what prompted Bee
thoven to write great music, he
himself could never hear?
How can we measure what gave
Abe Lincoln no rest until he freed
the black man? For Abe was
white.
We can’t measure it—we can’t
even name it.
We only know it is a belief in
yourself, your friend, and the om
nipotence which hovers above your
insight. We only know it is what
we need very badly. We know it
is what we must have if we are to
survive our own inventions.
How can we get it?
There is a way and it is not by
piety or ritual.
It is not by curses. It is not by
undue emphasis on the beastiality,
the stupidity which Is ours.
It is by emphasis upon the
strength, the courage, and the
dream which is also ours. That
dream: a free world of men who
love mankind.
Badly as we need it, there are
others who need it more. They are
the men yet unborn. They will be
here soon with open minds, clean
hearts, straight bodies. They will
follow where we lead them; they
will look at what we show them;
they will believe what we tell
them.
Shall we tell them: you are man
whose soul is black-—whose tongue
is forked. You were conceived of
hate, you will live in blood, and
you will die a beast.
Or shall we grant the black, af
firm the rest, and tell them what
we saw beyond, embracing both, i
The Wine
A gilt of sunlight on the floor,
A laughing face shone in the door,
An eager hand grasped praising mine,
A bright flecked eye raised up to shine
Its song of love, like red, red wine. . .
The sound of laughter filled the air.
Like twinkling bells without a care,
The rose outside then spied the groom,
And tossed its fragrance in the room
To dust away the demon gloom.
Shades of rain and dusk on the floor,
Memory’s face left through the door,
A precious hand tore quick from mile,
A tear flecked eye was not to shine . . .
I took the cup and drank the wine.
—Jeanne Wiltshire.
average veteran’s attitude, any
point in these books ? For us ci
vilians, yes. If we get the right
book and use the knowledge we
gain from it with discretion, re
membering that we are in contact
with an individual, not a machine.
On the seven-day book shelf you
will find “The Veteran Comes
Back,” by Willard Waller of Bar
hard' college and Columbia univer
sity. It is one of the few discern
ing and realistic histories of the
journey of the American soldier
from foxhole to family. It shows
why, strangely enough to us, the
ex-soldier feels more of a hatred
toward the whole “caste system”
of the army than he does toward
the enemy he fought.
It is surprising to learn, that
after taking a type of Gallup Poll
among chaplains, Waller found out
that there has been no great con
version of athiest soldiers into re
ligious ones in this war. Returning
men do not care too much about
serrVms unless they come from
the lips of men who know and un
derstand thoroughly what they
have been through and are ready
to help them constructively. Said
one chaplain after months of serv
ice on a famous ship, “I am very
much attached to the human race
having lost all hope in it.”
Unstable Marriages
It is revealing to discover that
from the history of the postwar
period after World War I, more
unstable marriages were made
after the war than before it. What
was the reason? Hysteria and the
lapse of normal living during the
war made couples so anxious to
get married after it was over that
the vows were taken with even less
thought than they were during the
war. Waller shows us how this fac
tor will come up in World War II
post-war marriages.
We see, above all, through this
book, the complete change the sol
dier has to make from being ex
pendable for so many months or
years to suddenly being an individ
ual with family and government
responsibilities and the necessity;
to make decisions which have all
been made for him in the past. We
see that we are all responsible for
our veterans, sound or unsound,
healthy or sick, from their years
in the service. As Waller puts it,
“they are our boys whom we de
livered to Moloch; our finest and
bravest, a whole generation of
men-children. We must somehow
find the way to win them back.”
In his book, he gives us some de
cent, logical ways.
It is a good study to read this
book and then to compare it with
“Johnny Comes Marching Home”
by Dixon Wecter. Here’s a tip,
though. Don’t tell your veteran,
whether he’s husband, brother, or
sweetheart, what you’re doing. It
makes him feel liek a specimen for
a biology class.
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