Mr. Corinth stopped. Jimmie, who had been watching the faces, saw anxiety on many—anxiety that changed slowly to a hard, resentful determination. It was if a bigotry froze on the people, froze in stolid rejection of anything so adamantine as the old man’s words implied. They sat on the porch, uniting their wills anew to ward off bombs and torpedoes, rape and blood.
One woman, however, who had listened with a sorrowful expression, now said, “If you’re right, Willie, what’s to become of us all? I’ve always thought that war was shameful and sinful and a waste. I’ve believed that you should turn the other cheek. I’m a pacifist—a real one, I trust.”
“I know you are, Mollie,” Mr. Corinth replied. “And if everyone were like you, there wouldn’t be war. But—everyone isn’t. War is still a collective expression of individual irresponsibility, as I’ve said, and of individual greed and avarice. Comes out of a natural instinct. War is nature, Mollie. It’s only man—in the last few thousand years—who has begun to see that he can someday evolve his nature up to a high enough plane to quit making war. All the carnivorous animals kill the little, weaker ones for food. They kill each other when pressures get unbearable. And even the grasseaters kill grass, which no doubt feels it has a right to live also. The instinct of self-preservation embraces the will to preserve yourself in an environment most advantageous to you. As a human being, whatever you may happen to think of as an advantage—money, power, a bigger nation, raw materials, anything—can consequently become a motive for going to war. Living is a struggle; that is the very meaning of the word. It’s a struggle for individuals, and consequently a struggle for groups.
“When groups translate their instinct to struggle into a fight, they’re doing a natural thing. Not necessarily a useful or a necessary one—but a normal one. It’s much more abnormal for you, Mollie, to believe that people—as dishonest and prejudiced and ill-willed as you know they are—can institute a permanent peace, than it is abnormal for them to start killing each other. Being a ‘pacifist’—in the face of human nature as of this date—is about as sensible as insisting that all men ought to be immediately made millionaires, or that every ditchdigger should become a scholar. We just aren’t good enough for peace, yet. We’ve got to make ourselves that good, someday—but the day isn’t here! We still think we can make other people behave, without first establishing an integrity of our own—and we still think that will bring peace. It won’t. Peace isn’t a legislative, an economic, a legal, or a political accomplishment. It’s strictly a matter of total human nature—and human nature is still in the slums, mostly. Every human woe stems back to the individual’s unwillingness to face truth, understand and accept it, and to be responsible for his acts in the light of that acceptance. We’re in kindergarten at that sort of behavior—as I was explaining to Jimmie on the business of morals the other day.”
Mollie sighed. “I know what you mean, Willie. Sometimes I get resigned. Like Anne Lindbergh. I just think this Nazi horror is the future—ugly and inescapable. ”
“What about that?” someone else said.
Mr. Corinth smiled. “The wave of future? It’s medieval! Barbaric! Every Nazi concept is one that has already been found wanting—and discarded. For instance, the ancient Hebrews tried conquest, city-smashing, salt-sowing, race snobbery, and race purity. The rest of the world never forgave them for it. The Nazis ape the old Jews in many ways. And the Germans will probably pay the same price for their egomania.
“Waves of the past keep rolling back, to threaten the precarious progress of mankind; the belief that such waves represent an inescapable future is the purest form of superstition. Superstition’s strong stuff. But it does not understand progress, and so, will not accept it. Nazism isn’t the wave of the future, Mollie. It’s that old black superstitious curse rolled up again. It may, indeed, roll over you and me. If it does, then men will have to emerge again from it and start all over. As they have had to do before. You see, we’re all superstitious.”
“ I’m not,” Mollie said. “Not a bit.”
“Oh, yes, you are. You’re not superstitious about cats and ladders, maybe. You know that water is hydrogen and oxygen, and whatnot. But you’re superstitious about—well, say, sex and love. Being a spinster. Mr. Wilson is superstitious about the New Deal.