Your Money and Your Life Mainland The Years of the Locust Against Revolution The Stammering Century The Seven Living Arts The United States and the War (London, 1917) This is America (Moving Picture)...

The Movies Come From America The Movies and the Talkies The Future of Drinking The Wings of the Eagle Lysistrata (A Modern Version) Proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof; it shall be a jubilee unto them.... Leviticus xxv, 10....

Thanks are given to the Macmillan Company for their permission to quote several paragraphs from Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon in my first chapter. The Grand Strategy by H.A. Sargeaunt and Geoffrey West, referred to in chapter two, is published by Thomas Y. Crowell Co. G.S....

The peril we are in today is this: For the first time since we became a nation, a power exists strong enough to destroy us. This book is about the strength we have to destroy our enemies—where it lies, what hinders it, how we can use it. It is not about munitions, but about men and women; it deals with the unity we have to create, the victory we have to win; it deals with the character of America, what it has been and is and will be. And since character is destiny, this book is about the destiny

There is a tendency at this moment to consider Hitler a master strategist, master psychologist, master statesman. His analysis of democracy, however, leaves something unsaid, and the nervous strong men who admire Hitler, as well as the weaklings who need "leadership", are doing their best to fill in the gaps. The Hitlerian concept of totality allows no room for difference; an official bread ration and an official biochemistry are equally to be accepted by everyone; in democracy Hitler finds a de

When I began to write this book the unity "made in Japan" was beginning to wear thin; when I finished people were slowly accustoming themselves to a new question: they did not know whether an illusion of unity was better than no unity at all. We know now that we were galvanized into common action by the shock of attack; but to recoil from a blow, to huddle together for self-protection, to cry for revenge—are not the signs of a national unity. Before the war was three months old it was clear that

The consequences of building on a unity which does not exist are serious. We have discovered that all war is total war; we have also found that while our enemies lie to us, they do not lie to their High Commands. Total war requires total effort from the civilian and we have assumed that, in America, this means enthusiasm for our cause, understanding of our danger, willingness to sacrifice, confidence in our leaders, faith in ultimate victory. We may be wrong; total effort in Germany is based mor

To distract attention, to put people's minds on useless or bewildering projects is a bit of sabotage, in a total war. It is well enough to divert people, for a moment, so that they are refreshed; but no one has the right to confuse a clear issue or to start inessential projects or to ask people to look at anything except the job in hand. For five minutes, I propose a look at the Declaration of Independence, because it is the one document essential to our military and moral success; it is the sta

In the back of our minds we have an image labeled "the immigrant"; and it is never like ourselves. The image has changed from generation to generation, but it has never been accurate, because in each generation it is a political cartoon, an exaggeration of certain features to prove a point. We have to tear up the cartoon; then we can get back to the picture it distorts. English-Speaking Aliens The immigrant-cartoon since 1910 has been the South-European: Slavic, Jewish, Italian; usually a woman

The communications of America and Europe have always run in two channels: our fumbling, foolish diplomacy, our direct, candid, successful dealings with the people. Our first word was to the people of Europe; the Declaration of Independence tried to incite the British people against their own Parliament; and the "decent respect to the opinions of mankind" refers to citizens, not to chancelleries. The Declaration was addressed to the world; it was heard in Paris and later in a dozen provinces of G

What we say to Europe is to be an incitement to revolution, a promise of liberation, a hope of a decent, orderly, comfortable living, in freedom; but it must be as hard and real and un-dreamlike as the Declaration, which was our first word to the people of the world. We have to begin by telling all the peoples of Europe, our friends and our enemies, what they have done for America, and what America has done for them. We have to destroy the slander that the Italians were kept at digging ditches,

We have two prodigious victories to gain—the war and the world after the war. The chatter about not "defining war aims" because specific aims are bound to disturb us, is dangerously beside the point, because the kind of world we will create depends largely on the kind of war we wage. If we nazify ourselves to win, we will win a nazified world; if we communize ourselves, we will probably share a modified Marxian world with the Soviets; and if we win by intensification of our democracy, we will cr

There are some consequences of our history so conspicuous and so significant that they deserve to be separated from the rest and examined briefly by themselves. In the United States every week 34 million families listen on an average four hours a day to the radio; 90 million individual movie admissions are bought; 16 million men and women go bowling at least once, probably oftener; thousands of couples dance in roadhouses, juke-joints, and dance halls; in winter 12 million hunting licenses are i

The tools of democracy are certain civil actions, certain inventions, certain habits. They can be used against us—but only if we fail to use them ourselves. The greatest tools are civil liberties which we have been considering as "rights" or "privileges". The right to free speech is a great one; free speech probably was originally intended to protect property; it preserves liberty; the rights of assembly, of protest for redress, of a free press all have this double value, that they guarantee the

The shape of this war was created in dark back rooms of cheap saloons, in a lodging house in Geneva, in several prison cells, in small half secret meetings, up back flights of stairs, behind drawn shades, in boarding houses over the dining table, in the lobbies of movie-houses, at lectures attended by the idle and the curious and the hopeless, in the kitchen of a New York restaurant where waiters talked more about the future than about tips; it was molded also in British pubs and by the sullen l

Above all things our function is to proclaim liberty, to proclaim it as the soil on which we grow and as the air we breathe, to make the world understand that liberty is what we fight for and live by. We have to keep the word always sounding so that people will not forget—and we have to create liberty so that it is always real and people will have a goal to fight for, and never believe that it is only a word. We do not need to convert the world to a special form of political democracy, but we ha