The Prologue

My interest is the study of human energy, how to free it from restraints, and how to abolish coercion of man by man—in short, how to enlarge the area of individual liberty, economic and otherwise.

We, as a people, are bent on a contrary course from which there appears to be no possible return short of a willingness—indeed, an insistence—honestly to examine every tenet we now hold. An analysis of liberty that would, at this juncture, prove “popular,” would be useless. Of course, it does not follow that an unpopular analysis would be right merely because of its unpopularity. But it does follow that unless it is highly controversial, and challenging to a great number of persons, it cannot be consistent with the advancement of human freedom. For popular ideas and liberty are now not in accord. Indeed, they are at odds.

It is strange that war, the most brutal of man’s activities, requires the utmost delicacy in discussion. Yet, anyone who even presumes an interest in economic affairs cannot let the subject of war, or the moral breakdown which underlies it, go untouched. To do so would be as absurd—indeed, as dishonest—as for a cleric to avoid the Commandment “Thou shalt not steal” simply because his parishioners had legalized and were practicing theft.

War is liberty’s greatest enemy, and the deadly foe of economic progress. If war is evil there must be a way to avoid it; there must be a rationale, a type of thinking, patterns for living, that lead to peace. These ways cannot be simple or we would invoke them. They must be difficult to practice or we would employ them. They are not easily explained or we would know them. Thus, anyone who attempts an exploration of these ways certainly will suggest unfamiliar ideas. But such probing is the preface to understanding, and frankness is the prelude to intelligent discussion.

Now, as to the presentation which follows:

In February of 1918, some 2500 of us were aboard the troopship Tuscania when it was sunk by a German submarine. Many young Americans lost their lives in that disaster.

As a 19-year old kid, I did not indulge in any deep, philosophical thought about war while that ship was sinking, or during the seemingly hopeless hours spent in a collapsible contraption on a very cold and angry Irish Sea. My thoughts were mostly about how to keep from freezing and how to remain alive. But the more than three score years that have since passed have wrought their change. What would be my thoughts in a similar situation today? If, for instance, I were wounded and awaiting death on a Korean battlefield, what thoughts and ideas about war might I now have in my last moments of consciousness? If I could now come close to grasping what might pass through my mind under such a circumstance, isn’t it possible that my thinking might thereby be enriched?

Therefore, why not imagine a dialogue with myself—one character being my young, 19-year-old, warlike self, and the other character being even more than my present peace-loving self, shall we say, such Conscience and Understanding as I am able to muster today?

As suggested, I am well qualified for one part of the characterization: the above-mentioned experience during War I, ancestors in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, sons in War II, plus many weaknesses of the flesh which account for wars.

Why should I not also try to capture the loftier side of the characterization? True, I haven’t lived this loftier side too well and, therefore, don’t know it too well. But lurking in my mental background, in a nebulous sort of way, are thoughts and a set of ideas rebellious to what I and many others have done. Why not by concentration and some imagination draw on the resources that lie hidden in the deeper recesses of one’s mind? Why not draw on the better thought of others too? Why should it be necessary to wait until that last moment of consciousness to find, as best one can, how one ought to have lived? The past cannot be undone, ’tis true. But cannot the past be drawn upon to make a better future? Cannot the past supply the stimulus for new understanding, for greater comprehension, in order that life may become finer in its wholeness?

The following dialogue is imagined to have taken place as I lay dying on a battlefield near the 38th Parallel in Korea. And let us also imagine that the thoughts were inspired by a passage I had read from the chaplain’s Bible a few days before: “Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.”

The talk is not hurried. Time, bordering on eternity, has lost all meaning.

Nor is the talk in final form. Quite likely it never will be on any subject requiring so much penetration.