Daily Post - 08.10.1943, Blaðsíða 3

UAILY POST
3
America: Land of fiood Will
• By Thomas Mann
Literary Noble Prize Winner
Sports
Bronx, New York. — In the
opening game of the 1943 world
series between the New York
Yankees, American League
champions, and the St. Louis
Cardinals, National League
winners this afternoon at the
Yankee Stadium . . the Yan-
kees won by a score of 4 to 2.
The New York team took the
game on Cardinal errors. Car-
dinal Infield misplays on the
first Yankee batters in the 4th
and 6th innings opened the
way for the New York team to
score twice in each inning. Joe
Gordon hit a home run in the
fourth to mark up the first
Yankee run. Lanier, the Car-
dinals twirler, was responsible
for two Yankee runs in the 6th
when he threw a wild pitch.
The Cards scored their 2 runs
on Marion’s double and Len-
ier’s single. Chandler, the Yan-
kees winning hurler, was in
fine form—and gave the carts
seven scattered hits. Lanier
was reached for 7 hits and
fanned y Yankee batters. Both
teams made two errors. 68
thousand 676 enthusiastie base-
ball fans jammed the Yankee
Stadium and paid two hundred
sixty five thousand nine hund-
red dollars to witness the game.
Many fans paid triple price for
tickets as thousands of out-of-
towners poured into New York
for the baseball classic. The
teams meet again tomorrow at
the Stadium i'cr tue second
game, and also play the 3rd
game at the New York ball
park. Then they move to St.
Louis for the remaining games
of the series.
News Shorts
(Continued from page 2.)
Fairbanks, Alaska. — Exis-
ence of 'a thousand mile oil
pipeline from Skagway on the
southeastern coast to Fair-
banks, deep in the interior of
Alaska, was revealed officially
for the first time recently. The
line, built by Army engineers
and in use since January, goes
by way of White Horse, Yukon
Territory, and supplies gaso-
line to air bases in Canada and
Alaska.
* *!
’ ’ < i
Careless Talk
Gosts Lives
« i i!
M##»#######################»###^
To express my gratitude and
homage to America, how can I
best say in a few words what
it is that I like and admire in
this country of our refuge, and
that inspires in me the feeling
of confidence and familiarity
which I have for it? A French
author who lives among us has
called the great social portrait
which he created in accordance
with his domestic tradition,
“Les Hommes de Bonne Vol-
onte”. This title gives me a
formula which seems fitting.
America is the country of
GOOD WILL, the best will,
perhaps, which is alive today,
—of a pure and mighty kind-
ness, an unselfish, often-times
childlike but by its means and
measures powerful zeal which
strives for the good, for the
welfare of all nations, and
which, we hope, will vastly
influence the future of mankind
with other powers of bene-
volence.
My life has a slow rhythm,
it does not have what is usually
—and, by the way, legenc'arily
—called “American Tempo”. I
did not throw myself ínto the
arms of America, but ap-
proached it step by step and
year by years,—úntil I noticed
that I would never want to
turn my back to it any more
even if the old continent would
offer me the physical possi-
bility. I never would have
thoguht that.
Never would I have left
Germany, in whose spiritual
tradition I stand, except for the
world-menacing atrocity which
broke out there in 1933, and
whose nature I recognized only
too well from the very beginn-
ing, in melancholy contrast to
most of my compatriots. Noth-
ing else in the world, no con-
ceivable change or revolution
but just this one could nave
driven me out of Germanv. I
lived in Switzerland, a country
which I remember with íor.d-
ness, and which I hope ío see
Chicago. — Marshall Field,
50 year old owner of the Chi-
cago Sun and New York’s PM,
received 80 million dollars in
real estate and stocks under
the terms of his grandfather’s
will.
again. But, as early as 1934, I j
crossed the ocean for the first
time and came to America,—
only temporarily, only as a
visitor; again the following
year, and for a longer stay;
again the year after that. There
were always new reasons.
What I wrote lived, almost ex-
clusively, in English, and it
had friends here; connections
with Universities followed; lec-
ture tours led me across the
continent. And one day, I found
myself detached from Europe
and domiciled here—even a
piece of American ground, a
garden in whose foliage the
breeze of the Pacific Ocean
plays, became mine; a ho’ase
grew on it for myself and my
family, and hereafter I shall be
a visitor in the old Europe -if
I live to see the day.
What is it that has won me !
over to this country, that at- I
tracted me to it again and
again, and finally for good—
even at a time when life in
Europe would still have been
definitely possible for me? The
magnificent vastness of the
national background; the inde-
scribable pleasure of an at-
mosphere of moral health. It
was especially the experience
of encountering a humanity
formed by a happy history
based on magnanimous prin-
ciples, of which I knew with
certainty that in the coming
struggle it would throw its en-
tire, probably decisive, power
into the scale of the good.
I say: the good, without fear
of being reproached for moral
oversimplification. There IS
the good and the bad in this
war, and we are lucky enough
to live through it on the side
where the good is perhaps not
PRESENT, but WANTEÐ. This
war is a world civil war whieh
began in Spain and has now
become planetary—a way
which is wholly different from
the wars of the nineteenth cen-
tury, inasmuch as its fronts not
only divide nations but run
across these nations, and of
necessity high treason shoots
upanywhere today. America,
too, has the enemy within its
borders, and it does not have
to conceal from itself that it
leads the war also against the
threat from within. The reason
for this is that this war is at
the same time a social revolu-
tion, in fact, that is its princi-
pal feature, its origin and its
true nature.
If the social revolution which
determines our time has as-
sumed the shape of a bloody,
devastating, as yet immeasur-
able war, it is the fault of
those powers which abused it
for the rapacious accumulation
of great empires, the fault of
the so-called Axis powers, Ger-
many, Italy and Japan. Only
the democracies which are ac-
cused of antiquity, of lament-
able attachment to old and
obsolete institutions, are seri-
ously concerned with this re-
volution and with a better,
happier future. For Hitler-Ger-
many and Japan, on the other
hand, the “New Order”, the
hopes of the peoples are
nothing but propaganda means
to the end of deception, sub-
version, conquest and oppress-
ion.
They were the ones who
carried the disfigurating ideas
of race and nationalism into
the pröcess of necessary change
and mutation of democracy
which, irresistible as it was.
could also have taken a peace-
ful course, and who degraded
the revolution to a dishonest
means of nationalistic power
politics. That is their funda-
mental crime, from which come
all other crimes, and therefore
the scepticism which says: “The
others are not any better
either!” is vain and wrong.
They ARE better, for among
them is the will for the better.
It is good fortune to live
among a people of good will.
One’s work progresses with
greater ease, one breathes more
joyfully. I feel compassion for
the spiritual, truth-loving hu-
man beings, the authors and
artists who have remained in
the countries of wrong and
guilt. They are at home, and
we are in foreign lands. But a
moral world crisis like the
present one dissolves the na-
tions, and turns strange lands
into homelands to which one
can wish victory with all one’s
heart because it deserves it.