America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction (17 page)

Our meeting was decorous. Communists always seem to travel in pairs, like cops in Los Angeles. On this occasion, there was one who spoke English and one who said he didn't. Then there was Packard, who always gives the deceptive impression of being half asleep, and, of course, myself.

We got down to business. They opened; they had to, because I didn't say anything. The letter written by Taddei, the spokesman said, had not been written for the reasons I thought. It had been addressed to me as a token of respect.

I bowed and smiled. Packard closed his eyes and gently scratched his stomach with his index finger. The spokesman went on. Since I had unfortunately misunderstood the intent of the open letter, the newspaper, again out of respect, wanted to print my reply. Again I bowed, waiting for the catch. It came right away. They were embarrassed by the length of my reply. It was a matter of paper shortages. Times were hard in Italy. Newspapers had to limit the length of their stories. Therefore, they wanted me to cut my reply to perhaps half its present length. They knew I would do it best.

I said that I deeply appreciated their concern for me, but I wanted to reveal to them my own difficulties. I had not wanted to answer Taddei's letter; I hadn't wanted him to write it in the first place. But once written, it could not be recalled. My answer, I said, was as short as I could possibly write it. I was not known for wasting words. Cutting was the most difficult of writing jobs. I had already spent far too much time with this matter. To cut would keep me out of churches and museums for two more days, and, besides, I could not recall anything I felt I could cut—out of respect for Mr. Taddei, of course.

Now a little edge crept into the conversation. Did I know that under Italian law an editor had the legal right to cut anything he wished?

No, I did not, but if that was the law, I could do nothing about it. If they felt they must cut, I said, then they must cut.

They were glad I felt that way. And if they did a careful and tasteful job of cutting, then naturally I would not carry out my unjustified threat to publish my letter elsewhere.

It was not a threat, I assured them. It was an inevitability.

“But your letter is twice as long as Taddei's.”

“That is a matter of sorrow to me. It took, I think, much more than twice as long to write.”

It would take three columns to print my letter. No paper in Italy would consider printing so long a piece in one issue.

“About that, I suppose we must wait and see,” I said. I did not inform them that practically every non-Communist paper in Italy had asked for the letter, complete, unchanged.

The man who did not speak English said something in fast Italian, and his companion answered with several seconds of rapid talk. Packard's eyes opened a trifle and then closed again.

We all stood up. They found my attitude unreasonable. I found that I didn't have a choice. Would it not be considered strange, I asked, if I said publicly I would do a thing and then did not do it?

There was a real coldness in the room. We all shook hands and murmured how great our pleasure had been at the meeting, and they went out, walking very straight. They were not pleased with me.

Packard opened his eyes a little. “That other guy knows English,” he said.

The next morning L'Unità printed my reply, Communistically cut. Which is to say that every bit of information was deleted, and the paragraphs were rearranged so that the piece didn't make sense. It was a deadly job. But to top it, Taddei had written an answer to my cut answer. His letter ran more than three columns. With alacrity and pleasure, I sent my original piece over to Il Tempo, which is a Rome newspaper of excellent reputation. Il Tempo did not find any space difficulties. It used my letter in full.

The next day was a little hectic. L'Unità announced that I was a Fascist and in the pay of a Fascist publication. The Communists also said that Collier's was part of a well-known Nazi-Fascist-Imperialist-Wall Street cannibalistic group which had organized to destroy the working classes. Further, they had re-examined my books and had found that they were no damn good.

For the rest of my stay in Rome, my phone never stopped ringing. Everybody wanted a statement; all I wanted was to get back to my churching and antiquitying.

There is only one last part of the incident which is amusing. My wife, who covers for me with a camera, had an idea that it would be good to get a picture of Taddei for this piece. She called L'Unità, got a girl who spoke English, and asked to take a picture of Taddei. The girl said the office was closed and would not be open until five-thirty.

At five-thirty, my wife called again and got a man who did not speak English. But he spoke a lot of rapid Italian, and what he said must have been good, because over the phone she could hear people killing themselves with laughter. She hung up and in five minutes called again. This time, she got a man who admitted that he spoke a little English. It seemed to her he had the same voice as the man who a moment before could not speak English. She explained who she was and said she wanted to photograph Taddei for Collier's. The man said he would have to ask Mr. Taddei. Unfortunately, Mr. Taddei was not at that moment available; he would call back.

He never did.

Well, that was the end of that, and I hope it's the end of the whole mess. I wasn't meant to get into things like this. I wish I wouldn't get mad. I get mad at some things in my own country sometimes, too, and I can't keep my big mouth shut. I don't think I'll ever learn to do that.

Someday I'll go back to Italy and finish looking at old bones, old churches and old ruins. I also want to get down to Positano, and look at fish and people. Besides, I have an anniversary to keep there.

One time during the war, I was on a PT boat off the Italian shore, right near Positano. One of our enlisted men went ashore to reconnoiter a brunette of excellent modern architecture. During this tour of duty, he was accosted by a big black chicken with a German accent. Naturally, he arrested the chicken for questioning. Under arrest, that chicken suddenly drew a knife, and our man was forced to defend himself. In the ensuing fight, the bird suffered wounds which resulted in his death.

Those of us in the PT boat had been living on wet sandwiches for a long time. We found a little beach and prepared to cremate the casualty. At that moment, some evil men opened fire on us with 88-millimeter guns, and we had to run to sea. The next day, we tried again to give that chicken a decent burial—with exactly the same results. The third day it was too late. The chicken had spoiled.

Someday I'm going down to that beach again, and I'm going to build a little memorial fire and sit beside it. Who knows what dangerous poultry might stroll by? My elegant moglie makes an elegant barbecue sauce.

THE TRIAL of Arthur Miller for contempt of Congress brings close to all of us one of the strangest and most frightening dilemmas that a people and a government has ever faced. It is not the first trial of its kind, nor will it in all probability be the last. But Arthur Miller is a writer—one of our very best. What has happened to him could happen to any writer; could happen to me. We are face to face with a problem by no means easy of solution. “Is a puzzlement!”

No man knows what he might do in a given situation, and surely many men must wonder how they would act if they were in Arthur Miller's shoes. I wonder what I would do.

Let me suppose that I were going to trial for contempt of Congress as he is. I might be thinking somewhat as follows:

There is no doubt that Congress has the right, under the law, to ask me any question it wishes and to punish my refusal to answer with a contempt charge. The Congress has the right to do nearly anything conceivable. It has only to define a situation or an action as a “clear and present danger” to public safety, public morals, or public health. The selling or eating of mince pie could be made a crime if Congress determined that mince pie was a danger to public health—which it probably is. Since many parents raise their children badly, mother love could be defined as a danger to the general welfare.

Surely, Congress has this right to ask me anything on any subject. The question is: Should the Congress take advantage of that right?

Let us say that the Congressional Committee feels that the Communist Party and many groups which have been linked with it—sometimes arbitrarily—constitute a clear and present danger to the nation. Now actually it is neither virtue nor good judgment on my part that has kept me from joining things. I am simply not a joiner by nature. Outside of the Boy Scouts and the Episcopal choir, I have never had an impulse to belong to things. But suppose I had. And suppose I have admitted my association with one or more of these groups posted as dangerous. As a writer, I must have been interested in everything, have felt it part of my profession to know and understand all kinds of people and groups. Having admitted these associations, I am now asked by the Committee to name individuals I have seen at meetings of such groups. I hope my reasoning then would go as follows:

The people I knew were not and are not, in my estimation, traitors to the nation. If they were, I would turn them in instantly. If I give names, it is reasonably certain that the persons named will be called up and questioned. In some cases they will lose their jobs, and in any case their reputations and standing in the community will suffer. And remember that these are persons who I honestly believe are innocent of any wrongdoing. Perhaps I do not feel that I have that right; that to name them would not only be disloyal but actually immoral. The Committee then is asking me to commit an immorality in the name of public virtue.

If I agree, I have outraged one of our basic codes of conduct, and if I refuse I am guilty of contempt of Congress, sentenced to prison and fined. One way outrages my sense of decency and the other brands me as a felon. And this brand does not fade out.

Now suppose I have children, a little property, a stake in the community. The threat of the contempt charge jeopardizes everything I love. Suppose, from worry or cowardice, I agree to what is asked. My deep and wounding shame will be with me always.

I cannot be reassured by the past performance of the Committee. I have read daily for a number of years the testimony of admitted liars and perjurers whose charges have been used to destroy the peace and happiness of people I do not know, and many of whom were destroyed without being tried.

Which path am I to choose? Either way I am caught. It may occur to me that a man who is disloyal to his friends could not be expected to be loyal to his country. You can't slice up morals. Our virtues begin at home. They do not change in a courtroom unless the pressure of fear is put upon us.

But if I am caught between two horrors, so is the Congress caught. Law, to survive, must be moral. To force personal immorality on a man, to wound his private virtue, undermines his public virtue. If the Committee frightens me enough, it is even possible that I may make up things to satisfy the questioners. This has been known to happen. A law which is immoral does not survive and a government which condones or fosters immorality is truly in clear and present danger.

The Congress had a perfect right to pass the Alien and Sedition Act. This law was repealed because of public revulsion. The Escaped Slave laws had to be removed because the people of free states found them immoral. The Prohibition laws were so generally flouted that all law suffered as a consequence.

We have seen and been revolted by the Soviet Union's encouragement of spying and telling, children reporting their parents, wives informing on their husbands. In Hitler's Germany, it was considered patriotic to report your friends and relations to the authorities. And we in America have felt safe from and superior to these things. But are we so safe or superior?

The men in Congress must be conscious of their terrible choice. Their legal right is clearly established, but should they not think of their moral responsibility also? In their attempts to save the nation from attack, they could well undermine the deep personal morality which is the nation's final defense. The Congress is truly on trial along with Arthur Miller.

Again let me change places with Arthur Miller. I have refused to name people. I am indicted, convicted, sent to prison. If the charge were murder or theft or extortion I would be subject to punishment, because I and all men know that these things are wrong. But if I am imprisoned for something I have been taught from birth is a good thing, then I go to jail with a deep sense of injustice and the rings of that injustice are bound to spread out like an infection. If I am brave enough to suffer for my principle, rather than to save myself by hurting other people I believe to be innocent, it seems to me that the law suffers more than I, and that contempt of the law and of the Congress is a real contempt rather than a legalistic one.

Under the law, Arthur Miller is guilty. But he seems also to be brave. Congress feels that it must press the charge against him, to keep its prerogative alive. But can we not hope that our representatives will inspect their dilemma? Respect for law can be kept high only if the law is respectable. There is a clear and present danger here, not to Arthur Miller, but to our changing and evolving way of life.

If I were in Arthur Miller's shoes, I do not know what I would do, but I could wish, for myself and for my children, that I would be brave enough to fortify and defend my private morality as he has. I feel profoundly that our country is better served by individual courage and morals than by the safe and public patriotism which Dr. Johnson called “the last refuge of scoundrels.”

My father was a great man, as any lucky man's father must be. He taught me rules I do not think are abrogated by our nervous and hysterical times. These laws have not been annulled; these rules of attitudes. He taught me—glory to God, honor to my family, loyalty to my friends, respect for the law, love of country and instant and open revolt against tyranny, whether it come from the bully in the schoolyard, the foreign dictator, or the local demagogue.