Mary's Mosaic (33 page)

The rising star was now shaping the policies of a number of post–World War II veterans groups, including the American Veterans Committee (AVC). Ideas for a new platform for world peace initiatives were gaining acceptance.

He was asked by the
Nation
to write a series of articles that would bring into sharper focus a new policy for shaping and keeping the peace in the nascent nuclear age. Cord published “Waves of Darkness” in the January 1946
Atlantic Monthly
. It would prove to be his best writing and one of the most insightful, penetrating war stories ever produced. The O. Henry Prize story gave a lightly fictionalized account of Cord’s foxhole trauma, and the force of will it took for him to go on living. That fall, Harvard bestowed yet another distinction on Cord, designating him a Lowell Fellow, one of the university’s highest honors.

In February 1947, all of the U.S. organizations committed to the possibility of achieving world government convened in Asheville, North Carolina. Out of this conference, a new organization was formed: the United World Federalists (UWF). Cord’s presence at the conference won him further attention. His clarity of focus, entwined with his acumen for understanding, impressed the leaders of the various organizations represented at the conference. In spite of his youth—he was only twenty-six at the time—Cord was put forward as the person with the potential to lead the new movement for world government. When some in attendance protested Cord’s nomination on the grounds of his youth, New York attorney A. J. Priest stood up on Cord’s behalf.

“Too young!” Priest said. “May I point out that Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison did their best work before they reached their 30s. I know this young man well. Despite my age, I know that I and others here would all be honored to make Cord Meyer our leader and to follow him.”
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For the next two years, with Mary by his side, already mothering two young boys born within twenty-two months of each other, the charismatic war veteran would lead the charge for world government as the best hope to ensure world peace. Within two years, the UWF’s paid membership of seventeen thousand supporters swelled to forty thousand members. The UWF had fifteen state branches, several hundred local chapters, and a galvanized student movement. In addition, Cord’s new book,
Peace or Anarchy
, sold more than fifty thousand copies. Cord tirelessly traveled the country, attending conferences and giving speeches, one of which would be read into the
Congressional Record
on May 14, 1947, by Representative Chat Holifield of California.

World Federalism became part of the American political landscape, attracting wide interest by such notables as atomic scientists Albert Einstein and Edward Teller, political figures Chester Bowles, General Douglas MacArthur, and finally President Truman himself. In 1949, Cord delivered an impassioned statement before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. It was inserted into the appendix of the
Congressional Record
by Senator Hubert Humphrey,
a staunch supporter of the effort.
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As political scientist Frederick Schulman reflected in the early 1950s, “World government had become for this generation the central symbol of Man’s will to survive, and of his moral abhorrence of collective murder and suicide.”
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As his renown took center stage that first year, Cord appeared to be one of the young men in the Western world who would forge the post–World War II trajectory of geopolitics. Certainly he was well positioned, but what if he should falter? Who else was capable of climbing similar heights? The July 1947 issue of
Glamour
featured an article entitled “Wise American Leadership Is the Hope of World,” by Vera Michaels Dean. Written and published in three languages (English, French, and Russian), it outlined six basic requirements for the preservation of world peace. Immediately following the article was a portrait gallery of ten men, entitled “Young Men Who Care,” ranked in order of importance. The first two, ironically pictured side by side, were none other than Cord Meyer Jr. and John F. Kennedy.

The caption under Cord’s picture read, “26 years old and a writer. He cares deeply about world government. Brilliantly articulate, he argues its case with lucid, patient logic. Ex-Yale and ex-Marine Corps, he gives back for the eye he lost in combat. His urgent vision of one world…. or none.”

Under Jack’s picture, the caption read, “at 29, a Congressman. He believes good government begins at home. In a democracy which needs the best of its young men, here’s one son of an influential father who didn’t settle for a soft life. A veteran, he represents the Boston wharf district.”

The remaining eight were positioned with four on each page.
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I
n the end, Cord’s heroic effort to bring world government to the national political stage would be stymied by international events, as well as by his organization’s inability to connect with the average American. Soviet Russia entered the nuclear world stage, testing its first successful atomic bomb in 1949. Relations with the Russians were already rapidly deteriorating in the aftermath of the Czechoslovakian coup, the Berlin crisis, a Communist victory in China, and, most dramatically, the Korean War. Such fear-laden World Federalist slogans as “one world or none” lost their appeal as the Federalist cause became enmeshed in its own complexity, internal politics, and inability to be more easily understood by the general public.

A new kind of fear was emerging. The growing paranoia over “Communism,” coupled with Russia’s elevation to superpower status, engendered a new mind-set, the era known as the Cold War. No longer persuasive concerning the
darkening storms from every direction, the World Federalist movement receded. “Our attempts to transform the United Nations had been overtaken by events that could no longer be ignored or explained away,” Cord wrote years later in his memoir
Facing Reality
.
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That was only one aspect of Cord’s own downfall, however. During the years he tirelessly devoted himself to finding a solution for world peace, Cord had a companion other than Mary. A dark melancholy had descended upon the World Federalist hero, intermingled with bouts of nervous exhaustion. Whether driven by his “absolute fury,” or his unresolved grief over the loss of his brother Quentin, Cord turned inward, despairing that the new world order was headed for nuclear Armageddon. Increasingly despondent, Cord took refuge in alcohol and nonstop chain-smoking, often finishing the first of several daily packs by midmorning. The World Federalist movement had, for Cord, run its course and failed in its mission; he returned to Harvard to resume his Lowell Fellowship, and to reflect on his defeat: “Two years spent in exhorting, pleading, warning, until my own reserves of confidence and hope had been so heavily overdrawn that it is hard for me to urge others on to action, when I now doubt the efficacy of any kind of action. Who am I to put myself against the dark and titanic forces that now mass themselves on the horizon of this new half-century? “Slowly, sadly, irreversibly, the tall world turns toward death like a flower for the Sun.”
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Rudderless and morose, unable to envision his next move, the strain was taking a huge toll, and not just on Cord. Mary was now eight months pregnant with their third child. Having traveled constantly for more than two years, Cord barely knew his first two sons: Quentin, born in 1946, and Michael, born in 1947. Not only had Mary been the stalwart figure behind Cord’s career—bearing his children, keeping house, editing his speeches and articles, and most important, aligning herself in complete support of the mission he had undertaken—she had exhausted her own reserves in the process. Incessantly preoccupied, Cord wanted only to know what the future might hold for him as his fellowship came to an end. The marriage began to show signs of trouble. Mary’s impatience became even more apparent. Saddled with mothering two young boys, and a third son born in February 1950, she carried all the family burdens and daily chores.

Taking refuge in his journal, Cord wrote of how tired he was of his own career dilemma, “wrestling with terms of personal decision and action” as to where he should focus. Unable to reach him directly, Mary pursued Cord in his journal, leaving comments for him to ponder. “You are a romantic!” She scribbled next to one entry. “We’re all in the same bed, Honey—pooped!”
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As Cord brooded over the Korean War (“This is in all probability the rehearsal for larger and more decisive battles”), he ultimately reflected: “I am without hope. And yet I live from day to day as before.” Here, Mary wrote in the margin: “When you say you are without hope, you imply that you thought humans were not what they are—humans.”
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Their banter soon reached a bitter crescendo. In June 1951, Cord wrote a four-stanza poem entitled “Proper Tribute.” The verse appeared as a thinly disguised expression of his feelings about Mary, and he surely meant her to take it as such when she discovered it.

Proper Tribute

Beauty, she wears carelessly like a bright gown,

Lent for a night by some indulgent guest

And is dismissed to find that no man loves

Only herself in that brief garment dressed.

She lacks the arrogance that lovely women

Habitually show. In genuine surprise

She smiles at praise that would-be lovers bring

As proper tribute to her transient eyes.

And in a way she’s right. She never earned

With work or special talent her tall grace,

Her full breasts or her abundant hair.

By luck with genes she won her dreaming face.

But now that beauty’s hers by nature’s gift,

She must its burden bear and growing learn

What damage in poor hearts her passing wrecks.

And how for her desire sleepless burns.

Mary took the bait. She added a closing stanza of mocking self-criticism that was also a warning to her husband: If he considered her passive or dormant, she would prove him wrong.

She bites her fingernails,

Fails to shave under her arms,

Has no sense of humor,

And is a totally mundane soul.

But silence fires the imagination of the spiritually timid.
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C
ord’s decision in 1951 to work for the CIA was not about following a calling or answering destiny. He had wanted to continue writing, and he had hoped that his tenure as a Lowell Fellow at Harvard might lead to an academic post. But postwar economics being what they were, academia was not recruiting. Not even his contacts at Yale or Columbia panned out. He consulted Secretary of State Dean Acheson for a job in the State Department, but there was none for him.

It is not known exactly when Cord’s first contact with Allen Dulles took place. Possibly contacted by Cord’s father, Dulles had already been apprised of Cord’s “splendid qualifications” as early as February 1951. By March of that year, the two had met in Washington, and Cord obviously went away intrigued by what Dulles had offered him, which remained top secret and classified. On March 31 that year, Cord acknowledged in his journal that he was busy filling out the required paperwork to work for the CIA.
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Following his interview with Dulles, he met with another Dulles protégé already at the CIA, Gerald E. Miller. Writing to Miller and Dulles in late May, Cord made it clear that he was “very much interested in the job we discussed,” but asked if he could “accept on the condition that I might be free to consider one other possibility that might materialize during the first two weeks of July.” He added, “In the remote event that this other thing developed, you would then still have more than two months to find someone else.” It isn’t clear from Cord’s personal papers and letters what the “other possibility” was, though it may have been an academic appointment. Clearly, Cord’s sights at the time included something more appealing than the CIA, and he wasn’t hesitant about stalling Allen Dulles until July before committing to an Agency job that would begin the following September (1951).
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