Mr. Wilson scowled. “Haven’t you got it backwards! Isn’t it easier to be an alarmist when there’s no grave danger than it is to keep your feet on the ground?”
“That’s an error all you plantigrade chaps make! It’s a hell of a lot easier to keep your feet on the ground and do nothing risky, Wilson, than it is to pull ’em out of the mud and start doing a job that involves—or may involve—blood and toil and tears and a God-awful sea of sweat.”
“You sound like Willkie,” Mr. Wilson said bitterly.
“What’s the matter with Willkie?”
“What was the matter with Benedict Arnold?”
“He was a traitor to his country,” Mr. Corinth said amiably.
“In my opinion, Willkie betrayed his party, his country, himself, and the dignity of being a man!”
“Because he was loyal to the truth?”
“Because he sold himself out to Roosevelt.”
Mr. Corinth scratched his head. “I don’t get it. I do remember, though, Wilson, the last election. I recall you out haranguing the state with your customary cold eloquence. I remember you in the parade—and I remember when Willkie stopped here. You were damned near as hoarse as he was, at the time! I must confess, I didn’t think much then of the frog-voiced prophet of your party. I believed he was going to undo the things that Roosevelt did for his countrymen because they had to be done. The expedient things.
There’s nothing wrong with expediency, as I was saying, as long as the underlying motive for it is okay. I thought Willkie lacked it. Anyway, Wilson, he wasn’t deceiving you about foreign policy at that time, was he? He said he was for aiding England, didn’t he? He told you he was against Hitler, didn’t he? And he hasn’t changed, has he? He went over there and saw for himself, in spite of the bombings, didn’t he? Have you been in England lately? Do you pretend to talk with authority about England? Well, Willkie does pretend to—and he has the right. He still disagrees with the New Deal, and says so with brilliance and violence, doesn’t he? Just what the devil has he betrayed?”
“He was supposed,” said Mr. Wilson acidly, “to be a Republican. The Republican party is the opposition party. Willkie’s thrown in with everything the Democrats are doing—every main thing.”
“The main thing they’re trying to do is beat Hitler. You think he should be against it?”
“I am sure of it.”
“F or Hitler?”
“Certainly not!”
“For what, then?”
“For America! A well-defended, independent, standing-alone America.”
“There you go!” Mr. Corinth shook his head. “Wendell Willkie decided—and Roosevelt decided, and about two thirds of the people of America have decided—that there’s no such thing. That there will be no such thing, until the last Nazi has been written off. We aren’t to blame for the Nazis, you say. I say we are, indirectly—but even that doesn’t matter. We aren’t to blame for microbes, but we fight ’em with the lives of our doctors and laboratory technicians. We aren’t to blame for hurricanes, but we get ready for ’em. We aren’t to blame for fires started by lightning, but we spend a lot on fire departments. If a gorilla was disemboweling the man next door and had his eye on me, I’d worry. I’d call the cops and get a hatchet, anyhow. I’d even set fire to my garage, if I thought it would drive the gorilla off. I think that Mr. Willkie is worried about the gorilla next door. As a matter of fact, from being very dubious about Mr. Willkie—due to some of the gentlemen in your political party, and not wishing to start here an argument about the gentlemen in my own—I have become a great admirer of Mr. Willkie. I like him. He warms me. I trust him. I believe he is bright. I doubt if Franklin Roosevelt runs for a fourth term, in spite of your little jokes, and I would like the opportunity to elect this Willkie fellow.”
“Politically,” said Mr. Wilson, “he has committed suicide.”
“Politically,” Mr. Corinth answered sharply, “you have. You—and the professional ironheads you’ve carried around. The Republican party in these United Sates is a chain-jangling ghost, a crusty anachronism, a mold-worshiping luster after the grave. Willkie may find a new body for it. Me, I’m sick of inexpert management of business. I have as big a business as you have and I know what I’m talking about. I’m sick of loud-mouthed amateurs trying to regulate affairs they don’t understand. I don’t like the administration attitude toward labor. I don’t think the laboring men like it themselves. I don’t like John Lewis and I never did think Greene was worth the powder it would take to blow him away. I don’t believe great undemocratic organizations should be allowed to flourish within democratic countries. I think labor unions ought to have to turn in the same reports corporations do. I think churches should, too, for that matter. I think that the leaders of labor are mostly self-appointed, because the laws governing unions aren’t like the laws governing the rest of the affairs of the nation. I don’t like self-appointed leaders anywhere. As a matter of fact, I don’t even like men with too-bushy eyebrows. But I do like Willkie.”
“When this war is over,” Mr. Wilson answered, “you’ll see! You’ll see America turn once more against war and against Europe—”
“Damn it! There you are! Postulating the course of future events on the last World War! Can’t you numbskulls ever realize that this isn’t a repetition of the last war? It may be, in a sense, a continuation of that war. I think it is. But, as such, it’s continuing simply because it never was finished the last time. Roosevelt isn’t Wilson. You Republicans can’t count on this war ending in an armistice and an economically nude Germany and a virtually untouched, unharmed American public that is anxious to forget trouble and have fun. It won’t end that way. It can’t. You won’t be able to get up a national reaction that’ll slap a Harding into the White House and put the pork and the spoils in the hands of you, or anybody else. After Roosevelt’s third term there may be another war president. Willkie would be my reformed idea of a good one. After that president there might be still another war president. Might go on ten, fifteen years. Why don’t you fellows think of what might happen for once—instead of what you wish would happen? Instead of forcing yourself to believe that what’s coming will be a replica of events a quarter of a century ago? What’s going on, Wilson, is a world-wide attempt to shift those old events. The Germans are trying to go on to the win they barely missed then. The English are trying to lick a menace that came back stronger, after being knocked down once. The Americans are about to get into the same fracas. And it’s going to continue, this time, until somebody—us or them—gets whipped to zero. Zero. None of your business deal armistices. None of your negotiated truces. None of your international diplomatic maneuvers. You guys aren’t in the saddle any more—and you don’t know it. Wall Street isn’t running things. Money isn’t running things. The people are. Willkie’s got a lot of people for him—millions on millions—and, my friend, any man who has the millions he has is still in politics!”