The realization that physicians are part of a killing machine provokes a special horror

  

In his memorable account of the Plague, Albert Camus described how Dr. Rieux was determined to complete his chronicle, “so that he should bear witness in favor of the victim, so that some memorial of the injustice and outrage done to them might endure. He knew that the tale he had to tell could not be one of final victory. It could only be the record of what had had to be done, and what assuredly would have to be done again in the never-ending fight against terror and its relentless onslaughts.” I can think of no better reason for telling the story in these pages.

While political terrorism has been capturing widespread attention for some time, almost nothing has been made public of how doctors today use their knowledge and skills in its support. Yet they regularly medically examine political prisoners before questioning to assess the degree of torture to be used. They attend interrogations to treat the direct physical effect of the torture they have approved so that investigation can continue. They recommend how much further torture can then be applied. Physicians employed in state-sponsored terrorism also falsify autopsy reports and provide fake medical certificates for persons those doctors know were tortured to death. A common description is “cardiac failure” or ‘pneumonia’ on those certificates.

Physicians who are members of terrorist organizations provide, or themselves use, drugs to fotce hostages into video recordings— confessions, exhortations, and genuinely pathetic pleas that have become a regular feature of TV newscasts. These stage-managed appearances are aimed at exerting worldwide psychological pressure designed to achieve the aims of the kidnappers.

All such routine malpractices violate medical ethics as defined by one of three oaths sworn by every physician before he or she starts to practice: to do no harm, provide assistance to all in need, and only treat with the consent of the patient.

Yet every day these pledges are flagrantly abused by doctors whose actions conform to the generally accepted definition of torture produced by the United Nations, Amnesty International, and other human rights organizations: the deliberate infliction of pain by one person on another in an effort to break the will of the victim.

In 1988 this gross and pervasive violation was occurring in over ninety countries; a quarter of the world’s population were living in areas where abuses have long become habitual, particularly in the Soviet Union, Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

The nonmedical perpetrators of physical and mental violence, such as prison guards and interrogators, are steadily being joined by doctors prepared to put aside all professional ethics to advise upon or perform torture. Psychiatry, in particular, is highly vulnerable to being used by the state to maintain power and control the thoughts and actions of its citizens. George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World continue to exist within all those countries where a person’s intentions and actions are interpreted by the state in a manner designed to destroy legiti- mate political dissent. In a high proportion of those instances psychiatrists provide the clinical label—and the veneer of legitimacy—that allows the state to incarcerate opponents. Doctors, therefore, are increasingly used to discredit and silence all those who oppose official policies; the description of political dissent as “insanity’’ would have no credence without their active support.

In Russia, glasnost has done nothing to significantly reduce the number of dissidents languishing in closed institutions. There, as elsewhere, they continue to be tortured psychologically and physically by physicians trying to induce a change of political views. There are no firm figures for the number of doctors involved. Some human rights workers suggest the global number could run to many thousands. More likely it is in the hundreds, at least for those actively engaged in daily torture. It is manifestly impossible to arrive at any accurate figure for the number who discreetly play a supportive role in torture. But one, surely, is too many.

What is certain is that not since Hitler understood that doctors were an integral and indispensable part of his final solution have physicians become so involved in torture. Yet, dismissing them as simply mad doctors intent on satisfying their own sadistic whims is no more convincing than it was concerning Nazi clini- cians involved in the death camps program. Many such physicians appear normal, offering a reminder that certain behavior does elude our full understanding. Indeed, much of what is described in this book cannot be explained by a comforting resort to psychological explanations, where personality and motivation interlock perfectly. All that can be safely claimed is that, be- cause this account is authentic, there can be no simple explana- ' tion for the way these doctors behaved—and continue to behave.

In writing this book I had access to written testimony from prime sources, which can be assessed in the following descending order of importance: reports by human rights organizations of fully verified medically sponsored torture; properly attested affidavits by those who were subjected to medical torture; statements by defectors, either from a terrorist organization or from state-sponsored terrorism, about the use of physicians to design methods of abuse or who act as torturers themselves; and authentic documents, gathered by security forces, which offer proof of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment administered directly by doctors or at the behest of those security forces.

That evidence was supported by interviews. Thirty-five years of researching other subjects has convinced me that the only way to fully understand an issue is to talk to those directly involved. For this book I traveled extensively in North America, Europe, the Middle East, and beyond to Asia and, finally, Latin America, during which I had to ponder many versions of truth and untruth.

I spoke to more than a hundred persons either directly employed or working indirectly for intelligence agencies. They ranged from desk men to field agents, from academics to physicians employed in prisons and interrogation centers. I conducted multiple interviews with over fifty of these people; some seventeen prime sources were each questioned a dozen or more times.
Their patience is something at which I still marvel—that and their willingness to talk. The only guarantee they asked for, and received, was that their anonymity would be protected.

To those who do not toil in the fields of investigative journalism, this is sometimes the moment when hands are thrown up and the question is put: “If they won’t be named, how can we believe them?” The only sensible answer is this: Men and women who work in intelligence generally will not discuss security matters without an absolute guarantee of not being identified.

However, that does not mean their words are any more, or less, believable; it simply requires that a reporter does not lower his guard.

In addition I followed the rules laid down by two of the great editors of this century, whom I had the good fortune to work for:

Arthur Christiansen of the Daily Express, London, and Ed Thompson of the Reader’s Digest. Both were absolutely firm on such matters as wherever possible using two sources for an important fact, and that when writing someone was said to have “felt,” “sensed,” “thought,” “understood,” or “believed,” such reactions must genuinely reflect the essence of a particular portion of an interview with that person. Both editors were insistent on the need to reproduce as accurately as possible the attitudes and personality of an interviewee, even when he or she was not directly quoted. 

Bob Woodward of the Washington Post has rightly reminded all of us of the need to try and distinguish between what should genuinely be kept secret for the sake of national security and what officialdom tries to hide under the guise of security, when what is really at stake is the uncovering of inept decision-making and unethical behavior. In his own book, Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981-1987, Woodward quoted the guide-lines of another veteran of our business, Ken Auletta. He has synthesized the complex business of prime and secondary sources, on-and off-the-record conversations, and recreating an event or happening with the use of memoranda, documents, letters, diaries, and notes-to-file. Auletta wrote that ‘‘no reporter can with 100 percent accuracy re-create events that occurred some time before. Memories play tricks on participants, the more so when the outcome has become clearer. A reporter tries to guard against inaccuracies by checking with a variety of sources. But it is useful for a reader—and an author—to be humbled by this journalistic limitation.”

Auletta’s reminder was certainly constantly in my mind during the interviews for this book. And just as Veil is among the first to illuminate the world of modern intelligence, so mine is an early entry into describing the field of medical torture. Like Woodward’s stated attitude to his work, I freely recognize that the story in these pages cannot be the final word; instead, I see it as an encouragement for others to pursue the trail, to turn what is essentially today’s reportage into the substantiality of tomorrow’s history. Sometimes, such as that day in May 1987 in Beirut, as on previous occasions, I had no alternative but to simply be my own prime source—to enter the story and describe what I saw. I’m not enthusiastic about such intrusions; after all, it is the story and not the teller who matters. But at those times there really seemed no other way.

When Veil was published in the autumn of 1987 it was attacked largely on the grounds that the one-time director of the Central Intelligence Agency, William Joseph Casey, would never have given the interviews Woodward claimed, let alone be so forthcoming—or if he had, it had simply been to use Woodward to shape Casey’s place in history and spread disinformation. It’s the old story of trusting a source. Personally, I have no problem in believing that Woodward spoke, as he wrote, close to fifty times with Casey and that the director was as frank as Veil suggests.

I met Casey on two occasions in Washington in March 1986. My path to him had been cleared by senior U.S. diplomats and members of the CIA in the Middle East whom I had gotten to know through the hostage situation in Beirut. They said the only person who could begin to answer some of my questions was Casey.

The first occasion we met was in the International Club in Washington, D.C., on Friday, March 21; the second time was at the same venue four days later. On both occasions Casey wore the same dark blue suit, clearly custom-made because of his size. He seemed considerably bulkier than in his television appearances—and older, too. He looked physically unwell, his skin gray and taut around the eyes and jaw.

He wasted no time on small talk, getting down to business at once. I gave him a brief account of what I had learned in the Middle East about the hostages. He listened carefully and said some of it had to be “just goddamn speculation.” Then he proceeded to substantially reduce that element by explaining in some detail why the CIA believed the hostages were being held under appalling conditions, including being ill-treated by a doctor. He suggested further ways I could “look into that aspect.” He was courteous and helpful, to a certain point—that point being that he told me he was “working with another writer,” and consequently could only be of limited assistance. That writer, of course, was Bob Woodward.

But Casey did provide me with confirmation of a number of key matters relating to medical torture, speaking candidly after he had been satisfied that anything he said would not be attributed to him. His death on May 6, 1987, freed me of that agreement and I can simply say that this book owes a debt to Casey—even though I am certain he would not have wanted many of the revelations about the CIA’s own behavior to emerge; it was very clear from our discussions that the director had a fierce protective feeling about not only the agency he then headed but the one he had inherited. I learned of his death back in the Middle East while pursuing one of the leads he had given. His passing came at the very time Congress had begun its public hearings on the Iran-Contra fiasco, whose ramifications arose directly out of the hostage-taking that forms a theme of this book.

The director, like my other interviewees from the intelligence world, would not be taped and would not allow notes to be taken at the time; those had to be written up immediately afterwards as background, that catchall phrase that means information provided could be fully used but not directly attributed.

Surprisingly, it worked; cross checks invariably showed my sources were not only in a position to know, but what they were saying was the truth. I am not one who subscribes to the idea that intelligence services spend their time and money running a continuous international conspiracy to deceive journalists and authors. All, undoubtedly, do spread disinformation some of the time among the gullible and unaware. But all the time? No.

Yet, that said, I should also add that sometimes attempts were made to dismiss medical torture as no more than harsh but essential treatment of dangerous suspects—and that, indeed, the very presence of a doctor should be seen as that of a physician ready to intervene, rather like a boxing referee, when a victim’s life is in danger.

Such arguments take no account of the long-term effects on the emotional stability of those who endure any form of violation of their basic human rights. Accounts by victims of torture are filled with trauma: recurrent nightmares and phobias, in- creased anxiety, and often impotency. Some of those symptoms are a direct result of medical abuse, itself not always easy to pinpoint, let alone assess, because its practitioners are often greatly skilled in its application.

Again, it was claimed that some of the doctors who were engaged in physical ill-treatment or psychological mind control were forced into such behavior because of threats to their own careers, and possibly their lives and those of their families. The most effective rebuttal to this suggestion is that the great majority of doctors—whether in totalitarian states or living amid terrorist enclaves—refuse to participate in such practices. Indeed, they are often prepared to risk their jobs, lives, and the safety of loved ones to avoid taking part in the violations of human rights that have become so systematic and efficient as to create a growth industry whose tools include drugs, electro-shocks, mouth gags, garrots, blindfolds, and branding irons, with methods ranging from sexual abuse to sham executions.

Nor is the defense of self-preservation new. It was advanced by some of the twenty-one German physicians charged with medical crimes at Nuremberg. Disclosures during their trials led to the Hippocratic Oath having an addendum: “I will not permit consideration of race, religion, nationality, party politics, or social standing to intervene between my duty and my patient.” Forty years after that edict was framed, medical cooperation forms an integral part of torture in many countries; the demands of state-sponsored terrorism, or the organizations that deal in terrorism, require no less.

What remains for me the most disturbing aspect of my investigation is that even as I write, and later when it is read, there are physicians who continue to participate in torture. Their behavior poses a continuous threat to all those of us who still possess that most precious of all gifts: the right of the human spirit to choose. In working on this book I have had to come to terms with my own emotions—disbelief, bewilderment, disgust, and anger and, more than once in the early stages, a feeling that the subject was simply too evil to cope with. Nothing I had researched before could have prepared me for the dark reality of doctors who set out to deliberately destroy minds and bodies they were trained to heal. The realization that physicians are part of a killing machine provokes a special horror. Throughout the interviews I worked through much of my personal conflict— whether to stop or go on—knowing that at every turn there would be further personally unsettling revelations. I survived by constantly reminding myself of a professional obligation to be balanced about doctors whose actions in the end raise a fundamental question: How did they become the way they were and are?

For the most part they did not give the impression, outside their work, of being totally evil; certainly they rarely filled the popular imagery of demonic figures. Equally, it must be said it is demonic that they are not demonic. And, without doubt, there is a deeply disturbing psychological truth that what they do does not require personalities anywhere close to sadistic: their behavior confirms that what can be properly called ordinary people, nurtured and tutored to find places within the oldest caring profession, can perform acts of authentic wickedness. To reveal their capacity to do so, I felt, like Dr. Rieux, a powerful need to complete a chronicle that has its beginning, though not its roots, in the predawn, neither light nor darkness, the hour the Moslem faithful say when night properly ends and another day starts in Beirut—4:30 A.M. on my watch on a morning in May 1987. (...)

from the book Journey Into Madness The True Story of Secret CIA Mind Control and Medical Abuse by Gordon Thomas

Stand for Law and Justice

 George Lucas’s Star Wars is not the only fantasy that challenges the idea of empire. The foundational myth of “fighting unjust tyrants” is deeply embedded into the origin of the United States of America; it may take effort for my American readers to accommodate their thinking to the idea that the very purpose of monarchies was to stand for law, justice, and peace for your people. Monarchs may not always have achieved this goal, either internally or along their borders, but, nevertheless, it was the goal and their purpose.

Partly, it may be more difficult for Americans to understand real monarchies because they rarely encounter real royals; and they tend to have little sense of actual royalty throughout history. They haven’t seen, or considered, how future monarchs were raised; how they took their first responsibilities and finally took over from their parents; how they then raised children of their own. All they imagine is an oppressive tyrant, sitting on a far-away throne. But the populations in countries with active monarchs, who witness royalty directly or are raised to consider the history of royalty throughout the generations, benefit from a completely different perspective, and this creates a close social bond. Furthermore, as a cousin to many modern royals, I personally have had the additional advantage of knowing and understanding the goals and aspirations of some of the princes and princesses who became rulers.

What did I find? I met people who, since their earliest childhood, were raised toserve — to serve their country with every appearance, every gesture, every parade, every photo. Just as their parents and grandparents had done before. Since they were young, they got to know their countries, the political parties and politicians, and the Church representatives. They learned about all the fault lines that menaced their country. They watched as their parents dealt with many problems. And they were told how their grandparents had confronted similar problems. 

Serving always meant putting your own interests second. In a country with several languages, your preferred language was not used exclusively; rather, all the country’s languages were spoken. Your preference for one region or for one kind of people could not be indulged. You were a symbol of unity and had to show respect to all regions and all people. Furthermore, you knew that any mess you created when you were eventually in the position of power would burden your children when they came to power. Finally, at least in my youth there was very little option to renounce your responsibilities and disappear into a private life. You simply owed it to your country: for God’s sake, and for the many privileges you had been given. And precisely because you were not elected — and therefore not obliged to calibrate your decisions to ensure re-election — you were specially positioned to engage real problems honestly. 

You may say this is a rose-tinted view. Perhaps. But nevertheless, it is what I have seen. 

Even if modern European monarchies have very limited constitutional powers — indeed, they have far less power than an American president — their real power is the power of example. But that was always a critical, perhaps the most critical, role played by monarchs. Whether a monarch is upholding the law, or simply the Truth, a Catholic monarch who believes in God understands that He will, someday, render final judgment. 

Contrast this mindset with some modern politicians. Not having been raised to responsibility, and with less permanently secure positions, they will quite understandably be more naturally tempted to use their careers as paths to personal advancement, profiting off the connections made during those careers. Nobody can blame them. But this was something rulers in the past need not have done. 

From the first Habsburg Emperor, Rudolf in 1273, the Habsburgs defended the law, tried to be just, and tried to improve the lives of their subjects. Remember, there had been a nearly thirty-year interregnum after the fall of the House of Hohenstaufen, so there had been constant fights, conflicts, and lawlessness. Rudolf’s first challenge was to restore order, which he did with remarkable success. He worked with local rulers to reorganize territories taken in those thirty years from the empire (the so-called “Revendication”). He gave them a juridical structure and abolished tolls unlawfully instituted during the interregnum. He forced his great rival Ottokar of Bohemia to give back all the countries he had taken — Central Austria, Styria, and Carinthia — that were then still independent lands. (First the lands were placed under imperial guardianship; later, when Ottokar was defeated, Rudolf gave the lands to his own sons.)

So the role of the emperors — as the “kings above kings” — required them to take law and justice very, very seriously.18 And like their forebear Rudolf, they did. There are too many Habsburg emperors to review each of their records; but it is worth considering at least a few examples of how seriously they stood for law, justice, and their subjects: (...)

There is much more to be said about the “glorious generation” of Francis and his brothers, especially about their modesty and frugality. But I want to finish with an amusing anecdote that illustrates what was typically said of them. When the poet Byron spent his famous summer on Lake Geneva in 1816 with Mary Wollstonecraft and her lover Percy B. Shelley, a literary bet prompted Mary to create the first scene of what was to become her immortal novel Frankenstein. During the same stay, Byron himself wrote a fragmentary novel, and his personal physician, John William Polidori, also wrote The Vampyre, the precursor of romantic vampire stories. However, Byron and Polidori had a falling out, and so Polidori left on a trip to Italy. Coming from Switzerland, Polidori crossed over the Grand St. Bernard and spent the night of September 27, 1816, in the monastery located at the top of the mountain pass. He notes in his diary that there was great excitement there: another simple traveler had stayed the previous night, and the monks had only just discovered, through his signature in the monk’s guest book, that the guest had been the famous Archduke Rainer, Viceroy of Lombardo-Venetia. Rainer, one of the “glorious brothers,” is known to regularly have hiked, incognito, along the borders of his reign, in order to better understand his subjects (and to study rock formations). 

Finally, I want to end the chapter with an anecdote about Franz Joseph standing up for his subjects. In 1910, the old emperor met with the former president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, in the Hofburg. When the former president and Noble Peace Prize winner asked the emperor to explain to him exactly what he was doing — implying, I suspect, that elected parliaments and governments had made the emperor’s role a superfluous anachronism — the emperor answered simply: “The idea of my office is to protect my peoples from their politicians.” 

I leave you with this question: Who protects the voters from their politicians today?

From:

The Habsburg Way

Seven Rules for Turbulent Times

By Eduard Habsburg 

Spiritual reptilians?

 Man, it would appear, is an easy enough creature to control, if one knows the right buttons to push and switches to flip on the opportune occasions. If we are to believe some authorities, the exercise of such control has been refined to the precision and exactitude of a science. Those who are in the business of what is called “public relations”—advertisements, political campaigns, propaganda efforts, and suchlike—zero in relentlessly upon the psychic vulnerabilities of targeted groups; billions of dollars have been spent to help these uber-experts to perfect their technique. By now, we are all allegedly at their mercy; they have effectively made us their Pavlovian mongrels, and mental freedom is now a sheer impossibility; the bitter dawn of the “Brave New World” has broken; we now dwell helplessly like lobotomized, lifeless-eyed mandarins, utterly enslaved to the whims of our handlers.

  I have my doubts that things are quite so dire as this, as I suspect that man is far too complicated an animal to be so thoroughly “owned” to such an extreme degree; in any case, if man is indeed “owned,” then his “owners” (being men themselves) are also perfectly capable of being dominated by the very same instruments they have used to consolidate their rule. Moreover, the fact that he sees fit to exercise control at all is an indication of their vulnerability to be controlled, as the compulsion to be a ruler is, paradoxically enough, itself a sign of psychic weakness. 

  Surely control is not an exact science; indeed, it is probably more of an art than a science. Still, it cannot be doubted that man is indeed an easily exploitable creature; there is no “one size fits all” manner of exercising dominion, as each individual is at least to some degree unique—to control for the quirks in absolutely everyone’s programming would be costly and time-consuming. Yet there does exist a baseline for control, a way of dominating the thoughts of the mass of men (even if some men manage to escape this widely-cast net), of strafing this weary load of penned-up souls with a barrage of stimuli to the extent that their minds are blown and their hearts are wrenched in a manner that aids and abets their psychological enslavement. Of course, such operations must be performed sparingly, or else they lose impact. Pragmatically speaking, these propagandistic campaigns necessitate extensive coordination and planning, cost loads of money, and are generally onerous and burdensome in their intricacies. 

  Still, one imagines, such campaigns have their utility. Just as a micro-controller—say, a devious and malignant-minded person who wished to gain the upper hand in a relationship—might resort to deception, even brazen theatrics, in order to establish a position of emphasis, thus insuring that he is better equipped to launch psychological sorties against his “target,” so it makes perfect sense that those with a similarly devious and malignant mindset attempting to gain or enhance control on a macro scale (i.e., those in charge of the machinery of the state) would likewise occasionally contrive and carry forth grand, bold, and decisive deceptions, as a means toward achieving domination over a larger but still generally hapless “target.” (i.e., the population in general).

  Such orchestrations are not unknown throughout human history; in modern-day conspiracy culture, they are often called “false flags” or “inside jobs.” That the ruling authorities would “have it in them” to intentionally deceive their subjects is beyond dispute, at least judging from history; to suppose that current rulers are exempt from such considerations is at best naïve, at worst disingenuous. Again, given that people commonly deceive other people on a small scale in their personal relationships, why would not those generally “in charge” not seek to promulgate deception on a wider scale, given their conspicuously more developed, and considerably more depraved, ambitions?

                                                          ********************                                                               

  It shouldn’t strain credulity overmuch, then, to posit the possibility, or even assert the likelihood, of certain events being artificially orchestrated for the purpose of mass deception and psychological manipulation. The adage that “power tends to corrupt” is verifiable on numerous levels, with reams of anecdotal evidence available for support. When a person gains power, things become available to him in ways that couldn’t even have been dreamt of in the absence of said power. A wide world of alluring possibilities suddenly opens up, and that which had previously constrained his sensibilities just as suddenly releases its grip, making him capable of behaviors that would have been deeply alienating to his consciousness prior to his ascension to the post he now occupies; he comes to believe that he is truly deserving of all that he has, and that all steps undertaken with the purpose of consolidating his position are self-justifying. Power thus becomes an end in itself; he need not appeal to any standard of decency in the pursuit of protecting and consolidating his “turf”; if an act helps him and hurts those who would oppose him, then that act is reflexively deemed warranted by dint of the end it serves.

  Such a condition, whereby a person gains power by surrendering his humanity, is commonly referred to as “selling one’s soul”—in such cases, one simply degrades oneself by choice, after making the determination that the benefits of this transformation outweigh the costs. A lot of fuss has been made over this categorization of person, the one who seems to be patently inhuman, at least according to our accustomed understanding of what humanity is. Clinical psychologists designate this man a “sociopath.” Those with broader and more adventuresome sensibilities have theorized that in fact a whole other race lives among us, one what only appears to resemble humanity; these beings are called “skin jobs,” in that they possess merely the epidermal exterior of normal men and women, while retaining a cold-blooded core. This sinister alien race is at times referred to as “Reptilian,” and while the patently ‘sci-fi’ connotations of such a designation may strike one as far-fetched when taken literally, it must be admitted that as a metaphor it could scarcely be more compelling in capturing the essence of a sociopathic soul: viperous, venomous, carnivorous,  bereft of empathy, etc..

  Some Reptilians are born, while others are no doubt made, and still others probably have their Reptoid identity “thrust upon them” through perceived necessity of one kind or another. Still, all such beings, whether via nature or nurture, have assumed room temperature in their hearts; they are perfectly possessed, one might say, by their ambition. Everything they say seems suggestive of a “normal” mindset is in fact a ruse; all gestures which appear to indicate goodwill and charity are merely aspects of a carefully contrived façade. Their lusts predominate, unconstrained by appeals to morality, reality, or restraint; the only thing that keeps them in line is their wily cunning; indeed, absent the sneaky prudence of their conniving craftiness (that which bids them to bide their time in order to achieve the best results), they would abandon themselves to an orgy of sheer, unbridled concupiscence.

  Of course, their predominant ruthlessness of heart and monstrousness of spirit ought not keep us from recognizing that these Reptilians are essentially vulnerable in a manner that is (dare we say it?) deeply human. There could even be said to linger an aura of poignancy about these creatures, since in their drive to be masters of the universe, they have become little more than slaves to their appetites. Still, while not inhumanly invulnerable, they have indeed ceased to be “human” in the way that a human being is said to have empathy, awareness of moral obligation, and a thirst for a transcendent consciousness whose locus dwells outside of his own willfulness and ruthless determination to survive and thrive at all costs. Moreover, these (literal or figurative, born or made) Reptilians have come to see other humans as little more than beasts of burden: to be worked, to be exploited, to be fussed over and fattened, not out of a compassionate impulse to provide nurturance, sustenance, and livelihood for said “beasts,” but rather with the mindset of a profit-minded owner of livestock, i.e., as one who feeds one’s cattle with an eye towards their eventual slaughter and sale for consumption. Other people, that is, exist merely for one’s use; they can be culled and cannibalized whenever it proves advantageous to do so.

CONSPIRACY, COMPLIANCE, CONTROL, AND DEFIANCE:

 a primer on what is, and what is to be done

 By Andy Nowicki

Ludovici - On Schooling

 

Education, as organized by the state, can have but one object: the rearing of people who are fit to be decent and worthy citizens. A man may educate himself privately in vice, in jazzing, in motoring or in crime; he is at liberty to do this at his own expense and in his own time, but if he is educated at the expense of his fellow-men the intention of these fellow-men must be to train him into a desirable member of society. Only thus can the huge outlay be made worthwhile.

Now, a desirable citizen is above all a well-conducted citizen. He may know French and fencing and be able to beat all-comers at billiards or biology, marbles or mathematics, but he is only a nuisance if he is not, in addition, well-conducted—that is to say, reliable, sensible, understanding and honest. It is more important that he should thoroughly grasp the first principles of sound conduct and thought than that he should know the whole of counterpoint or conchology.

When once he has mastered the first principles of sound conduct and thought, he is prepared to do well at anything according to his gifts, whereas the most exhaustive knowledge of counterpoint and conchology will, in the most favourable circumstances, only make him a good musician or a good classifier of shells.

In short, happiness and harmony are more easily achieved by a people holding deep and sound views concerning life and humanity than by people deeply versed in science and top-heavy with information. Happiness has been achieved again and again upon earth by people possessing not a billionth part of the knowledge that has been accumulated by modern man. A sound instinct in regard to food, a correct understanding of one’s self and one’s fellows, and a decent appreciation of the limits of individual caprice in a social community are, after all, more precious than a large accumulation of facts. And thus education, if it is to be valuable, should consist very much more in a training in manners, sound views and means of intercourse than in the acquisition of knowledge about facts. (The False Assumptions of ‘Democracy’, pp. 126–7)

Anybody would have thought that one of the first concerns of any educational body dealing with national education would have been to secure to all citizens of the same nation, irrespective of rank, at least a thorough knowledge of their native tongue. For what, indeed, could be more vital? It is the first prerequisite of all satisfactory communication, whether from or to the subject; it is the first essential weapon of the rational faculties. A particular native language may have faults and shortcomings, as compared with other native languages; it may be poorer in words, more complicated in syntax, less copiously supplied with racy idiom, etc., but surely any national scheme of education that fails to make the mastery of this native language—such as it is, perfect or imperfect—the foremost object on its programme is guilty of a gross dereliction of duty. For whatever its faults may be, the masses, at least, have no other means of communication and, if they are going to be made articulate, they must be taught their native tongue.

At present, the situation of the English working-classes is, in this respect, pathetic in its helpless and infantile humility. Their talk is the babble of babes, their vocabulary the means of expression for creatures whose feelings and thoughts are no more complicated than those of primitive savages. Not only are they incapable of understanding complex states of feeling or complex thoughts when they hear them accurately and carefully expressed, but they are also utterly unable to give expression to at least three-quarters of their own thoughts and emotions. In regard to a very large number of thoughts and emotions, which to the cultivated man are commonplace matters, the masses of England are therefore literally inarticulate. The same word answers for a hundred meanings in their conversation, all of which it but inadequately expresses, while for those emotions and thoughts for which they have no words there can exist only mute and mystified suspicion.

This is bad enough. Life is sufficiently tragic for millions of creatures today, without its being either necessary or desirable to aggravate it with the additional affliction of dumbness. And yet the fact that this inarticulateness which ignorance imposes, is equivalent to dumbness, or at least to partial dumbness, is surely incontestable.

But there is a consequence of this ignorance which is even more serious than that discussed above. And that is the danger to which it exposes its sufferers of falling under false guidance, misdirection and pollution from outside. Whereas dumbness, although a sad affliction, is often merely another form of constraint; misunderstanding, misinterpretation, or the inability to criticize and to reject the expressed thoughts of others may be a source of pollution, a source of grave error and a speedy means of complete and incurable perversion.

If people are to be protected from misconceptions, false leaders, demagogues and all those smart and slippery unemployed who are ever ready to exploit ignorance and take advantage of simplicity, they must be in a position to listen critically to an address or an appeal made to them in their own language. They must be in a position to tell to what extent their proposed leader or misleader understands what he is talking about. How much false sentiment, false doctrine, inflammatory teaching is simply an abuse of language, a forcing of terms—in fact, catachresis. How much of it would be detected and exposed if the majority of the nation possessed that precision and understanding in the use of words which would come with a proper knowledge of their native tongue. (The False Assumptions of ‘Democracy’, pp. 132–4)

The boys’ curriculum at an average elementary school consists of the following subjects: English, arithmetic, geography, history, nature study or hygiene, physics, drawing, singing, physical exercise, manual work.

The reader will only need to glance at this curriculum in order to realize how varied the programme is, and how assiduously the subjects would require to be studied in the eight years of school life in order to leave in the minds of the scholars a sufficient knowledge of them to be of use in later life. Eight years, with 22 hours a week for 44 weeks a year, and such a programme! Can it be possible for the boys to acquire anything more than a mere smattering of each subject? … In fact, take it how you will, it must be acknowledged without either bitterness or malice that elementary education is nothing more than a very expensive and very elaborate farce.

It teaches the boys two things that they undoubtedly remember: the trick of deciphering letterpress, which constitutes them purchasers and readers of the lowest and most fatuous literature that sweated literary hacks can produce, and enough arithmetic for them to master the ordinary numerical problems that may arise in the daily routine of their adult lives. Of history nothing, literally nothing, is remembered, except perhaps that there was once a king who spoilt some tarts (they are not quite certain whether it was Alfred the Great or the King of Hearts) and that there was once a monarch called William the Conqueror. Of geography only the vaguest notions are retained, and these relate more often to the world as a whole than to their native land. Of hygiene, physics, not a trace is left, not even a recollection of the names of the subjects. While singing and drawing, except to the few, are a pure waste of time.

It is safe to say that this is true of the majority of the scholars and, since it is the majority of the children that constitute the great mass of the nation, it is on them we must concentrate our attention.

Since the object of all our expensive elementary school organization ought to be to impart to them some valuable knowledge that they can retain throughout their lives, some valuable knowledge, moreover, in the acquisition of which the highest faculties of their mind would be disciplined and trained, surely it would be an advantage in the first place to concentrate on a fewer number of subjects, and secondly to select only those which could be of service to them in later life (for they are the only subjects that are ever remembered), and thirdly to confine the study of the subject or subjects chosen, as far as possible, to those limits which, while they guarantee a solid foundation of learning, allow of further unassisted progress when once the school career is over.

Now, it seems to the present writer that no subject in the whole curriculum of schools answers these requirements more satisfactorily in every way than English itself. It is at once an ideal means of disciplining and training the mind, of clarifying thought and of correcting vagueness and looseness of reasoning; it is an excellent preservative of natural nobility of character, by opening up to the student the whole treasury of lofty thought and sentiment that the language contains; it is a mental weapon against befoulment by prurient and other deleterious influences; it is an instrument of criticism that can be employed at any moment, in any contingency, against the appeals of demagogues, agitators and corrupters of all kinds, and it is a means of lucid and logical communication, without which no man can be said to be safe against misunderstanding or confusion. Above all—and this is its principal value today—a knowledge of English is essential to anyone who wishes to know how to ‘read’. (The False Assumptions of ‘Democracy’, pp. 141–5)

The Lost Philosopher: The Best of Anthony M. Ludovici

Edited with Preface by John V. Day.

Mutilating Children Could Have Been Avoided

The sexual left is blamed for the mutilation of children in the name of trangenderism. But the estalishment right allowed it to happen.

The conservative political class may finally be waking up to the realization that mutilating children is a little more serious consequence of transgenderist ideology than is admitting men to feminist bastions like women’s sports. Tucker Carlson has contributed to this awareness. But the interview he just held with the creator of a new film on this hideous practice covers up more than it reveals.

Carlson and filmmaker Robby Starbuck are appropriately outraged that children should be systematically abused in this way. But government policies and government officials, captured by radical sexual ideologues, have been the main driver of child abuse for decades, while both liberals and conservatives ignored it. I published articles clearly demonstrating this in the respected conservative news magazine Human Events back in 2002 and 2006, and in my books of 2007 and 2017 and my pieces were based on evidence provided by other investigators and scholars well before that.¹

Briefly, the argument is this: It is undeniable that child abuse overwhelmingly takes place in single-parent homes. Almost all physical child abuse (which is most of it) is perpetrated by single mothers (or in foster care after the children are removed from the mothers). Virtually all sexual abuse is by the mothers’ lovers. Mothers in intact families also account for very little. Biological fathers are responsible for a miniscule proportion and serve as the children’s principal protectors.

Yet trumped-up accusations of child abuse have long been used to rationalize separating children from their fathers through divorce/custody proceedings and creating the very single-parent homes where most abuse occurs. Family court judges, terrified of feminist social workers (and skillful at creating additional business for themselves), readily grant their requests to endanger children.

As I wrote previously:

Seldom does public policy stand in such direct defiance of undisputed truths, to the point where the cause of the problem -- separating children from their fathers -- is presented as the solution, and the solution -- allowing children to grow up with their fathers -- is depicted as the problem. If you want to encourage child abuse, remove the fathers. … Appalling as it sounds, the conclusion is inescapable that we have created a huge army of officials with a vested interest in child abuse.

Conservatives may finally be willing to criticize the transgenderists for the latest outrage, but they are still too frightened to challenge the feminists who started it all: both sexual ideology itself and using other people’s children as political weapons. Had they had the courage to do so decades ago, we might have avoided all this.² But then neutering conservatives, and rendering them cowardly sissies, is another achievement of the feminists.

As a coda to this, Tucker Carlson recently intereviewed a father who found himself helpless as his former wife and feminist judges started physically “changing the sex” of his young son. Again, Carlson was appropriately outraged. But here is what I posted on X (Twitter) in response:

https://twitter.com/DrSBaskerville/status/1784189991976865856

This [too] could have been avoided. As I posted recently (https://twitter.com/DrSBaskerville/status/1782147106423140573…), child abuse -- including some hideous child abuse -- has long been taking place almost entirely in the homes of single mothers. Yet only now that it involves transgender ideology do conservatives start expressing outrage about it. Where were they all these decades, when children were being taken away from their fathers and subject to abuse every bit as horrifying as this? And why are they not expressing any outrage or desire to reform the divorce machinery itself, which is the first weapon that enables all the horrors like this one? It is no accident that this man's son is suffering this at the hands of his "ex-wife". It is certainly why she become his ex-wife, so that she would be "liberated" to do things like this. This is all thoroughly documented in my book, Taken Into Custody (https://stephenbaskerville.com/taken-into-custody…). I realize that Carlson worked for Fox News, who would have dismissed him earlier if he had investigated this properly. But now he is free. My new book will argue that professional conservatives deliberately allow and even encourage harm to come to ordinary people in order that they can express outrage about it and benefit politically. I would like to think this is not true of Carlson. His commentaries are full of little asides indicating that he wants to expose things like this. So what is he waiting for?

1
Stephen Baskerville, “The Truth About Child Abuse,” Human Events, vol. 58, no. 16, 29 April 2002, p. 14; “How the Government Creates Child Abuse,” Human Events Online, 13 April 2006. You can find extensive documentation in my books, Taken Into Custody (2007), chap. 4, and The New Politics of Sex (2017), pp, 193-206.

2
I have not seen a breakdown of how many children undergoing “sex change” procedures are the children of broken homes, but it is almost certainly huge. Even if it is not, the point is the same, because failing to confront feminist extremism is what led to transgenderism. That would make a good project for a graduate student.

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"Mind control", dissociative states & children

 Perhaps the most controversial theory that readers will find themselves confronted with concerns a phenomenon commonly referred to as “mind control.” Although the concept of mind control has long been a staple of that polluted well-spring of information known as the ‘conspiracy theory’ literature (where it often mingles freely with outlandish tales of reptilian aliens and paranormal activity), it has never been a polite topic of discussion in mainstream culture. The only exposure that most people have had to the idea of mind control is through the often metaphorical, and frequently absurd, images that Hollywood has provided in a decades-long string of films—from The Manchurian Candidate and The Stepford Wives in the 1960s and 1970s, to such recent offerings as Conspiracy Theory and Zoolander (along with the remakes of both The Manchurian Candidate and The Stepford Wives).

Most people are naturally quite skeptical of the notion that someone’s thoughts and actions can be controlled by unseen actors. Particularly in Western culture, where the idea of “free will” is firmly indoctrinated, theories of mind control are inimical to the omnipresent mantra that “we are all responsible for our own actions.” It is quite likely then that scenarios involving mind-controlled killers—whether assassins like Lee Harvey Oswald or Sirhan Sirhan, or serial killers like Henry Lee Lucas or Charles Manson—will be summarily dismissed by many readers. Skeptics though should bear in mind that, contrary to perceptions, mind control is not a fictional creation of novelists and Hollywood screenwriters; to the contrary, there exists a substantial paper trail establishing that the U.S. intelligence community has devoted a vast amount of both human and financial resources, over a period of several decades, to the study of mind control. Along the way, luminaries of numerous social sciences have been recruited and co-opted.

Detailing all the techniques and procedures that have received attention from the Central Intelligence Agency and its brethren is, unfortunately, well beyond the scope of this book. 2 It is possible, however, to provide a rough sketch of what mind control really is—a sketch that will, it is hoped, help to demystify a phenomenon that is not, as it turns out, nearly so esoteric as it may at first appear to be.

The basic methodology of mind control was revealed many decades ago by George Estabrooks, a prominent psychologist/hypnotist who worked under contract to American intelligence agencies. In his book Hypnotism, first published in 1943, Estabrooks teased his audience by noting that the “intelligent reader...will sense that much more is withheld than has been told.” While that was undoubtedly an accurate assessment, Estabrooks nevertheless did reveal enough to allow an informed reader to construct a reasonably accurate picture of the fundamentals of mind control.

The degree to which any given person is susceptible to being mind controlled is a direct function of that persons susceptibility to what are known as “dissociative states.” According to the psychiatric community, dissociative states (or dissociative ‘disorders’) include Amnesia, Fugue State, and what used to be called Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) but is now generally referred to as Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). All of these terms describe the same basic phenomenon: a person who is seemingly in control of his or her actions over a given time period is unable, at a later date, to recall or account for those actions.

As with any category of ‘mental illness,’ there is no dividing line that separates those who are diagnosed with dissociative ‘disorders’ from those who are ‘normal.’ Virtually everyone possesses the ability to experience dissociative states. Many people, for example, are familiar with the phenomenon sometimes referred to as “driving on autopilot.” The scenario generally plays out as follows: you suddenly ‘snap out of it’ just as you are pulling into your parking space at work, and you realize, to your horror, that you can’t remember anything since leaving your house! If this has happened to you, then you have experienced being in a dissociative state. In essence, you drove to work while in a “fugue state,” and you later had “amnesia.” In a similar vein, it could be said that an “alter personality,” which you have no conscious awareness of, drove you to work. In any event, it is clear that someone piloted your car to work in a safe and reasonable manner, and it was someone other than you.’

(...)

As mental health professionals have long recognized, the normal human reaction to highly stressful situations is what is known as the “fight or flight” response. Children, however, typically lack the ability to either fight off or flee from their attackers and abusers. This is particularly true, of course, for very young children. The human brain, that wonderfully resilient organ, therefore reacts in the best way that it can under the circumstances: it allows the child to mentally ‘flee’ from the situation. When the abuse is of an extreme and sustained nature, the brain’s response is to build a virtual wall around the traumatic experiences by creating a separate and distinct ‘alter personality to deal with current and future episodes of abuse.

Although MPD/DID is a ‘disorder’ listed in the DSM IV, the veritable bible of the psychiatric community, the public generally looks upon the notion of multiple personality with a healthy dose of skepticism—a skepticism encouraged by a news and entertainment media apparatus that generally mocks and ridicules the condition, and by a not insignificant number of psychologists and psychiatrists who deny the existence of MPD/DID (strangely enough, many of the most visible and vocal members of the denial crowd tend to be psychologists and psychiatrists who have received funding from the CIA).

(...)

But can this really be done? Is mind control is a real phenomenon, or merely the product of the fertile imaginations of various ‘conspiracy theorists’ and self-described survivors? The answer to that question lies in the answers to several other questions, beginning with:

• Do dissociative states occur naturally in the human species?

As anyone who has ever driven their car to work “on autopilot”—or been caught “daydreaming” or “spacing out”—can testify, the answer is yes (although the vast majority of people would not normally use the term “dissociative state” to describe the experience).

• Can the naturally occurring ability to dissociate be enhanced?

The answer here also appears to be yes, albeit with the caveat that enhancing that ability generally requires the infliction of severe trauma, preferably during the vulnerable childhood years.

• Would the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies be restrained morally or ethically from inflicting such trauma?

How this question is answered depends largely upon the individual reader’s political orientation and level of awareness of national and world events. Serious students of covert operations know that the CIA has a long and very sordid history of sponsoring countless assassinations, civilian massacres, violent coups, and barbaric torture/interrogation centers (and that is just the short list). This bloody, and very well documented, 3 record suggests that there is little, if anything, that the CIA will not attempt to justify in the name of “national security.” Documents released through FOIA requests have revealed that, at the very least, the agency has not shied away from funding and sponsoring studies in which very young children have been dosed with LSD continuously for several weeks.

• If we accept that dissociation is a real and naturally occurring human ability, and that the tendency to dissociate can be enhanced, and that the intelligence community’s hands are not tied by ethical concerns, then the final, and most critical, question becomes: can enhanced dissociative states, once created, be controlled?.

George Estabrooks was clearly convinced that that was indeed the case.

(...)

The vulnerability of children to dissociative states brought on by traumatic abuse is one of the reasons that the CIA and other intelligence agencies have played key roles in the creation of relatively mainstream satanic groups, as well as in denying the existence of underground satanic cults engaged in violent criminal enterprises. Some of the available evidence suggests that an array of satanic groups have served as intelligence agency ‘fronts’ for mind control operations—which actually makes perfect sense, considering that if the goal is to severely traumatize children, then surely nothing compares to the seemingly outlandish stories told by those who have survived what has been dubbed “Satanic Ritual Abuse” (SRA).

Verdier took note in his book of the fact that one of “the most pronounced emotional experiences that a human being can undergo is having his or her life threatened. Threats of death are used as a basic tool by brainwashing Communists. Even among them, however, this threat is used sparingly, for they know that humans quickly adapt to this type of threat, especially if it is repeatedly given but never carried out. In order to avoid this routinization of stressful emotional situations, they have been known to casually execute prisoners for the apparent effect it has on others.” The actions that Verdier predictably attributed to “brainwashing Communists” precisely mirror the stories that have been told repeatedly by self-described survivors of ritual abuse. These victims speak of receiving frequent death threats, directed against both themselves and their family members. They speak also of having those threats reinforced through their forced witnessing of, and even participate in, the killing of others.

There has been a tremendous amount of energy expended to discredit all such stories. At the forefront of the movement to deny the validity of the stories told by countless survivors is the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, a group led by a truly vile coalition of CIA-funded psychiatrists and accused (and in some cases, convicted) pedophiles. Also playing a key role in the movement are Paul and Shirley Eberle, the authors of a purportedly authoritative book entitled The Politics of Child Abuse. The Eberles’ book attempts to lay the blame for virtually all child abuse accusations and prosecutions on overzealous prosecutors, therapists and parents. That argument might be a little more credible, however, if the Eberles themselves were not known to Los Angeles police as distributors of child pornography—a fact that media outlets conveniently and rather consistently ignore while touting the Eberles as authorities in the field of child abuse.

Form: Programmed to Kill The Politics of Serial Murder

David McGowan

Adventures of ahimsa follower - 1

Part 2 →

 Ozarksville, Missouri. Rhoda May Gruber. Mrs. Efrim’s hold-up man. George Brush’s criminal record: Incarceration No. 3.

In spite of the absorbing occupation that entered his life with the appearance of Elizabeth and the problems of her education, George Brush’s mind was filled with the coming interview on Sunday. In order to quiet his anticipation he decided to fill in the time with work. There were a number of professional calls in the vicinity waiting to be made, but first he decided to journey some distance and confer with a certain mathematics teacher and high-school principal at Ozarksville in lower Missouri. Arriving at the town, he discovered that he had more than a day’s free time on his hands—the man he had come to see was away on a tour of inspection in the rural districts—and he decided to put into practice a plan that had long appealed to him. He resolved to pass a day in silence, following the example of his master, Gandhi. From four o’clock on Thursday until four o’clock on Friday not a word would pass his lips; and to mark the occasion still more solemnly he decided that not a particle of food would enter them.

He now communicated with the outside world by means of paper and pencil. The staff of the Baker Hotel was astonished to discover that its guest had been visited by so sudden an attack of laryngitis. On Thursday night, Mr. Baker, staring at the sky from the railing of his veranda, asked Brush whether he thought it was going to snow. Brush drew out his pad and gravely wrote the word, “No.” He was mistaken. The next morning he woke up to find that it had been snowing during the night; it grew warmer, however, the snow changed to rain and presently cleared to a mild winter day. He spent the morning in his room, light-headed from hunger, but rendered strangely happy by what he took to be the spiritual benefits of the experiment. Soon after two o’clock he started out for a walk, having put some apples in his pocket in anticipation of the stroke of four. He was strolling down a street looking at the houses to right and left when his glance fell upon an arresting sight. A little girl was sitting on the front steps of a house and a few yards from the sidewalk; around her neck was a placard which read, “I AM A LIAR.” Brush stared at the little girl and the little girl, pursing up her mouth importantly, stared at him. He hesitated only a moment, however. He walked up the path to the house and, drawing out his pencil and pad, wrote:

“What is your name?”

The little girl took his writing materials from him and wrote, “Rhoda May Gruber.”

“You can talk?” wrote Brush.

Rhoda May insisted on being given the pencil and paper again. She wrote, “Yes.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Ten years.”

“Talk. You can talk,” wrote Brush.

“Yes,” wrote Rhoda May, “only I cannot talk now because I have been noty.”

“Are your father and mother home?”

“Yes.”

Brush hesitated, but it was too late. The Grubers had become aware of the unusual conversation on their front steps. They came out upon the porch.

“What’s goin’ on here?” asked Mr. Gruber, darkly.

Brush smiled reassuringly up at him.

Mrs. Gruber said, shrilly: “Rhoda May, git up off that step. Come here to me.”

Mr. Gruber followed her with his eyes. “Take that thing off your neck,” he said. “What did this man say to you?”

Mrs. Gruber gave Rhoda May a sharp pull and clutched her to her skirts. Rhoda May began to cry. Mr. Gruber turned back to Brush.

“What do you want? Eh? What is it you want?”

Brush began writing on his pad.

“You’re deef-’n’-dumb, is that it?”

Brush shook his head, still smiling.

“You’re not deef-’n’-dumb? Then what is it? . . . Rhoda May, what did this man say to you? . . . There’s something funny about this,” he said, raising his eyebrows significantly. “You’d better run over to the Jones’ telephone and call Mr. Warren or the sheriff.” Then he turned back to Brush. “What is it you want? Are you selling something?”

Brush raised his head from his work, shook it, pointed at Rhoda May, then at the placard, and went back to his writing.

Rhoda May’s wails rose louder. Her father slapped her smartly and roared: “Git in the house. Git in there. . . . You git in there, too, Mary. I’ll tend to this.”

Mrs. Gruber put out one trembling hand. “Now do be careful, Herman.”

Brush now presented his statement: “I will be back later to talk to you about that punishment. I think you’ll see what I mean.”

Whereupon, walking down the path backwards, with gestures of cordiality, he returned to the sidewalk.

“You show up here again,” called Gruber, “and I’ll lick the hide off you, d’ya hear? I’ll get the police on you, d’ya hear?”

Brush nodded, making gestures of pacification with his hands.

“You come around here and I’ll knock your teeth out!” bellowed Gruber, and went into the house, slamming the door on Rhoda May’s howls.

Four o’clock found Brush several miles from town, stumbling about in the mud of the road. As he looked at his watch and found that the vow was accomplished, he was filled with a satisfaction that was almost ecstasy. He turned back toward the town and did a quarter of an hour’s running, then slowed down and ate an apple. He gazed with affection at the squatters’ frame cabins, at the hound dogs that hesitantly approached the gates in the wire fences, at the chickens that had ventured out in the pale wintry sunshine. The path amid the dried weeds at the side of the road gave way to a sidewalk of planks. In the distance he could see a few rusty automobiles drawn up before the long arcade made by the projecting fronts of the stores beside the post-office.

At the edge of the town he came upon a store, or rather two stores thrown into one, that bore a sign: “N. Efrim, Dry Goods and Notions.” One door had been boarded up. In the windows lay a disordered mass of such objects as dress patterns, slates, kites, and licorice whips. It occurred to Brush that he might buy some milk chocolate here, and seeing a row of dolls in the window, that he might take one of them as a peace-offering to the Grubers.

Mrs. Efrim was sitting by the window, knitting, when Brush entered the store. She was a wrinkled old woman with the head of an intelligent and dolorous monkey. Over a thick woolen dress she was wearing a frayed sweater, and over the sweater a short greenish-black cape trimmed with rusty braid. She pushed her spectacles farther down her nose and looked over them at Brush.

“I’d . . . I’d like a doll, please,” said Brush.

Mrs. Efrim laid aside her knitting and, putting her hands on her knees, painfully rose to her feet. They inspected the dolls together.

“It’s for a girl ten years old,” said Brush. “I guess you may know her. Her name’s Rhoda May Gruber.”

Mrs. Efrim nodded. Brush told her about the placard.

“Ain’t that terrible, now!” said Mrs. Efrim.

They looked at one another and became great friends. Both were pining for conversation. They agreed that that was no way to bring up children. Brush, a little mysteriously, alluded to the fact that the bringing up of little girls had recently become a problem in his life. Mrs. Efrim had six children and Brush was glad to hear about their good and bad traits. He suddenly remembered that he was hungry, and offered Mrs. Efrim an apple, adding that he had eaten nothing for twenty-four hours, but that he felt fine. When he came to pay for the doll and the milk chocolate he laid a ten-dollar bill on the counter. Mrs. Efrim, making change, had a moment’s hesitation before the cash register.

“I’ll go and change it at the drug store,” said Brush.

“No, no. I have it. You’ll see. I have it fine, only it’s hid.”

“Hid?”

Mrs. Efrim looked at him and nodded mysteriously. “It don’t do to have money in the till these days. No, sir. It don’t hurtyour knowing where it’s kep’. Look!” Whereupon she put her hand behind a bolt of cloth and drew out a packet of one dollar bills and pushing aside some spools of ribbon came upon a store of fives. “That’s the way we do it.”

“I see.”

The purchase was completed, but Brush lingered on, looking about the shop enviously.

“Young man,” said Mrs. Efrim, who had again seated herself by the window, “do you know how to thread a needle?”

“I certainly do, Mrs. Efrim. I can sew pretty well, too.”

“Well, my eyes aren’t as good as they used to be. My children—every morning before they go off to school and to work—every morning they thread me up five or six needles, but sometimes they give out. Now, if you could thread me two or three needles . . .”

“I’d like to.”

So it was that when the hold-up man entered Mrs. Efrim’s store he came upon Brush standing by the window, threading needles.

“Stick up your hands,” he roared. “Stick’m up, you two!”

“Ach Gott!” cried Mrs. Efrim.

“Stand where you are and keep your mouths shut. One peep out of you and you’re dead. Do you speak English?—Eh? Spika Inglis?”

“Yes,” replied Brush and Mrs. Efrim.

“All right, then. Now stay where you are.”

This burglar was a nervous young man, new to the work and considerably hampered by the fact that the bandana handkerchief which he had tied about his nose was continually slipping and falling about his shoulders. He was given to crouching and glaring, and what he lacked in terrifying appearance he tried to make up for by shouting and by pointing his revolver squarely at the noses of his victims. He slowly crept over to the counter, keeping his eyes and his aim on Brush, opened the cash register and swept the silver change out of the drawer. Then he began uncertainly looking about for objects of value. Brush and Mrs. Efrim stood side by side with arms upraised. Brush’s face shone with happy excitement. He glanced downward, trying to meet Mrs. Efrim’s eyes in an exchange of intimate amusement.

“What are you laughing at, you big hyena,” said the burglar. “Wipe that smile off your face or I’ll plug you.”

Brush assumed a grave expression, and the burglar continued his search. There was a long pause, filled only by the rumblings in Brush’s famished stomach.

At last the burglar turned and said: “I didn’t come in here for two dollars and a quarter, you two. There’s some more money somewhere here and I’m going to get it.” He addressed Brush: “Take off your coat and throw it on the floor,—here by me. One extra move from you and you get it in the belly. Do you hear?”

“Yes,” said Brush.

The burglar rested the revolver on the counter, retied the bandana about his face, and carefully went through Brush’s pockets. He found two apples, a purse containing two dollars, a nail file, copies ofKing Lear and other classics, some newspaper clippings about India and an application for a marriage license.“Can I say something?” asked Brush.

“What the hell’s the matter with you—can you say something? What is it?”

“There’s hardly any money in that coat, but I know where you can find some. . . . I’ll pay you back, Mrs. Efrim, when it’s all over.”

The burglar stared at Brush, pointing the revolver at his eyes. “Well, where is it?”

“I won’t say anything if you point that gun at me like that,” said Brush. “You ought to know better than that.”

“What’s the matter with you?”

“You don’t really mean to kill us, but you might kill us by accident.”

“I don’t, eh?”

“No, of course not. Notkill. Never point a gun at a person. That’s a rule everybody ought to know.”

“Well, Ido mean to shoot you, so keep your face shut. Now where’s this money you were talking about?”

“Iwant to tell you about it, but I won’t tell you until you point that gun at the window.”

The burglar turned the barrel a fraction to the left and shouted, “All right now, spit it out.”

“You’ll find some money on the shelf behind the cash register,” said Brush, calmly, “behind that roll of blue cloth.”

“Gott—enu!” cried Mrs. Efrim. “How can you tell him that! You’re crazy! Telling him that!”

The man was looking at the bolt of cloth suspiciously: “So you say! So you say! What’s the trick, eh?”

Brush said in a low, urgent whisper to Mrs. Efrim: “I’ll pay you back, Mrs. Efrim. He needs it a lot more than we do. I swear to you you won’t lose a cent.” Then he continued to the burglar, “And there’s some more in five-dollar bills behind those spools of ribbon.”

Mrs. Efrim wailed still more loudly than before. Brush entered into an earnest debate with her. The hold-up man, still distrustful of the hiding-places, tried to follow the argument.

“You see, Mrs. Efrim, this is very interesting to me, because I have a theory about thieves and robbers. I’ll explain it to you afterwards. Really, I’ll pay you it all back.”

“I don’t want your money. I want my own,” said Mrs. Efrim.

The hold-up man finally outshouted them: “Say, shut up, you two. What’s the idea? Who do you think I am, anyway? I’m not fooling. I’m serious. Now what’s all this about money over here?”

Brush repeated the directions. The man extracted the money from its hiding-places.

“All right, now. Where’s some more. Out with it.”

“That’s all I know about over there,” said Brush, “but if you’ll let me put my hand down I’ll get you some I have here.”

“Where?”

“In my . . . my watch pocket, here.”

“Say, what is this?” cried the man, as though in pain. “You keep your hands up or I’ll shoot you.”

“Well, I’d like to give you twenty dollars I have here.”

“Keep your hands up! Say, are you yellow or cuckoo, or what? Keep your hands up. Where’s this money?”

Brush motioned with his chin toward the pocket.

There was silence for a moment while they stared at one another.

Brush said, quietly: “You want money, don’t you? That’s what you came for. Well, I want to give you some. You need it a lot more than I do. Only you won’t let me put my hand down to get it.”

At that moment a gust of wind flung open the warped door of Mrs. Efrim’s shop and then slammed it shut with a tremendous detonation. The current of air rushed through the room, tossing the window curtains toward the ceiling and flinging a shower of the exposed objects over the floor. The burglar was so alarmed that the gun went off in his hand and the bullet shattered the window pane. Mrs. Efrim, wailed louder than ever. The burglar let fall the revolver, jumped across the counter, and sank on one knee, still crying: “What is this, anyway? What’s going on here?”

Brush picked up the gun and planted himself in the middle of the room. With furrowed brow, he pointed the barrel towards a corner of the ceiling.

“Nowyou hold up your hands,” he said. “I don’t believe in weapons of any kind, but I want you to stay there while I say something.”

The hold-up man, swearing softly, stooped so that only his eyes appeared above the counter. Mrs. Efrim began pulling at Brush’s sleeve, “Now, you make him give back that money before you do another thing.”

“No, Mrs. Efrim, no! Don’t you understand? This is a kind of experiment. We’re going to give this man a new start in life, don’t yousee? I’ll pay you back every cent that he’s taken.”

“I don’t want your money. I want my own money. That’s all I want. And I’m going to phone Mr. Warren this minute.”

“No, Mrs. Efrim.”

“Yes, I will.”

“Mrs. Efrim,” said Brush severely, “you move over there and put up your hands.”

“Ach, g’rechter Gott!”

“Put up your hands, Mrs. Efrim. I’m sorry, but I know what I’m doing. Burglar,” continued Brush, quietly, “what’s your name?”

There was no answer.

“Do you know a trade of any kind?”

More silence.

“Have you been holding up people long?”

“Oh, shoot me and get this over with,” muttered the burglar, contemptuously, but remained in hiding behind the counter. Brush was not abashed. He continued:

“I’m going to see that you leave this store with about fifty dollars in all. That’ll give you room and board for a while. You go somewhere where you can think things over. Now listen. Even I can see that you’ll never be a very good hold-up man.”

Brush was entering into a discourse on the rewards of honesty when an unfortunate interruption occurred. A customer opened the door of the shop, an old woman who promptly put her hand over her mouth and screamed through it:

“Why, Mrs. Efrim, what’s the trouble?”

“I don’t know, Mrs. Robinson,” replied Mrs. Efrim, sullenly. “I don’t know at all.”

Brush turned his head a fraction and said, curtly: “You can’t come in now because we’re busy here. Come back in half an hour.”

“Mrs. Efrim,” gasped Mrs. Robinson, “I’ll call Mr. Warren,” and disappeared.

“That woman’s coming in here has spoiled everything,” said Brush, lowering his gun with an impatient sigh. “I guess we’ll have to hurry.—Mrs. Efrim, there’s a way he can escape through the back of the house, isn’t there?”

“Don’t ask me no questions,” replied Mrs. Efrim. “I’m not going to tell you a thing.”

Brush walked up to the counter and laid some bills on it. “Here’s your money,” he said to the burglar. “The price of the gun’s in it, too. Now you can go. You’d better go out through there.”

The man snatched up the money and, sidling about the room, filled up his cheeks with air, made an explosive sound, and dashed out of the door.

Brush put down the gun carefully. “That was awfully interesting, wasn’t it?” he said, with a constrained laugh. “Now I want to pay you what I owe you.”

Mrs. Efrim did not answer. She crossed the room and closed the till with a bang.

“Mrs. Efrim, don’t be mad at me. I had to act that way to live up to my ideals.”

“You’re crazy.”

“No, I’m not.”

“You are. You’re crazy. Whoever heard of anybody going out of their way to give money to a burglar. Yes, and letting him go free, too. No, I won’t take your money. Look at all that’s been took from you already. Now go away before the police come and arrest you.”

“I’m not afraid of the police.”

“Now you mind what I say—go away.”

“Mrs. Efrim, if I’d done anything wrong I’d apologize. I owe you about thirty-five dollars . . .”

Mr. Warren, the town constable, appeared at the door followed by some men and by Mrs. Robinson.

“Now come out quiet,” commanded Mr. Warren. “Hold up your hands and come quiet.”

Brush said to Mrs. Efrim, smiling: “He thinks I did it! . . . Here I am, Officer.” Mr. Warren handcuffed him. “Oh—oh, Mr. Warren,” said Brush. “I hope I can eat with those things on, because I haven’t eaten anything but an apple for twenty-four hours and I’m very hungry.”

“Lock up your store and come with us, Mrs. Efrim,” said Mr. Warren. “We’ll want your story of what’s been going on.”

“There’s nothing to tell,” said Mrs. Efrim, shrilly. “It was just foolishness. No, I’m not going to leave this store. No, I’m not.”

The officer insisted, however, and presently the procession was making its way down Main Street. As luck would have it Mr. and Mrs. Gruber were standing under the arcade.

“Look! Herman, look!” cried Mrs. Gruber, catching her husband’s arm. “That’s the man!—The kidnapper!”

“Charley Warren,” said Mr. Gruber, “I charge that man with attempting to kidnap my daughter Rhoda May.”

“Follow in behind, Herman,” said Warren.

When they reached the jail, Brush was shown into a cell. He ate another apple, sighed heavily and went to sleep.

Thorton Wilder

Heaven's My Destination 

Adventures of ahimsa follower - 2

 Part one →

(...)

George Brush had already become a legend of terror in the town, and by two o’clock the courtroom was filled with spectators sitting in a church-going silence. When Brush entered and took his place the silence became even more profound; the room held its breath. Brush’s lips were pressed tightly together and he was paler than usual, but he looked about him with an unabashed glance. Judge Carberry had been for thirty-five years the best-known citizen in town, but when he entered all eyes rested upon him as though for the first time. He looked about him wearily, blew his nose, and sat down. He was a bald old man with small black eyes and a pointed nose set in a myriad of wrinkles that read kindliness, disillusion, and boredom. He was vexed by the unaccustomed throng and today pushed even farther than usual his habitual contempt for the procedure of the law. He grunted a few instructions to the clerk, who began to expedite matters furiously. While the charges were being read he artfully adjusted the screen of books—a vast bulwark of Blackstone—behind which it was his custom to read during sessions. He was hurrying through George Eliot and looked forward to a review ofWaverly in the spring.“. . . attempted kidnapping,” mumbled the clerk “. . . aiding and abetting larceny . . . pleads not guilty . . . undertakes his own defense . . .”

Mr. Warren was called. “Wa-all, I got this here phone call from Mrs. Robinson that there was this hold-up goin’ on over to Mrs. Efrim’s store; so I . . .”

The judge stole a paragraph or two ofAdam Bede, then raised his head. “Both these charges against the same person?” he asked, dryly.

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“Same day?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

The judge let his eyes fall on Brush in a cool, contemptuous glance. Brush returned his gaze without flinching. There was a silence. Brush raised his hand. “May I speak, Your Honor?” he asked.

For a moment it seemed as though the judge had not heard him. “What do you wish to say?”

“Your Honor, I think you ought to know there is no case here at all.”

“Indeed?”

“Yes, it’s all a misunderstanding. And if you’ll let me tell my account of it right now we can all be out of the court building in fifteen minutes. Also, Your Honor, I can explain the case of Mr. Burkin, who you’re going to see after me, and that’s just a misunderstanding, too.”

“Have you ever been brought before a court before?”

“No, Your Honor.” Then he added, with some difficulty. “But I’ve been arrested before.”

“Oh, you have?”

“Yes, but they were misunderstandings, too. I was let go in an hour.”

“Would you feel able to tell the court what you were arrested for, and where?”

“I’d be glad to, Your Honor.”

“We should be glad to hear it.”

“The first time was in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I was arrested for riding in a Jim Crow car. I believe in the equality of races, Your Honor, in the brotherhood of man, and I rode in the Jim Crow car to show that I believed it. They arrested me. The second time—”

Judge Carberry stopped him with a gesture of the hand. The judge looked slowly and a little dazedly over the spell-bound audience, then turned toward the court stenographer as though to make sure that this testimony was being recorded. He then looked at the tops of the windows as though he were debating as to whether he should issue orders for new sashes. Finally his gaze returned to Brush. He blew his nose and said, politely, “Kindly continue.”

“The second time was about a month ago in Armina, Oklahoma. I was drawing out my savings from a savings-bank and I told the president of the bank that in my opinion savings-banks are practically immoral. They arrested me for that.”

“Had you any reason to think that the bank was unsound?”

“I didn’t mean that, Your Honor. I meant that all banks like that are due to fear and breed fear in the people. It’s a theory of mine and it takes quite a while to explain.”

“I see,” said the judge. “Your ideas aren’t the same as most people’s, are they?”

“No,” said Brush. “I didn’t put myself through college for four years and go through a difficult religious conversion in order to have the same ideas as other people have.”

Again the judge allowed his astonished gaze to wander about the room. He saw Mrs. Efrim, sitting in the midst of her six children, all dressed in their best clothes and staring up at him with awe-struck eyes. He saw the Grubers and Rhoda May scrubbed to startling pinkness and wearing a starched white party dress. “You may be seated,” he said to Brush, then mumbling a few words to the clerk, he left the room. He went to the telephone and called up his wife. He talked slowly with many pauses and with an affected indifference.

“Oh, Emma,” he said, looking down his nose and scratching his cheek. “. . . euh . . . euh . . . better get your sewing and come down to the courthouse.”

“What do you mean, Darwin?”

“Well . . . well . . . you might be interested in something that’s going on here.”

“Now, Darwin, if it’s something improper, you know I don’t like such things.”

The judge slowly passed his tongue over his front teeth. “No . . . oh, no . . . perfectly proper.”

“Well, what is it, Darwin?”

“. . . there’s a type here . . . little out of the ordinary. Better come down. Bring your sewing.”

“Now, Darwin, I won’t have you tormenting some poor prisoner. I know you. I know you and I won’t have it.”

The judge’s shoulders shook. “Prisoner’s tormenting me, Emma . . . seems like. We’re putting on a little show today. Call up Fred and see if he’s free. You can bring Lucile, too.”

Fred Hart had been mayor of Ozarksville for twenty years. Lucile was his wife. The Harts and the Carberrys had played bridge together three nights a week for a longer time than that.

“Well, if I come down I want you to behave, Darwin. I’ve told you a thousand times I don’t like you when you’re sarcastic.”

The judge returned to the bench. He gave the prisoner an awe-inspiring glance. He saw to it that the court marked time until the arrival of his wife. Mr. Gruber was sworn in and told his story of indignant virtue . . . only and treasured child. He dwelt upon the peekyuliar behavior of the accused, his pretense of being unable to speak. The whole court could see for itself that the accused could speak as well as anyone else. Brush raised his hand, but the judge sharply ordered him to lower it. Gruber droned on and the judge caught half a chapter ofAdam Bede. Mrs. Gruber was called and gave a flighty, incoherent account of the affair. At last the judge saw his wife and the Harts slipping into the last row of seats. He put a book mark into his volume and laid it to one side. Mrs. Gruber was dismissed and Brush was called upon.“What’s your business, young man, and what are you doing in Ozarksville?”

“I travel for Caulkins and Company, publishers of textbooks for school and college. I came to town to call on Superintendent MacPherson.”

“I see. Have you ever had an impediment in your speech?”

“No, Your Honor.”

“Did you have laryngitis yesterday?”

“No, Your Honor.”

“Can you explain why you pretended to be incapable of speech yesterday?”

“Yes, Your Honor, easily.”

“I should like to hear it.”

“Your Honor,” began Brush, “I am very interested in Gandhi.”

The judge laid down his pencil sharply and said, in a loud voice: “Young man, you will please give me the answers to my questions and nothing else.”

Brush squared his shoulders. “I am, Your Honor. It’s the only way I can answer them. I . . . I’ve been studying Gandhi’s ideas lately and—”

Judge Carberry threw an ecstatic glance at his wife, then drawing his hand down his face he roared: “Stop that! Stop it right now! I will not be made a fool of in my own courtroom. Young man, this is no time for desultory conversation. Do you realize that you’re standing here under two very serious charges? Do you?”

“Yes,” said Brush, his jaws set.

The judge lowered his eyes and said, more quietly: “Now continue and let’s have no nonsense.”

Brush remained silent. There was a long pause.

The judge looked up. “Do you wish to add contempt of court to your other charges? Do you—Very well. Young man, perhaps you do not understand your position here. You have been charged with two offenses, either of which might send you to state prison for a very long time. You have been in Ozarksville for a little less than two days and already you have drawn across it a trail—a trail, I say—of suspicion and confusion such as it has not seen in fifteen years. And yet you conduct yourself before mefrivolously, yes,frivolously in open court.”

Brush turned even paler, but remained firm. “I’m not afraid of anything or anybody, Your Honor,” he said. “All I want to do is to tell the truth, and you keep misunderstanding me.”

“Well, begin again, then. And if you bring up the name of Gandhi again I shall put you in jail for a few days, where you can cool off.”

Brush wiped his forehead. “The reason I didn’t talk to anybody yesterday until four o’clock was that I had taken a vow of silence,” he said.

The judge suddenly grasped the connection. When he reappeared, still panting, from behind his barrier of books, he glanced at his wife. Mrs. Carberry shook her fist at him.

“I see. Go on,” he said.

“That vow of silence,” continued Brush, “was in imitation of a certain leader in India. Soon after two o’clock I went out for a walk. I saw that girl sitting on the steps of her house. She had a sign around her neck that said ‘I am a liar.’ ”

“What?” asked the judge.

“ ‘I am a liar.’ ”

When this confusion was cleared up, everyone took a deep breath and the judge took a drink of water. He asked, “What was your purpose in approaching the child?”

“I didn’t think that was any way to punish a child. I think lying’s a bad thing, but I don’t think that’s the way to punish a child that does lying.”

“I see. Are you a father, may I ask?”

Brush was silent a moment. “No,” he said, in a low voice. “I don’t think I am.”

“Ibeg your pardon?” asked the judge, learning forward.

“Not that I know of,” said Brush.

Judge Carberry shuffled the papers on his desk. “Well, we won’t go into that now,” he said. He then asked, loudly, “Is this little girl in court?”

Rhoda May was led to the witness stand. She was given laborious instructions about the oath and the Bible, but she entered into the proceedings with perfect assurance and unbounded enjoyment.

“Will you tell us what happened, Rhoda?” asked the judge.

Rhoda May turned and faced the audience. She kept her eyes proudly fixed on her mother’s face. For a moment she turned back to the judge. “My name’s Rhoda May,” she said. “I was sitting at my house and that man came up the walk to my house and I knew he was a bad man right away.”

“Why were you sitting on the steps, Rhoda May?”

“Because I’d been bad.”

“Yes, and what did this man do?”

“He said for me to go away to a bad place, and I said no, because I love papa and mamma best.”

“He asked you to go away with him?”

“Yes, but I didn’t go, because I love papa and mamma best.”

“Rhoda May, be careful. You must tell the truth. Did hesay this with his mouth, or did he write it down?”

“He wrote it down, Judge Car-Berry. But I knew he was a bad man kidnapper right off. He looked at me likethis and then I gave him a good kick. I gave him a good kick. And he began to run away and I ran after him and gave him another good kick in the face, and—”

“Mr. Gruber!” roared the judge.

“Yes, Judge Carberry.”

“Take your daughter home. We will now proceed to the second charge.”

A shocked silence ensued while the Grubers with lowered heads passed down the aisle.

The judge then said in a courteous tone: “Mrs. Efrim, will you be so good as to give us an account of the events that took place in your store yesterday afternoon?”

Mrs. Efrim, rustling in a voluminous black silk dress, edged her way past her children’s knees and took her place on the stand. The judge paid her a deference that touched on gallantry. Her hand was scarcely lowered from the oath when she broke out:

“Judge Carberry, I can’t tell you how terrible I feel to be in court this way. I’ve lived in this town forty years—my husband and I, may his soul be at rest!—without ever coming in this building, beyond paying our taxes in the basement, Judge Carberry.”

“But, Mrs. Efrim, there’s no reflection on yourself. I assure you—”

“You can say what you like, Judge Carberry,” she said, hugging her elbows woefully, “and it’s very kind of you, but it don’t change the facts.”

“Now, now, Mrs. Efrim,” said the judge, leaning forward, “The Court considers it an honor that you should be kind enough to appear here today. Yourself and my friend Nathan Efrim have been among the most respected citizens in this town for many years and the Court holds it a privilege to have you among us today.”

Mrs. Efrim cast a mighty glance at her six openmouthed children and started to tell her story.

“Really, Judge Carberry . . . Your Honor . . . I have no charges to make against that young man. I guess he’s just different from the rest of us, that’s all. Even to this minute I don’t know what happened. At first I thought he was a nice young man.” Here she looked at him a moment. “I don’t know what to think, Your Honor.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Efrim, will you simply tell us what took place.”

“Well, he came in. I was sitting by the window, knitting, when he came in . . . and he hadn’t been there two minutes when it seemed like he began—I don’t know how else to say it, Your Honor—he beganwinding himself into my confidence.”“You don’t say?”

“I don’t know what else I can say. Your Honor, Judge Carberry. There’s nothing he didn’t do. He tried to give me an apple; he threaded me needles—”

“I beg your pardon?”

“He threaded me three-four needles. He asked me my children’s names. He . . . he bought a doll. Yes, sir. He asked me to eat an apple and he said himself he hadn’t eaten a thing for twenty-four hours. And then he . . . and then he got me to show him where my money was hid.”

“Why, Mrs. Efrim, I never heard such a story in my life.”

“Well, it was funny, Your Honor. There’s nothing he didn’t do, but I must say I liked him until he began acting queer when the hold-up man came in.”

“Will you tell us about that, please?”

Mrs. Efrim, however, was unable to tell it. From her confused narrative Judge Carberry received the impression that there were three or more hold-ups, a storm, broken window panes, and some very curious exchanges of money. He thanked her elaborately, however, and she resumed her place among her children, who scarcely so much as dared to look at her sideways, after her excursion into the important world. Mrs. Robinson was called. Her testimony was to the effect that there was no hold-up man with a handkerchief about his face—no one beyond the accused standing in the middle of the store with a revolver in his hand terrorizing Mrs. Efrim. This testimony was confirmed by Mr. Warren.

Finally Brush was called.

“Young man, did you obtain from Mrs. Efrim the secret of the hiding-places of her money?”

“Yes. She . . .”

“Did you tell the hold-up man where her money was hid?”

“Yes, Your Honor, but I meant to pay her back.”

“Did you take the gun yourself and hold up Mrs. Efrim?”

“Yes, but I never meant—”

“Don’t tell me what you meant or what you didn’t mean. All I want is the facts, and the facts speak for themselves, don’t they? Did you allow the hold-up man to escape when you knew the deputy sheriff was coming?”

Brush was silent.

“Are you going to answer that question?”

Brush continued looking stonily before him. The judge waited. Finally he began speaking in a low, penetrating voice:

“You’ve gone into another vow of silence, I suppose? And no wonder! Thereis nothing to say. The facts speak for themselves. You were going to tell me this is all a misunderstanding. You were sure we were going to be out of this courtroom in a quarter of an hour. . . . Put your hand down! . . . You wound your way into Mrs. Efrim’s confidence, did you? You threaded needles for her! You even went so far as to buy a doll, did you? No wonder you found out where she had hidden her money.”

Here the judge was so overcome with pleasure at his own wit that he descended behind the barrier of books and had a fit of coughing. When he emerged he discovered that Brush was descending the steps into the auditorium and apparently intended to leave the building.

“Where are you goingnow?” shouted the judge.

“I won’t be talked to like that, Judge Carberry,” said Brush.

“You’re under arrest; Officer, restrain that man.”

Brush said, “You won’t let me speak!”

“Come back here. You’re under arrest. So you’ve changed your mind? Now you want to talk, do you?—Where are you going?”

“Oh, I’m going to the jail, all right. I’d rather sit in jail and make rope than be treated like you’re treating me, Judge Carberry. You haven’t heard my explanations yet.”

At this moment, to the great excitement of the already dazzled audience, Mrs. Carberry, very red in the face, advanced down the aisle of the auditorium.

“Darwin, you behave yourself,” she said. Then turning to Brush, she added: “Young man, don’t you mind what he says. You tell your story. That’s just his way. He doesn’t mean it. You go back and tell your story.”

“Order! Order!” cried the judge. “Go back to your seat, ma’am, and leave the running of this court to me. . . . Now, Mr. Brush, I’ll give you another chance.” But the judge could not resist the addition of one further embellishment to his afternoon, and called after his retreating wife: “Ma’am, if you attend properly to the running of your home, I shall try to attend to the running of my court.” Whereupon he disappeared behind the bulwark of his Blackstones, from which he presently appeared, much shaken, wiping his eyes. “Mr. Brush,” he said, grandly, “have you an explanation for your astonishing conduct yesterday afternoon?”

“Yes, sir, I have.”

“We are ready to hear it. And kindly remember you are under oath. . . . One minute!” He took a deep drink of water, mopped his face, and bade the stenographer look sharp.

Brush gave a clear and detailed account of the events in Mrs. Efrim’s store. When he had finished, the judge sat in silence a moment, looking at his wife. He took off his glasses, breathed on them, and slowly polished them. The audience followed his movements in silence. He then turned to Mrs. Efrim:

“Mrs. Efrim, have you anything to add or correct in that story?”

“No, Judge Carberry. Everything he said really happened.”

“Well, now at least we have an idea of what this is all about. Now, Mr. Brush, can you explain to the court your reasons for giving Mrs. Efrim’s money to the hold-up man?”

“Yes . . . it’s all based on a theory of mine. I mean on two theories of mine.”

“What!”

“Yes, and a lot of it I owe to Gandhi.”

“There’s Gandhi again!” said the judge, resignedly.

“It’s all based onahimsa, Your Honor, but before I get toahimsa I have to tell you what I think about money.”

So Brush told the court about voluntary poverty.

“And do you live by voluntary poverty?” asked the judge.

“Yes, Your Honor. And the point of that is this: apoor person—even if he’s a millionaire—is a person whose head’s always full of anxious thoughts about money; and a rich person is a person whose head’s not full of anxious thoughts about money.”

“Thank you, Mr. Brush,” said the judge, dryly, “I’m sure we’re all the better today for that thought.”

“And the poorest persons in the world, therefore are beggars and robbers. Now you’ll see what I mean when I say that a robber is a beggar that doesn’t know he’s a beggar.”

“And now, Mr. Brush, I’m going to ask you what good it does to give your money away to these robber-beggars of yours?”

“It’s easy to see that. When you give money to a robber you do two things: you show him that he’s really a beggar at heart, and you make a certain strong impression on his mind that—”

“Yes, you do. You give him the impression that you’re a coward or fool.”

Brush smiled and shook his head. “I think I can explain this idea in another way. It’s my favorite idea in the world and I’ve spent a lot of time on it. Your Honor, I’m a pacifist. If they put me in a battle I wouldn’t shoot anybody. Now suppose that I was in a shell-hole and I met an enemy who was about to shoot me, and suppose I tore the gun out of his hands. Naturally he’d expect me to shoot him, but of course I wouldn’t. That would make an impression on his mind, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes, it would.”

“Well, and if I pointed out some hidden money to a burglar that was trying to steal some money from me, that would make an impression on his mind, too.”

“Yes, it would: I say again they’d think you were a fool.”

“Judge, that might be what they’d call it, but at the back of their minds they would be taught something.”

“Have you finished?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“So you gave forty or fifty dollars to a burglar in order to make an impression on his mind?”

“Yes.”

“Suppose that the man in the shell-hole shot you. What becomes of your lesson to him then?”

“Well, Judge,ahimsa would have been in my mind. That’s Gandhi’s word for it, Your Honor. And if somebody hasahimsa in his mind, I believe it has a chance of jumping from mind to mind.”“What becomes ofahimsa, Mr. Brush, if you suddenly come upon a man who’s attacking your sister?”

“Yes, I’ve heard that before. Everybody brings up that argument about your sister being attacked, and I get angry about it. What if a thousand sisters were attacked. Let them be attacked. If the attackers are met withahimsa the attackers will learn about it. That’s the way the idea will spread. Somebody’s sisters—millions of them—are being attacked all the time, and things aren’t getting any better; so it’s time to try a new way to cure it. Let some of your sisters be attacked. Before the new idea can jump around the world from one person’s mind to another’s there will have to be a lot of people attacked.”

“I see. I see. And you want us to go about releasing murderers and thieves, on the chance that this impression is made on their minds. Do you advise the Department of Justice to collect as many thieves as possible and give them each a hundred-dollar bill? Is that it?”

“Well, look how things are now in your system. People go on committing crimes, and the government goes on committing crimes to punish them.”

“Oh, it does!”

“Yes, sir. It’s a crime to kill, and the government does that, and it’s a crime to lock somebody up in a room for years on end, and the government does that by the thousands. The government commits thousands of crimes in a year. And every crime makes more crimes. The only way out of this mess of crimes is to try this other way.”

The judge was silent, stroking his face. The silence was filled by the anxious scribbling of the stenographer and the sounds of automobile horns from the street. He glanced at the audience which sat watching him with fallen jaw.

“And where did you get that idea?” he asked.

“It’s mine and Tolstoi’s.”

While the judge spelled out the name for the stenographer, Brush drew from his pocket a little blue pamphlet,Sayings of Leo Tolstoi, and passed it up.

“Have you any other sources upon your person, Mr. Brush?”

Whereupon Brush began to draw similar little pamphlets from all his pockets. They were gravely passed up to the bench—Epictetus,Thoughts from Edmund Burke, Sayings of Great Statesmen, Sayings of Great Philosophers, Stories from Famous After-Dinner Speakers. The judge passed the books to the stenographer. He then collected himself and said, dryly:

“Well, it’s all sort of poetical and sentimental, Mr. Brush; but it’s all very unlike the facts of life. And it seems to be based upon a profound misunderstanding of the criminal’s mind.”

“I don’t know what you mean by the criminal’s mind, Your Honor. All I mean is, a criminal is a human being who thinks that the whole universe hates him. I think that awful things must go on in your mind when you think that the whole universe hates you. And the certain impression that we try to make on their minds is the impression that they are not hated.”

Again the judge paused. Then he said, “And you expect the United States to—”

Brush interrupted him: “Judge Carberry, people like me, who believe inahimsa—it’s not our business to worry as to whether other people do or not. It’s our business to do it ourselves and to take every chance, like this, to talk about it to other people. It’s the truth and so it’ll spread about the world of its own accord.”

“Mrs. Efrim, do you feel that this explains what this young man did with your money?”

Mrs. Efrim rose hesitantly. “Judge Carberry . . . I guess he means what he says.”

“Court is dismissed,” said the judge.

The clerk said, quickly: “There’s this other man, Your Honor—Burkin, charged with—”

“Court is dismissed,” repeated the judge.

The clerk was required to repeat the announcement a number of times in addition, for the audience remained motionless in its seats, unwilling to quit so bewildering a display, but finally the Carberrys and the Harts took Brush in the mayor’s car to the jail to call on Burkin.

“Let me explain about Burkin,” said Brush. “He’s a—”

“No. Wait ’til we get there,” said the judge.

Burkin sat in his cell, rereadingKing Lear. He was brought into the office.

“What’s it all about?” asked the judge.

Burkin was pale and contemptuous. “You wouldn’t understand,” he said. “You wouldn’t understand. Go and give me your twenty days. I’ve got some letters to write.”

The judge was silent, listening to him gravely.

Burkin continued: “Only leave me Little Rollo here. Big kidnapper and hold-up man. Big public enemy.—The law’s a farce and you know it.”

“Come on,” said the judge. “What is it? Looking in windows?”

Burkin began to tremble and snap his fingers with excitement. “I tell you you wouldn’t understand. Go tell the goddam mayor there never was anybody in Ozarksville who ever understood anything and there never will be.”

Brush was suffering acutely. “Let me explain?” he asked, in a whisper.

“All right, Brush. What’s the matter with your friend?”

Brush explained.

The judge turned to Burkin. “Even I can understand that, Burkin,” be said. “Gentlemen, would you rather have your supper here in the jail or would you rather find it somewhere else? Have either of you got a car?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I don’t want to hurry you, gentlemen, but it would be less embarrassing for us if you decided to eat in some other town.”

The prisoners gathered their things together and went down the hall.

Judge Carberry put his hand on Brush’s shoulder and stopped him. Brush stood still and looked at the ground. The judge spoke with effort:

“Well, boy . . . I’m an old fool, you know . . . in the routine, in the routine. . . . Go slow; go slow. See what I mean? I don’t like to think of you getting into any unnecessary trouble. . . . The human race is pretty stupid, . . . Doesn’t do any good to insult ’m. Go gradual. See what I mean?”

“No,” said Brush, looking up quickly, puzzled.

“Most people don’t like ideas. Well,” he added, clearing his throat, “if you do get into any trouble, send me a telegram, see? Let me see what I can do.”

Brush didn’t understand any of this. “I don’t know what you mean by trouble,” he said. “But thanks a lot, Judge.”

They shook hands and Brush climbed into the car beside Burkin. Burkin bent over the wheel with a black expression on his face, but Brush waved back at the judge, the mayor and the warden and disappeared down the street.

From: Heaven's My Destination 

Thorton Wilder