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WHAT CAN ANYONE
DO?
A Sermon
by
Rev. A. Powell Davies, D.D.
Minister, All Soul's Church (Unitarian)
Washington, DC
November 25, 1945
A
week ago yesterday, very early in the morning, I flew from Pittsburgh
to Detroit on my way to Toronto. From my seat in the airliner I
looked down through the darkness and saw the twinkling lights of hundreds
of streets in city after city in the industrial heart of America.
Then in the slow, misty daybreak I saw the smoke rising from farms and
factories, the yellow sun melting away the grayness of numberless roofs,
the long shadows from the spires and towers of tall buildings.
I saw America, with the dawn on its hills and valleys, its lakes and plains;
America, young in the light of morning; America, bright with its golden
promise...and all of it unharmed. At the end of the cruelest, most
savage war in history, physically unharmed.
Something
that welled up in my heart made me bow my head. I bowed my head,
but I could not pray. I wanted to be grateful, but I could not be
grateful. If I had been a citizen of some other nation, perhaps
I could at least have rejoiced that this one land was untouched, unscathed,
unscarred. But I am an American. And my guilt is poisoning
my gratitude. My guilt that as an American I must share responsibility
for what is daily becoming one of the most shameful betrayals of humanity
know to history. A betrayal of my own and every other country.
A betrayal of American ideals, American standards, American humanity.
A betrayal of our national heritage. A betrayal of overseas millions
upon whose roofless homes the sun never rises except to reveal a scene
of utter desolation. A betrayal of multitudes--men, women and little
children--who are wandering homeless and starving across the continent
of Europe. These people, God pity them, still look to the United
States with desperate clinging--the only source that earth affords for
the alleviation of their suffering. They are the people--many of
them--who helped to keep the war away from America; who helped to give
us time to prepare; whose courage wore down the triumph of the tyrant;
and whose countries bore the brunt of the battle. They are waiting--in
vain. Millions of them will die, from disease and famine.
For America is looking the other way; the people are chasing the shining
bubble of prosperity, and in the halls of Congress, conscience sleeps:
untroubled even by nightmare, conscience sleeps.
We
kept our annual festival of Thanksgiving in this country last week.
There were turkeys by the carload. We knew that in a few days rationing
would be almost completely over. We thanked God for safety, for
a land unscathed, for copiousness and bounty. The Department
of Agriculture had told us that in 1946 we shall eat better than ever
before in our history. Let me read you a part of the report: "Plentiful
supplies of most foods are in prospect....More ice cream, cheese, condensed
and evaporated milk, fluid cream, canned vegetables, and fresh and frozen
fish....Eggs and fluid milk will continue plentiful. Chicken, turkey,
fresh fruits and vegetables, frozen and dried fruits, potatoes and sweet
potatoes and cereal products will continue substantially the same....Supplies
of some meats and fats (other than butter) will be larger than before
the war. Sugar supplies should improve..." Yes, in the year
1944, in spite of rationing, Americans on the average ate a record eleven
per cent more than the highest level of prewar years. The average
consumption of meat in 1946 will be 145-155 pounds; equalling and probably
surpassing the record for the last thirty years--150 pounds.
Gluttony--unbridled
and unlimited, while millions starve. Greed--greed of profits, greed
of wages, stark ugly evil greed, while the children of the homeless waste
and wither, and forsaken multitudes pine and die.
Why
do we not admit openly that Christianity has departed from this land?
That the great American ideals are all forsaken? That we have joined
the ruthless and the pitiless? That all mercy, all compassion, all
tenderness are gone?
Even
our promises are half-abandoned. We pledged long ago $1,350,000,000
(one per cent of our 1943 income--much less by percentage than we gave
to overseas relief after the First World War). We pledged it.
Other nations have redeemed their pledges--nations which could not afford
to do so. Some of their citizens are now voluntarily giving up still
further portions of their meager food allowance. But our Congress
postpones and delays the final part of its first pledge. It does
so for a score of reasons; but not one of them is worth a moment's thought
beside the fact that while Congress talks and tarries, the starving die.
Starvation does not wait for politicians. It just happens--promptly.
While the well-fed dawdle and trifle, the hungry perish.
The
delay in Congress down to now--the delay, that is, in appropriating money
already pledged to UNRRA--has forced that organization to cancel orders
for $50,000,000 worth of medical supplies--critically needed medical supplies--so
that money might be spent on food--which is even more critically needed.
What does this mean in human terms? It means that half-starved people
who are sick will get no medicine; it means that thousands of them will
die. We shall not have killed them. No, of course not.
We shall merely have let them die. If I had a neighbor who was at
the point of death, and if I had the medicines that would bring him back
to health, if I and only I had them, and if I failed to take them to him,
I would not have killed my neighbor. No. I would just have
let him die. That's all. I would just be the kind of person,
the sort of human being who could do a thing like that. As a citizen
of the strongest, fattest, richest country in the world, that is what
I am now doing to millions of my neighbors. I am letting it be done.
So are you.
Have
you, dear friends of this congregation, any idea of what is really happening?
Do you think you are listening to something dramatized, something exaggerated?
Then read Director Lehman's report. Or read the story in the quiet
sedate New York Times. "More than 20,000,000 people", says that
grave and restrained journal, "more than 20,000,000 desperate and homeless
people are now milling east and west, north and south, across the Continent
[of Europe]...800,000 Poles are now living in holes in the ground and
dugouts...Rumania is suffering from the worst drought in fifty years..."
And so on and so on from country to country..."Tuberculosis is rife.
The very young and the very old especially are beginning to die in droves
as the autumn leaves fall."
The
very old, the very young. Picture it. The old and helpless.
The young: babies. Do you have the courage to let yourself imagine
a baby starving to death? Then close your eves and imagine it; imagine
it multiplied by thousands. Or if you do not have the courage,
admit yourself a coward. Then remember that we could save those
babies. We could have saved them--we could still save some.
Yes,
but not until we have attached conditions to our appropriations, apparently.
Not until we have made sure that the American farmer makes a profit on
it--all the profit on it. Not until the politicians who want American
farmers' votes have got all possible political benefit from it.
Why, you have to make a profit on saving the lives of babies! You
have to make political capital out of famine. You have to climb
back into Congress, even if it has to be over a mountain of corpses.
I
suppose it will not be long before some of the gentlemen we have elected
to rule over us will be wondering how it happens that all Europe has gone
Communist. I suppose they will be wondering how it is that these
terrible Europeans are moving once again toward war--against us, this
time. Against us! Maybe those valiant protectors of the nation's
safety, those exalted statesmen and sublime and lofty sages, the members
of the Committee on un-American Activities, will investigate it.
They will discover how despicable and dastardly these starving Europeans
are, so spitefully withholding their cooperation from the American way
of life, the American standard of living! Disloyally allowing themselves
to be penniless and thus unprofitable as American customers! Allowing
themselves to get desperate because they watch their children die, and
therefore, for some obscure reason, unfriendly to the American policy
of keeping this a land of plenty, no matter who starves in other places.
I suppose they will want to investigate whoever would have befriended
these dreadful people.
Well,
if that Committee wants to investigate something really un-American, it
has its greatest opportunity right now. For the most un-American
thing this nation has ever done is to delay assistance to these desolate,
famine-ridden millions. These lost and forsaken people, who are
hoping against hope that we shall come to them before it is too late.
Yes, the greatest heritage any nation ever had is being betrayed.
The most un-American thing in its history is being perpetrated right now.
In these very weeks we are closing the gates on our own future, we are
condemning ourselves before the world.
I am afraid
to think of the judgment of history. I am afraid to remember the
providence of God. For no matter what may be your theology, this
remains true: in that dread providence, no sin, whether of commission
or omission, goes unpunished. Will it always be possible to look
down from an airplane on an unscarred land, a land of plenty? I
am afraid of the answer. I am afraid of what my knowledge of history
is telling me. I am afraid of what my own conscience foresees.
Jesus
once told a parable, the words of which go like this:
"The ground of a certain rich man brought
forth plentifully: and he reasoned within himself saying, What shall I
do, because I have not where to bestow my fruits? And he said, This
I will do: I will pull down my barns and build greater; and there will
I bestow all my corn and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul
thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink,
be merry. But God said unto him, Thou fool! This night shall
thy soul be required of thee!"
Does
there come a night like that for nations, too?
There
is another parable of Jesus'. At a time of judgment, he says, many
will claim the privileges of good people, pious people, faithful believers--but
it will do them no good. For, he goes on,
"I was an hungered and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty and ye gave me
no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in; naked and ye clothed
me not; sick and in prison and ye visited me not. Then shall they
answer saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, or athirst, a stranger
or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?
Then shall he answer them saying, Verily, I say unto you, Inasmuch as
ye did it not unto one of these least, ye did it not unto me."
Just
a fantasy, you say? Just an old-fashioned parable of a last judgment?
Do not be too sure, dear friend. History records many judgments--judgments
of men and nations. My own very deliberate opinion is that wrapped
within this saying of Jesus is history's grim and solemn truth...
There
is another Biblical saying which is also not to be despised: "Whatsoever
a man soweth, that shall he also reap." A man or nation! When
the halls of government have become the sepulchre of a nation's conscience,
the smell of death is already in the air.
"Soul, thou hast much goods!...take thine ease, eat, drink and be merry!"
Yes. The candles burn brightly. The food is plentiful, the
wine abundant. But somewhere across the world an east wind is rising.
The wind that blows all candles out. And in the nighttime comes
a voice that the noise of abundance cannot drown, that no merriment can
silence. "This night is thy soul...thy soul...required of thee."
The soul of a nation. And the soul of this nation is being betrayed.
Is
it too late, then? Already too late? I do not think so.
The time is terribly short--and getting shorter--but it is not yet too
late. The people are beginning to understand--some of them--to understand
a little. The happiest thing that happened to me last week was that
I chanced to read in Time news magazine two items. One was a protest
of Senator Vandenberg's against the attempt to impose a free press requirement
on countries to which UNRRA takes assistance. "I am unable to agree,"
he said, "that we should suddenly choose UNRRA, on the threshold of winter,
as the vehicle for [this requirement]. The iron curtain [of censorship]
is in the control of governments. It is the people in these areas
who die for want of bread....It is the people--pitiful, suffering, starving
millions of them facing what will probably be the blackest, cruelest winter
since the age of plagues--from whom our aid would be withheld....You may
say that the blame would rest upon the government which denied our requirement.
But the dead would not know the difference." I have not usually
agreed with Senator Vandenberg in the past, and I do not know whether
or not I shall always do so in the future. But I give him my humble
thanks today for that saying. My thanks, and, if he cares to have
it, a simple preacher's heartfelt benediction. He spoke like a statesman,
an American, and, best of all, like a true man--a man with a soul.
The
other item I read was part of a letter from a soldier in France, an American
occupation soldier. He wrote it to the editor of Stars and Stripes.
These are his words: "I am getting too damned fat. With a lot of
women, children, grown men...in Europe on the verge of starvation, why
do they insist on fattening us up like pigs? Please bring more for
folks over here who need it and less for me."
When
I read that, I felt again as I had in the airplane, that I wanted to bow
my head. But this time I could pray. "O God," I could say,
"We are stirring in our sleep at last. Stab us to wakefulness, pierce
us with the sharpest barbs of conscience until we are ready to give up
something--and send it to those who need it."
And that is
precisely what I propose to you today. I do not in the least intend
that you shall go away from this Church, after telling me that it was
an acceptable sermon, or even an unacceptable sermon, or any other kind
of sermon, and then do nothing. I am not interested in what you
think of the sermon, of the preacher, of the Church, or anything else.
I am interested only in what you are going to do.
The churches
could take the lead. This Church could take the lead. As an
act of penitence that we did not do it sooner. As a demonstration
of sincerity that we mean the humanity we profess. As church people,
as Americans, and simply as human beings. Most of all, because it
is intolerable, unbearable, utterly wicked not to do something--and begin
right away.
What
can anyone do? I will tell you. First, you can take the full
responsibility of a citizen. You can write or telegraph to the Committee
chairmen in Congress, or if you live outside the District, also to your
own Senators and Representatives. Do not write as sharply as you
have heard me speak this morning. I am a preacher, and to speak
as I have spoken is sometimes my inescapable duty. Write simply,
briefly and clearly that you want the UNRRA appropriations made
immediately and the subsequent ones without delay. But do more than
this. Almost every person in this Church has friends and relatives
in the States of the Union from which he or she has come.
Write to those friends and relatives. Beg them to write--or telegraph--
their Senators and Representatives--right away! Tell them why, and,
if desirable, what to say. Ask them to get things going along these
lines in their own communities.
Do
you say there is nothing you can do. You can do this. You
can do it today. You can begin to do it before you eat your next
meal. **Two missing pages.** I have a daughter. I would die
a thousand deaths before I would see her starve. How can I ask that
any other father bear that anguish? How can I let it happen--anywhere?
If I have said bitter things today out of the pain of my own conscience,
the frustration of my own soul, forgive me. And may God cleanse
the spirits of us all. But let us remember this, and keep remembering
it: that nothing will absolve us--nothing!--if we fail to act and act
with all out power.
Jesus
said: A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and he fell
among robbers, which both stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving
him half dead by the road. And by chance a certain priest was going
that way, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. And
in like manner a Levite also, when he came to the place and saw him, passed
by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed,
came where he was, and when he saw him, he was moved with compassion,
and came to him, and bound up his wounds....Which of these, asked Jesus,
proved neighbor unto him that fell among thieves? And he said, He
that shewed mercy on him. And Jesus said....Go and do thou likewise.
Jesus
is still saying it. So is your conscience. And mine.
Let
us pray: O God, we are ashamed. Deepen our shame, we beseech
thee, until we open the gates of conscience to the world's misery and
let it beat a pathway to our hearts. Amen.
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