LAST DITCH OF DEMOCRACY - Majority Rights

That old phrase about clarifying one’s intentions is not worked nearly
enough. In trying to give the American people what they WANT, I mean
WANT, no one can offer them blood and destruction. The sob stuff
aimed at getting ’em into trenches is all based on NOT getting into the
trenches. It is all based on how wrong it is for anyone to get into
trenches. Which being the case, why not move DIRECT toward the
goal? Why has so little been done in and FROM North America to stop
the war or before that to prevent it, or at any rate to keep it from
overflowing the whole of the earth?
I gather that if I am to go on with these talks, I shall have gradually more
to say about letters and less about international politics. I might even say
a word or two about Joyce, but before I get onto that subject, I shall one
of these days read you a letter from Mensdorff, Count Mensdorff
Dietrichstein-Pouilly, containing a few ideas on peace, and how to attain
it, written in Vienna back in 1928. Just to show how long it takes to get
ideas into action. Then again they asked me here a couple of weeks ago
what I thought about one or two American writers, handin’ me samples.
And I wrote out a couple of comments, which I will also read you one
night, if the spring advances, and rain lays off and the spirit of man takes
on a little normality.
You probably still think I am joking about those cinema records of
Japanese plays. I am not. You spend millions a year on education. Young
men go to colleges to get education. You spend MONEY and time to get
education. I am telling you how to get some. I have knocked ’round
Europe for 30 years, I have seen some fairly good dancing, I have heard
some music, Mozart, Janequin. I have even been paid for writing down
my opinions on music. As to dancing, Russian or whatever, I have never
seen anything that could touch the movement of the tennin in the
Hagormo dance that Tami Koumé did for me in his London studio 25
years ago. And as to music, a couple of bars of modern Japanese film
play, after 25 years, hit me straight in the midriff. You couldn’t mistake