"Last night we attended the opera Martha presented at the Stadische Theatre in Berlin by a local company. Martha happens to be the first opera this writer ever saw -- we saw it in November 1917, at Camp Funston, Kansas, in a boarded-up amphitheatre, when a traveling entertainment unit of World War I, very much like the USO in this war, came to give the boys a glimpse of opera and the art of song, symphony and acting blended into one performance.
"It is a long way from Camp Funston, Kansas in 1917 to Berlin, Germany, in 1946 -- in miles to trave, in the mileposts of history, in approach to world problems and human relations, in concepts of international order. Then we were entering a war on the wave of tremendous idealism and a concept of self-determination of peoples and nations. Now we are winding up a war which was fought with a singularly cold, calculated realism and we are winding it up in the earthy atmosphere of power and political expediency, giving wide concern to the ability of a nation to make good its principles by power rather than by moral standard.
"A little over 27 years ago we left Europe firm in the belief that we had participated in a 'war to end wars' and that the mechanics of international negotiations would some way, some how patch things up to where we could all live in peace. Now we are far less sure of peace, of any real long-term security for the so-called little people of the world, then we were twenty-seven years ago -- indeed there are times when it seems Europe is about to explode of its own problems.
"The opera Martha, which we saw last night, was written in 1812 by a German who had come to America. It told in beautiful music a love story of Colonial times. In the years since it was written few concert halls in the world have not been filled with the mellow and brooding strains of 'The Last Rose of Summer' and the audience which last night heard it -- Germans, Russians, French, Americans and British alike applauded to the rafters through the Martha of opera sang it in German.
"Today we are asking ourselves -- why, if we recognize the good and beautiful almost universally in music -- why can't we recognize, applaud, and appreciate the common good which is found in all men and work toward that instead of some so-called prestige which we call Sovereign Power -- which is another name for a big nation ready to impose its will on one not strong enough to resist it.
"In the mass trials before the International Tribunal at Nuremburg one sees 29 men, ring-leaders in an archaic scheme and philosophy that war is a necessity -- that it is an honorable profession and ameans to a national end. But there are more than 29 Nazi criminals on trial there at Nuremburg --there is a system on trial and a code which in the past has said that nations could trample down their weaker neighbors, that men could destroy weaker men, that there was something legal, and indeed honorable in the art of war, no matter for what purpose made. It is time for that philosophy to die with these men as they will surely die when the final verdict of the court is read.
"The day we attended the trials, Herr Doctor Frank, the former gauleiter of Poland was defending himself against the charges that he ordered the execution and expulsion of some six million Jews from that country. The Doctor denied giving the order -- in fact presented copies of letters to prove that he opposed such measures but he admitted the ultimate responsibility for the acts because he was the titular head of the area. What shocked this writer was that except for changed names and situations these memorandums and letters and proclamations sounded very much like some of our own.
"The twenty-nine men in the dock on trial looked just like any other twenty-nine men involved in a government or business enterprise -- they had their marks -- Goering the huge, cat-like restless one; Hess, the brooding dreamer; Jodl, the austere Prussian; Raeder, the tall squint-eyed man of the sea; Schacht, the straight-laced bespectacled banker -- 29 men -- fanatical men with a genius to lead, who almost conquered the world, now just gangsters in the dock. It sobered one to think of the ability in that group and think what might have happened had those men turned their tremendous energy and efforts toward constructive things in Germany and Central Europe.
"We are leaving Germany after ten months here with the conviction that 'The German Problem', as we term it, is but one of the many problems which must be somehow met on an economic as well as political basis if there is to be any long-term real peace in Europe. There was an hour back in 1943-1945 when Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin -- along with the many tremendous achievements in their collaboration in war -- might have done for world peace what they did in war. It would have been easy then. It grows daily more difficult now. There may be no shooting war in the next ten years, but there will be war -- desperate and deadly -- war for men's minds -- war for men's loyalties -- war for resources -- war for commercial advantage -- war of political ideas -- the years ahead will be dangerous and explosive -- America must keep watch, with men on the walls."
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