CHAPTER 6. LIFE AT HARD LABOR—THE HOPI 126
my brains were going on all eight and I evolved the following philosophy which I wrote down when I got home that night:
- "Love without courage and wisdom is sentimentality, as with the ordinary church member. Courage without love and wisdom is foolhardiness, as with the ordinary soldier. Wisdom without love and courage is cowardice, as with the ordinary intellectual. Therefore one who has love, courage and wisdom is one in a million who moves the world, as with Jesus, Buddha and Ghandi."
My friend Helen Ford printed this on a card for me for Christmas. Later I raised the ante from a million to a billion. Nearly all of my philosophy is a rehash of what I have gained from Jesus, Tolstoy, and Ghandi. But this once it seems that an original thought got through. Looking back over great radicals I think that Debs showed great love and courage, but all Berger or Hillquit had to do was to say, "Sign here, Gene, it's for the cause," and Debs showed his lack of wisdom by signing. Any amount of radicals, including myself, have great courage and a fair amount of wisdom, but are nearly totally lacking in love. Many pacifist leaders have great love and a fair amount of courage but are so gullible when it comes to being stooges for do-good schemes of no-good politicians that it is pitiable. It seems to me that Dorothy Day alone today has the love, courage, and wisdom of which I speak.
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Joe Craigmyle was doing time in the prison at La Tuna, Texas. They told him that the milk from the farm was used for a regular hospital in town. When he accidentally saw a voucher showing that the milk went to the Navy he walked away from the farm. The government is notoriously a liar. Countless times have boys in Civilian Public Service been told that certain work was non military, only to discover later that it was military. The FBI came to see me, asking if Joe was hiding around my place. I told them that he was not here and if he was here I would not tell them. I had given the same answer to FBI men who had twice come to me in the orchard in Albuquerque asking about an anarchist who was in hiding. Joe was caught soon afterward and given extra time for escaping. The judge asked him if he believed in "overthrowing the government by force and violence." Joe answered: "I believe in overthrowing the government without force and violence."
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Ginny Anderson has a son Keith by her first marriage. While the conversation around the house between Ginny and Rik and myself was pacifistic, Keith read wild west funnies, carried a toy gun (a gift from relatives) and acted like the ordinary product of our breakfast-food box-top culture. The following conversation occurred the other day:
