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On A Note Of Triumph 1945-05-13 A Day Of Victory
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On A Note Of Triumph 1945-05-13 A Day Of Victory
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- [00:24]
Norman Corwin
So they've given up. They've. They're finally done in. And the rat is dead in an alley back of the Villaelmstrasse. Take a bow, GI. Take a bow, little guy. The superman of tomorrow lies dead at the feet of you common men of this afternoon. This is it, kid. This is the day. All the way from Newburyport to Vladivostok. You had what it took and you gave it. And each of you has a hunk of rainbow around your helmet. Seems like three men have done it. By popular request, the Columbia Broadcasting System presents a repeat performance of On a Note of Triumph, a special broadcast written, directed and produced by Norman Corwin for the Day of Victory. Martin Gable is narrator and the music is by Bernard Herman. Martin Gable in Norman Corwin's On a Note of Triumph. Is victory a sweet disher, isn't it? And how do you think those lights look in Europe after five years of blackout? Going on to six? Rather pretty good. Pretty good, sister. The kids of Poland soon will know what an orange tastes like. And the smell of honest to God bread freshly made and sawdust free will create a stir in the streets of Athens. There's a hot time in the old town of Dnieper Petrovsk tonight. And it is reasonable to assume the same goes for a thousand other cities, including some Scandinavians. It can at last be said without jinxing the campaign. Somehow the decadent democracies, the bungling Bolsheviks, the saps and softies, were tougher in the end than the brown shirt bully boys. And smarter too. For without whipping a priest, burning a book or slugging a Jew, without corralling a girl in a brothel or bleeding a child for plasma, far flung ordinary men, unspectacular but free, rousing out of their habits and their homes. Got up early one morning, flexed their muscles, learned as amateurs the manual of arms and set out across perilous plains and oceans to wat the bajeepers out of the professionals. This they did for confirmation. See the last communique bearing the mark of the Allied high command. Clip it out of the morning paper and hand it over to your children for safekeeping. We're gonna tell the postman next time he comes around that Mr. Hitler's new address is the Berlin burying ground. Round and around Hitler's grave Round and around we go Gonna lay that feller down so he won't get up no more. Hitler went to the Russian front where every bullet but he caused a dose of Stalin bread that spread all through his system. Round and around Hitler's Babe, Round and around we go Gonna lay the feller down he won't get up no more There are many variations on this melody tonight. Many a different tongue and tune saying the same thing the Serbs would refer to it as. And the Danes, the Greeks have a word for it. Gyrostom, Nematou, Hitler, Giro, Jiro, Pername. Obviously the occasion calls for a round of cheers and a toast with the very best you have in the house. And it is entirely appropriate to make a joke and laugh at it. But fix your eyes on the horizons, Swing your ears about, size up the day and date Looking on prayer and thanksgiving, song and laughter, dated planet Earth, May 1945, you, mother in St. Louis on the Mississippi, whose firstborn is a visitor in Magdeburg on the Elbe.
- [04:54]
Martin Gable
Thank God I'll get my boy back.
- [04:55]
Norman Corwin
Instead of a telegram, you, patient wife of Bridgeport, whose husband sat it out inside a Nazi camp.
- [05:00]
Martin Gable
Now he'll be home for longer than a furlough.
- [05:03]
Norman Corwin
Now we can see our daughter for the first time.
- [05:05]
Martin Gable
She's two years old, and it seems strange to think they've never met you.
- [05:09]
Norman Corwin
Minister and congregation in a wooden church, having come in from your farms through the nippy night air of New Hampshire, meeting together to thank the God of wrath for justice done. Oh, sing unto the Lord a new song. Let the congregation of saints praise him. Let the praises of God be in their mouth and to be avenged of the nations and to rebuke the people to bind their kings in chains. And you, Rabbi, in the synagogue, by the light of the menorah, by the light of the proud candelabra, descended from the tabernacle in the wilderness, from Egypt to the Oklahoma prairie town, you, Rabbi, entering another Red Sea crossing in the ancient scroll, no great tyranny has ever lasted. The empires of Pharaoh, Caesar, Philip, Napoleon, Hitler, each flourished and held sway and was destroyed. They were powerful, but all of them forgot one thing, that the only civilization which can endure is a freedom. And you, bishop, in the cathedral, singing te deums to him who has again delivered man te beam. Have you time right now, listener, to stop in at a hundred million homes, Some of them with plaster loose from the last bombing, Some in towns where townsmen's blood mixed lately with rainwater in the gutters, in farmhouses of step and upland, in mining villages with regimented chimneys, in apartments of executives where decor is impeccable and genuine utrillos hang in tenements where l trains go by every seven minutes with a rack and roar. It's top of the evening. Hip hip hooray. How about another drink out. And a very good time being had by all. Meanwhile the crowd gather. Crowds in Times Square, Piccadilly. Nevsky prospects. Crowds in the Loop. Crowds on the boulevard Gaiety and neon. Laughter in the flare of horns. Headlines cheerful as a Christmas poster. Noise and glitter. This is it, kids. This is the day. This is what we've been waiting for. But through the dim, the clamor you hear a voice in the hearing of your conscience. Don't you get a whisper? Listen. Listen. Nothing yet this crowd, but listen close. Take your good ear out of low range, Whisk it high, hoist it up to cirro stratus country up to where a B29 has wing room. Flash across a dark Atlantic heaving under the sway of a victor's moon. Listen for intimations of wind and water in a rush of far eastwood of the Grand Banks below these waters strewn beneath the lanes of porpoise and whale the bones of how many good men lie. But never mind running as we are eastward against the grain of time we are over the aisles and a hop and a jump. We're established now on the continent, so listen closely. In just a moment. Now don't expect to hear metallic speech from a rosette of amplifying horns on the high poles of the public address system. But listen for a modest voice as sensible and intimate to you as the quiet turning of your own considered judgment. Now we're ready. The voice you hear will be that of the conqueror, the man of the hour, the man of the year of the past 10 years and the next 20. I'm a private first class in an army of one of the United Nations. If you don't mind, there's some things I'd like to ask. Just a man in uniform you've met somewhere or seen in the newsreels loading a truck, a Martin, or read about in the dispatches. A fighting man, glad to be alive, a little tired but in good shape. A dozen battles notched in his gunstock and dug in his memory. Who is he? Well, his name and rank and nationality don't matter much. Just picture him where he may be tonight. In Europe perhaps. In his cot in a barracks, his hands behind his head thinking things over. Perhaps he's standing on a village green before a monument to the dead of World War I. Perhaps he's strolling in a history weary valley under the Same stars which 2500 years ago watched a Persian brand of Nazi take a beating in the hills of Marathon. Close your Eyes. And it could reasonably be this boy, that boy, any boy at all, with war still thumping in his ears. Close your eyes and concentrate and listen. You don't mind? There's some things we guys would like to have. First of all, who did we beat? How much did it cost to beat him? What have we learned? What do we know now that we didn't know before? What do we do now? Is it all going to happen again? Can it be in the interim, between the making of a toast and the drinking of it? Such questions on the lips of fighting men tonight. Questions from areas of truce, insistent footnoting. The surrender. Who have we beaten? Who have you beaten? Well, let's get hold of him and see. Lead him in and prop him up before our microphone. Now look at this rubble of a man. Ragged, broken, blonde, Nordic hair matted with pure Aryan blood. Deaf from blast and blind from smoke. Chin down, tail between his legs. Pity the poor beggar. I was ordered to do it, you hear? He was ordered to do it. I'm a soldier. I'm a little man. I merely obeyed orders. Whose orders? The parties. Who elected the party? I did. Who supported the Party? I did. When you saw where the Party was taking Germany, whose job was it to overthrow the Party? Mine. Did you? No. I was a member of the Party. He's meek now. He answers questions. He stands before you. Gun. Ref. Palms empty. Steel whip confiscated. Wounded, Defenseless. Thrown upon your tender mercies. The quality of which he trusts will not be strained. Observe him. Note him well. Now, if you wait until we spin the mic about so that it picks up. The winter of a not long bygone year. It was the year Broker's Tip won the Kentucky Derby and 3.2% beer was proclaimed morally fit for Americans to drink. It was 1933. The mike, reversible goes back to it. Look at our German now. Fat and sassy. Swastika on his armband, cobblestone in hand, ready to advance the cause. Another Jewish store window is broken. The stock will presently be looted and the state is happy. Hey, Nani. Nani. Achtung and Welladay. This has been a good week for the little man who obeys orders and prosperity fills his jowls and biceps. For his Fuhrer was appointed Chancellor last Monday. And on Wednesday. Open the door. Open raids on the homes of leaders of the opposition parties. And on Thursday. This is what we think of your newspaper. You are forbidden by decree to publish any further editions. As of today, suppression of the opposition newspapers. And on Sunday. Attention. An official government decree.
- [15:45]
Martin Gable
Henceforth it shall be deemed a crime.
- [15:47]
Norman Corwin
Against the state, punishable by law to.
- [15:50]
Martin Gable
Make any criticisms whatever of Vice Chancellor Hitler.
- [15:53]
Norman Corwin
Heil Hitler. All this in the first week they were in the saddle every week. Then after, for 12 inbreeding years of 52 weeks each year, week in, week out. The looking around carefully before speaking. The leather heels on the door stoop and the bell ringing insistently at three in the morning. The stormtrooper authority dangling from the holster on his hip, smugness fitting him like tights. The new decree even worse than the one published last week. The dream of escape. The pillow full of border where kind people wait. Just across, just beyond, on the other side. So near they see you and have pity for you. And then the awakening in the room and bisselled off. You're under arrest. Put your clothes on. Come with me. Violence beyond the fitful dreams of the straight jacketed maniac in the asylum. Dear art is bared by the roots. If his face comes off with it, all the better. Arrogance enough to dwarf an alp. God has manifested himself not in Jesus Christ, but in Adolf Hitler. Last week pillage. This week murder. Next week burn the books and don't forget the Bible. Fourth week in April, trial of a thousand priests and nuns. The men who are masterless but free now have a master but no freedom. However, they have discipline and a scapegoat. And one can go far on that. Hunger and poverty and a couple of big, big contributions from a couple of big industrialists were enough to get them started. And fancy treasons, foreign and domestic, kept them going. Also cruelties to make skin creep on the sweating scout, the fat and hairy fist against the fragile mouth. Now spit out your teeth, pretty one, and tell us who else was in your trait union. The conscript children. Putrescence in the classroom, scum injected into the growing arm.
- [17:46]
Martin Gable
My father last night said to my mother that he hates der Fuhrer.
- [17:50]
Norman Corwin
Good boy. Where do you live, Hun? Last week, purge. This week, putsch. Next week break a treaty, form an axis, give a hitch to Francois. Meanwhile, the small businessman who didn't kick into the party is framed on a trumped up charge of listening to the British radio and is thrust protesting on a table for the guillotine. No, no. I'm innocent. I have no radio. I'm innocent, I tell you. No radio this week and every week the staggering lie nation stripped and tortured like a captive girl, while sidewalk superintendents stand by around the world and look on, fascinated even as they watch. Of course, death warrants issued to themselves and to their sons. Extra double feature. Austria and Anschluss and the corpses of the suicides of gay Vienna are sanitarily disposed of. Darkness rising, pageants and parades, drapes and flags and searchlights in the goose step. Next week, umbrella dance at Munich. Salome bearing the head of John the Czech. And coming soon, too soon. Lavish spectacle. Millions in the cast curtain going up. Pollen devoured by lightning and locusts. In 18 days eastward. Look, the land is bright. You can read an occupational order. By the flare of the Burning Church, 1600 of the townspeople are locked in there, but their screams have sizzled out, the children's being the first to cease in the ruddy complexioned evening of. Did Gust Study, if you will, the reflected glow on the face of the little man who obeys orders. He hasn't had as much fun as this since the day he split open the professor's head in the well planned scuffle on Froebel Strasse. Now, if you will permit us to move the mic along, being careful not to trip either over the rubble of treaties or the ruins of Rotterdam, we'll have a word with the same little man who last month pasted Denmark and Norway in his scrapbook. Will you explain why Rotterdam was bombed and thousands of its people killed after the city had surrendered? Yeah, sure. What's that? Frightfulness. It means frightfulness. Yeah, that was our plan. You mean Schrecklichkeit is an official policy of the German High Command? Yeah. You seem to be feeling pretty chipper. Holland fell to us in four days, Denmark in one and France. We will be in Paris before the end of Seen a clearing in the forest of Compien before the end of June. Occasion unconditional surrender of liberty. Egalite fraternity cast in order of appearance. Hitler, the sunshine boy. Gehring of the splendid Nordic belly. Von Brauchitsch, the man who looks like a rat. Ribbentrop, the rat who looks like a man. Assorted admirals, generals Flunke his plenipotentiary. Shirer, the reporter stands at the edge of the clearing, watching the party advance to the armistice car. His eyes are on the face of the Fuhrer, who the other day did a little dance for the newsreel cameras when he learned the good news of the death of France. He glances slowly around the clearing. And now, as his eyes meet ours, you grasp the depth of his hatred. Revengeful, triumphant hate. Suddenly, as though his face were not giving quite complete expression to his feelings, he throws his whole body into harmony with his mood. He swiftly snaps his Hands on his hips, arches his shoulders, plants his feet wide apart. It is a magnificent gesture of burning contempt of this place. The gloating hour is to be remembered. File it away in a bomb proof corner if such there be against a better time, if such can possibly arrive. Meanwhile, other gestures of contempt soon fill the night skies over London. A cocky pilot, little man with wings, smiles in German and the bombardiers bits on his punctual hands in forewarning of which below the news is published on the blacked out air. And the workers of Britain in bed with the aches of a long day at the factory. Overtime, no Sundays off, rouse now from their body warm blankets in the cold room shuffle along to the damp shelter, leery, pooped out, hoping not to catch a direct hit or a sore throat. And inevitably, in some postal zone or other, the hit is a direct hit. And the kid with the bright blonde hair and the turned up nose moans all night among the rebel because his left leg hangs in blackened tatters and he cries to his mother who is dead. The siren is a musician of no value, knowing only one tune, which each time played as a disturbance of the peace. Oh, in the prime of the Luftwaffe, when there was nothing west of Dunkirk save prospects of invasion, the tenor of life in London was considerably beneath that of Berlin. For whereas the pubs of Westminster burned like books and synagogues and the waters of the estuary blazed with oil, the warm cafes of Khustam were busy and gay and there was boating in the Tiergarten the waltzes of J. Strauss of Austria, now part of the Reich, were especially lilting in the ballroom of the Adlan. The dances of a Dvorak of Bohemia, lately absorbed by the Greater Germany Borgaze could be and the contralto and the Rothschild brim with charm, sang feelingly the leader of y Grieg of Norway, Reich protectorate and war was glorious and the best champagnes of France were poured on the tables of the Schutzstaffel. The finest grades of Danish bacon sputtered in the skillets of loyal party workers. Paintings from the Louvre hung tastefully on the walls of Berchtesgaden and the iron ore of Sweden alloyed well with the bauxite of Spain. The music was but stimulating and the performance but continuous with a minor fanfare for the pushovers in the Balkans in the month of April, A flourish for the isle of Crete in May and in June, summer coming in with the sound of another broken treaty. Yea, on the dawn of the second day of summer the little man who could be relied on to take orders, took yet another order. Proudly he advanced, chin up, Stuka high, chest out. Tanks pointed east into the Soviet Union. And it was a great morning. And war was glorious. And it was exalting to kill and destroy for their Fuhrer, as always. And the fanfare soon came every hour on the hour on the right center, Radio Smolensk, Kiev and Oriel falling to the accompaniment of pronouncements from Lord Volvo. It will be futile to hope that one day the Soviets may rise again. They will never rise again. They are being smashed once and for all. When their defeat is completed, Britain will stand alone without one single barrier between her and the foe. Bryansk, Odessa, Rostov. Encirclement of Leningrad. Siege of Moscow. Russia staggering under the bulletins of DNB and the sale of Russian German dictionaries boomed in Leipzig, city of books and culture, at about which time the little man took another swig of captured vodka, stripped, another car, loaded. Lublin herded naked men, women and children into hot showers to open their pores for the gas chamber, and then sat back in his barracks and listened to waltzes on the loudspeaker in the prison yard. Later, in conformity with the predictions of seasoned military observers, the Russians were crushed at Stalingrad. And that was the deciding blow. Hitler, the giver of orders, said so himself, said no power on earth could push the Wehrmacht back from Stalingrad. And who could doubt the word of him, in whom God hath manifested himself? What Hitler hath put asunder, no man could join. And that was that. And the wave of the future swept all before it, and the century of the uncommon Aryan opened up ahead and Germany was promises. The little man no longer was a little man. He was a colossus who stood with one foot in Rhodes and the other in Finland. He clapped his hands and a tanker went down off Atlantic City aflame. He blinked his eyes and there ensued mighty thunder. And so brook was his in a day. He inhaled and a million slaves trembled in his galleys. Nothing like him ever was. He was organized from the womb, often illegitimate, with state approval, to the grave of his enemy. His brand was on the soul of his victims and the planet fitted in his palm. This is the man you have beaten? German army General staff. I guess they miss connections. They went a hundred miles a day, but in the wrong direction. Round and around Hitler's bay Round and around we go. Gonna lay that feller down so he won't get up no more. We return you to the conqueror, to the boy with the questions on his mind, to the man of the hour. The man of the year. The man of the next 20 years. So that is the man we've beaten. How much did it cost to beat him? How much did it cost? Well, the gun, the half track and the fuselage come to a figure resembling mileages between two stars. Impressive, but not to be grasped by any single imagination. High octane is high and K rations in the aggregate mount up. Also mosquito netting in battleships. But these costs are calculable and have no nerve endings and will eventually be taken care of by the federal taxes on antiques, cigarettes and excess profits. However, in the matter of the kid who used to deliver folded newspapers to your doorstep, flipping them sideways from his bicycle and who died on a jeep in the Ruhr, there is no fixed price and no amount of taxes can restore him to his mother. His mother sits in a room with a picture tonight and listens to a clock ticking on the mantelpiece and remembers, among other things, how he struggled with a barber when he was getting his first haircut and how she tried to calm him. And the upstairs tenant, in consideration of the news outdoors, says to his wife, shall we invite Mrs. Fish to come up? She's all alone tonight and seems sort of ashamed.
- [31:02]
Martin Gable
Well, I have a hunch she'd rather be alone tonight.
- [31:05]
Norman Corwin
Think so?
- [31:06]
Martin Gable
I don't think she's in the mood to talk or carry on. She probably just wants to be with her thoughts.
- [31:13]
Norman Corwin
Maybe you're right. And the thoughts of the mother are tall, straight thoughts, and they burn like candles, quietly and slowly, and they trail into smoke and are lost in shadows.
- [31:25]
Martin Gable
He was a good boy. My grief I'll take with me to my grave. But also my pride. For he died in the service of his country. It's a good country, and he was worthy of living in it. Pray God it'll always be worthy of his having died for it.
- [32:01]
Norman Corwin
And most of the fallen young leave mothers and fathers alive and awake tonight. And if you wish to assess the cost of beating the fascists, you must multiply the closed files in the departments of war by the exchange value of sorrow, which is infinite and has no decimals. Not to be overlooked either in such reckonings tonight is the international character of the love of human beings. Since this phenomenon never has been founded on the east by Eastport Elsewise, what is a notice like this doing in the busy pages of the London Times?
- [32:40]
Martin Gable
To my dearly beloved boy, Donald H. Collins, fighter pilot, RAF, on this, your 21st birthday. Reported killed in action, September 6, 1941. Sadly missed.
- [32:57]
Norman Corwin
Mother Elsewise, Why the young Mother and Baron of each of Poland, writing to relatives in Orange, New Jersey.
- [33:05]
Martin Gable
My dear Moishkale and all my dear ones. On the 25th, there was a massacre here. People were thrown like dogs into privy. Children were thrown alive down wells. We are still among those who have been able to survive. But for how long? We expect death every day. Your family is no more. Not one of them was left alive. But I envy them. Must close this letter now. It is impossible to describe our torments. The one thing that you can do for us is to revenge yourselves on our murderers. Someday, alas, even a little revenge.
- [34:10]
Norman Corwin
Shall the balance sheet be balanced? By whom? How? No combination of savants and learned cogs, holes punched in cards and electric motors, no brow containing Euclid could be else than baffled by the simplest problem of the cost of hunger and a baby's bones. Have you paid something of the cost? Well, you're not through paying, and the bill's not settled. For in this way and that for the rest of your days the cost will appear. It will present itself in the form of deductions from the paycheck in a surplus of widows and fatherless children, in the remembering eyes of the sweetheart, in the tubercular lung of the stunted girl, in the stammering speech of the shell shocked boy, in babies never to be conceived on love beds never lain in shall the balance sheet be balanced. By whom? Again we return you to the conqueror, man of the textbooks of millenniums ahead. But what do we know now that we didn't know before? What have we learned out of this war? What have we learned? For one thing, evil is not always as insidious as advertised, but will upon occasion give fair warning, just as smoke announces the intention of flame to follow. Never has disaster had so many heralds as this war. Cassandra spoke from every lecture platform and the notices were posted high and low. A cabinet minister resigned at Downing street, protesting. A president cried quarantine. Moscow sent food and guns to Barcelona. A housewife of Duluth boycotted German goods. An emperor of Ethiopia said in good French before the statesman of Geneva, I came to give Europe warning of the doom that awaits it. I came defending the cause of all small people who are threatened with aggression. The problem today is much wider than merely a question of Italian aggression. It is collective security. It is international morality which is at stake. God in history will remember your judgment. Signs and portents. It was no furtive tapping on the windowsill at night, but clamorous pounding in the public square. Blow after blow, like a monstrous Drop, forge, beating into shape the time to come. And the time came and the prophecies matured. The storm arrived and was no surprise to the barometer. The Jew who had cautioned the Nazis are not against the Jews alone. That's just a sham. You let them carry on this way, there'll be the death of Christians too. He saw gentiles die as well and sighed and foraged for bullets in the cellars of the Warsaw Ghetto. Yea, and the time came and it developed that Cassandra and the Jew were right and that the Cliveden set was wrong. Fire and brimstone dropping from the sky were educational. There were tongues and torpedoes, sermons in bombs, books in the running battles. Whatever was learned was learned the hard way. Between blood transfusions and last rites, each lesson fell trip hammer hard with a bang that killed a citizen or two somewhere. We've learned out of World War II that we've learned nothing out of World War I. We've learned that nations don't know what they want, will get what they don't want. We've learned that our east coast is the west bank of the Rhine and the defenses of Portland begin in Shanghai. Soft answer, doesn't turn away wrath. If you offer your other cheek to a fascist, you'll get your head blown off. We've learned that a newspaper with a big circulation right at home can lie with a straight face seven days a week and be as filthy and fascist as a handout in Berlin. We've learned that those most concerned with saving the world from communism usually turn up, making it safer. Fascists.
- [39:18]
Martin Gable
We've learned that women can work in fighting as well as McCready and Cook.
- [39:22]
Norman Corwin
We've learned the Germans came close to winning the first time, even closer the second time, and might gamble, win if we give them a third time.
- [39:30]
Martin Gable
We've learned the value of allies in a world where any war is, sooner.
- [39:33]
Norman Corwin
Or later, a world war. We've learned that some men will fight for power, but that most men will fight to be free. We've learned that freedom isn't something to be won and then forgotten. It must be removed, renewed, like soil after yielding. Good crops must be rewound like a faithful clock, exercise like a healthy muscle. Free men who forget that lose their freedom. These, and many more. These are the lessons our sons and brothers have turned to dust to teach us. And whether victory will stick and the dead be not made fools of depends on whether what we learn is held as close and constant as a catechism come summer and prosperity come winter and the wolf come ebb tide and come FL Again the Conqueror where he patrols in Germany tonight under a street light. Again GI triumphant by whose dent? The lamps are going on all over Europe. We return you to the Conqueror. There's another thing I'd like to know. What do we do now? What do we do now while the war goes on? And you yourself, men of the hour, start out upon old worlds to conquer. For though the swastika comes down and is trampled under shoes made in Massachusetts and Lancashire, though the ovens of Lublin are avenged, the war goes on and peace stands off stage waiting for a queue at the end of a Japanese drama. Meanwhile, unfinished business in Asia killing to be done among the archipelagos. The cruiser turns about and makes for wider waters. The garrisons of China check the hour. So those of us who never quite believed that war could come now hasten to believe it over. We here at home who safely tidied battles into books, spliced the counteroffensive into a feature film and went to see it together with an Andy Hardy picture at the opium. Shall we? Who followed the bloody tracks on maps and took assurances from pins that tanks had gotten through? Shall any of us celebrate beyond the compounds of this night? Look here. We hoist our microphone again 50ft higher than Everest and listen to items blowing tortoise on the west wind over unpacific oceans. Listen. You hear it? The report of young men from Nebraska dying. Yes. This night word that Kentuckians are navigating coral seas. Texas Rangers bombing pagoda country run with us westward now in pursuit of a sun last seen on this continent an hour back westward with the grain of time over an afternoon of ocean, over humid isles where the situation is in hand and into tropic skies to overtake a young American on vigil. Ahoy there. Have you heard the news? Yeah. Pretty wonderful. Run on among the Indies. Look below you now. Sunlight fretting the surface of the sea. Horizons tentative and haze. Islands a lee and the smell of vegetation mixing with ocean air in a flicker. Banks of cumulus ahead now fall behind. Leagues rush past. Noonday is caught up with straight below like beetles in a pond. Warships out of Newport News, destroyers on patrol. We plummet to the leader and through a ventilator on the port side aft, lower our microphone until it touches bottom in the engine room. Ahoy there, engineer. Have you heard the good news? We sure have. What do you think of it? 2 Now what's the go now? Hoist you up and overboard and dive with your equipment. Well, in Hand into the sea and under it. Five fathoms down we go. Steady now. Look up. The roof of ocean lifts and settles slowly. Tufts of seaweed pinned against the ceiling. This is the boundless green estate of upper ocean. Where the mine and the submersible perform. Where tin fish swim among the fauna. Unreal. The cable of the smike and light your headlamp. But we're diving deeper, past schools of angler fish and sail fins, down to zones where greenness goes to blue and blue to black. Careful now. Look sharp. Push hard against the crushing water. Can you make it out? A shape, long and slender, lying on a hummock of the bottom, almost covered by a drift of mud. Alas, yes. It's not an ancient hulk. It is a submarine, made in Wisconsin. The Scorpion, perhaps. The Amberjack. The Argonauts. We beat upon her hull. Ahoy there. Have you heard the news? Listen. Can you hear us? Listen. It's all over with the Nazis. We've beaten them. Can you make that out? You, who are these long months unreported. You who have been out of touch of any but the deep sea angels of the Lord's leviathan reserves. You who are resting, rest assured of this. Over your heads and above the sea. Victory has risen like a sun and moves west. As we tell these things to you, your brothers going down to sea in ships sail toward the settling of a scar. Here with you on this ocean bed lie fighting comrades. Men of the Cisco and the Perch, the Offtown, the Chicago and the Liscombe Bay. Each shall be vindicated in good time. The names of Hornet and of Wasp have been fitted with new stingers. And on trim battle wagons, sailors from Northampton, Houston, Helena and Lexington set out to resurrect the glory of proud sunken ships who bore those names. The Japs in conference tonight may well consider the latest news from Europe. And while they're at it, please to note the weather forecast for tomorrow. Dawn coming up like thunder. Let me tell you, Hirohito, now that Hitler's down, better buy a black kimono. Cause you're on your last go. Round, round and around Hitler's grave. Round and around we we return you to the conqueror. Yeah, the war goes on, that's understood.
- [47:18]
Martin Gable
All right.
- [47:19]
Norman Corwin
But when we finished with the Japs and the whole thing's over. Well, what then? Is it going to happen again? Soldier, when the sweet morning comes and you're muster out, when you get paid off and there'll ticket in your wallet, guarantees delivery to street and number and the faces that You've dreamed about in foxholes. You must not forget to take along your homework in the barracks bag. There's no discharge in the war. You're on probation. Only you and the places you've dreamed about and all the rest of us. Henceforward, we must do a little civil thinking every day and not pass up the front page for the sports page as we did before. Vigilance pays interest and compounds into peace. Whereas bland unconcern in the appeasing cheek draw blitzkrieg as a lightning rod attracts a thunderbolt. A little civil thinking every day. That is the homework. Yes. Shooting your mouth off against the bad appointment and the shoddy referendum. Storming the redoubts of the local shickle groover. Voting in season and demanding of your representative that he be representative. Is it going to happen again? Listen. Peace is never granted outright, is lent and leased. You can win a war today and lose a peace tomorrow. Win in the field and lose in the forum. Peace has a mind of its own and doesn't follow victory around what is two thirds finished in Germany, won't be 3/3 finished in Japan. There's a homely maxim out of London says it better. That duration's gonna be a lot longer than the war. Governor, you can make war quickly, but you make peace slowly. It takes a second to break a piece, but a long time to put it together again. There are some records in Washington say it better.
- [49:29]
Martin Gable
Congress took only eight minutes to declare war on Germany. And in the same session it took only five minutes to declare war on Japan. But between this war and the last one, the world took 25 years trying to declare peace and then couldn't do it.
- [49:48]
Norman Corwin
Listen. To win is great, to learn from winning greater. But to put the lessons learned from winning hard to work. That is the neatest trick of all. Shall we live alone this time and like it? We tried that before and it didn't work. Shall we sit with the rest of the world in common council or stand apart in splendid isolation?
- [50:07]
Martin Gable
We stood apart last time and it didn't work.
- [50:09]
Norman Corwin
Shall we merely assume it will happen again in the course of human nature and make up our minds not to make up our minds about anything really important? We tried the ostrich routine last time and it didn't work. Soldier, don't you feel in your bones that we can keep it from happening again? That we're smarter now we've learned some lessons and stronger now we've made some friends? For has it not been shown what three united peoples can accomplish? Wonder Staggering the naked mind we came from behind and we came up fast.
- [50:38]
Martin Gable
We got together and spotted them aces in spades and beat him at their own game.
- [50:42]
Norman Corwin
Showed them how to pull off what Napoleon and Hitler never even dared to.
- [50:45]
Martin Gable
Try Invasion across the Channel Showed him how to flank a flank and blitz a blitz Showed him that when you get together and conquer it works out better than divide and conquer.
- [50:54]
Norman Corwin
Show them how to wage a war and work and plan and sing songs all at once. We're going to tell the postman next time he comes around that Mr. Hitler's new address. This is the Berlin Berrian ground Round and around Hitler's grave Round and around we go Gonna lay that fell down he won't get up no more Adolf Hitler started hot he was mighty big and bold but the Allies slapped him down so hard he caught his death of cold Round and around Hitler grave Round and round he gonna lay the fe down he won't get up no more Round and around Hitler's grave Round and around we gonna lay the fur down the singing fades, the celebrants go home. The bowl is drained and emptied and the toasts are drunk. The guns are still, the tank's garaged, the plane rests in the hangar. Only the night remains in the armed camps. A boy with questions on his mind turns on his cot in the barracks, stares at the ceiling, says to himself, I hope to God it's not going to happen again.
- [52:13]
Martin Gable
I hope they plan better this time.
- [52:16]
Norman Corwin
Outside, the dew of morning glistens like a hope, and light of day is just beyond the local curve of earth. The plan gets ready for tomorrow. Tomorrow is ready for the plan. Lord God of trajectory and blasts, whose terrible sword has laid open the serpent poor so it withers in the sun for the just to see. Sheathe now the swift avenging blade with the names of nations writ on it and assist in the preparation of the plowshare. Lord God of fresh bread and tranquil mornings, who walks in the circuit of heaven among the worthy, deliver notice to the fallen young men. The tokens of orange juice and a whole egg appear now before the hungry children. That night again falls cooling on the earth as quietly as when it leaves your hand that freedom hath withstood the tyrant like a mortar in a hostile sea, and that the soul of man is surely a sacrifice Vastopol which goes down hard and leaps from ruins quickly. Lord God of the topcoat and the living wage, who has furred the fox against the time of winter and stored provender of bees in summer's brightest places do bring sweet influences to bear upon this assembly line. Accept the smoke of the mill town among the accredited clouds of the sky. Fend from the wind with a house and a hedge him whom you made in your image, and permit him to pick up the tree and the flock that he may eat today without fear of tomorrow and clothe himself with dignity in December. Lord God of test tube and blueprints, who jointed molecules of dust and shook them till their name was Adam, who taught worms and stars how they could live together, Appear now among the parliaments of conquerors and give instruction to their schemes. Measure out new liberties, so none shall suffer for his father's color or the praeto of his choice. Post proofs that brotherhood is not so wild a dream as those who profit by postponing it pretend, Sit at the treaty table and convoy the hopes of little peoples through expected straits and press into the final seal a sign that peace will come for longer than posterity. As can see ahead, that man unto his fellow man shall be a friend forever. You have been listening to Columbia's presentation of On a Note of Triumph, a special broadcast written, directed and produced by Norman Corwin for the Day of Victory in Europe. Martin Gable starred as narrator. The musical score was composed by Bernard Herman and conducted by Lud Gleskin. The text of tonight's broadcast will be for sale at bookstores throughout the country. This is cbs, the Columbia Broadcasting System.