I DARE SAY —
Parrygraphs
By Florence Fisher Parry
The great industrialists are back at work. The captains of industry, the giants among men – they are back at it again, grinding out the great pattern of America, as they always have before in a crisis, as they always will.
Free enterprise cannot die in America. We need its leaders too much, when the crisis comes.
We are confident now that they are back on their old job. Things will hum now, for they are minding their own business, their familiar business of production, production. So that this land of theirs will keep free.
How far away the fond delusion that we could play at war, encased and safe!
If you do not remember so far back, get out your magazines of a few months ago. Read the ads. Read the contents. Look at the news pictures. You could feel yourself a visitor from Mars or Jupiter. How COULD we have led such a delusory life?
Here is that magnificent advertising medium. Fortune, certainly the most far-sighted as well as the most beautiful of all the magazines. Yet in its December issue its pages are devoted to such sentiments as:
General Motors’ bland assumption that:
…as the national defense program progresses, the importance of the auto dealer to his local community is becoming increasingly apparent.
No remote thought there, that as the magazine was delivered to its waiting subscribers, the order to stop manufacturing pleasure cars already had been given!
The Matson Line assures us that to cross in one of her vessels to Hawaii and the South Seas is:
…the most pleasant voyage in the world!
The most dated of all, however, is the “Fortune Survey” of DECEMBER. It discloses that just before Pearl Harbor, 40% of our whole populations was against our entering the war on any basis.
When we change, we change fast – in America!
Some books
If you are an anxious mother confused and helpless in the rearing of your children, and simply don’t know what to do about the problems of the movies, the comics and the radio, as they touch young minds and habits, you might look into a wise little volume called What Books for Children, by Josette Frank.
Those of us who heard Vincent Sheean say that Churchill is no strategist, might look into Philip Guedalla’s Mr. Churchill, which delineates him as a very military-minded man indeed.
Besides, this interesting biography reveals a little-known fact: his teacher, when he was a very little boy, called him:
…the naughtiest small boy in the world.
No wonder he grew up to be about the most fetching man in contemporary history.
My, oh my, but we’re going to have a lot of war films! And that suits this corner down to the ground. Just listen to these titles. The Bugle Blows, Sergeant York, Captains of the Clouds, Torpedo Boat, The Fleet’s In, Salute to Courage, Fly By Night, Treat 'Em Rough, This Above All, Target for Tonight, A Yank on the Burma Road, Tanks a Million, Swing It Soldier, Stick to Your Guns, Steel Against the Sky, Saboteur, Parachute Battalion, Pacific Blackout, Navy Blues, Keep 'Em Flying, Joan of Paris, The Invaders, International Squadron, Come On, Danger, Canal Zone, Call Out the Marines, All Through the Night.
Will you, dear moviegoers, make know yp our neighborhood theater manager. AND your downtown theater manager, how you feel about the war news in the newsreels? Surely I am not mistaken in believing that most people, when they go to the movies in wartime, expect to see good newsreels of the war. Indeed, there are many persons I know who are making a practice of going to the movies far oftener than they ever did before, simply because they feel that they can’t afford to miss the fine newsreels of the war on all fronts.
Yet it is a fact that the motion picture theater managers have the idea that we don’t WANT to be reminded of the war when we go to the movies.
If they were told by dispersing audiences that the war news IS acceptable, they would be convinced that they are doing us no kindness when they omit to show the very part of the program many of us have come purposely to see.
Maps
One chance this World War already has made is our whole concept of maps. The old distracted GLOBE is coming back into its own. For 50 years, we have been conditioned against all true concepts of the world’s area, because of the wretched way that geography has been taught in our schools. Even today, with Japan spreading her net over half the world, it seems impossible to convince the rank and file of the magnitude of her accomplishments, and the real danger of our position in this war.
It hasn’t come from indifference, soft living, isolationism, or any of these purported weaknesses, nearly so much as from the fact that we have been conditioned wrong from the first. We didn’t learn GEOGRAPHY the right way. Today we’re being given our first lesson in it. A costly, tragic lesson, learned almost too late.
The child of the future can be counted upon to know his world globe, if nothing else in the whole school program. At least let us hope so.
