I DARE SAY —
Maud Muller – so what?
By Florence Fisher Parry
Yes, yes, I know. It was NOT Tennyson who penned that awful couplet ending in “it might have been.” I have heard of my error agane and agane and agane. I have tried to blame it on the election, on something I ate, on being cursed with the kind of mind that is forever calling my son Frederic when his name is David, and my brother David when his name is Frederic. Sorry, sorry, sorry. When you write for a newspaper, you’re supposed to write it right.
Once when I first started writing a column, I nearly lost my job because, when the editor called me into his presence to tell me that I had made the appalling mistake of calling Florence Vidor Florence Fisher, I asked him what difference that made; everyone would know I didn’t mean me.
“You make ships only about the things you know best,” I tried to tell him. And I still am of the same mind. Accurate people are never quite sure of their ground. They never take the risk of letting their minds slip. into neutral, they’re always in gear.
That’s the only fault I could scrape up to find with Mr. Dewey. He is ALWAYS so doggone accurate. Of course, this country could DO with a little accuracy… but don’t let’s get on THAT subject today. It’s Election Day as I write these scrambled words and if I implied yesterday that Tennyson wrote Maud Muller, I’m apt to put ANYTHING in this column today! One comforting thing is that it won’t be read – who’s going to see, think, LIVE anything but the Returns!
Fond delusion
Now already the easygoing are beginning to tell us that never mind who wins, this election and its issues will slide off our united backs like water off a duck’s back, and that we’ll be just one good-natured family again, telling each other that we hadn’t meant what we said, we were just talking.
I say such a loose attitude is an insult to Americans. If we can’t keep on believing TODAY what we believed YESTERDAY, what kind of folks are we anyway? If we can’t fight and pray today for the things we fought and prayed about yesterday, what kind of souls have we, say?
I saw a woman voting today at 7:00 a.m. She was on her way to her war work – Nurses aide in one of the hospitals. I saw another a few minutes later who had just got word that her only son has been killed. She was on her way to the Blood Bank – where she hasn’t lost an hour since the news came that her only child was dead.
These women worked hard campaigning. Nothing was too much for them, I saw men, too, at the polls this morning who had been putting their whole might into this campaign. Now, these people happened to believe as I believe.
And at the polls I saw those on the OTHER side who had worked like zealots, with an equal drive, purpose, belief. You can’t tell me that after today these men and women are all going to be in sweet accord with one another!
We are a wonderful people! We pull together in war. In crisis we are one. Our Armed Forces’ performance has been the astonishment of the world. But to assume that in order to achieve this teamwork we all laid aside – or will again – the deep political fundamental issues which electrified this campaign, is crazy. We all kept on thinking the same thoughts, and we will continue to do so.
The same as ever
Now they say this has been a dirty campaign, contemptible, shameful, low. I don’t think so, when you consider how, ever since the war began, the people of this country have been doing their almighty best to put their political detestations aside for the sake of the greater stakes this war confronted us with.
This campaign was a perfectly natural breaking out on both sides, and as healthy as hives.
Oh, yes, there has been campaign oratory; the professional politicians have had a great time. But they’re not the American people; they’re not the rank and file.
We, the people, are a different breed. God keep us faithful to our land, our flag, and the dreams that went into its making!