The Pittsburgh Press (January 31, 1944)
I DARE SAY —
Peculiarly American
By Florence Fisher Parry
Don’t ask me what makes us what we are; what sets us apart from all other creeds of men; what makes you able to spot an American anywhere on earth.
It couldn’t have been the elements. It couldn’t have been the land. They say it’s because we’re a democracy; but there have been other democracies and they worked for a while and then were replaced by tyranny again.
It can’t be heredity. We’re just a few hundred years old, not time enough to shape our features into a recognizable anatomical mold. Most of us are only a couple of generations removed from other lands, and there have been mixtures and amalgamations of peoples since time began.
What makes us, US? What makes us We, the People? What makes us so very, very different from any of our Allies? What is there about us that confounds our enemy, makes it impossible for him ever to gauge our temper?
The other morning a terrible piece of news crashed through the press, over the ether: the hideous story of Bataan’s men and the horrible sadism of their torturers. And something moved in us that frightened us all: a terrible spasm of hate and revenge, an emotion we’d hardly known we possessed. And I dare say each one of us was astonished at our own capacity to hate with real ferocity, with terrible vengeance in our maddened souls.
Don’t Tread on Me!
That’s us. The American Republic.
Don’t Tread on Me!
This has been a horrible war, God knows. Would that there had been some other honest way. But it has served strange ends. It has brought strange revelations. And one of these revelations is, I think, our own true self-appraisal. We know our mettle now. We know who is our enemy. We shall never be naïve or credulous again. That curious trait – so unexpected, so unlooked for, so believed by our enemies – that trait has hissed its warning at last.
Don’t Tread on Me!
For as a bird or reptile puts on camouflage the better to deceive its natural enemy, so does our breed in America seem to delight in fooling those who’d crowd us.
We have strange camouflages. They serve as a fine decoy. For example, I went over to Syria Mosque to hear and see a young man, a composer, who lately has been assisting Artur Rodziński conduct the New York Philharmonic: Leonard Bernstein. He was to conduct, for the first time before an audience, his own symphony, Jeremiah.
You would have sworn, sitting there in that huge audience, that there was not a vestige in our chemistry of that strange deadliness – Don’t Tread on Me. We were innocents. We were children at a festival. Except for the few technically-wise musicians in the audience, who were busily appraising the talents of our young composer, we were not very different from the audiences that crowd to hear the hurt, loosely strung, haunting voice of Frank Sinatra.
The decoy
Indeed, this young and gifted composer seemed to evoke a strangely similar reaction from his lady listeners; for after the concert the stage and corridors were swarmed with autograph seekers, and flushed and foolish maidens waited for just the sight of the young, tense, tired face of this new idol, and snatched his autograph.
It was a curious demonstration; disturbing, inconsistent. It would have served our enemies, had they been present, a curious decoy. For looking on at this unbridled demonstration, these silly girls, these tallow-skinned young men, these flushed and florid matrons, a son of the Rising Sun and of the Swastika could think perhaps that he could afford to smile at these undisciplined and naïve people who swoon with equal readiness at a Sinatra or a Leonard Bernstein. These same enemies could go to one of our football games or into one of our jive haunts or stand sinisterly smiling at any one of our nightspot bars, and think that they were sizing up the temper of America.
Or rather, I might say, this could have happened two, three years ago. Not now. The squealing little Sinatra fan of yesterday is suddenly the equal, in sacrifice and stamina, of any pioneer woman of our covered wagon days. These tallow youths enveloped in those sport coats pouring a drink from their flasks in the stadium, are those same soldiers who made the landings at Tarawa and Salerno, and dropped the blockbuster upon its target in Berlin.
Don’t Tread on Me.
O dying Yankees on Bataan, raise up your heads and listen to the hiss, peculiarly American in its deadly warning. Peculiarly American, Tōjō and Adolf.
Peculiarly US.