The Pittsburgh Press (May 18, 1945)
I DARE SAY —
Vengeance is Jehovah’s
By Florence Fisher Parry
This hotel housekeeper was a German woman. She had been here only a few years. All her people, those who were left, are still in Germany. She is a typical German hausfrau in appearance and behavior, very respectful and obedient to those above her, unsparing and demanding of those under her.
Before this war, she would have been accepted anywhere in America as a worthy and desirable citizen, her industry and honesty would have commanded respect and friendliness. She would have stood for all the virtues if not the graces.
I saw this woman on V-E Day in New York. She looked beaten. Shame, insecurity and even fear stabbed from her eyes. You felt that she would have liked nothing better than to disappear, sink into the ground and be obliterated. For our new regard, yes, she felt it, and she felt it aright. Our regard had changed. She was suspect. However innocent, however loyal to this land of refuge, however admirable a citizen she might prove to be; she was and would be suspect now and always.
Thus are the sins of a people visited upon its separate members. Thus will the German people pay wherever in this world they strive to live down the ignominy of their outcast country.
New philosophy needed
Yet even as I write these words, I am suspicious of the sentiments that animated me to set them down. I tell myself to beware. This is the very frame of mind which we are warned to mistrust in ourselves, this is the very soft spot in our natures that our enemies are hoping will first excuse, and then redeem them, and then provide them weapons with which to rise and conquer again.
Here then is example of one of the saddest visitations that this war has wrought upon the souls of men. In place of confidence, we must develop mistrust.
This is going to be the hardest task in which the American character ever has set self. Already in occupied Germany the strict rule against fraternizing with civilians has had to be rescinded. Our G.I.’s cannot hold out against pretty girls, the old women and the little children, and we, we here at home, untouched by aught but a vicarious penalty will be easy prey to indoctrination by those who would have us forget the crimes of Germany.
I call myself a realist in regard to what our attitude must be; I make splendid resolves to be on guard impervious to the subtle soft persuasion of the heart. But I am frightened at my own spiritual waverings. And if I secretly mistrust myself knowing that I would be the first to yield to a child’s helplessness, to an old woman’s importunings, then what of those who are still easier prey to the insidious machinations of the German mind and intent?
Incurable
The other day a motion picture exhibitor was standing at the exit of his theater when a young civilian came up to him and leered, “Well, I have just seen those touted atrocity pictures. Hollywood did a pretty good job this time, didn’t it?”
“What do you mean?” said my friend. “Don’t you believe it’s genuine, what you just saw?”
“Of course not!” shrugged the civilian. “You overdid it this time, sure enough!”
What are we going to do with people like that? How many are there? How many will there be in one year, five, 10, 20? We still don’t grasp the danger, we seem incapable of believing the capacity for evil that people have. Our only hope is to open our minds to admit acceptance of the implacable laws of Nature; the laws of Cause and Effect; the laws of Crime and Punishment; the old Jehovah’s laws of the sins being visited on the children “even to the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me.”
Look, in the skies course monstrous metal birds, in defiance of the law of gravity. But no, there’s where our thinking fools us. Flying is not defiance to, but in scientific accord with, the law of gravity. Thus, it must be now with our evil foes, reduced at last!
The wrath of Jehovah has descended on them, and who shall say it, nay!