 The Cavalcade of America, sponsored by the E.I. DuPont Dinamoys and Company, maker of better things for better living through chemistry, presents Lifetide, starring Walter Pigeon, with Walter Houston as our commentator. Before we begin our play this evening, may we remind you that the best time of the year for redecoration of your home is in the fall. And the paint you will like to use is DuPont's speedy wall finish. It covers dingy wallpaper and most other wall surfaces in one coat. It comes in 11 rich pastel colors. Although speedy is an oil paint, it thins with water and can be applied with brush or roller. It dries within an hour, free of brush marks. For your fall home decoration, use speed easy. Its name tells the story. Speed easy, made by DuPont. Before turning tonight's program over to Cavalcade's commentator, Walter Houston, may I remind you that in weeks to come, DuPont will present many great broadcasts with leading stars from stage and screen. Among those who will be Cavalcade's guests are Edward G. Robinson, Bob Hope, Jerry Cologne, Francis Langford, Clark Gable, and many others. And now Cavalcade's commentator, Walter Houston. This evening you are going to hear my good friend Walter Pigeon as Dr. Norman Bethune. A man I am frank to admit I knew too little about until the war came. In thinking about this evening's Cavalcade, which is called Lifetide, I tried to search out of its particular meaning to me. A meaning I now want to pass on to you. Bethune was a man with a great heart. Because he was a scientist as well, hundreds of thousands of hearts are beating tonight. That otherwise might have been still forever. A fighter as well as a scientist. Norman Bethune's battle was waged not in a laboratory, but where a man were waging the endless struggle, which is the price of freedom and human dignity. It was in Spain and in China that he originated the idea of a mobile field blood bank, an idea which has been developed and widely used so that it is now making precious plasma available to those wounded on every fund. Listen to the story of Dr. Norman Bethune, as he is portrayed by Walter Pigeon in Lifetide, written by Robert Talman for the Cavalcade of America. Lifetide. Listen. That sound is the first and last sound in your memory. It is the falsetting of the human heart. In it, like the tides of the sea, the life flood of all humanity ebbs and flows. Remember that sound as we bring you this chronicle of a man of our time who touched the fountain head of that most ancient and sacred of human mysteries, blood of the living and blood of the fallen, inseparably fused in his legacy to us, the blood bank, that lifetide of the human race. Lifetide. Sometimes it is a fevered and irregular pulse, lifetide of a man rested on a hospital bed. One of four men, a New Englander, a Southerner, a Canadian and a Chinese, all doctors, all dying of the same disease, tuberculosis. Norman Bethune was the Canadian. Well, gentlemen, how about it? We're all doctors. What's the prognosis? How and when shall we die? How about you, Fisher? Well, this is the summer of 1926. I shall probably drop dead in Boston in the winter of 1934 while writing a prescription for a man with nervous indigestion. Lim. I shall die in China. China will be fighting for her life. I hope I will die fighting for her. And you, Bethune? Well, as for me, I've done all I'm likely to. Loved a beautiful woman and made her my wife. Wanted a career in surgery and did better than I expected. I won't stay here, but I won't go back to that life. Oh, I will probably die out west somewhere, Tucson. Likely, let's say 1932. And I shan't be sorry to go. Everything from now on would be an anti-climax anyway. Lifetide. The pulse quickens, but the pace is more even. This is the pulse of sudden resolution. Death tugs at him. In a moment, the tide will turn and slow. Resolution. I want, I want. He did not even know what it was he wanted. Maybe I could write a poem, paint a picture, something like that. I've got to do something before I go out. I've got to. The patients take time. Somehow, anyhow, time to accomplish something. He rises from sick bed, walks over to the main building in the sanatorium. I apologize to you gentlemen for interrupting what is undoubtedly a very important staff meeting, but I have decided to appoint myself the doctor in charge of my own case. That is your privilege? Dr. Bethul, furthermore, I ask your permission to perform a surgical operation on myself. I will require at least one assistant and full equipment for artificial pneumothorax. Well, gentlemen, we've had bad results with that operation, Dr. Bethul. And as for your idea of piercing through your own chest cavity... What's the difference whether it's mine or somebody else's? Well, gentlemen, Dr. Bethul is willing to undertake it entirely at his own risk. Gentlemen, I am not only willing, I welcome the risk. Lifetide. The force is strong and exultant. His health improved by his own skillful surgery. Norman Bethul has emerged from the shadows. He is a chief surgeon of Sacred Heart Hospital now in Montreal. Depression years. So many ill, so many sick at heart. 1935, the worst of all. So many needing him. Doctor, tell me, the eye is a chance for my little girl. Already we lost one, and now the doctor at the clinic says I can never have another. Ah, I see. Well, there is one thing we could try. It's never been done in this country. Certainly never on a child of ten, but we could try. Please try, Doctor. Please do. We will have to remove one of her lungs altogether. No. It's a very unusual and dangerous operation. I must warn you in advance. How much? How much will it cost, Doctor? If I can give your child back to you alive and well. That's all the payment I want. Nurse. Nurse. Yes, Doctor? The silver clips quickly. There's more gauze. Here, Doctor. Read the blood pressure. It's fallen another ten points. Pulse. Well? 32. That settles it. It can't go on. Get the patient ready for a transfusion. But, Doctor... Hurry up, we've no time to lose. But, Doctor, we couldn't find any of the right blood type. You mean to tell me I'm going to lose a patient because some fool couldn't arrange a simple transfusion? Well, there's no way to force people to volunteer as blood donors, Doctor Bisson. Oh, I suppose not. Somebody else should finish this job. I bet type zero blood. Nurse. Yes, Doctor? Get a sterile container. I'll take a liter of my blood and transfuse it into the patient while it's still warm. Pulse is nearly normal now, Doctor. Good. Hooks, please. Retractors. Doctor Bisson, let me... You're too weak. It's all right, Nurse. I'll be steady enough when the real job begins. She's coming around now, Doctor. Good. Good. Was it big? Did you have fun there, Yvette? The doctor brought it, Yvette. I ever saw... She's yours, Yvette. Take good care of her, won't you? She just came out of the hospital herself. The child is well. It was a very beautiful operation. I felt very happy doing it. Yes, I will sleep tonight. Wife tied. Sometimes it is a fanatic pulse. The heartbeat of a fear-crazed animal. Heartbeat of a mob. Bethune did not sleep that night. That night in October 1935, through the streets of Montreal, men with swastika armbands surged in the vanguard of a mob of hoodlums. Sharp windows were broken, innocent people set upon and beaten. That night, Bethune witnessed the first blow by the Nazi's fifth column in North America. Let's see, old Joe Stringerman. Please, my father's done nothing. Why don't you let us alone? A quiet Jewish will give you some of the same. But he's old, his heart is weak, he can't stand. All right, then let him off easy. Only ten licks with a rubber hose. One, two. Hold him up, hold him up, make him stand on his feet. What's going on here? What are you doing to this man? Who are you? Bethune is my name, I'm a doctor. Arian or non-Arian? I come from a race you wouldn't understand. I'm a Scott. We're violent and unstable. We'd as soon kill a man like you as look at you. Now go home and take off those monkey suits before I beat your brains out with this walking stick. Lifetime, a mounting pulse of anger, tidal wave crashing over the breakwater. I tell you, the sickness of the world isn't in these hospital wards. It's out there in the streets. It draws the blood out of men's veins and leaves them there to die. Blood. That's what gives life and that's what they hate. They've smelled blood now and they'll not stop till they've spilled plenty of it. We must fight them wherever they strike. They struck in Spain. Norman Bethune went there to fight as a doctor. He found Madrid in ruins. Ambulances needed at once, desperately. He drove back to Paris to see what could be done, but ambulances cost money. Too much money. Maybe his friends at home could help. They didn't. This ambulance makes pretty good time for a jalapé. Yeah. We should be in Madrid before dark. Say, do you mind drawing up here a minute? I'd like to get a picture of that old man with the donkey. Okay. Make it quick, though, will you? I get nervous on this road. Oh, this won't take a moment. Hola, señor. Un momentito. Por favor. Vengo a que pasar muy rápido. Ya me voy. He wouldn't even stop. Well, get in. Let's get going. Wait a minute. Listen. Planes. German dive bombers. What are they up to? There's no military or any other kind of target around here. There's something in the valley over there. Come on, let's have a look. If I didn't see it with my own eyes, but, though, I'd never believe it. Children with bloodstained rags wrapped around their arms and legs. Children without shoes, their feet swollen to twice their size, crying hopelessly from pain, hunger and fatigue. 200 kilometers of misery. We moved as many as we could. We might have spared ourselves the anguish, for most of them were bombed in almerie again that night. We worked as long as we could by the orange glare of the burning buildings. In the darkness, the moans of the wounded children, the agonized mothers, and the cursing of the men rose higher and higher to a pitch of intolerable intensity. One's body felt as heavy as the dead themselves, but empty and hollow. And in one's brain, burned a bright flame of hate for the enemy that had done this thing. We're listening to Walter Pigeon, as Dr. Norman Bethune in Lifetime on The Cavalcade of America, sponsored by E.I. DuPont Dinamoison Company, for better things for better living through chemistry. Your Cavalcade commentator is Walter Houston. Lifetime. Story of Dr. Norman Bethune, inventor of the Mobile Field Blood Bank. Being used as you hear these words to save precious American lives, wherever the men and women of our armed forces fight the battle against oppression. Almost motionless sometimes before its turning. War in Spain, 1937. Between offensives, Norman Bethune is preparing glass jars of precious blood plasma to be moved up to sectors where the attack is to take place. Bethune and an elderly Spanish doctor have worked far into the night. They work in silence until... Fool, idiot, look what you've done. Don't you know how valuable that stuff is? I... I'm sorry, Dr. Howard. Dr. Bethune, he did not wish to do this. You are being unkind. I know what I want to say to him. I'm sorry, Dr. Bethune. Since I am no good here, I will go and join my brothers on the battlefield. I have no bitterness, doctor. I am grateful for what you are doing for Spain. Goodbye. Go after him. Tell him I apologize for my stupid, ill-tempered remarks. I'm trying to blame my own failure on somebody else. Failure, doctor? I know I'm not doing this job properly. We ought to be sending blood right up to the front in refrigerated containers. But we haven't enough plasma on hand. I've been afraid to risk what we have out there on the line of fire. Doctor, if that is all that is worrying you, worrying no more, all Spain will give blood. You shall have all you need. My blood bank is a success. Being able to transfuse casualties in the front lines has saved a great many lives. I know that the final battle will never be lost. Blood of the living will sustain the fallen. And it will be given freely and with love. This thought is with me as I leave for China. Dr. Bethune, what to China? Carrying on the work he'd started in Spain. Friends and comrades of China, thousands of your soldiers have fallen fighting for you. They will live to fight again if you will do one thing for them. Give them a pint of your blood. Who will be the first to volunteer? I'm afraid it is hopeless, doctor. What's the matter? Didn't they understand what I was saying? Yes, they understood. But they are afraid to give their blood. Bring one of the patients up here. The worst one. Go ahead, orderly. You heard what the doctor said. Yes, commandant. I go to Old Bay. Nurse, hand me that alcohol and sterile needle. Here, doctor. Careful there. Careful. Set the stretcher down gently. That's it. Good. Now then, nurse, help me here, will you? You are going to transfuse the patient yourself, doctor? Yes. All of them if necessary. As Norman Bethune lay down beside the dying Chinese soldier, and the lifetime began to flow from his veins into the wounded man's body, the little circle of peasants watched in dismay. Then they witnessed a miracle. The man they thought dead moved, sat up. What happened? I'm home again. These are people of my village. Yes. These are your people. But they would not give a little blood to save your life. What kind of people are you anyway? Look, he lives. Orderly, bring up another of the wounded men. The sickest one. Doctor, I am very old, and maybe the blood is dried up in my veins. But I would like to give. Do not put woman's blood in a soldier. Let me. I am strong. I would give. Three o'clock in the morning, December, North China, near Linxiu with the Eighth Route Army, mud walls, mud floor, mud bed, white paper windows, smell of blood and chloroform, cold men with wounds. Is this one alive? He lives technically speaking. He is alive. Give him saline intravenously. Perhaps the innumerable tiny cells of his body will remember. They may remember the hot, salty sea, their ancestral home, their first food. With the memory of a million years, they may remember other tides, other oceans, and life being born of the sea and the sun. And this one? Will he run along the road beside his mule at another harvest with cries of happiness? No. That one will never run again. But don't pity him. Pity would diminish his sacrifice. He did this without sentimentality or China. Four Japanese prisoners cut away that bloodstained uniform, lay him beside the others. There they are. Twenty operations tonight, 16 heroes and four enemies. Blood separated them. Blood has brought them together. Administrator of the anesthetic, please. Gloves, nurse. Dr. Bateson, there is no anesthetic. Not even chloroform? Not even chloroform. Are you a game soldier? I... I will not feel it at all. I promise you, doctor, if you can make me well, so I can fight the game. All right. Gloves. Here, doctor. Oh, throw them away. Look at the holes in them. What a joke. I'll operate without Gloves. Doctor, you will excuse me, but do you think you ought to? There is a cut in your finger there in this infection. I know what I'm doing, but before I begin... Orderly! Yes, Dr. Bateson? Go to your commanding officer. Tell him to contact China Aid Council in New York and arrange transportation for me back to the capital. I'm going home to America. You are leaving us, Dr. Bateson? I must. Americans have got to be made to realize that China is fighting the first battle of our war. If it's too bad, you must go, doctor. You know what the commandant says to the men when he starts an offensive? What's that? You will not think it disrespectful, if I tell you? Of course not. The commandant says, you have your marching orders. Attack. Bateson is here to take care of the wounded. He says that, does he? Hmm. Scalpel nurse. Norman Bateson died that night of an infection caused by operating without a 15 cent pair of rubber glands. Thank you, Walter Bateson. Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Norman Bateson gave his great heart for our freedom. Can we in the same cause give less than a little of our blood to the American Red Cross blood bank? Here is Gaine Whitman speaking for the DuPont Company with a story about a typical American girl in her nylon stockings and some of the many interesting ways nylon is serving in the war. On May 15, 1940, a typical American girl walked into a store and bought a pair of stockings made of a new material. A new material with a new name, nylon. The next day she wore them and that night she washed them. There she made a surprising discovery. Less than half an hour after she washed her new nylon stockings, she found they were dry. Men trying out their first nylon fishing lines too found they didn't soak up water and dried in a few minutes. People using their first toothbrushes with nylon bristles found they never grew soggy because nylon sheds water so easily. No one dreamed then that nylon's resistance to water would one day mean a great deal to the comfort and health of American soldiers fighting in faraway tropical jungles. But today the army finds nylon invaluable in jungle warfare, keeping dry as the first rule of health in the jungle. The first hammocks issued to jungle troops were soon eaten by termites. Their mosquito nets mildewed, ripped and fell to pieces. Nylon hammocks and nets stand the hot moist climate. Nylon ponchos mean that a soldier carries four pounds less weight, so nylon ponchos have replaced cotton ponchos and raincoats, serving not only as raincoats but as shelter tents, foxhole covers and waterproof bedding rolls. Nylon shoelaces are now standard equipment. Shoelaces made of other materials rotted quickly in the moist steaming air of the tropics. But nylon retains its strength and keeps a man from losing his jungle boots in swamps and mud holes. All of the toothbrushes issued to jungle troops have nylon bristles. Nylon headnets protect soldiers from the voracious tropical insects. Four years ago, when a pretty girl bought her first pair of nylon stockings, she found that they dried only a few minutes after she washed them. Today, nylon's ability to dry quickly, plus its great strength, roughness and long life adds to the health, comfort and fighting efficiency of American soldiers slugging through the jungles ever nearer and nearer to Japan. Nylon is only one of many of the DuPont Company's better things for better living through chemistry. And here is Cavalcade's commentator, Walter Houston. One better cold night nearly 200 years ago, by the light of a flickering candle and with a drum head or a desk, the man dipped quill into ink and wrote these words. These are the times that try men's souls. You've heard them before, I know. Men have repeated them in times of great struggle, finding comfort and guidance in the preservation of freedom. They were written by a great patriot, Thomas Paine. And the plain, homely men of 1776, realizing their full meaning, fought on to win the liberty we enjoy today. We want you to rediscover these words with us next week, and they will be spoken again on Cavalcade. Our star is one of your favorite actors, Edward G. Robinson. The play in which you will portray Tom Paine is called The Voice on the Stairs. Thank you. Thank you, Walter Houston. Next Wednesday, September 27th, is Victory Fleet Day, the third birthday of America's hard-hitting Johnny on the Spot wartime merchant fleet. Victory Fleet Day will honor the private shipping companies of the U.S., which under control of the war shipping administration, operate the great fleets made up of three-and-a-half thousand liberty ships, tankers, and other vessels, which deliver the vital supplies of war to our fighting men. Cavalcade joins with all America in saluting the experienced, capable private managements, which are so successfully operating our vessels, which are supervising the unbelievably intricate and difficult loading and unloading of the millions of tons of cargoes needed to wage this total war. Remember, in weeks to come, Cavalcade will bring you exciting dramas with the most famous of Hollywood stars, Bob Hope, Jerry Colonna, Francis Langford, Clark Gable, and many others. Walter Pigeon, star of tonight's performance, appeared through the courtesy of MGM, in whose production, Mrs. Parkington, he will soon be seen. For materials upon which tonight's play was based, Cavalcade thanks the 20th Century Fox Film Corporation for permission to use material from the biography, The Story of Norman Bethune, by Ted Allen, to be published next spring by Little Brown & Company. Musical score of tonight's production was arranged and conducted by Robert Ambruster. Next week, Voice on the Stairs, starring Edward G. Robinson, brought to you on the Cavalcade of America by E.I. DuPont Dinamours & Company of Wilmington, Delaware. Until next Monday evening, thank you, and good night.