 Starring Charles Lawton in The Prophet Without Honor, an original radio play on the cavalcade of America sponsored by the DuPont Company. A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country. So goes the ancient saying. Here in our own America in this very century they lived a prophet. 33 years ago Homer Lee warned his countrymen that Japan someday would attack Pearl Harbor by surprise. He prophesied in infinite detail the war that would follow and left to us his warning in his book Valor of Ignorance. Our play written by Robert Tallman tells his story. DuPont, maker of better things for better living through chemistry presents Charles Lawton in the role of Homer Lee on the cavalcade of America. China, the year 1900. In Beijing, ancient capital city of the Manchun, a great event is being solemnized. The dragon empress, red monarch over 400 million souls, is making her annual pilgrimage into the outside world, born high on a jewel pelanquin. A lone sentry standing guard at a tall gate in the purple wall outside the forbidden city, awaits her return. Toward him limps a pale gray eyed hunchback in American dress, quietly the little cripple addresses the sentry. Only one man guarding the gates of the forbidden city? The old Tigris must be very sure of herself. She is the daughter of heaven, my friend, the most serenely wise one in all the world. Yes. Do you really believe that? I value my head. She is cruel and corrupt, this old empress of yours. How long will China tolerate her? Until one comes who is wise and steadfast and strong, my friend. Very strong. Strong? Look, Captain, your empress approaches. Look at her face. No, no, you must go, she will question me. Look at her face. What do you see in it, huh? Is there anything divine in that face, my friend? It's the face of a little tempered old Hanigan. And now look at it as it comes near, it's a frightened face. And it's a guilty face. Now you cannot stand here. I've come a long way to stand here at this moment, my friend. I wanted to have a good look at this dragon empress of whom 400 million good people are afraid. Sentry, sentry. Yes, Majesty. You see, she's angered at your presence. Go now, quickly. What is the meaning of this sentry? Your Majesty. A pale one in the dress of the foreign devils standing at the sacred gates. Sentry does your service, oh, serenely wise one. He wishes you'd have a lucky day. Oh, I had not noticed. It is a humped one. Yes. Yes, but it's good luck. That is very lucky. And you speak the Manchu tongue. I have studied many of the dialects of China, your Majesty. Then you are a scholar. Tell me your name. My own country in America. I am called Homer Lee. In China, I shall be called Wang Ying. Wang Ying. Don't you want to touch the back of my neck for luck, your Majesty? No. No. Quickly. Open the gates wide. Carry me to the palace at once. All of it. Now, close the gates quickly. Lock them. Lock them, Mr. King. What did you say to the old she-devil fair one? I told him my name in China would be Wang Ying. Wang Ying. That is the name of the dwarf tiger. He who overthrew the first of China's tyrants. Precisely. But I hope to overthrow China's last tyrant, my friend. Then you are one of us. Hope to be. But first I've got to get inside that gate. I must see the old dragon's prime minister. All right. I dare not help you. My head would roll in the dirt before morning. Wouldn't it be more honorable to lose it in the cause of your people's liberty than to have it locked up some morning because the old lady is in a bad temper? Very well. Come back an hour after sunset for the changing of the guard. Thank you. I'll see if you get inside the walls. And then I'm sold of your ancestors be with you. Wang Ying. And with China, my friend. Yes. You are a very brave man, Mr. Li, to come inside these walls. Unbidden. Oh, valor is a relative thing, Mr. Prime Minister. Why are you so certain that I would not betray your presence here to the Empress? Well, to do so might arouse her suspicions of you. Your head might roll in the dirt with mine, Dr. Carl. You understand the mind you get it very well, Mr. Li. Tell me, what brings you a scholar so far from home? I come to offer you my services. In what capacity? I want you to place me in command of an army. It needn't be a large force, one or two divisions will be sufficient. That is a rather ambitious plan for a man of your years, Mr. Li. Why? And the same age Napoleon was at Rivoli? But I know nothing about you, nothing of your military experience. Well, is there a single Chinese general who would risk as I am prepared to do a large on the capital of Shanxi province tomorrow? Shanxi. You are right. Shanxi is the place to strike. It is the weakest. But to lead an army in forced marches. Well, excuse me, but your physique, Mr. Li. My mistake is nothing to do with it. Did not Wang Ying the dwarf tiger overthrow the first of China's talents? He was half-blind as well as crippled. Well, Mr. Li, I am not superstitious as so many of my countrymen are. But I have a strange feeling about you. Well, you do as I ask. I will assemble as many troops as I can, Mr. Li, and you shall be the general. Before that month was out, a pitched battle was raging on the dry sun-baked plain before the walled capital city of Shanxi province. A stride-spirited white horse, Hummer Li, attired now in the uniform of a Chinese general, untiringly watches the progress of his first battle from a hill overlooking the fields. A week, a fortnight, the fighting continued. Then one morning, the governor of Shanxi surrendered and sends for Hummer Li under a flag of truth. Well, those are our terms, Excellency. You can take them or leave them. I have no more time for formalities. I think you can wait a little longer. Come over here to the window, General Li. Now, look out across the battlements. Yes. Do you see, General? The heads of your excellent officers now decorate the walls of my city. Yes, I see. I have spared your life because I do not wish to inconvenience the empress with protests from foreign embassies. Thank you. It is very considerate of you. Bring in General Li Zade. He is here, Honored One. And now I shall let you stay here, General Li, where you shall have the best possible view of the destruction of your army. It will begin in about twenty minutes. Good day. Well, Captain, General Li, if I could only get to our army in time. Yes. What message could I take to them? Take this map. Show the way of retreating to the hills. He will join us there, won't he? Hope, too. First, I've got to go to America. The discontent of China's millions has been like a stone dropped into a pool of water. Your battle must inevitably become the battle of three men everywhere. China's victory, you know, might not even be one on Chinese soil. It may be one in another continent on the other side of the world. I do not understand this talk, one thing. Well, you're not alone now that there's anybody, particularly my fellow Americans, but I'm going to try to make them understand. And if I do, China will have a great ally. You are listening to Charles Lawton in The Prophet Without Honor, an original radio play on the Cavalcade of America sponsored by the DuPont Company. As our play continues, Homer Lee, played by Charles Lawton, has returned home from his unsuccessful Chinese venture. In Washington, he is ushered into the presence of Lieutenant General Chaffee of the United States Army. Welcome home, General Lee. Thank you, sir. I need not tell you, General Lee, that your expedition in China has excited the admiration of every military man in America. General Chaffee, if you'll forgive me, for being admired, I want to know what you intend to do about China. You ask a direct question, sir. I'll give you a direct answer. The United States Army has no militant aims in connection with China or any other foreign power. Yes, I was afraid you'd say that. You must realize things have changed since you went to China, sir. Due to the Spanish-American War, the European powers now have a new respect for America. We've entered a period of international good feeling. Yes, yes. That's all very commendable. But you've left one power out of your pictures there. Yes. Yes. There's a fool in Germany who today cannon will blast your pretty picture of international good feeling. Sky-eye! Oh, this German Kaiser. He struts and he postures. No one takes it seriously. Britain maintains the balance of power in Europe. Our Lord 1907, but I tell you, General Chaffee, we have passed far beyond the point to a balance of power in continents or even hemispheres. Patiny meaning. Germany controls important bases in the Pacific. These can be stepping stones for Japan's attack on our Pacific coast or they can be barriers. Japan's attack on our Pacific coast? Will you tell me what is to prevent that, sir? Generally, you'll leap around the world from China to Germany to Japan. How be that as it may, sir? For the moment, will you do something to send help to my good Chinese fighters? I regret that there is nothing I can do to help you, General Lee. Well, sir, will you give me permission to train a force of men myself? I can recruit them on the west coast of under Chinese population. I can raise money to arm and equip them and build them up. I can raise money to arm and equip them from private sources. All I need is your blessing, sir, and a good drill, Sergeant. That much I'll be only too happy to do for you, unofficially, General Lee. Thank you. And Godspeed you. Sergeant O'Bannon reporting, sir. I have to report, sir, the men under training are ready for review. Good. I'm glad to hear that. I beg your pardon, General. May I ask when these men will see action? They've all been badgering me about it, sir. I'd like to know what to tell them. Well, you'll have to tell them to wait and be patient of Banyan. I'm leaving today for Germany. Germany? I thought we were going to fight in China, sir. Wars of Banyan have developed a habit of popping about from place to place when I went to China all the world was at peace and I found a fight there that had to be fought, huh? Now, Germany's preparing for war. I don't know yet what this war will mean to America or to China, but it still is possible. Two months later, in a reviewing stand overlooking a parade ground at Potsdam, Homer Lee stands beside Kaiser Wilhelm, watching the gray uniformed, spike-helmeted soldiers of Imperial Germany as they pass in review. Well, General Lee, what do you think? I think that you have a great army, Your Majesty. With the kind of disciplined army I should like to lead myself. They do not appreciate you so much in America, eh? Well, perhaps it is I who should appreciate America, sir. In Germany, there would have been a place for a mind like yours. It is a place for it now, if you wish it. You are looking for military strategist, Your Majesty? Well, but a fool is not in these times. We shall forge a new Europe, a new world out of blood and iron, and it will turn on an axis reaching from Berlin to Baghdad. Germany, sir, is approaching our destiny. Yes, Your Majesty, perhaps Germany is, but if you will forgive me, I personally would rather not be associated with any plan to cause the world to turn on an axis of blood and iron reaching from Berlin to Baghdad. Well, General, all I can say is you didn't get to Germany a minute too soon. Oh, they hope I'm not too late at banging. There's an awful lot that's got to be done in too short a time. I've got to start America thinking about the German danger I can't leave here with my country unprepared. Then we have our war defied at banging in China. China's become more important than ever now. Oh, General, one thing at a time. You'll kill yourself if you keep going on at this rate. Ha-ha! The man doesn't die till his work is done at banging. At least you took my advice and got yourself a secretary. You're going to need that eyesight of yours when we get to China. Would you tell me something at banging? You don't think I'm working my secretary too hard, do you? It's power. If you are, she'd never admit it. You know, I like her at banging. I hate most people, but I like her. Most people are fools. She's not a fool. Who's not a fool? Her, Mrs. Powers. We've got to start at work right away. Now, where were we? Chapter 10. With the acquisition of Holland, the German Empire expands right across the Pacific, securing a landed area three times greater than that of Germany, and a native population equal to that of France. Germany becomes an oriental empire, dominating Japan and speeding up the Japanese aggression against the United States. These are not speculations. These are facts we must face. General Lee, what is it? I don't know. I have pain in the back of my eyes. I can't hardly see anything. Oh, you must rest awhile. Yes, because I'd better. Oh, who'll believe me anyway. I've told them all these things a thousand times, and still they go on. Bravely calling peace conferences, talking disarmament, when our enemies are powder kings, ready to explore enough places. General Lee. Yeah, what is it? The Chinese gentleman, Dr. Sun. Dr. Sun Yat-sen. Sun Yat-sen? Yes, I met him in Kentown. Come in. Yes, sir. General Lee will see you, Dr. Sun. Thank you. Fortunately, we meet again. I don't interrupt your work. Oh, no, no. I was on the point of abandoning the whole project. My secretary, Mrs. Parris, Dr. Sun. How do you do, sir? Madam. I have come to thank you for your great service in training officers for the Chinese Revolution, generally, and to ask you to come to China with them and me as my chief of staff. Dr. Sun, I believe you are a political leader, are you not? You envisage a republic in China. I do. That and precisely upon your American republic. Then you are a fool. You'll be invaded by Japan before your republic is established. China has been invaded before. She swallows up her conquerors and digest them. Yes, but this will not happen this time. The world is separating into two great hostile groups of nations, one dominated by Germany and Japan and the other by the democracies, and it is going to be a death struggle. And China, if she becomes a republic, will be the first to shed her blood in the Holocaust. Then China will do so with pride. Manpower and ideals alone cannot win wars in this age, Dr. Sun. Your enemies are armed with machines for destruction. The German count Zeppelin has perfected an airship to shower you with bombs from the skies. You cannot win, sir. Generally, you are a great genius. Your picture of our flight is a true one, I have no doubt of that. But you have left out of your picture an important element. You pray, what is that, sir? People. The strength of people bound together in a common resolve. Yes. We of China are such a people. Help us to overthrow the Manchu throne and overnight we will become a united militant nation ready to meet any enemy. You will see. Well, this is against all calculations, all natural laws, no logic. You know, I have a promise to keep to your people before I die, Dr. Sun, and I'm going with you. Dr. Sun, I beg of you, don't let him do it. He's a sick man. I've told you many times, and I tell you again, Mrs. Powers, a man doesn't die until his work is done. And so it was an American. A crippled genius wracked with a fatal illness went to lead the armies of the Chinese Republic. He lived to see that republic established with Sun Yat-sen as its first president. And returning home, he lived to utter one final prophetic word of warning to his countrymen. No state is ever destroyed except through those avertable conditions that mankind dreads to contemplate. Yet nations prefer to perish rather than to master the single lesson taught by the washing away of those who have gone before them. In their indifference and in their valor of ignorance, they depart together with their monuments and their constitutions. On a day in 1912, only one year and some months before the first of the great world wars he had foreseen and warned us to prepare against, Homer Lee lay a bed of his final illness in a house in Santa Monica, California. How is he, Mrs. Paws? No better, I'm afraid. Is it okay for me to go in? Of course. Louise? Who's with him? Oh, it's just me, General. Banion? Banion. Sit down here beside me. Louise, you sit over there. I need you both. I've never needed anything before in my life. Been overdoing it again, I don't know. Maybe I have a banion, but the book was worth it. They can't argue with effects in my book, can they? They can't say that's any pipe dream. I even drew pictures for them, showing exactly where the Japs must attack. The Philippines, Pearl Harbor, the Aleutians, Alaska. We'll be powerless to stop Homer. Homer, you mustn't excite yourself this way. But anyway, what do you get off saying Manila will fall in three weeks? Not with no banion there, it won't hurt. Thanks, sir Banion. It was funny. I seem to hear marching somewhere, Louise. You do. The Chinese students wanted to pay their respects, but the doctor said you were too ill to see them. The leader of them said, when you heard them marching outside, you'd get the message they wanted to give you anyway. Yes, I get the message. You won't stop them, Louise, will you? You'll stop them. You know, there's hope in that sound. There's hope in that sound. In a few minutes, we will hear again from our star, Charles Lawton. And now, our story of chemistry. A chemical compound called phenothiazine, first manufactured by DuPont, has emerged as one of the greatest contributions of our day to animal husbandry. Phenothiazine is another of the marvelous coal-tar products related to aniline dyes. A few years ago, it was experimented with as an insecticide. Further research, since by scientists of the Bureau of Animal Industry of the Department of Agriculture, found the fact that phenothiazine destroys many of the animal parasites in livestock that take an estimated toll through death and loss of weight of $125 million worth of animals on American farms each year. Both of those things, both the loss by death and the loss of weight, are serious even in peacetime. Today, with the nation at war, they are of great importance because they have a direct bearing on the food supply. A single sheep may become infested by as many as 100,000 worms as farmers and meatpackers know to their sorrow. Nodular disease in sheep caused by a parasite is such a grave menace that in some localities, the raising of sheep has had to be entirely abandoned. Wherever the disease appears, it causes great losses, running to several million dollars a year for the country as a whole. It becomes doubly serious at this time, since it affects the increased demand for meat and wool, as well as surgical sutures made from the intestines of sheep. The United States Department of Agriculture recommends phenothiazine for ridding sheep of nodular worms and other parasites. Hogs, horses, goats, and poultry all suffer from different parasites. Until very recently, each kind of animal had to be given a different treatment for each kind of parasite with varying degrees of success. Today, phenothiazine alone has proved to be effective for a wide range of parasites. It is used by veterinarians to treat more kinds of livestock for more kinds of parasites with greater effect than any medicine known up until now. Sheep can be treated for a few cents a head. As an experiment, scientists last winter tested the new drug by giving it to one half of an infested herd of cattle and withholding treatment from the other half, so they could study the results in treated and untreated cattle in the same herd. The treated animals in the herd gained weight. The untreated animals, fed the same diet, but not given the phenothiazine, lost 80 pounds apiece over the winter. The burden of feeding the country at war and feeding our allies is so heavy that there is talk of meat rationing, of meatless days. Few things are more important to us at this moment than our supply of meats, milk, eggs and wool produced by the nation's herds and flocks. Safeguarding the health of these herds and flocks, phenothiazine in wartime all the more than in time of peace may certainly be called one of DuPont's better things for better living through chemistry. And now our star of tonight's cavalcade, Charles Lawton. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. I would like to say just a word more about the brilliant neglected genius of tonight's play on cavalcade of America to know Homer Lee's maps and his strategies and his sensational prophecies all emphasize one simple basic fact that only a militant, united nation can win a war. We have alas, lost many battles through our failure to heed the warnings of Homer Lee, the prophet of our times. But please, God, it is still not too late to take ourselves in hand. We who are yet in civilian life and make ourselves deeply possessed of that militant spirit which wins the final battle. Thank you. And now before we sign off, a word about cavalcade next Monday. At the same time next week, cavalcade will present Soldier of Fortune starring the distinguished screen player Claude Reigns. It is a powerful and dramatic story of Richard Harding Davis, America's pioneer war correspondent. Don't forget, next Monday night, cavalcade presents Claude Reigns in Soldier of Fortune. The orchestra and original score tonight were under the personal direction of Don Borey. This is Clayton Collier sending best wishes from our sponsor, the DuPont Company. This program contains you from New York. This is the National Broadcasting Company.