 The National Broadcasting Company, in cooperation with the Council on Books in War Time, presents on Words at War, Russell Davenport's My Country, a poem of America, as adapted for radio by the author himself. America is not a land of ease. We have not paused from action to beget heroic simile in song and freeze. We have no empire of the mind as yet, nor have we shed our light within the grave. But as the sons of enterprise and sweat, honor the quick, the strong, the free, the brave, the mind whose thoughts are cradled in the hand, the fierce emancipators of the slave, exacting destiny of virgin land. We are the builders of dynamic things, successors to the spires of Samarkand, boilers and bars, propellers, wheels and wings to run and fly and dive at our behest, through which the mighty wind of freedom sings. America is not a land of rest. We are the men of motion and desire, spirits that seek in gender and collide like atoms of regenerating fire. The western men who must forever be consumed in deeds to which their souls aspire, the bright creative fuel of destiny that burns in action as in ecstasy. My country loves the lovers of her land, they who in spring behind the heavy plows rip up the sterile project winterplanned, when brooks are like extended veins and sloughs of soak the feet of every shivering hill, and in the April sunlight winter's cows crop the intoxicating chlorophyll. They who endure the agony of will to load the land with hay and gold and grain and vines, and heavy corn and calves and peas, in light as hot as liquor in the brain, in August when the sun goes down so late, and willow trees, reflective and sedate, and crimson apples like the dreams of gain. Or yet those others, restless ones, who boast some secret kinship with the course of fate, who haunt the hills with summers screaming ghost when the new England trees disintegrate like incantations chanted to the frost, and all the jewelry of her land is lost, of which in summertime she was so fond, and carried outward on the beat of drums the wings of wild geese far above the pond. The earthy men are those who have America to love and keep, her mountaintops, her daring clouds that scud above the dappled carpets that we reap, her rain, her snow, her forest fire, her flood, her dusty winds, her tidal hurricanes, her desert deutes, her lakes blue-eyed and deep, her foaming rocks and shores, her silver veins. These are her men to whom she will confide the secret of the seed that she contains which is so generously multiplied within the fertile pastures of her creed, the seed of liberty which can provide the love of man, the flower of the freed. And yet it is not clear, darkness is all around us and the cries of dying men and fear and other fear, the fear of eyes staring at other eyes, of eyes that stare at nothing to be seen or at nothing in disguise, pumpkins in the dark of Halloween, fear, the image of man in steel and motion, the iron image, the carborundum image, the hope of man in aluminum, the dream and cement of man with electric thoughts, the copper nerves, the brass guts, the bars, impassioned as men are the wheels turning, like the thoughts of men and the fires and the white pigs spouting from the bellies and the red blooms rolled and re-rolled longer and longer to the shape of a man's ambition. There is this blind thing, there is this thing grown out of us, this thing, thing of energy, thing of steel, of speed, blind, infinitely strong and swift and blind, not God's thing, not God's thing but man's, man's thing, thing without soul, the dead thing living, thing evolving out of the beast flesh without the soul of the beast. This is the lathe turning, this is the drill, this is the planer, planing, this the jig, the dictator, the indispensable, this is the cutter cutting, this is the feeder feeding, this is the gear box, this is the slab cutter, this is the go gauge and this the not go. These are the substances of the dead, the living dead, the animated dead, the nickel steel dead, the chrome steel dead, the hard steel dead, the car by the cobalt, the bright machines, the lovely bright incredible machines, the goddesses of mind, of space and time, the turning of goddesses, the heartless goddesses, the bright incredible machines, living in motion to destroy the living, living among the living without. Oh my country, it is nothing that we must fear, the thought of nothing, the sound of nothing in our hearts like the hideous scream of fire engines in the streets at midnight, the belief in nothing. Here are the signs of nothing in the portents where the machines are and their priests and their prophets, where the fire is and only fire and cinders and only cinders and the voices rising up from the cities where the people are but only voices. We have found nothing, we have seen it, have seen nothing, the face of nothing. We know nothing, we have heard nothing, heard it rant, heard it proclaim the new order of hate, the godless order, the radio face in the darkness of hate where man ends who is without freedom is the machine man, the instrument man, the automatic man without soul where man is without God, not God's face, not God's face but man's, man's face, the man face without love, the machine face, the instrument face without faith, without hope, man face without Christ, the Antichrist. These are the Poles dying, these are the Czechs, these are the dead Jews, these the French running, these the fair cities of Holland burning, these the British driven into the sea, these are the Yugoslavs crushed, these the Greek starving, these the Russians falling in snow by the million before the machine face, these are the shattering bombs, these the women, the wailing babies, the timbers falling, roofs spouting, stone walls crumbling, blasts crashing, bodies flying, beds, rags, running feet, fire, water, blood, silence. And the burnt faces and the dawn, the grey dawn moving into the desolate cities, moving into the desolate streets and over the hearts of people, looking over the people, over the looking people, for people in silence, lost and forever buried under the buildings, under the nothing. This is the face, this, now we have seen it, now we have seen the face, looked into the eyes, now we know what fear is, what the price is, what pain is, what fear is, what hate is, what blood is, now we know that it hurts, that freedom hurts, oh God it hurts, oh Christ save me. As an American soldier, he is dead, there is no blood in his hollow cheek, in his twisted hand there is no nerve, he is dead, who among us will speak for this man, who will say what there is to be said, who will set forth what the dead deserve concerning the dead, among his countrymen who will speak, who will say what there is to be said on behalf of the dead. When Pop got the telegram, he didn't know what to do. It was just after noon and Pop had come in to wash up for dinner and Mom was in the kitchen and she hollered to Pop to answer the door and it was the telegram. I was standing there in the hall and I watched him read it and then I watched him just stand there. He didn't know what to do, then he kind of crumpled it in his hand, turned with his head barled and put one foot in the stairs and held on to the banister, but I didn't know what to do either, so I just stood there and then without thinking I ran up the stairs out to Pop and went right in. Is it? I said, is it? And he just nodded his head slow, held out the telegram and I took it, but I couldn't read it. I just saw it, attitude in general, then I saw backwood until I saw it, killed in action. Then I couldn't see anything at all and I turned around to Pop and just let myself down. It was neat and cried and cried and cried. In the heart, when the dread word reaches into the homes of America, that he who was there like the sun has departed forever, and sorrow falls as the night over the secret places of memory and of laughter, and the hungry shadows of death enclose the living. What shall we say to those who have lost their soldiers? What light have we to show? What words beyond their tears? There were Americans once who believed in God, but we are the unbelievers, the darkened people. We are the generations who've lost the faith. But here an American soldier is lying dead, there is no blood in the hollow cheek, there's no light in the darkened nerve or in the head. There's there none in our midst who can speak, none to say what there is to be said, none to set forth what the dead deserve concerning the dead. Best he lie forever killed in vain, lost in the dust of the wasted land, dead as the shape of his hollow cheek. Oh, speak, countryman, speak. There's almost nothing I can say. A memorial service will be held at the Presbyterian church next Sunday. The whole school will attend. I suggest also that those of you who knew him, write to his parents and his sister. Any little word. For my part, I want to say that I believe that Larry died for a reason, that he died for a cause, freedom. I don't mean that he was thinking about freedom. I doubt if he was thinking about anything except the enemy. And I'm sure that if ever he thought about freedom there in the foxholes, it was never the way we learn about freedom here in books. When he thought about freedom, he thought about you sitting here, his friends, thought about our town and the life we lead here and the fun we have and the good things that we have to eat and the bright hopes that we all share. These I'm sure were Larry's idea of freedom. But as his former teacher, I want to point out that this life of ours, this free life, is not the result of accident. Freedom as we live it here in America is an inheritance from ages past. It was by no mere accident that Larry was called to go out and fight against the declared enemies of freedom. He fought not just to avenge Pearl Harbor, not just for our security, not for conquest. He fought for all that has been gained since men began to record their history. For all that has been gained and all that can be gained and all that will be gained. He fought that you whose lives still lie before you may have a chance to carry forward, to carry forward in your lives, those long and illustrious gains, those gains which men with freedom in their hearts have made against the enemies of man and the enemies of God. Larry has passed you the ball. Don't let him down. Take it. Press it to you, advance it, run with it. He was a generous boy. A man of freedom, spacious hope of man. Where are the brave, God-given words that woke the shadowy wilderness to liberty? Where is that common faith of which we built here on the broad foundations of your shores, a temple for a human brotherhood, a mighty land, awakened in our hearts the ancient spirit, now relaxed in sleep of liberty, which once inspired our lives, that we may rise from our enchanted soil against the unnatural powers of our time, and with condescent policies apply the universal lessons that we learned in this majestic and abundant school. The principles, the rights, the obligations, the deep and holy structure of our law. These are like water hidden in the hills, the eternal springs of liberty, whose source, though lost beneath the deserts of our time, might yet be redefined and opened up and sluiced into the future of the world. Here lies on the alien shore an American soldier. He lies in the darkness of the dead. He lies in a grave beyond the latch of a secret door. Who can see what there is to be seen? Who can say what there is to be said? Who can compose a last dispatch from the alien shore? None of us here in his home can speak, and none who have known him herefore. There is no faith in our hearts to catch the knob of the door. Who is there living among the dead to open a crack and tell us more? Who will bring word of our soldier's son from the alien shore? Speak countrymen, speak and open the door. It might just as well have been me. We're all huddled there under the bank that rises up from the beach, and they have an emplacement up there in their potnests with a couple of mortars. The Louis says we've got to get them out of there. We'll just die like pigs here, he says. Who will go up and get them? So Larry steps up and he says I will, sir. Because I always went with Larry, I said I would too, but I'm scared, no kidding. So he climbed out their bank, and I guess it's right there I make up my mind, I'm going to get it. Because it's easier that way than trying to expect to live in all that lead. Anyways, Larry starts like he's going to take on the whole army. He must be six or eight yards ahead of me, and I see him take a grenade, and I see his arm go back to throw it. Then it's the damnedest thing I ever felt. I see that grenade lobbing through the air, and I see Larry fall like he didn't have any legs. He just fall. But I swear I don't know whether it's him or me that's hit. It might just as well have been me. Anyways, I fall too. I don't remember nothing then. I must have chucked all my pineapples because when the Louie comes up he says fine work costs, and he says nice job. I'm kneeling there beside Larry looking at his face, and when the Louie says that, it hits me hard. Because when I hear the Louie use my name like that, then I know I'm alive. And I look down to Larry, and then I know he's dead, not me. And I just put my head down onto his chest and blubber like a kid. I've thought about it in the night a lot of times. It might just as well have been me. Nobody will ever take away that feeling I had about Larry when I got mixed up. And for my money that's what the chaplain was talking about before we got into them lousy barges. I never seen it so clear before, and I guess I never will again. And ever since then I've had an idea. I guess maybe I'm a bit off my nut the way you get. But the idea keeps coming back and coming back, and I wish I could express it. The idea is that when I got mixed up that way between Larry and myself, well, that's the way it is. And the idea is that if you could see it that way all the time, mixed up like that, the world would be a hell of a lot different. That's the idea. I guess I will never be able to express it very well. All I can say is there's something we don't see most of the time, except in times like that. I know it like I'm sitting here, because it might just as well have been me. On the shore where the stiff white crosses mark a design for eternity, and the infantry of sleep is forever enrolled in silence, and the lives of men up at numbers, and an alien wind comes up to the beaches caressing the fallen sons of men of a distant country. At last the meaning and truth of freedom opens unsealed before the eyes of the nations, where death has merged the memories of Maine and Nebraska, of Indian fires in the desert, of bearded live oaks, the motion of Texas grass when the wind is moving, the dusty roads that led to the schools and churches. Here in the name of freedom all have been gathered into the perfect union of purposes disunited, a brotherhood of men in the arms of death who were never aware in life that they were brothers. Read the unsealed message you who desire freedom, you millions and millions who struggle against each other, open these graves to discover the secret of liberty shoveled under the earth. Behind the curtain of flesh as under the crosses there is one brother of all, and all are one. So now out of the graves the boys return to our hearts, like shadows of ourselves. Now in the brotherhood of the dead we can see all who have known her well, all who have loved her, who are with her no more in the shape of their hands or their faces, but are in us forever a part of her being, trappers and tillers, workers, dim representatives, heroes who died for the living, who lived for the dying. All of them all are forever enwrapped in our will, deathless voters, unburied voices of freedom, invisible leaders, teachers of new generations, the living saviour within us, the American dead. Let us live therefore in the name of those who have fallen, that in our lives they may be resurrected. Let us search for the light by which to find them within ourselves and in one another. All nations made my flag, the pole, the fin, the English and the Irish and the Swede, the Czech who found in it his origin, the glowing French who helped to build its creed. All nations north and south, the light, the dark, are in this flag and cannot now secede. Nor yet can we, the guardians of the spark, betray their freedom in our own behalf. Unless we free those lands, this flag will mark America's freedom senate half, where faith for all the world was lost and hope was hauled at dusk for lonely down the staff. It is not ours. We cannot bound its scope. What we have borrowed, we must now return to live in Earth's revolving envelope which wings surmount and slow propellers churn. We must pass back the fire they pass to us, that it may freshen and forever burn to those who live among the hideous ruins of fear, revenge and phobia, haunting their fallen hopes, cadaverists bereft and lonely for America, along the northern sea or on the throne or down the sad majestic Voltava, all priceless flag, guard the hopeful and the good and lead us onward, unconfusedly, that in our freedom others may be free. America lives in her simple homes, the weathered door, the old wisteria line, the dusty barn yard where the rooster roams, the common trees like elm, oak and pine, and furniture for comfort, not for looks, in names like Jack and Pete and Caroline, in neighbors you can trust and honest books and peace and hope and opportunity. She lives like destiny in mom, who cooks on gleaming stoves her special frigazee in jams and cakes and endless apple pies. She lives in pop, the family referee, absorbing Sunday news with heavy eyes, and in the dog and in the shouting kids returning home from school to memorize the history of the ancient pyramids, and still she lives in them when darkness wakes the distant smells and infinite katydids, and valleys seem like black and fearsome lakes guarded by windows of American light. While in the wind the family maple rakes the lucent stars westward across the night, and still however far her sons may go to venture or to die beyond her sight, these little windows shine incognito across incredulous humanity, that all the peoples of the earth may know the embattled destination of the free, not peace, not rest, not pleasure, but to dare to face the axiom of democracy. Freedom is not to limit, but to share, and freedom here is freedom everywhere. Tonight on Words at War, we've brought you My Country, a poem of America in a version prepared for radio by the author himself, Russell Davenport. The voices which read this widely discussed patriotic poem included those of Anne Seymour, Margaret Morrissey, Barry Kroger, Lamont Johnson, Martin Blaine, Gregory Morton, Carl Swenson, and Mason Adams. The music was arranged and played by William Meader, and the entire production was under the direction of Anton M. Leeder. The program series Words at War, of which this is the last, has been brought to you in cooperation with the Council on Books and Wartime, by the National Broadcasting Company, and the Independent Radio Stations associated with the NBC Network. This is the National Broadcasting Company.