Interview of Norman Cousins

1.1. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE ONE (OCTOBER 27, 1986)

COUSINS

Name, Norman Cousins. Born June 24, 1915, New Jersey.

BASIAGO

Well, I think we've set the stage. We'll explore your years at Current History, a leading periodical. From 1937-40 you were serving as book editor for Current History, and then you moved up the editorial ladder. At that time that opportunity afforded you a chance to examine contemporary affairs during pivotal years in the history of global organization--war in China and Spain threatened to set fire to Asia and Europe. Leading journalists were writing works still used in college classes today to analyze nations, leaders, and ideas of political order. How did you get the job at Current History? How did that all come about? It sounds like a remarkable opportunity.

COUSINS

It was. I had been a cub reporter on what was then the New York Evening Post. The Post at that time had been a very conservative newspaper, not just politically, but in terms of its approach to journalism, its general design. It was in large part, I suppose, a newspaper designed for members of the financial community. Most of its circulation, in fact, was in the downtown area, near where the Post itself had been located at 75 West Street, overlooking the docks, near the Battery. I originally had been what is known as a "stringer" for the Post, which is to say someone on a list who would be called in when all the other reporters were occupied or someone who would cover, let's say, sports events, which I had done. Then in view of my Teachers College connection, when they decided to start an education page, I was assigned to that. The editor of the education page was a man named Leonard M. Leonard. And after I think a year and a half or two, Leonard decided to leave the Post to join with a neighbor who lived in Huntington, Long Island, to publish Current History. Current History was a magazine founded by the New York Times at the end of World War I for the purpose of addressing itself to the new interest in the United States in world affairs. It was directed mainly at scholars. As a monthly journal, it reviewed the principal events of the month, published documents, and was the forerunner of the news weeklies and journals. But in 1937 I guess the New York Times decided to sell Current History. M. E. [Merle E.] Tracy, who had been a longtime newspaper editor, offered to buy it from the Times for ten thousand dollars, I think. M. E. Tracy was a neighbor of Leonard M. Leonard's in Huntington, Long Island, and asked Leonard to be his right-hand man in editing the magazine, and Leonard asked me to be his right-hand man.

BASIAGO

How did you meet Leonard?

COUSINS

Leonard was the editor of the education page.

BASIAGO

Oh, I see. It was a direct connection then.

COUSINS

Yes. On the New York Post. So I met Tracy at Leonard's request. Tracy then had established a little office for himself in contemplation of publishing Current History. The office was in the old Chanin Building on Forty-second Street and Lexington Avenue in New York City. I went to see Tracy. He was a very large man, blind, but not only had an encyclopedic mind but spoke like an encyclopedia. I learned that his view of the world and history was largely shaped by his reading of the eleventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which he had virtually committed to memory. I suppose that if anyone had a choice of an edition of an encyclopedia to memorize, it would be the eleventh edition, because this was probably the most complete encyclopedia ever published.

BASIAGO

I found a list of the Great Books [of the Western World] in your files from these years. Did you start to emulate that method of self-education?

COUSINS

Well, we're getting ahead of ourselves. Wouldn't you like me to complete the question about Current History?

BASIAGO

All right.

COUSINS

Tracy asked me to do two things: first to help on Current History, and second to help to be his eyes. I would scour the magazines and also new books and then mark out the passages that I would read to him. That was a vastly educational experience for both of us. I learned one thing that was very valuable, and that was how to convert language into meaning. Tracy, I'd always felt, had lived six thousand years-- I've written about this. Since his connection with both the contemporary world and historic world came to him through his fingertips, through Braille, both had the same sense of reality. In following the events of the day or in following the historical events, he had the same sense of immediacy and reality about both. Consequently, it was as though he had actually lived through, as I say, six thousand years of history, because the reality that history had for him was exactly the same as the living reality. I suppose that a little of that rubbed off on me, since we read the same things together as we went along. In reading about contemporary events he would offer comments about historical episodes that were relevant or that were suggested by the current readings. He had his favorites, to be sure: Suetonius's Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Redpath's History of the World, Polybius' Macedonia, Thucydides on the Peloponnesian Wars [History of the Peloponnesian War]. Our discussions of those books were made vivid for me as well. Not too many years later I was able to lean on these readings in a little book I did about early political experiences of Greece [The Good Inheritance: The Democratic Chance] and the significance they had for the American founding fathers, at least as evidenced by The Federalist Papers. My work on Current History began, as you said, as literary editor. I would review perhaps eight, ten, or a dozen books each month in the field of world affairs, so I got to know the work of authorities in different fields. The emphasis taken by Current History was somewhat different from that given it by the New York Times. The Times was interested in supplying records of the month for historians and scholars. We broadened, or tried to broaden, this appeal for serious readers who were interested in world affairs but who were not necessarily scholars. Looking back on the magazine today, I probably would say it was more scholarly than I thought at the time, but that is due to change now in terms of, oh, definitions of what scholarly materials are. Since our frame of reference then was what we were trying to do under the New York Times, I suppose our feeling that it had a broader base was perhaps justified.

BASIAGO

I selected a passage that I think reflects the tone of almost all the pieces you wrote at that time--I'm speaking of the book reviews. For a November 1937 article you wrote, [reads] "It is a strange and uneasy peace, for all around us the stage is being cleared for another world conflict. And if we are to believe history, we will have a difficult time keeping out of it." What were some of the most relevant ideas about war and peace from antiquity that you drew from this survey of classical--?

COUSINS

Can you identify that particular passage?

BASIAGO

That was for November of 1937. I don't have the particular text. I selected it because I think it typifies the ominous mood--

COUSINS

It does, yes.

BASIAGO

--that had an effect, I think, on all of your work at that time.

COUSINS

It did. Almost everything that's happened since that period and the period that goes through to the end of the war-- Almost everything that has happened since that time is, I suppose, something of a leisurely footnote to events. Complicated and dangerous though the times may now seem, I don't suppose that anything could be more volatile or hazardous or perilous than that particular period. It's not that the scale of destruction was a real factor. Obviously our destructive capabilities are much greater today than they were then; the consequences of war would certainly be incomparably more serious. But since life tends to be run by things readily recognizable, a fact of living horror had greater impact then than the fact of pervasive death today. When you have to cope with destruction of values, as apart from physical destruction, you tend to be more engaged intellectually, emotionally, spiritually perhaps. It was a time of tremendous urgency and blistering reality for all of us. I was caught up in it, obviously, by way of magazine journalism, since Current History was dealing with different aspects of the problem.

BASIAGO

As you made your survey of writings of classical history under Tracy's tutelage--actually for him--were there any epiphanies that you had that you thought had particular relevance to our present time?

COUSINS

Yes. I was especially interested in the reasons for the fall of Athens and the Greek states in general and especially in the failure of the Greek states to federate. There had been various attempts at it, but none of them had reached the point where it was possible to eliminate the rivalries among the Greek states or the mutual insecurity because of the lack of a common security structure. I read [Alexander] Hamilton and [James] Madison and [John] Jay in The Federalist Papers and saw that this was their perception too, that what meant a great deal to the authors of The Federalist as they combed through history for relevant guides was the historic example of the failure of Greek states almost at the height of their development to achieve a political form that was workable for the entire group. The failure to achieve that form, they believed, resulted in the breakdown of that society. So that even before World War II broke out, I became aware of certain historical principles which pertained to the operation of large aggregations, and the events of the war themselves gave substance to these concerns.

BASIAGO

One of the things I find most remarkable about your work for Current History was that you were in your early twenties and you were already voicing some of the unpopular ideas you would defend throughout your career. I'm wondering if there were particular writers who you were reviewing whose work influenced your ideas regarding world federation. You've just mentioned Greek history. I located one reference. This is to James Harvey Robinson's work The Human Comedy. [reads] "Robinson, " you wrote, "thought of life as a human comedy, a drama in which man was never able to learn enough from history to fashion for himself an existence which knew neither war nor intensities of economic injustices. Had Professor Robinson lived one more year to see the Second World War which is now in the making, he probably would have pushed back a bit his estimate of the day when man would be sufficiently advanced to enter the fuller life. Just as man has learned, even if only after repeated unfortunate experiences, that he must build his home in such a manner that it will resist wind and water, so will he eventually come to the realization that he must build against other destructive forces--war, famine, and intense nationalism. " Were you traveling in a certain circle of intellectuals who were exploring all these ideas? I find antecedents to ideas perhaps later expressed by [R.] Buckminster Fuller and others of your contemporaries. Were you already in that milieu of world federalist thinkers?

COUSINS

No, no. That came in 1944, or at least began in 1944. Up to this time it represented an association with historical principles and with the certain authors that I mentioned. We might add to them John Stuart Mill and [John] Locke and [Jean- Jacques] Rousseau and Edmund Burke, all of whom were concerned with freedom, not just as a desirable state, but with the conditions of freedom. That was what concerned me primarily. What were the circumstances that made freedom possible? What was the connection between political structure and the philosophical ideas that developed inside that structure? In 1944 a group in the East, a group of individuals who discovered an affinity for each other as the result of their concern about Nazism even before America entered the war, had stayed together. Now this group came together to form an organization called Americans United for World Organization. The underlying fuel for their energies came from the experience of the United States after World War I, when the ground was not prepared for Americans' participation in world organization. This group came together now anticipating that we would have to go beyond the League of Nations, but that it became necessary to prepare American public opinion so that a president would not have to go through the same kind of ordeal and defeat that was experienced by [Woodrow] Wilson after World War I. Even before the war ended, this particular group was involved in public education, helping to send certain senators-- [ Joseph H.] Ball and [Carl A.] Hatch, I think--across the country to talk about the need for effective world organization. But the moment the bomb was dropped we realized that world organization was not enough, that we had to start talking about world government. I will never forget the meetings that we had at the old Murray Hill Hotel in New York City, since demolished. At our first meeting-- It came, oh, maybe no more than four or five days after the bomb was dropped. I'd just completed writing an editorial called "Modern Man Is Obsolete" based on that bomb. When we convened, it developed that we were all thinking the same thing, that the United Nations [UN] that had been formed at San Francisco couldn't possibly meet the problems that would ensue in the postwar world, given the fact of atomic weapons and all those things that were apt to be connected to it.

BASIAGO

Who were some of the principals involved there with Americans United for World Organization?

COUSINS

A man by the name of Ulric Bell; Leo [M.] Cherne; Thomas K. Finletter, who was to become the secretary of the air force; James Goldsmith; Clark [M. ] Eichelberger, who was to become the executive director of [the] United Nations Association; Rex T. Stout, the writer; one or two others.

BASIAGO

I'm wondering about the influence of the work of Clarence Kirshman Streit on your ideas and on this particular organization. Just to refresh your memory, in his work Union Now in 1940 Streit called for a nucleus world government and provided an elaborate plan for federal union of the Atlantic democracies in five fields. The Union of the North Atlantic, as he wished it to be called, would have a union government and citizenship, defense force, customs- free economy, money, and postal and communications system. Had you met Streit?

COUSINS

Oh, yes. I was very fond of Clarence Streit, a superb human being in terms of intelligence, integrity, dedication. But it seemed to me that Union Now was pre- atomic, that it was the sort of thing that might have helped to avert World War II, but I wasn't sure that it was as relevant as it ought to be in averting World War III. It was always preoccupied with Europe and with the kind of alliance that would have enabled us either to have prevented World War II or to have given a better account of ourselves than we did when we fought it. But the end of the war changed the shape of the world. Now you had the Soviet Union and the nations of the East. It seemed to me that the last thing in the world we ought to do is to give the impression that we were creating a legal rationale for an alliance, and I also thought that the Soviet reaction to this would help to polarize the problem between the two worlds. In short, it seemed to me to be a better device of fighting World War III than for averting it.

BASIAGO

Grenville Clark observed that it divided the world along racial and class lines, and he thought it might have actually been a fuse point to World War III.

COUSINS

He said much better than I've just said what the problem was.

BASIAGO

This original group, were they also enthusiasts of Streit or was that--?

COUSINS

Some were and for good reason.

BASIAGO

Were you introduced to him or did you meet him by chance?

COUSINS

I had known him on Current History.

BASIAGO

As a contributor?

COUSINS

Yes. And I liked him.

BASIAGO

He seemed to want to organize this Atlantic Union along what nation states possessed in common rather than along their differences. Some of the criteria he gave were that this particular group of fifteen nations, not only were they the ones that had not yet fallen to Nazi aggression, but were linguistically divided only along English and French, and that they composed nearly three hundred million world citizens. What do you know about Streit's background that might have lead him to take this approach rather than a more transnational--?

COUSINS

Well, first a parenthetical preface. When you spoke about the linguistic factor, I thought of [George] Bernard Shaw's remark that the English and Americans were two wonderful peoples separated by the same language. To talk of language and commonalities as Streit did seemed to me actually to emphasize the weaknesses of the Union Now approach. Where we came together was in terms of our belief in federalist principles for bringing together nations. Where we parted was on our side the feeling that he was basing his concept of federalism on the principle of exclusivity, whereas he felt that our weakness was that we were being indiscriminate and that the admission standards were too low. Grenville Clark was right: we had to look ahead to the problems of a bipolar world. Clark was right too in invoking the federalist experience in the United States, or at least the constitutional debates, to justify his feeling that if you had a geographical unit, the extent of the differences define the need to convert that unit into a workable structure. So the ideological differences between the United States and the Soviet Union in Clark ' s mind actually defined the need rather than the obstacles.

BASIAGO

Streit gave this rationale for his Atlantic Union: that these particular nations had not warred with one another for one hundred years. At the same time he observed that these nations owned nearly 50 percent of every essential war material and almost all of the world's banked gold. Do you think his proposal can be separated from pressing military considerations?

COUSINS

No. As I say, it seemed to be a legalizing procedure for a coalition against the Soviet Union. And just in that litany you just read you can anticipate how all these organs would be used vis-a-vis the Soviet Union. Now, in Streit ' s favor we have to recognize that we're dealing with a Stalinist Russia, where the major Soviet foreign policy was shaped by the irrational and unpredictable actions associated with [Joseph] Stalin, and at the end of the war you had Czechoslovakia as an example. So that in taking a position against Streit, we also had to recognize that he was not flying blind. But we were trying to look beyond Stalin to certain historical situations and trying to avert a war which in the context of nuclear weapons could be suicidal for all concerned.

BASIAGO

You mentioned the connection to the failure of the League of Nations. This group obviously was aware of the nations that were being expelled from the League of Nations--Japan in 1933, Germany in 1935, Italy in 1937. How were they grappling with that reality, that the League was disintegrating? Would they prefer to not have nations expelled despite fundamental differences in political ideology?

COUSINS

In the federalist theology the greater the problem, the greater the need to keep that problem from breaking up the group. The essence of federalism is to devise means for dealing with breakup situations. No one in the federalist movement after 1945 minimized the differences that would have to be accommodated within the world structure, but we found it necessary too to divide these differences between those that belonged to ideology or culture or politics and those that flowed out of the fact of world anarchy. We had to identify underlying situations and those factors that intensified the underlying situations. When we made that distinction between the two, we recognized that the federalist approach gave us the best chance for making distinctions and also creating the structure that could deal with them.

BASIAGO

Was there a feeling that the League of Nations wasn't truly federalist? Streit observed that leagues tend to work against "one man, one vote." Because a nation, regardless of population, has one vote.

COUSINS

Are you talking about the League of Nations or the United Nations?

BASIAGO

The League of Nations.

COUSINS

The League of Nations could not be considered remotely as a federation nor even a confederation. The League of Nations was an association where standards were defined but not prescribed and where the behavior of nations essentially was left to the good sense of the nations themselves rather than to any structural means for dealing with departures from prescribed conduct.

1.2. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE TWO (OCTOBER 27, 1986)

BASIAGO

What were some of the more practical alternatives to the League of Nations that this particular group of thinkers was putting forth to achieve a more federalist vision?

COUSINS

Well, when Americans United for World Organization came to be, we were thinking primarily of the need for a public commitment rather than what the structure itself would be. After Americans United for World Organization became Americans United for World Government, the emphasis was shifted to the kind of organization we would have and not just to the need to persuade the American people to become part of it. Our concern at that time was directed not to the League of Nations but to the United Nations. We had to take into account, of course, the failures under the League of Nations, which were also illumined by the experiences that were described in The Federalist Papers, Madison and Hamilton and so forth. Our discussions therefore were not directed mostly to the League but to the UN and how best to change it in terms of the situation that existed and was likely to be . I had several meetings with Streit.

BASIAGO

Yeah. I'm rather unclear really what the involvement was with Mr. Streit.

COUSINS

Attempts were made to bring us together. Two or three of the members of Americans United for World Government were also on his central board. Charles McKee, for example, whose name I didn't mention before-- We did have several meetings with key members of Union Now and key members of ours, as well as several separate meetings between Streit and myself. We got along very well. Certainly there was no difference between us on what was meant by federalism or the principles of it. The main difference had to do with what the effect would be of a Union Now-type of organization in the context of the situations that developed at the end of the war and the fact that we would actually, as I felt, alienate the majority of the world's peoples and create a very dangerous situation. What we ought to do, it seemed to me, is to deal with this very fact of division and find some workable means for dealing with it, rather than to formalize the division. He, for his part, was concerned with the situation as it then existed, with the fact that there was no basis for getting together with the Soviet Union, indeed no basis for getting together with [any of] the larger nations.

BASIAGO

I'd like to survey the impact various visions of world federation had on the vision that you helped construct in the fifties. Apparently Streit had been privy to secret dispatches between Wilson, [Georges] Clemenceau and [David] Lloyd George, and our American diplomats in Washington right after World War I . Did you ever have any discussions with him about his particular involvement from that period?

COUSINS

No.

BASIAGO

So you really had no discussion with Streit about his background. Had you heard anything?

COUSINS

Yes, he'd written about it. He was a journalist who reported these events- It seemed to me, again, that what he was attempting to do was to meet a situation that belonged in the past rather than one that would anticipate the problems that existed at the end of World War II.

BASIAGO

We might characterize this time as a period in American history when the nation was really split between two visions of the future, one an isolationist vision where we would not defend Britain and more or less concern ourselves with our own economic struggles- -

COUSINS

Talking about the 1930s now?

BASIAGO

Yeah, now we're in the late thirties again. Contrasted with an anticipation that our democratic principles and alliance would soon find itself in a war against--

COUSINS

Yes. You see what happened was that a tremendous momentum had been set up in the 1930s where we were reacting not only against the involvement in World War I but against war in general. It was a period marked by the Oxford Oath, by a pervasive pacifism, not so much a pacifism that had its origins in religious belief but in political reality. Then also we were muckraking over the munitions makers in World War I and their part in fomenting the general situation. Consequently we were moving in opposite directions in the late thirties with the advent of Hitlerism. Part of the American intellectual mind had been swept up in reaction against World War I and part of it was alive to the meaning and implications of Hitlerism. It was very difficult to resolve and led to contrary actions and thoughts. But the clarifying experience, it seemed to me, came with the beginning of World War II, with the German- Russian nonaggression pact [Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact] in 1939, with the fall of Finland, the rapid advance through Poland, and the collapse of France. The earlier confusion dissipated very rapidly. By the middle of 1941, I think that the contrary tendencies in American intellectual thought had been resolved.

BASIAGO

Your work reviewing these various works, discussing the failure of the League of Nations-- I believe you discussed a work which treated Krupp, the arms manufacturer, and its role in fomenting World War I. How did you look ahead to the potential conflict that America might find itself in? Were you planning to fight or--?

COUSINS

What date are we talking about?

BASIAGO

We're still in the late 1930s. Here you are, you're in your early twenties, you're aware of these ideas--

COUSINS

I was split down the middle. I wasn't intellectually torn in the sense that I would wake up debating with myself which way to go, but I certainly knew that I was being pushed in contrary directions. First, there was still the momentum of the Oxford Oath symbolism and the manipulation of public opinion during World War I. But then I was also forced to open my eyes to the horrors of Hitlerism. Finally, in 1938 I guess it was, when William Allen White formed his Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies, the ambiguity ceased. It was at that time that I recognized that it takes two to stay out of a war and that all the arguments we had used against World War II had little validity against Hitlerism. So I joined the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies, I think it was in '38. Things moved very swiftly then. I remember in 1938, I guess it was, having a meeting with [Alfred] Duff Cooper, who became the minister of the admiralty under [Winston] Churchill. He'd just written a book [The Second World War] . It was about 1940, when it was a quiescent war. Poland having been conquered, Germany had not yet moved against France, and it seemed to many of us that this thing would just run its course, just dry up. But again we were shattered out of that absurd idea by the rapid advance of Germany, beginning I think in the middle of 1940, against France.

BASIAGO

Do you think that by 1941, when we felt it necessary to enter the war, that we ultimately did our part to in some ways fulfill Streit's vision? We came to the aid of Great Britain and were effective in defending a number of the nations that found themselves in this original group.

COUSINS

It was a pretty late start, and we were fighting for our life then too. As a matter of fact, we didn't get into the war until we were attacked, so that Streit's design philosophically and structurally really did not apply. But I have no doubt that if we had accepted Streit's ideas, let's say in 1939 or 1940, history might have been different. I think he was right about that particular situation. But the situation, you see, changed very rapidly as the war developed and certainly at the end of the war, and that was why we thought we needed a larger design.

BASIAGO

You seem to suggest that the heritage of pacifism from World War I instilled a certain degree of inertia. Are you saying it impeded America's response?

COUSINS

Well, intellectual America was not the whole of America, and so I can't say what the country as a whole thought. I certainly don't know whether the country as a whole was impeded by it, but it's certainly true that the intellectually visible part of America was. Whether that had a substantial effect on the whole I can't say, but it also did on government, of course.

BASIAGO

You mentioned your endorsement of White's program. When we ultimately did find ourselves in the war, did you seek to enlist or wait to be drafted or how did that work itself out?

COUSINS

Well, I was in effect drafted to edit the magazine USA. I'd had tuberculosis as a kid and my doctor told me I didn't have a chance of passing the physical because of the calcification on my lungs. When I did go up for my physical, that was exactly the finding. My feelings about it, such as they were, were certainly eased when I in effect was drafted to edit USA. Before that I was the head of the Victory Book Campaign, which collected books for shipments overseas to our soldiers.

1.3. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE ONE (NOVEMBER 3, 1986)

BASIAGO

I'm interested in how you met Charles [A.] Beard, a contributor to Current History, a scholar of an economic interpretation of the Constitution, and someone who wasn't very enthusiastic about any meddling by the United States in European affairs.

COUSINS

Beard was a historian. He intended to follow the strict view that America was created in the attempt to tear free of the kind of entanglements that had disfigured so much of European history. In that respect he was almost Washingtonian, and this led him, as it led a number of other people, [Charles A.] Lindbergh, for example, to a rather strict view. But most American intellectuals in the 1930s, certainly the 1920s, had that strong feeling of distaste for Balkan politics and for involvements with Europe. Most intellectuals had a profound distaste for war, as they did in England, and Beard was just one of the high priests.

BASIAGO

You apparently believed he was wrong in that view. Even in the late thirties, as the war was just beginning, you noted that being against any American attempt to bring order out of Europe's chaos, he [reads] "minimizes the mutuality of our problems with foreign nations and seems to think we can work out our destiny without paying too much attention to the fate of Europe." So you had a suspicion then that he was wrong. What gave you that suspicion?

COUSINS

We were all going through a period of agonizing reappraisal. The very large intellectual surge against World War I and towards pacifism that existed throughout the twenties and the momentum of which carried then into the thirties had created this dichotomy. It took us some time to come out of it. Adolf Hitler was the principal reason for the change. We were confronted then with a threat that we realized couldn't be met by the kind of thinking that had captured us in the 1920s and early 1930s.

BASIAGO

Beard called his idea "continentalism" rather than "isolationism." Did it become particularly outmoded following the advent of intercontinental ballistic missiles, in the sense that the United States could no longer protect itself geographically?

COUSINS

The best way of answering your question is, yes.

BASIAGO

Do you feel that looking back, though, on perhaps some lingering truths from Beard's concerns that we not entangle ourselves as Washington had warned us, that there were things we lost by our entanglement in European affairs?

COUSINS

I think so. I think other things being equal it would be nice to be free to carry out or try to complete the design, but the question became very academic.

BASIAGO

John Gunther was another leading writer associated with Current History during your years there. He made a career of expanding a rather globalist outlook. At least he was concerned, it seems, in fostering greater understanding on the part of Americans about other nations and continents in such works as Inside Asia and Inside Africa. Did his view of history in the making have any impact upon later journalistic projects you would undertake?

COUSINS

Gunther's first book--vastly successful--was called Inside Europe. It was very well written, very fast-paced, a great deal of personal and anecdotal material. It became a Book-of-the-Month Club selection and started a trend of books by other foreign correspondents. As usually happens when a book is a success, all the publishers jump in to try to replicate it. You had a book by John Whittaker and another one by Edgar Ansel Mowrer of the Chicago Daily News, which had a very good corps of foreign correspondents--a long trail of books by foreign correspondents, the effect of which I think was to give people more intimate understanding of other parts of the world than they had previously known.

BASIAGO

You were still quite a young writer at that time. Were you developing plans? Thinking, "My, Gunther's had a lot of success in this area. I think I'll undertake an at- tempt to illuminate the country about India's politics or--"

COUSINS

I suppose I had many exalted ideas at the time, but that was not one of them.

BASIAGO

Did you borrow anything from his writing methods? I note that his personality sketches approximate what you later developed for your book Human Options: [An Autobiographical Notebook]. Was there any borrowing there from his approach?

COUSINS

He was very pithy. He had pinpoint characterizations and had a gift for the vivid example, but I don't think he invented that kind of vivid journalism. I think it was one of the staples of the trade.

BASIAGO

Manuel [L.] Quezon he said was "elastic and electric. "

COUSINS

Say that slowly.

BASIAGO

Quezon, of the Philippines, he described as "elastic and electric." Chiang Kai-shek he found "shrewd, suspicious, and calculating, " while his wife [Soong Mai- ling] was "alert, amusing, smoothly polished, full of graceful small talk." Do you think that writers like this tend to minimize both world leaders and slightly patronize other nations and cultures?

COUSINS

He certainly missed the mark on some in his desire to get a quick portrait. I'm not sure that he really understood Gandhi. He did a better job of understanding [Jawaharlal] Nehru. I think he completely missed the boat with [Albert] Schweitzer.

BASIAGO

I found that he found Gandhi "an incredible combination of Jesus Christ--"

COUSINS

And Tammany Hall.

BASIAGO

"--Tammany Hall and your father." Was there an attempt on your part to-- I'm pretty sure how you're going to answer this, but were you aware at that time that perhaps he was not seeing people of other cultures and nations clearly?

COUSINS

No, I had a very high regard for John Gunther, and still do. The fact that he tended to jump in and out was clear. In one sense it was a tribute to him that even on the basis of fast, short exposure, he was able to get a very vivid picture. That was to his credit. But sometimes it worked to his discredit, as in the case of Schweitzer and possibly of Gandhi.

BASIAGO

He seemed to be focusing a lot of attention in his works, the Inside Africa, Inside Europe series, on personalities. Did you come to reject his emphasis upon the more or less great-man school of history? Do you think that was one of the foibles?

COUSINS

In the context of journalism rather than of history, that approach is justified. I think that if the historian tried to view history in those terms, he'd be vulnerable to serious criticism. But as a foreign correspondent, this is what Gunther was expected to do, and he did it very well but not always accurately.

BASIAGO

I believe you said that he characterized Nehru quite accurately. When you did meet Nehru and publish your Talks with Nehru, you found that the man you had read about was the man you found?

COUSINS

Yes, he was better with Nehru, I thought, than he was with Schweitzer.

BASIAGO

He found Nehru "an Indian who had become a westerner, an aristocrat who had become a socialist."

COUSINS

That's right. I think that Gunther had a good eye for juxtapositions and for paradox, and I think that the art of the writer is always someone who can identify the paradox. Not until you find the paradox of a human being do you really understand that human being. Gunther was a paradox searcher. He got at it very fast- -sometimes even when it didn't exist.

BASIAGO

Did that dichotomy in Nehru's personal history fascinate you?

COUSINS

Yes.

BASIAGO

While you were at Current History or later?

COUSINS

No, later.

BASIAGO

I'm wondering whether your project with Nehru came about just through serendipity during your State Department tour or whether there were some plans there to go after Nehru and understand how this transition was occurring.

COUSINS

I had an admiration for Nehru before I went, and not solely as the result of John Gunther. I liked the intellectuality of Nehru, and I was much taken with his Glimpses of World History, which is one of the most remarkable books I think ever written. Here in a book that runs to eight hundred pages or so you have an excursion through history, hundreds of historical events-- all of which he wrote without a single reference book, because he was in jail at the time. Just as a sheer feat of intellectuality I don't think it's ever been surpassed. His part in the Indian revolution tended to be more on the American model than on the Far Eastern model. And he did a beautiful balancing act. He always had to deal with the British; he had to deal with Gandhi. He could talk to the British in a way that Gandhi could not; he could talk to the Muslims very effectively with [Mohammed Ali] Jinnah. He knew a great deal about political engineering and human engineering. I'd always been fascinated with Nehru long before I went to see him. Of the two, Gandhi and Nehru, I tended to lean more towards Nehru in terms of the personal fascination that either man had for me.

BASIAGO

Another important writer, someone that you've already mentioned, is G. A. [Giuseppe Antonio] Borgese . His work Goliath: The March of Fascism you reviewed. Did you meet him after his flight from Italy?

COUSINS

Yes.

BASIAGO

How did that meeting come about?

COUSINS

He was a federalist of sorts. I say of sorts because he didn't fit into anything very well. He tended to draw everything to himself and individualize it. But he was a believer in a world constitution and worked with Bob [Robert Maynard] Hutchins in fashioning one. His wife, Elisabeth [Mann] Borgese, was the daughter of Thomas Mann. She became a very prominent federalist intellectually if not organizationally.

BASIAGO

I'm curious about the connection between the world federalists and that community of Jewish and German expatriates who came to Southern California, I guess being Mann and Einstein and company. Were they the bridge between those two camps, those fundamentally fleeing fascism and then the original group on the East Coast who were thinking about world organization?

COUSINS

I'm not sure I understand your question.

BASIAGO

Were Borgese and his wife the connection between that group that came to, let's say. Pacific Palisades? I believe it also included Fritz Lang.

COUSINS

Oh, I see your question.

BASIAGO

And Einstein at Caltech [California Institute of Technology] .

COUSINS

No, I think they were footnotes rather than the main text. There was a dominant drive to which they attached themselves, and they had a certain effect on it. But they were not the prime movers, though they tried to be.

BASIAGO

Of course by 1945 we find Hutchins and the Borgeses founding the Committee to Frame a World Constitution. I was wondering whether there was a connection, too, during that time when Einstein visited Caltech, and essentially leading intellectuals were fleeing Hitler.

COUSINS

Einstein and Borgese, to the best of my knowledge, were not very close. Einstein's approach to world government was nothing that proceeded out of his knowledge of political science, which had been the case with Borgese. Einstein arrived at these conclusions under the heat of living history, and the conclusion was forced on him by day-to-day events. I don't think that he interacted very much with Borgese . Have you found evidence that he did?

BASIAGO

I'm only assuming that there might have been a connection in Southern California between Mann's daughter, that community of intellectuals.

COUSINS

If so I know nothing about it.

BASIAGO

When did you meet Robert Hutchins and under what circumstances?

COUSINS

Oh, gosh, I find it very difficult to think of a time in my grown life when I didn't know him. Let me think, when did I first meet Bob Hutchins? [long pause] His interest in the Great Books with [Mortimer J.] Adler preceded his interest in world government, a world federation. We had some friendly differences about the Great Books. I had felt, looking through the Great Books, that the series had been misnamed. It should have been called the Great Books of the Western World. I didn't understand why the world ought to be divided intellectually. Yet I came to recognize that the Great Books themselves were a legitimate and very useful product, and I think he came to recognize too that he had to be explicit in describing them. But the notion of a great Western heritage and the way it was being presented at the time troubled me too. It seemed to suggest a certain provincialism, which was moving in the wrong direction. There may have been some correspondence in which I had raised these questions. I think I may have met him, as I did [Wendell L.] Willkie, at the Century Club by way of Beardsley Ruml, I'm not sure. But I took an immediate liking to the man when I met him. Then our families took a trip to Greece together. I forget when this was, but the Greek government had just launched the new ship the Queen Frederica and had invited Hutchins and Mrs. [Vesta Orlick] Hutchins and their daughter and John Roosevelt and his family and us. We took two of our kids, I think, and we went on that long trip together and got to know each other pretty well on that boat. We took shore leave at Rhodes and went up into the hills and the valley of the butterflies and took donkeys up the very steep mountain. It was amazing to watch Bob Hutchins on that donkey and his inability to find a place to put his feet, because if he let them hang it would produce excavations not less steep than the ancient ones of [Heinrich] Schliemann.

BASIAGO

Around what time are we speaking of?

COUSINS

Oh, probably the early fifties, '52 maybe. By that time we'd known each other, and we became good friends then. He would have me come out to the university--the combination of world federalism and his educational interests. Then we also triangulated with Bill [William] Benton, who was the owner of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and one of our neighbors in Connecticut, and that was another vantage point on Hutchins. Aspen [Institute for Humanistic Studies (Aspen, Colorado)] was yet another point of contact. I got out to Aspen several times at his invitation and at the invitation of Walter [P.] Paepcke and Mortimer Adler to conduct seminars and give courses out there. So we had a little cabal, our own little conspiratorial group.

BASIAGO

It seems that you've emphasized your social relationship with Hutchins. I'm wondering if there was any intellectual transference. As the chancellor of the University of Chicago, he urged students to explore the great writings of the past because he felt there was too much of an emphasis upon technical studies. Had you any discussions with him before or after the bomb?

COUSINS

Oh, yes. The interactions took place on a number of levels. On the genesis and development of the great ideas or the Great Books program at [University of] Chicago you might want to look at Mortimer Adler's autobiography, in which he describes his relationship with Hutchins and how that came out of Columbia [University] and spread to Chicago, or Saint John's [University] and then Chicago, that group with Stringfellow Barr. That will give you a very good view of how Hutchins got into the Great Books of the Western World. My own contacts with Adler, which probably began at the Saturday Review [of Literature] very, very early-- Yes it was very early. He had written an article called "How To Mark a Book," which we published. That could be 1941 maybe, '40, '41. Once you write a letter to Adler you have to be prepared for a lifetime of correspondence. I never could make up my mind whether Adler wrote books faster than letters or letters faster than books, but both ran a race. He would always have new ideas that he would write you about .

BASIAGO

Some of the books that you were reviewing for Current History introduced a theme which of course would become much more important after Trinity, which was that technology and science were getting out of control. When did you first begin thinking about these ideas in terms of your relationship with Hutchins?

COUSINS

The first time I knew that science and technology were getting out of control was when I took a spill off my scooter at the age of seven and scraped my leg from toe to hip--but don't let me be facetious. Whatever putative ideas I may have had in this direction I think came full- size with the atomic bomb. That was when I really sat down, went off, and thought by myself, and wasn't just reacting to things I had read or to events, but where I felt it necessary to do some very sustained thinking.

BASIAGO

In your discussion of your dealings with Hutchins you mentioned that you "triangulated" with another individual. Do I find the influence of Bucky [R. Buckminster] Fuller there, looking at things synergistically?

COUSINS

Bucky was not involved in that constellation with Adler and Hutchins and Benton or Borgese. Bucky didn't swim into my field of vision until some years later and that represents a somewhat different philosophical set of circumstances.

1.4. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE TWO (NOVEMBER 3, 1986)

BASIAGO

When we last spoke, we discussed your years at Current History. We talked about the influence of the Athenian and federalist experiences on your vision of history and also the influence immediate events in Europe had on your approach to journalism. Would you agree with my conclusion that these were pivotal years in shaping your journalistic mission?

COUSINS

Yes. You refer to my interest in certain periods of history. This is a combination of several things. With respect to ancient history, it was a result, if I understand what happened correctly, of my relationship with M. E. [Merle E.] Tracy, who had a very extensive library in ancient history. In addition to the standard books on the history of Greece, he had a number of works usually brought up in history classes. As we went through those books and as I began to see that period through his mind- -because I would read to him from these books and he would comment--I had a sense of proximity to those events which was somewhat the same as his own. That history interacted with my own special interest in the constitutional period of American history and later was to serve as the basis, or at least the stimulus, for a book called The Good Inheritance: [The Democratic Chance], in which I tried to show the extent to which the historical interests of the American founding fathers, and especially in the Greek period of history, was reflected in the structure of government as reflected in the Constitution, Now, it was against this background that I was reacting to the events of the 1930s. I have a very vivid memory of where I was and what I was thinking at critical points along the way. For example, I remember listening to a radio news report about [Neville] Chamberlain's speech on "peace in our time, " and I remember going out into the street and thinking about that. I remember wondering whether he might be right after all. The need for hope at such a desperate time--and it was desperate--was so great that to have anyone, even through an umbrella, talk about the fact that peace was possible made you slow up. And then by the time I got to the other side of the street I recognized that I was grabbing at straws and that this particular straw had Mr. Chamberlain's umbrella attached to it. Oh, I remember early memories about Hitler coming to power: again, the occasional words of reassurance that came up or that he offered, and how trying to reach for the best or trying to think the best I would entertain the notion that, well, maybe Hitler ought to be heard and see what he really had in mind--only to fall back with the realization that this was part of a dreadful strategy.

BASIAGO

In the course of reading the work from your four years at Current History, I found that with the exception of appropriate characterizations of Stalin and Hitler, you reserved negative criticism only for the Munich-misled Neville Chamberlain. What do you think Chamberlain's mistakes were?

COUSINS

The same as my own, which is the tendency to expect the best of people, the desire not to allow even the smallest sign of hope to go untended or unnurtured. His philosophy in that respect, of course, was exploited to the detriment not just of the British people but of the world. The mistakes were very uncomplicated: he tried to translate his wishes for peace into a belief system that just wasn't justified.

BASIAGO

Were you constantly struggling with memories of Chamberlain in trying to fashion a world federalist vision?

COUSINS

As I say, that federalist vision was pretty well developed earlier as a result both of the Athenian experience and of the American experience. That was the filter or the prism through which I tended to see current history, lower case c and lower case h.

BASIAGO

How did his policy of appeasement differ from the peace sought by disarmament advocates, particularly after the development of the atomic bomb?

COUSINS

Would you mind repeating the question?

BASIAGO

How did his policy of appeasement differ from the peace sought by disarmament advocates following the development of the atomic bomb? Did it constantly force you to forge a bilateral vision of disarmament?

COUSINS

I don't think that the two situations were analogous. In one case, you were dealing with certain basic dynamics and forces in motion that, as had been demonstrated, could not be arrested by sweet nothings, whether the Oxford Oath or Chamberlain's "peace in our time." With the atomic situation, you're in a totally different situation, which is the fact that history had come around to the point where it was no longer possible to use force as a way of protecting yourself against force. Therefore, at a very early stage, before antagonisms deepened and hardened, it was necessary to anticipate the implications of this new fact that you had to try to find some way other than force to deal with the need to protect oneself against aggression, protect and preserve your freedoms. That way it seemed clear to me was through world organization. Then the question was what kind of world organization and how do you go about creating it. So the situations were not analogous. In one case you were turning away from reality, and in the second case you were actually trying to understand a new reality.

BASIAGO

Now, of course. Secretary of War [Henry L.] Stimson had led the Manhattan Project at the highest levels, and it was essentially his request to Granville Clark in 1944 to go home and create a vision of a world with no more war that really spawned the movement toward world organization. Was this a natural progression by a group of idealistic people from attacking the greatest embodiment of evil in their time--first Hitler and Nazi aggression, then the bomb as a physical embodiment of evil?

COUSINS

When one thinks of the term "political realities" and its opposite, one naturally thinks of pacifism as counterposed to political realism. Some of that, I think, was probably implicit in your question earlier about whether the "peace in our time" approach, which was fallacious, was not also apparent in the thinking of those who wanted to control nuclear force. I bring this up because Grenville Clark was no pacifist. I'm not sure that he would even qualify as an idealist. You have to recall that he was the author of the Plattsburg Amendment, which may well have saved the life of the United States by giving us a certain measure of preparedness. So that when he thought about the situation as it then existed, it was not from the vantage point of someone who all his life had opposed the use of force in national defense, but quite the contrary- -someone who had actually sought to mobilize that force in time to prevent an attack. He recognized the implications of force in the modern world and was forced himself to think in terms of workable alternatives to that force. So as a political realist, he was trying to create a new architecture for peace to protect the United States.

BASIAGO

I know that he had also led a group of private citizens in developing the Selective Service Act, and there is a second instance I would imagine where he was encouraging American preparedness. Did Stimson or anyone else high in the government have any interest in fostering a civilian extension of U.S. policy?

COUSINS

Yes. Justice Roberts, Owen [J.] Roberts of the Supreme Court, a Republican, perhaps more conservative-- judging by his record--than Clark, had strong feelings about the connection between peace and law and also the need for a structure which would make law possible. Like Clark, he was a student of history. He was thinking in terms of historical principle in trying to gain acceptance for the fact that the world now had to be governed, and this was the great challenge of our time. The government should take a certain form, because the drift would be inevitably towards world control, since the same reasons that created the need for a governed world would also create the opportunity for a monolithic world under totalitarian control. He was looking ahead and saw the alternatives .

BASIAGO

Did any of these leaders express a fear that following the development of the bomb there would be a possibility that the United States would be put in an untenable position in the sense that a very informed citizenry such as the United States' would perhaps desire a movement toward unilateral disarmament? Was there any fear among this original group that the movement toward the control of the bomb should be marshaled by people who were very well connected to the original effort to create the bomb? I find an interesting connection in Stimson. Here was a person who had marshaled the effort to design the bomb, realized its danger, and then--

COUSINS

Stimson was a very interesting blend. [Franklin D.] Roosevelt was wise in selecting him for the cabinet, because he was able to bring along a large segment of independent Republican thought, and Stimson 's presence in the cabinet provided a great deal of strength for Roosevelt in dealing with the rising problem of Hitlerism. Stimson, like Clark, was a reasonable man. He had an open mind, but like the rest of us he was not free of error. At some points along the way his inability to understand the workings of politics may have figured in certain decisions or attitudes. For example, when he told [Dwight D.] Eisenhower that the United States had successfully exploded the bomb at Alamogordo [New Mexico] , he surprised Eisenhower by his own feelings of elation: "This great new force has been created." Eisenhower immediately perceived the implications of this and was as saddened instinctively as Stimson had been jubilant. Stimson could only regard this new development in short-term gains; Eisenhower was able to think through the implications. But on the whole I think that Stimson 's presence in the United States government during that period was profoundly constructive. I think he came into the cabinet very early in the war. When was it? Nineteen thirty-nine or 'forty? I don't know when he became secretary of war. It's vague in my mind. But he performed a very useful service, by and large, and as I say was a constructive force during that period.

BASIAGO

I think we're moving a little bit too far ahead in history, perhaps because of the momentous nature of the development of the bomb and your role in the aftermath. Let's go back. I find some very interesting personalities in your history who were already in the early thirties entertaining an internationalist vision. I'm wondering about Nicholas Murray Butler, the esteemed president of your alma mater, Columbia University, who was an ardent advocate of international cooperation. In reviewing his work The Family of Nations for the periodical that you were writing for at that time, you noted with some sense of familiarity that "Dr. Butler has been advocating a family of nations from the moment he became articulate as a public figure, and that was as far back as any one of us can remember." When were you first introduced to Dr. Butler's ideas about world order?

COUSINS

I was introduced to Butler's ideas of world order, or other order in general, when I was called on the carpet because I was suspected of having hung some girl ' s panties from the window of his residence on the campus. It is true that girl's panties were fluttering from just outside his bedroom, but it is not true that I was one of the guilty parties. When he spoke about it, I'm not sure whether he recognized that there were legitimate grounds for humor in the situation, but he did talk about the fact that you have to maintain order on the campus, [laughter] Whether or not this was a reflection of the fact that he didn't want panties hung from world windows, or that was a reflection of his world order-- But I never knew Butler personally. I heard him speak two or three times in addition to that little lecture we received.

BASIAGO

When he wasn't speaking to you about lingerie, did you take any ideas from his vision? Last week you mentioned that you attended a lecture during which he spoke about the lost years of American history. Was that the connection to the founding fathers?

COUSINS

Yes, it was. I don't think that Butler's ideas about the need for a family of nations or law in the world were especially apparent to me at Columbia. He was not regarded highly by the student body. He seemed to the kids to be a little pompous, and I tended, I suppose, to be swept up in the general disdain for the man at the time. Later I came to have perhaps a higher respect for him. I did, however, become very fond of his successor, Grayson [L.] Kirk, with whom I became good friends.

BASIAGO

What impact did Kirk have on your intellect?

COUSINS

Well, Kirk like Butler had the same imposing presence and like Butler he tended to be a little magisterial and like Butler he had a deep sense of history. But he was closer to the mainstream of student life. His experience with students in [the University of] Wisconsin had, I think, given him a certain sensitivity that Butler didn't have to the way young people acted and thought. But the man who had the greatest influence on me was James T. Shotwell. That was a relationship that deepened, and I was close to him for the rest of his life. He was a professor of international relations at Columbia, and he was a scholar of world reputation. He had studied and had written about the League of Nations and about problems in international order, had done some massive works on the subject in fact. Even when in later years--which is, say, after 1945--we differed-- He felt that world federalism tended to bypass existing problems and that we ought to work as we could to make sure that the United Nations had the acceptance of the United States and could function. [We ought] to take it as far as American public opinion was ready to accept it, rather than to lose it altogether because we were reaching out for something better. Shotwell was very close to Clark [M.] Eichelberger, to whom I became very close too. It was interesting that even though the ideas of Shotwell and Eichelberger tended to be counterposed against the ideas of the federalists, that in terms of my personal relationships I was as close to Shotwell and Eichelberger as I was to any of the federalists, including Clark.

BASIAGO

Were Shotwell and Eichelberger sharing Justice Roberts's view that before complete world government and control of nuclear weapons there should be some intermediary position whereby the European nations would try to hold onto a monopoly and then administer--?

COUSINS

Well, Roberts's views tended to be in tension I thought between the two sets of views. He'd been swept along by the momentum of day-to-day events and rivalries. and yet he recognized that historically old principles had to be applied to new situations. So there was some dichotomy, perhaps, in his views. Yet he was able to make common cause with Grenville Clark, who I think perhaps more so than any other person was able to strike a proper balance between the need to attend to existing problems of the world and the need to create a long-term mechanism for dealing with the inevitable effects of failures of the current approaches to problems.

BASIAGO

You mentioned last week that Reinhold Niebuhr never became an advocate of world federation. Did you have any discussions with Niebuhr? I know he was associated with Current History. I'm wondering--

COUSINS

Yes. Niebuhr felt that government was a consequence of community--I think those were his words--and that you didn't have the development of the world that could lead to the next step of government. But my reading of The Federalist Papers had persuaded me that community was not just a forerunner of order but the result of it, and that there were imperatives that transcended community as Niebuhr saw it. There was first of all the fact of the inability to deal with breakdown, actual and potential, and that some movement in the direction of an architectural form was the best assurance we might have that community could be created. Federalists thought that the community argument was refuted by the experience of the thirteen colonies, where you had contrasting communities--cultural, political, social--and where the very real probability existed that those differences could become combustible, which is to say where the lack of community could destroy all the gains of the revolution. And so they attempted to create a basis for community. That was the way federalists saw the world picture. We had to create a basis for world community which didn't exist, as well as to recognize the consequences of the absence of community.

BASIAGO

Niebuhr viewed man as beholden to original sin. Was he concerned that any world government would fall victim to that tendency in the individual human heart and inevitably lead to dictatorship?

COUSINS

He wrote about that. Niebuhr was not just a political philosopher but a religious philosopher, and he tended to move back and forth between the two. To the extent that philosophy is a way of looking at questions in other than purely religious terms, I had the feeling that there was an admixture there in Niebuhr ' s thinking which, however challenging and interesting it might be, was not without flaws.

BASIAGO

He viewed the idea that man is a victim of bad institutions as naive. In fact, he thought man was faulty and not perfectible by political systems. What gave you an assurance that human society, and man individually, is perfectible by the political architecture?

COUSINS

I took rather a dualistic--and still do--view of human life, which is to say that people are neither all type A or type B and that circumstances help to determine whether we become predominantly one or the other and not just our own genes. I think our genes give us the tendency, and the setting helps to determine which becomes more manifest or even dominant. The view of [Thomas] Jefferson, which is that you don't exhaust yourself in speculation as to whether man is predominantly good or evil-- You put yourself in a position to take advantage of the best and protect yourself against the worst and you try to create those conditions which will help to bring out the best. After all, for every argument that man is evil, you can find an argument that man is good. The debate as to which is predominant is really a fruitless debate. The thing that we do, therefore, is realize that since we have the capacity to be both, we also have to ask how we protect ourselves against the negative capacity and how we take advantage of the positive one.

BASIAGO

Sounds like you were being influenced by a nurture-over-nature view of human psychology. Were you reading any of the postwar writings?

COUSINS

We're talking now about the period, say, 1945 to 1950, and the readings took two forms, one historical and the other contemporary. On the contemporary level, there were a number of books that were put out at the time. One was The Principles of Power by Guglielmo Ferrero, in which he was applying to nations the same considerations that Jefferson was applying to the individual, and where he was concerned with principles of legitimacy in government. He had made a very extensive study of what is and what is not legitimate in the way governments are created and also in government policy. That was a rather interesting work. You also had [Gaetano] Salvemini's book on power [March of Fascism], Bertrand Russell's book on power [Power: A New Social Analysis], Stuart Chase's book dealing with the theme of power [Roads To Agreement; Successful Methods in the Science of Human Relations], Borgese's work, I think called Goliath: The March of Fascism-- I think we spoke about that last week. There's a great deal of intellectual and philosophical ferment at the time, much of it I think touched off by the new change that had come about in the world, which made it necessary for people to reexamine old assumptions .

BASIAGO

In his book Power, Russell noted that present political systems worked against the best sorts of people finding their way into government. Socially and culturally, was the world federalist movement an attempt to right that? You apparently have great respect for the people you were then associated with like Clark.

COUSINS

That would have been its effect, but that was not its motivation. Our motivation was purely to try at that stage, since we're looking ahead, to avoid the consequences of an atomic arms race and the drift of the world towards anarchy. That was the primary motivation- -not to get good people in the government. Although that, I think, would have been an effect, certainly a desirable one.

BASIAGO

Clark, of course, was a son of great privilege and of optimum physical security because of his family's wealth. Was that shared by others associated with you at that time?

COUSINS

We had some people who were not impoverished. James [P.] Warburg was one of them. Thomas [K.] Finletter was another. Frank Altschul at least in an early stage of the federalist movement, was yet another. He was very strong at one point. Then you had some people in Boston, the Cabots. All of which, I suppose, gave rise to the notion that it was a fairly aristocratic, elite, and somewhat privileged group. But there were enough of the poor folks, including myself, to more than counterbalance that trend.

BASIAGO

I was wondering whether they fit Jefferson's paradigm of the natural aristocracy of virtue and talent versus wealth and privilege? Or in some cases was it both?

COUSINS

I think that at some of our meetings you could look around the room and think that Jefferson might have felt very much at home.

BASIAGO

Let's explore some of the other individuals you met at Current History. Apparently it was during this time that you met Wendell [L.] Willkie. How did you meet Willkie?

COUSINS

I met him at the Century Club in New York. This was after he had returned from his world tour, out of which came the book One World. I think that that book was probably published in 1945. I don't know, somewhere around then. When was it published? Do you have a date on that?

BASIAGO

'Forty- three.

COUSINS

'Forty- three. Yes, that's right. He ran for the presidency.

BASIAGO

Fall of 1940.

COUSINS

Fall of 1940. That's right. He ran for the presidency in '40, was defeated, and then carried out this mission for Roosevelt on his world trip. That's right. So it was after he came back from his world trip that I met him. There was a small group at the Century Club who met for lunch, summoned by Beardsley Ruml , who was then chairman of the board of R. H. Macy and Company [Inc.] and who was one of those who were being swept up by the impress of events at the time. Ruml had been influenced by the atomic scientists. There was a great deal of ferment then, and Willkie, because of his book, was considered a natural asset to the movement.

BASIAGO

So you first learned of Willkie 's views on world society during that first meeting there at the Century Club?

COUSINS

No. I first learned of his views through his statements about the war after his defeat for the presidency. He had also appeared on a program called "Information Please" with Clifton Fadiman as moderator. It was a radio program. He did very well on it, and for the first time intellectuals began to cotton to him. He rather liked that too. I may have met him once or twice shortly after, but the one strong memory I had was at the luncheon meeting called by Beardsley Ruml, one of the series of meetings that Ruml had sponsored.

BASIAGO

Despite his book One World being published in 1943, I've had trouble finding any connection between him and let's say Clark and the people who carried on the movement into the Cold War period. Apparently there wasn't one or--?

COUSINS

Not that I know of.

1.5. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE ONE (JANUARY 30, 1987)

BASIAGO

I'm intrigued by your association with Wendell [L.] Willkie, whose work One World in 1943 so typifies the world federalist era. Just to get some background information on Willkie and his influence upon you, what can you tell me about how well you knew him and when you met him and that sort of thing?

COUSINS

Willkie was a phenomenon on the American scene at that particular time. He was a businessman, a utilities executive, but he had a great deal of flair. It was extremely appealing. He was a good friend of Irita Van Doren, then the editor of the New York Herald Tribune weekly book section, and she had dinners at her home to which he was invited. It was in this way that he met some of the people responsible for the program "Information Please." That was a highly popular radio program. It later became a TV program as well, but at this particular time it was just a talk program where questions would be asked of a panel. He did very well on that panel, and that made him something of a darling of the intellectuals in New York--which was a paradox because, as I say, he was a businessman and my knowledge of him came about in that fashion. I don't think that it would be accurate to say that he was a friend. He was an acquaintance, someone you met at dinner parties, Irita Van Doren's and Harrison Smith's and Amy Loveman's, but certainly not a confidant in any way.

BASIAGO

It's been said that to some extent the efforts he made to foster world order in a sense represented his own enlightened self-interest as a businessman. Did you find any evangelical or cosmic religious dimension to his sponsorship of these ideas? How did you put it in perspective?

COUSINS

It was probably true that there was some self- interest in that position, but that could be said of anyone who works in the area of world peace. It increases, or perhaps that person hopes to increase, his or her own chances of survival. But more accurately, it was a very genuine awareness that he had about what the world was like. He went on that trip with Joseph [F.] Barnes, then of Simon and Schuster [Inc.], and Barnes helped him write the book. I think he also went on that trip with Gardner Cowles [Jr.], "Mike" Cowles of the Cowles Publishing Company, which also published at that time a magazine called Look. It would not be accurate, I think, to say that his concept of one world was a desire to serve his business interests. At least his associates in the company didn't think so, quite the contrary. They probably felt that he was embarrassing the company by these long-haired interests of his.

BASIAGO

So you're suggesting that his work was actually divergent from the expectations of his class or colleagues. A theme that's reiterated again and again in your own work The Good Inheritance is this idea that some kind of comprehensive world political order was a necessity from certain historical forces. How did you personally arrive at this position? What information led you to see that that was obvious and gave you such convictions so early on that we had to move ahead and create a viable world federation?

COUSINS

Well, this is all pre-atomic now. We're talking about 1940, '41, '42. After we got into the war or as we were approaching the entry into the war and as the situation in Europe began to heat up, there was I think a new search for American identity. We were rediscovering our past. The poetry of Walt Whitman, for example, which at one time had been regarded as hortatory and over- expressionistic, now became an item in the American rediscovery--the poetry of patriotism. It was a higher patriotism. "I hear America singing," Walt Whitman wrote. Henry [S.] Canby, my colleague on the Saturday Review of Literature, about that time wrote a biography of Whitman [Walt Whitman, An American]. There were these stirrings of the American tradition and the American heritage, which I think we all felt because it was now being challenged. It was not a tub-thumping jingoism so much as it was a reassertion of basic American values. Coward-McCann, a book publisher, wanting to publish something that would reflect or appeal to this reassertion of American values, asked me if I would write a primer of democracy. As I got into it, almost like someone doing a Ph.D. thesis that gets out of control, I discovered that the portion devoted to ancient Greece was not only dominant but perhaps predominant. Then, when I came to the American founding fathers and became aware of their own intellectual debt to ancient Greece, it seemed to me that we had an interesting juxtaposition between the failure of Greece, failure to federate, and the decline of Greece. It bled itself through the Peloponnesian Wars, and those wars were a reflection of the fact that the Greek states were unable to arrive at a political form among themselves and slid into this long period of wars which drained much of the lifeblood of Greece. Even though you had an afterglow, one might say--Plato, Aristotle--the fact of the matter was that the place of Greece as a nation had been very severely weakened and had passed the primary stage of world history. The men who met at Philadelphia in their study of history were tremendously impressed by the fact that this state, or this congeries of states known as Greece, despite all their wisdom and their great contributions, never realized the importance of creating a political form among themselves, and that failure cost Greece its life. So the American constitutional convention, in effect, was a counterpoint to the experience of the Greek states, just as The Federalist Papers-- [James] Madison, [Alexander] Hamilton, [John] Jay--were a counterpoint to Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War. I became, as I say, aware of this juxtaposition, and it seemed to me that it had not been sufficiently recognized or highlighted. That was what The Good Inheritance: [The Democratic Chance] was about. Now, that still left undone perhaps a large part of the assignment given to me when I was asked to do a primer of democracy. So it seemed to me that what I ought to do was to bring together not just the main historical documents concerned with the development of the democratic form of government, but in an attempt to give it a very contemporary flavor to seek the credos of prominent living Americans on the subject. That was the second part of the book, and the book appeared under the title A Treasury of Democracy. So these two books were companion volumes. They came out, I think, at the same time and constituted, I hope, an attempt to meet the original assignment given me, even though the form was somewhat different from what had been contemplated by the publishers.

BASIAGO

When we last spoke, you mentioned the important role that M. E. [Merle E.] Tracy played in your development, and you've just described again how in a sense you were communing with the great minds of antiquity during this period. I'm wondering how this educational process took place in a day-to-day sense. For instance, in Suetonius we find this vivid picture of Roman society and the emphasis upon the moral and political decadence of its leaders. Was it commonplace at the offices of Current History to be making active connections, let's say, between current political leaders and comparisons in ancient history?

COUSINS

It may not have been commonplace, but it was not unusual. We had an environment of classical scholarship at the Saturday Review. Elmer [H.] Davis, who came on the editorial board at the time that I did, was a Greek scholar and also a Roman scholar.

BASIAGO

In fact, wasn't he a Rhodes scholar?

COUSINS

Yes. He once gave a lecture in Latin at the New York Public Library. He was identified mainly as a news commentator, but he was a classical scholar as well. He would talk not just about Thucydides or Suetonius' Lives of the Twelve Caesars or about Plutarch or about Seneca or about [Edward] Gibbon, but he had a deep sense of that history. One of our principal contributors, Leonard Bacon, the poet, was an enthusiast of Polybius, and so we would have these discussions as to the impact of the Macedonian experience contrasted with the Athenian experience. It was not a showy thing. It was rather-- Not entirely casual either, I suppose, but it was not unusual, and it was used more for the purpose of illustrating a point than for the purpose of demonstrating scholarship. It was a time when historical allusion was not only commonplace but was rather expected. In our discussions the allusions were very pertinent, and it was an educational arena in that sense.

BASIAGO

You mentioned Elmer Davis, Leonard Bacon. Could we include Carl Van Doren in this circle? He'd just published a biography of Franklin [Benjamin Franklin].

COUSINS

Yes, he did his biography of Franklin, and later as one of the small group that we had who were discussing the relevance of federalist ideas to the world situation, he also wrote The Great Rehearsal. He was inspired by the experience of the American founding fathers. That was why he called the book The Great Rehearsal, which is that he felt that this experience was in effect a rehearsal for a much larger approach to the ideas that had to go into a design for human survival.

BASIAGO

I'd like to get more material on your experiences at Current History before you actually went next door to the Saturday Review. In particular, I'd like to get information regarding any forays you might have made into actual political reporting. I've really found only two references that I could identify as attempts you might have made to move into the mainstream of political reporting.

COUSINS

You surely do your homework.

BASIAGO

There's one reference in Human Options: [An Autobiographical Notebook] to the first time you saw Franklin [D.] Roosevelt [FDR].

COUSINS

Yes.

BASIAGO

This was in October of 1937.

COUSINS

That's right.

BASIAGO

You describe how you moved around the great circle of reporters at a conference and got a vision of a rather physically remarkable human being.

COUSINS

That's right.

BASIAGO

Where were you? How did that come about? What was he talking about?

COUSINS

I was education writer at the time for the New York Evening Post. In reading some of the reports of the Federal Trade Commission [FTC], I saw some references to the attempts of the utilities industry to influence American education. They hired textbook writers, prepared new texts. It seemed to me this was worth digging into. I persuaded the city editor, Walter Lister, to let me go to Washington. At the Federal Trade Commission, I was able to examine all the documents. And I was amazed that this hadn't been done by the newspapers before this- -showing the attempt of the utilities to use the schools as an integral part of their propaganda efforts. The head of the Federal Trade Commission escorted me to the presidential press conference, and that was when I had a chance to see FDR in action.

BASIAGO

You've described him as "tanned, robust, and electric with life."

COUSINS

Yes.

BASIAGO

And you thought you'd never seen a healthier- looking human being.

COUSINS

That's right.

BASIAGO

Now, that was written many decades later. Were you suggesting that this was actually an individual who looked larger than life?

COUSINS

Good way of putting it. He was very much at home behind the president's desk. I saw nothing unnatural about that scene. This was the way a president ought to look-- not only look but act. When he spoke, it was on the basis of a very accurate understanding of what the question was and he had a knowledgeable answer. He didn't need cue cards and he didn't need people standing behind him to prompt him with a correct answer. If he didn't know anything, he would say so; but I don't recall that he had to say that he would "look into it" more than once or twice. For the most part he was precise with his replies and very cogent. The reporters didn't feel that they were being handed synthetic materials. They knew that they could take what the president said at face value.

BASIAGO

You mentioned you were there in this research for this article regarding propaganda attempts by the utilities. During the same period, actually a few months later in February 1938, you wrote an article entitled "Food for the Trust Busters" in which you attacked monopoly in the dairy, meat, and bread markets. Sounds like another FTC connection.

COUSINS

That's right.

BASIAGO

That article, the second one, was based on an unpublished FTC report. That adjective "unpublished" kind of fascinates me. Where was the connection there? How did you get into the FTC's operations?

COUSINS

Well, as I indicated, I met some of the people in the FTC. I think the word "unpublicized" would have been more accurate than "unpublished," even though it wasn't published by a commercial firm. It did exist, but it hadn't been picked up any more than the utilities material had been publicized. When I learned of the existence of this, my friends at the FTC supplied me with the materials. I had sort of forgotten about that.

BASIAGO

This circle of intellectuals concerned with the lessons of antiquity, if you will-- Elmer Davis later became, I guess, head of the Office of War Information. I'm wondering to what extent this group had active New Deal connections. For instance, Rexford Guy Tugwell, one of the brain trusters, was an infrequent contributor to Current History. Were there any other connections that--?

COUSINS

So was Raymond Moley. It was not unnatural that these people who were called upon by FDR would be prominent in the university world. FDR had a profound respect for the university world, and I think that Sam [Samuel I.] Rosenman helped introduce him to a number of those persons. I'm not sure of this, but I believe that Rosenman was responsible for the fact that Bob [Robert E.] Sherwood also became a confidant of the president. Sherwood was a playwright, Abe Lincoln in Illinois--a Pulitzer Prize winner. He was also very close to the Saturday Review. He was a close friend of John Mason Brown's, for example. Sherwood later did the book Roosevelt and Hopkins, a study of many aspects of the Roosevelt years. Then John Mason Brown, who was our drama critic and a very close friend of Sherwood's, later wrote the biography of Sherwood and died before that book could be completed. I was asked, as you probably know, to finish it and ready it for publication.

BASIAGO

Now, this is interpretative on my part, but I find that The Good Inheritance ultimately comes to be quite a defense of some of the social experimentation that FDR was carrying on. Would that be a fair characterization? As an example, you describe Athens before Solon as facing some of the problems that FDR faced, widespread dislocation of the work force, an increasing debtor class, and a growing discrepancy between rich and poor. And there seem to be a few initiatives that FDR undertook that in fact Solon also undertook thousands of years earlier. For instance, I guess FDR's closing of the banks had a parallel in antiquity. Was that on your mind?

COUSINS

I was not unaware of the resemblances, but what was most striking to me was the parallel between the attempt of the Greek states to federate ending in failure and the consequent war. That on one side of the parallel, and on the other the world situation at that particular time with all the nations who were a part of a geographic unit in the same sense that the Greek states were part of a geographic unit. As Hamilton said, whenever you have a geographic unit the choice generally is unite or fight. And if we were to fight it's important to take into account the weapons that that would be fought with. So we had no choice it seemed to me except to try to find a basis for uniting that would enable each country to maintain its own traditions and its culture and its values, but at the same time yielding to a common authority with respect to common dangers and common needs. Such at least was the reading that I had from the Greek experience.

BASIAGO

When we last spoke you also discussed M. E. Tracy. I can't find many references to Merle Elliott Tracy beyond a work entitled Our Country, Their Country--

COUSINS

Our Country, Our People and Theirs.

BASIAGO

Exactly. I'm fascinated by this particular project. You seem to have come together with another circle of individuals who were helping Tracy.

COUSINS

But on that book, have you seen the book?

BASIAGO

Yes, and I've read the introductions to each of the quantitative sections, but not all the statistical material .

COUSINS

What he did was to study various aspects-- history, politics, economy, culture, and so forth. I did one of the sections for him on American culture. It's an interesting undertaking.

BASIAGO

That was your primary contribution in that group to that work?

COUSINS

Yes.

BASIAGO

You mentioned what a remarkable individual M. E. Tracy was, a blind individual with this remarkable grasp of history and antiquity. What are some more of the facts of his life? I've been unable to find anything.

COUSINS

He grew up in Maine, went to the Perkins Institute for the Blind, became a newspaperman. Went to Texas, where he was one of the editors of I think the Houston Chronicle. [He] became a columnist for the Chronicle, in fact, and then one of the earliest of the syndicated columnists--the title of the columns being "M. E. Tracy Says, " I believe. He was syndicated by Scripps- Howard [News Service] , along with Heywood Broun and Westbrook Pegler. [He] came north and learned that the New York Times magazine Current History was available and acquired it. I met him through one of the reporters on the Post who was his neighbor. When he wanted a staff for Current History, the two of us, Leonard M. Leonard and I, left the Post to join Tracy.

BASIAGO

My search, as I mentioned, brought up that one text in 1938, which essentially was a comparison of the superstates- -the United States, Italy, Germany, and Russia. Were there any longer projects in Tracy's curriculum vitae?

COUSINS

No.

BASIAGO

Do you find it curious that most of his distilling of history was in terms of inspiring or educating younger individuals? That he never developed a larger corpus of historical writings beyond journalism and that sort of thing?

COUSINS

I never thought of it in that sense. He was a very thoughtful man and knew how to read, largely because it didn't come to him very easily. Though he was not showy in his knowledge, he had a very wide historical knowledge. I thought of him obviously at the time as being very old, but he was then in his fifties, I believe, his late fifties. So that the period in a person's life where you harvest your ideas, he was just about entering. I think he died about the age of sixty-four. Was that right?

BASIAGO

I think around there, yes. I just find it remarkable that with someone with such comprehension that we don't find a magnum opus. Who were some of the other young individuals who might have been inspired by this circle of individuals? I find it curious that your contemporaries I. F. Stone and Vance Packard were at least contributing to Current History. Did you know them?

COUSINS

Yes.

BASIAGO

Were they in that same circle of students?

COUSINS

I. F. Stone was then Izzy Feinstein, who was an editorial writer for the same paper that I worked on. We were on the Post together. As I look back I realize that he's my contemporary, but at that particular time I was a cub reporter and he was a chief editorial writer about ten years older than I, I guess, ten or fifteen. It was only in later years after the Post that I got to know Izzy Stone pretty well. He wrote for us, both for Current History and the Saturday Review, and I found him very enjoyable, apart from being very stimulating.

BASIAGO

Another curious or fascinating thing I find in my review of your entry into journalism is a tendency to want to do articles about medical themes. For instance, the May 1938 issue of Current History contains your review of Paul [H.] de Kruif's The Fight for Life, a polemic about the conflict between commerce and mercy in the medical field. You also reported about Harry [G.] and Rebecca [Janney] Timbres, who had gone to Russia to fight disease. Is there anything in your background that made you particularly interested in man's fight against illness?

COUSINS

I think I had spoken about having been sent to a tuberculosis sanatorium at the age of ten. They do a lot of growing up rather fast under those circumstances. At that time TB therapy was largely a matter of dry, cold air, and there was a TB sanatorium in New Jersey which in a flat state was considered at a pretty high altitude. I doubt that it was more than two or three thousand feet, if that. In any event, I was sent to the sanatorium, largely on the basis of a lung X ray. At that time they didn't quite realize that young children in their X rays show calcification and that the exposure to TB was rather general without meaning that it was active. So I was sent to this place where I was exposed, of course, to TB, since mainly the people there did have active TB. I suppose one of the reasons I was sent there was that I was very frail as a kid, and they were rather worried about me. At the time that I was sent to this sanatorium, TB sanatorium, I think I weighed fifty-eight pounds. And the exposure to that particular experience where you had to think about life in a rather basic way-- Not all the kids who were there survived the experience or survived their TB. So I was not without some residual philosophy, perhaps, of health as I developed.

BASIAGO

It would not be until 1979 when Anatomy of an Illness [as Perceived by the Patient: Reflections on Regeneration and Healing] would emerge. In your earliest years in journalism is it accurate to describe this as a particular cause or fascination that you sought to write about?

COUSINS

Yes, yes.

BASIAGO

Were there other articles that I haven't found perhaps in medicine that you worked on at the time?

COUSINS

I don't recall.

BASIAGO

I'd like to get a greater understanding of this work Our Country, Our People and Theirs. It is in a sense a statistical abstract, a compilation of economic and natural resource trends among the superstates. Was anything learned by this team that suggested where, let's say, the war would go based on natural resource comparisons?

COUSINS

The context in which that book was developed and published was the same as the context in which The Good Inheritance was written. First, a challenge which was not theoretical but a real challenge to existence, a real question of whether the United States could stand apart from what was happening to the other countries of Europe, which were going under. Democracy was then in retreat. Our Country, Our People and Theirs was an attempt to examine these different systems to see exactly what the record was with respect to the ability of those systems to meet the needs of people. I think the book did a rather good job.

BASIAGO

I was impressed by its comprehensivity--twenty major topics. I was just wondering if along the way this team discovered that America had a tremendous advantage, that beyond or in spite of its intellectual heritage that perhaps there were natural resource advantages that it might have had, that sort of thing.

COUSINS

Yes, we did have great resources, but it would be a mistake to think of resources in terms of what you get out of the ground. I think Tracy was equally interested in the resources of the human mind.

BASIAGO

The work seems to have covered both- -both the potential in timber and coal and also in political systems and ideas of justice and that sort of thing.

COUSINS

That's right.

BASIAGO

Polybius tried to identify 220 BC as a time when things really started to get dangerous, where the tendency in human geography toward coming together of society- - inward forces--really had to be addressed, and in fact the Athenians failed to address it. Was there a moment in modern civilization that you and Tracy and others were looking back to as a focal point where in our time inevitable forces tended to be coming together? Was it 1914?

COUSINS

That pivotal period came later I think. In terms of what makes for a genuine turning point of history, I think that it was not the war or the events leading to the war, whether World War I or World War II, but the event that marked the end of the war, the Second World War, that represented a great turning point. As a matter of fact, it was almost a dividing point between pre-atomic history and the atomic age, perhaps just these two ages of humans. That was when the big turning point came. The intellectual ferment that produced occurred on different levels. When you talk about intellectuals coming together, I think of the group that was called the Writers War Board that supplied the government during the war with effective materials that could be used at home and abroad. But in the way the war ended, the people who were part of that group recognized that we had now an even larger threat which applied to the human race as a whole. So instead of the Writers War Board, it metamorphosed into the Writers Board for World Government.

1.6. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE TWO (JANUARY 30, 1987)

BASIAGO

You stated that 1945 was the point of departure where there was a certain degree of inevitability to what human society was confronted with in terms of its political arrangements. Of course, Polybius noted in 220 B.C. that suddenly the affairs of Italy and Africa were interlinked with those of Greece and Asia. What I find in reading your pre-atomic work is that you were already concerned with certain themes that frequently we associate with being post-atomic--a concern that industry and technology were actually fueling the forces of disintegration. What might have been some of the contributing factors to these ideas?

COUSINS

The Good Inheritance was written in 1940 and '41, I believe. It was probably published early in 1942, somewhere around then. It was at that time that the notion of what was happening to the world seemed to take shape in my mind. So the advocacy of world federalism didn't await the atomic explosion. What the atomic explosion did was to provide explosive verification, so that these groups which had been meeting, conscious of the need for world organization even before the atomic bomb, groups such as Americans United for World Organization or the Writers Board, which was thinking in terms of the need for a world organization in which the United States would participate-- Such groups, now confronted with the atomic bomb, recognized that we weren't talking about a long-term problem but something that had a great deal of immediacy connected to it. Our failure at that time to educate the American people about the need for effective world organization would radiate out--as indeed it has since--in monstrous failures, with an arms race and all the consequences of that, world tensions and the buildup for the most catastrophic war the world had ever known.

BASIAGO

This might seem like an unusual question: To some degree it seems intuitional on your part. Is that a fair characterization? In other words, as an individual, have you been known for in a sense anticipating things, or was this mostly from the study of things that had already passed? I just find it remarkable that you were in touch with conditions that really only seemed to be validated by the atomic bomb, because most of the things that could be said about national interest really had to change after--

COUSINS

I think it natural perhaps that writers should be concerned with the unseen effects of existing problems. The basic function of the writer, it seems to me, is to try to give people a sense in time of the connection between cause and effect. That's all education is, an attempt to understand that particular connection and not to wait for causes to produce their effects before dealing with them. The causes, even without respect to the atomic bomb, were certainly in evidence even before World War II, but certainly during the war and most certainly as the result of it.

BASIAGO

I was wondering if in August of 1945, despite all the obvious global shock of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, whether you felt to some extent that your themes had been validated--that they were experimental when they emerged and proof positive in August of '45.

COUSINS

One might say that what happened represented an escalation in degree, but I think that the atomic bomb also represented a difference in kind as well as in degree, because it now affected the time factor as well. It gave us only a limited amount of time in which to prevent things from being set in motion, and thus there was a great urgency. All the issues now being discussed even with respect to Star Wars, for example, were being considered at that time a prospect as an inevitable consequence of what had been started.

BASIAGO

One theme that seems to emerge in The Good Inheritance is that the dichotomy between the Athenian and Spartan vision of human society might have contained somewhat of a racial/geographic component. That is, there's a reference to Sparta carrying on a sort of Nordic tradition and Athens a Mediterranean tradition. Can you elaborate on that?

COUSINS

Yes, I found it rather striking--made all the more so because of what was happening in the world at the time with Adolf Hitler and the march of totalitarianism, or what [Gaetano] Salvemini called "the march of fascism. " Here you had between Athens and Sparta an interesting analogy historically. Athens, perhaps the most cultural of the Greek states; Sparta, a state that had come to have a militaristic tradition. But what to me was extremely interesting, most interesting of all about that juxtaposition between the two, was that Sparta had not always been militaristic. It became militaristic for geopolitical reasons. Here we begin to see the interaction between a nation's geographical position and its political institutions. Being a land state, not having access to the sea, Sparta had to protect itself against its neighbors, and so it had a military on-site presence. Athens could have its navy, you see, and it didn't affect to the same extent the domestic institutions, but Sparta increasingly became a garrison state. At one time it was the most cultural perhaps of all the Greek states in poetry and art and music. But with the passing of years and the conscription of youth and the omnipresence of the military, the institutions slowly began to change. Finally we had what is known as the Spartan example in history or the predominantly military influence in a state, as well as certain Spartan habits which they had to develop just because the military requirements were so stern. The trouble with having such a large standing army, as I suggested in the book, was that the standing army doesn't always stand--at some point it begins to march. So we could see the way political problems would actually change the dominant character of a society. Athens, on the other hand, which was a maritime state, was able not just to have the military presence offshore predominantly, but was able to engage an exchange of goods and ideas. The access to the seas provided for a certain ventilation--cultural ventilation and ventilation of ideas.

BASIAGO

You mention at the beginning of The Good Inheritance that in terms of time not many human lifetimes have passed since that age. You've mentioned today the way in which Spartan culture seemed to reach a peak magnitude of cultural development and then devolved. And we've discussed how that might have paralleled, or foreshadowed rather, Germany. Was there any potential--or did you discover anything--that this was in fact an organic trend? That there was a heritage of two power blocs within Western civilization whose struggle was still being played out on the world stage? Was this parallel or continuity?

COUSINS

I tend to believe that history is a little more plastic than that in that while you have underlying forces that tend to foster certain developments, you have a certain margin for human interpretation and action that can become quite profound, as in the case of Adolf Hitler. One might say that Hitler was a product of Versailles, and certainly that is true. But a lot of Germans were the product of Versailles as well, and yet there was only one Hitler. He was able because of Germany's situation to attract support in Germany, but the fact of the matter is that he represented a certain phenomenon. I am not convinced that if there were no person named Adolf Hitler there would be another person who would do the same thing in the same way or have the same impact. You had a situation that was deeply pathological: Hitler was insane. I don't think that there's any psychiatric standard that would admit a different conclusion from that. So you had to allow for the impress of human personality on history, even though history within broad margins is affected by the broad current of events, obviously.

BASIAGO

You mentioned what a short period has passed since the fall of Athens. During these years or in the years hence, did you learn of any continuity in actual real power in families or institutions?

COUSINS

Could you rephrase that question?

BASIAGO

Well, you mentioned how history is plastic and that this work represented an attempt at historical parallel, but then I add in the time factor and I realize that quite possibly these two interpretations of where Western civilization should go might have been carried on in a real way.

COUSINS

I see. The essential question, I suppose, is the role of determinism in history. It is manifestly true that no event is without its effects and that what happens today is an inevitable consequence of everything that has happened before. What I try to suggest is that even allowing for that, there are strange twists and turnings that history can take because of unpredictable circumstances, one of them being the impress of certain personalities on history. So history is really a combination of the two, which is determinism and free will. I think we spoke once about one aspect of this, and this had to do with the discussions with [Jawaharlal] Nehru, who said that he had often thought about the place of determinism as well as the importance of free will and which was the more important in history. Most of the people who discussed this were advocates of the deterministic theory or the free will theory. He didn't regard himself as an advocate but as an observer, someone who noted that history, like life, is similar to a game of cards. He said, "The hand that is dealt you is determinism. You can't change it. That's it. But the way you play it is free will." So there's always this relationship between the two in varying degrees. Some people play a hand better than others; some people are dealt hands that can't be changed. So you get varying degrees between the two, but both are involved, I think the same thing was true of Germany and Hitlerism. The hand that had been dealt Germany was represented by the aftereffects of World War I, but it's a mistake to blame Versailles for Hitler. What about the war that produced Versailles? What about the policies of the kaisers in Germany? That produced the defeat; the defeat produced Versailles. It would have been a mistake to suppose that a war like that would not have produced a psychology of victor and vanquished. It always does. Certainly Hitler in conquering countries ran counter to what he said about Versailles. He was far less generous with the nations he defeated than the Allies were with Germany.

1.7. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE ONE (FEBRUARY 17, 1987)

BASIAGO

Another individual that I have a suspicion you worked with and were influenced by is John Dewey. He joined Henry [S.] Canby, Amy Loveman, and M. E. [Merle E.] Tracy on the Current History literary advisory board, which selected typically the ten outstanding nonfiction works in the late thirties. What was your involvement with John Dewey?

COUSINS

I had a great admiration for Dewey. In terms of his educational and political philosophy, it seemed to me that he represented ideological integrity. He didn't allow himself to be pushed around by the far left wing of the liberal movement, even though at the time they had a powerful voice in left-of-center politics and a great many liberal intellectuals almost as a badge of intelligence either identified themselves with or did not oppose those dictates. Dewey was one of the first independent liberal voices of the time. He was accused of being a Trotskyite because of the Trotsky trial in Mexico that you're familiar with. He was probably preeminent in American education, certainly in the philosophical approach to education. It was my good fortune to get to know him at Teachers College [Columbia University] . He would invite me up to his home for dinner, as he would other students. Very straightforward, very open. When I went to Current History, I found him a very valuable resource. The selection jury for the book awards was a very good cross section of intellectual aristocracy in America. It was beautifully balanced too. Dewey was very supportive, regarding me as a former student, even though by the time I got there he had long since retired. But he did give occasional lectures that I came to, and he did invite me to his apartment on--it may have been Claremont Drive, I'm not sure--near Columbia. He had a relatively young wife at the time--a very discerning, intelligent, gracious lady--whom I admired too. I always regarded him, if not as a mentor, at least as someone who had an important part in my philosophical and intellectual development.

BASIAGO

I understand that he had adopted an Italian child when he lost his own son. Following your involvement with the Hiroshima Maidens you would go on to adopt an individual. Was there a--?

COUSINS

No connection.

BASIAGO

Were you opened up to the intimate aspects of his life-style in the sense of--?

COUSINS

No.

BASIAGO

So when he was entertaining students it was in a rather formal academic sense?

COUSINS

Informal academic.

BASIAGO

Was he challenging you or--?

COUSINS

We'd sit around cross-legged, and he would generally respond to things that we would bring up. At the time our minds were more on politics than on the philosophy of education. It was comforting to know that it was possible to be radical without being communist. From the very start I found myself with that orientation, and at times it was a very lonely position. You kept being tagged as an anticommunist . I was anticommunist, but the term itself had other overtones. It meant that, as used then, that you were dominated by hate of the Soviet Union and that you didn't know the difference between a communist and a liberal, which in my case of course I thought was absurd. This is a fight that spilled over to the [American] Newspaper Guild. I was a member of the guild since I'd been on the [New York Evening] Post. The people in the guild, some of the people in the guild, didn't hesitate to throw labels around to castigate you. While they themselves resented being called red or communist, there was a tendency to use the same tactics against those who disagreed with them. So you became a red-baiter if you didn't agree. It was not an easy field to find your way through. It was filled with mines, and you didn't want to be associated with those whose politics were shaped largely by communist-hating. And yet on the other hand, you certainly didn't want to be associated with those you couldn't support either because they were uncritical of anything the Soviet Union did and totally critical of anything the United States did. And it was not a very robust movement, if indeed it was a movement at all, trying to be free of both. The Spanish civil war helped sharpen those lines. You've got to be one thing or the other, that sort of approach. That was why I suppose I liked men like John Dewey and George [S.] Counts and Professor [William H.] Kilpatrick at Columbia, whose anticommunism was based on a belief in human freedom but not on red-baiting and not on trying to create a public opinion that would be hostile to relations between the two countries. [Franklin D. ] Roosevelt had a very good balance, I thought. There's a lot about John Dewey's philosophy that I didn't understand. I found some of his essays and books, if not impenetrable, at least rather dense. But the man himself was not. He was quite the opposite of his writing. He was explicit in speech, very responsive, listened well, and was not given to talking in long paragraphs. He spoke in sentences.

BASIAGO

In analyzing the Cold War, people have pointed to our educational system for fostering an either-or attitude in relationship to the Soviet Union and to other nations that are perceived to be our enemy. Dewey had been involved in the "outlawry of war" movement which helped bring about the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928. What connection was he making between the American school system and the mind-set of which you spoke?

COUSINS

I don't know.

BASIAGO

I'm trying to ascertain where his pacifism and educational ideas met.

COUSINS

While Dewey had a deep and perhaps overriding interest in the politics of the times, especially with respect to basic issues involving freedom, his attempt to use his ideas with respect to educational systems or educational philosophy never really obtruded, so far as I know, even though he was accused of that. But I don't recall, at least in the lectures that I heard, that he was attempting to create the kind of amalgam between the two that would say to people, "If you believe in what I'm saying in education, believe in what I'm saying in politics." I don't think that that was his style.

BASIAGO

Another individual that we touched very briefly on was James T. Shotwell, who had been active with [Woodrow] Wilson in 1917, as a delegate to Versailles.

COUSINS

Yes. Shotwell was rather important in my life. He had his office at Columbia and students would come to see him there. After the bomb was dropped, I felt that we were at a rather critical period, that a mold was then being cast that would be very difficult later to change, especially with respect to the start-up of the arms race. I thought that was the time to stop it. I had world government ideas--ideas of world government that came out of my commitment to the American experience. Shotwell and Clark [M.] Eichelberger represented to my mind the gradualist approach with respect to the UN [United Nations] and world federation. It's so interesting that both these men who worked together should become very close friends, closer than any friends I had in the federalist movement. Perhaps it was a matter of style, a matter of personality. Shotwell never tried to discourage me from my world federalist views. In fact, in our direct discussions he gave me the impression that our only difference was with respect to timing. There's almost a father-son relationship with Shotwell. When we had my twenty-fifth anniversary with the Saturday Review [of Literature], I believe he spoke. But for the most part our relationship was not based, curiously, on world affairs so much as on personal matters. We just got along very well together. He lived in a wonderful duplex apartment, had all sorts of art objects in it. His daughter was a painter and a very fine one. He was a good source of history for me. I had an admiration for Woodrow Wilson, whom he knew. It's hard for me to realize that he must have died about eighteen to twenty years ago. When did he die?

BASIAGO

I believe it was 1965. Twenty years after the UN. That sticks in my mind.

COUSINS

Yes.

BASIAGO

Following his involvement as the chief of U.S. consultants to the UN, were his old students going back to learn what he had discovered this time around? Who were some of the other students?

COUSINS

I don't know. He was one-on-one with them. With Dewey, it was generally part of a group. But with Shotwell, it was one-on-one, especially with his work at the Carnegie Endowment for [International] Peace. I would sit at his feet and listen to him talk for hours on League of Nations matters, other historical matters. He's a very decent human being. I had quite a few people in my life who were in that particular, not just generation but genre: Shotwell, Grenville Clark, Tracy, Edgar [G. ] Sisson. [Thomas K.] Finletter was younger, but he was in that general tradition with Learned Hand, Judge Learned Hand. It was the style that I had associated with the American founding fathers. I always felt, for example, that Shotwell and Grenville Clark would be very much at home with the kind of men who were at the Philadelphia constitutional convention. So I had many of those men in my life and gravitated to them quite naturally perhaps. Now I realize that I'm older than they were.

BASIAGO

Something that begs asking is what about you at that age convinced them that their time was well spent dealing with you, educating you, inspiring you?

COUSINS

I've often wondered myself. It's possible they responded to the respect I had for them. But I didn't hesitate to convert those experiences into personal assets. We got along pretty well, as I did with Professor Kilpatrick and Professor [Harold O. ] Rugg. I think I told you that two of the greatest honors I think that I received were being asked to represent all the students that Kilpatrick had taught over the years, and all the students Rugg had taught, at their eighty-fifth and ninetieth birthday parties. It meant a great deal to me. At those dinners you looked out and saw a vast array of former students who, well not just in education, but most of them leaders in the life of the country. Don't ask me to give their names. I don't remember. But I don't know what it was that served as a basis for Shotwell's devotion. It was really that. He was a very devoted friend. And Clark, I was deeply touched when Clark came all the way down from New Hampshire to visit me the time that I was ill. I had to keep-- He kept getting up to go just because he thought that he was tiring me, but I relished his presence. John [F. ] Wharton was another older man. When John Wharton came to visit me during that illness, he wept openly--something I try to discourage people from doing when they visit patients today. But it was a reflection of genuine feeling, which I had towards them as well of course.

BASIAGO

Individuals like Shotwell had been through some very important episodes in world history. Was there an urgency with which they sought to communicate what they'd learned to the next generation?

COUSINS

I had no sense of that. I don't think that any of those men felt a mission to impart or share, but [they] wouldn't hold back when it was sought.

BASIAGO

Another individual who had contributed to Current History and I'm not certain that you met was H. G. Wells, an early advocate of world federation. While he was contributing to Current History or thereafter did you ever meet him?

COUSINS

No, we corresponded. It's interesting you should mention it because Wells and G. B. [George Bernard] Shaw tended to be counterposed philosophically, at least in the intellectual mind. You found yourself taking sides as you would between Jefferson and Hamilton, even though the actual differences between the two were not what was supposed or at least not as deep as had been supposed. But I had no difficulty in coming down on the side of Wells, not that I was opposed to Shaw. There was a rivalry for preeminence, I suppose. The debate was who was the greatest living English writer and thinker, that sort of thing. But Wells, to my mind, was beautifully balanced intellectually. He's a very deep thinker, and yet he had a very lively imagination, as witnessed in his books about space. This combination of historical knowledge, his Outline of History and his abilities as a novelist, Mr. Britling Sees it Through. That was my idea of a rounded intellectual: deep in knowledge, deep in wisdom, soaring imagination, writing talent. I was sorry that I never got to know Wells. I have some letters from him. Curiously, the letters from him and the [William] Faulkner letters have disappeared from my treasures book. They used to be in the treasures book. They're not there anymore. There aren't any slips in the blank pages to indicate they were taken out.

BASIAGO

Do you have any theories?

COUSINS

Beyond what I've said, none.

BASIAGO

Wells was drawn to this idea of the world as a book or a book that would represent the entire world. Do you think he ever accomplished that?

COUSINS

That's a poetical conception, and it didn't have to be translated into reality to have value.

BASIAGO

There's a theme that we touched on briefly in the last session. You mentioned the slow progression of the development of the idea that technology had to some degree outstripped our social and moral traditions. This was a concern of Wells's. He was very intrigued by how we would arrive at the world peace which would save mankind from the destruction which he saw as inevitable.

COUSINS

The way he put it was that we were involved in a race between education and catastrophe. I think that was his way of looking at it.

BASIAGO

A question that I've always been fascinated to find answers about is the notion of scientists prior to Hiroshima who were concerned about the forward pitch of technologically inspired chaos.

COUSINS

Wells was certainly one of them, and so was Bertrand Russell. I break out into a smile when I think of Russell because I think of so many things. The blazing colors of the man personally. Episodes involving him when he came to lunch with the Sat [Saturday] Review [of Literature]. When he went to Clara Urquhart's place in London, on 46 Whimpole Street, right next to the Barrets, to have lunch with [Albert] Schweitzer. All these anecdotes, my visit with Russell, several visits in London. The almost infinite number of facets to the man's personality-- but that's not what we were talking about. I just brought him in as one of those who long before Hiroshima called attention to the increasing gap between achievements in technology and in governance. I busted two ribs so--

BASIAGO

I know that your archives reveal that after you published "Modern Man Is Obsolete, " you sent it around to people like Harrison [S.] Brown and other people who became representatives of the [Union of] Concerned Scientists. We've mentioned some literary people, people like Wells, who had a superb grasp of scientific issues. Were there more technical people in that constellation of concerned humanists prior to the bomb?

COUSINS

Brown had seen it and felt that this was the first thing that he had read that indicated that the public knew that this was more than just a weapon. But we got a number of responses, one from Carlos [P.] Romulo and one from the Overstreets, Harry [A.] and Bonaro [W.] Overstreet, quite a few in fact. Nothing that we ever did in the Sat Review got more response than that, with the possible exception of the John [A.] Ciardi/Anne [M.] Lindbergh controversy. But considering the fact that our circulation at the time was a lot smaller than it was in later years, the heavy response to that editorial would dwarf almost anything that happened before or since.

BASIAGO

So some of the principal world federalists contacted you for the first time.

COUSINS

World federalism as such didn't exist then. Einstein was one of those who responded to it. Two of his letters are missing too. We had a group called Americans United for World Government that grew out of Americans United for World Organization and added a certain impetus. Those were rather exciting days. A great deal was happening. I had a certain sense of centrality in connection with it because all the lines seemed to be converging at the Sat Review [SR] . We had support not just from scientists like Brown but from Leo Szilard, who had brought the bomb to the attention of President Roosevelt with Alexander Sachs; from Lee [A.] DuBridge, president of Caltech [California Institute of Technology] ; [George B.] Kistiakowsky of Harvard [University]; Karl [T.] Compton. Not all of them agreed fully with me about what the design ought to be, but most of them felt that SR had perceived the nature of atomic energy in other than purely military terms. They responded to the emphasis we put on the need to head off an arms race. Szilard was the most supportive and he was perhaps the most prominent, because he was the one who persuaded Alexander Sachs to take him to see the president--call the president's attention to the fact that Germany was pretty close to having a bomb of its own.

BASIAGO

I regressed somewhat in order here. Wells had written a work in 1914 entitled The World Set Free. Was there concern among the Saturday Review group prior to 1945 in the sense that they were tracking these developments-- that it was already a principal issue? Would our advances in destructive power become such that civilization itself would be endangered?

COUSINS

There was very little of that. The country was preoccupied with the need to save its life against nazism. The long-term implications of the new weapons were not perceived or even anticipated. But a group that we had called Americans United for World Organization tried to anticipate the problems of world organization following the war and tried to prepare the United States for full participation in world organization, mindful of the fact that American public opinion after World War I had not been so prepared and this resulted in profound liabilities for the United States and for the world.

BASIAGO

I guess the essence of my curiosity on this particular question is that we see in the work of people like Wells the beginning of that dichotomy that Bucky [R. Buckminster] Fuller referred to when he spoke of modern civilization as a struggle between utopia and oblivion. In the last session you rather surprised me in the sense that these individuals at Saturday Review that you were working with didn't really seem as particularly surprised or shocked by Hiroshima as we here are historically, as we can historically conceive it. In a sense, I was looking for more validation that there were other visionaries like Wells who saw this struggle before them.

COUSINS

There was a genuine sense of celebration and relief at the time the bomb was dropped. I write about this in my new book. The Pathology of Power. Have you seen it yet?

BASIAGO

Yeah, I've read it.

COUSINS

I don't think that, except for a few circles, there was an electric concern. After Modern Man Is Obsolete, there were other flurries, the transformation of Americans United for World Organization into Americans United for World Government. The movement led by Clarence [K.] Streit, Union Now, which was addressing itself to somewhat the same concern but in little more limited way perhaps. The beginnings of an organized political consciousness among the atomic scientists, led by Szilard and DuBridge, Willy [William] Higinbotham, Spofford [G.] English, and Harrison Brown. But the American people were far behind. And Szilard and Brown and I would go off on lectures, barnstorming to try to create some awareness of the fact that while we could celebrate the end of the war, we had to recognize that the war ended in a way that set the stage for genuine peril for the United States and for the human race in general.

1.8. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE TWO (FEBRUARY 17, 1987)

BASIAGO

I'd like to delve into four individuals who you've identified as extremely important in your development and whose memories you cherish fondly. Amy Loveman, Henry [S.] Canby, Christopher Morley, and William Rose Benet, your editors at Saturday Review. One thing I find remarkable in Amy Loveman's work--and a theme that redounds through your own--is her concern about not giving in to defeatism. The necessity of avoiding defeatism is an idea and even a phrase I find in many places in your own work--in the notes you provided President [John F.] Kennedy for the American University speech. We find it again in your essay Celebration of Life: [A Dialogue on Immortality and Infinity], and it's actually expanded in your philosophy of consequentialism and also in a very personal way in an Anatomy of an Illness--not giving in to physical defeat. What about Amy Loveman ' s background made her someone who so frequently inspired people not to identify with defeatism and seek to avoid it?

COUSINS

Let me talk about Amy in general. In a very real sense, she was the center of the higher literary life in New York City. The dinners in her apartment, a modest apartment on Seventy-third Street between Second and Third Avenues, provided the richest kind of relaxed conversation. Amy had two radiating centers. One was at the Saturday Review and the other was at the Book-of-the- Month Club. The history of the two organizations were intertwined because Amy, Henry Canby, and Chris Morley were also intimately connected with the Book-of-the-Month Club. The Book-of-the-Month Club in a curious sense almost drew its brain power from the Saturday Review. Henry Canby was the chairman of the board of judges of the Book-of-the- Month Club, as well as being editor of the Saturday Review. Amy Loveman was in charge of book screening and became a judge. Christopher Morley was a judge. Harry Scherman helped to support the Saturday Review. Amy would divide her time between the two offices. I became aware very early of this visceral connection. Not long after I came to the Saturday Review Harry Scherman took me out to lunch. It was across the street from Sat Review, in Longchamp's at Madison Avenue. That was where the Book-of-the-Month Club had its offices. We were right across the street at 420. Harry took me out to lunch and urged me to stand up to the old guard- -by which he meant Amy, Henry, and Chris--and not to be afraid to move out in new directions and make it my magazine. He said you build a great institution by going against conventions. This puzzled me, because I never regarded Amy, Henry, Chris as the old guard. I never conceived that they were standing in the way of what I wanted to do. I was afraid that I would disappoint Scherman, who helped financially support the Sat Review, by not starting out on a new track. It never occurred to me that a new track was required. All I wanted to do was to make it possible for their tradition to have its full luster. Obviously, I had some ideas of my own, but this had to do with the role of the Sat Review during the war more than it did with any basic change in direction of the magazine. My editorials tended to reflect the issues of the times as they impinged on the intellectual community. But I regarded the needs of the Sat Review as developmental rather than as points of departure for what had been done. I loved the old Sat Review, really, with a great deal of reverence. I couldn't ever adjust myself to the fact that I would really be in their company. Even today I'm surprised when people identify me as a primary figure of the Sat Review. I have to say, "Well, that's right. I was there more than twice the time that they were." The magazine at that time had a readership of 15,000 or 18,000 or so. At the time I left, there were 650,000 readers. So I could understand how people would identify me--not having seen the people who had been part of the old magazine. But in my own thinking, at least, it was always their magazine, always. I always regarded myself as somewhat of a trustee for them or a custodian of what they had brought into the world.

BASIAGO

The Saturday Review maintained a reputation for preserving certain journalistic values. I'm intrigued and curious about specifically what kind of social relationship you had with them- -being much younger- -and how you were being schooled in these values. Were they something that you got through osmosis just from being in that atmosphere? Or were the things that ultimately went into the credo that you drafted for the Saturday Review, this idea that the magazine belonged to the readers, that you were just the custodians of it, were these things that were actually spoken?

COUSINS

Well, let me go at your questions in sequence. On the social level, I had a strong relationship with Amy and a pleasant social relationship with Henry Canby but very little with Chris Morley. In all three cases it was to some extent a matter of geography. Henry Canby spent a great deal of his time in Clinton, Connecticut. He'd commute, to be sure, and they did have a place in New York, a little pad. But he was away a great deal of the time. He was not as involved as Amy was in my family matters. Amy had a very deep interest in the family. In fact, we named one of our girls after her. She'd come out to the country and we were very close. I loved that woman. She was very supportive. There was a tendency, of course, on the part of some people, to ask, how can Norman at the age of twenty-five or twenty-six edit a magazine such as this? How can you take him seriously? Amy was the greatest single supporter I had. As a matter of fact, one of the problems I perceived about the Sat Review from the very start was the notion that we were perhaps departing somehow from its traditions. Amy's presence and support, especially with the book publishers, was the strongest evidence anyone could have of continuity. Just to have her respect and support was one of the great blessings of my life.

BASIAGO

I don't know if I misunderstood you. You mentioned how there were forces operating upon the tradition during the war years. To some extent the magazine became more political following the war. I mean, it seems rather apparent. It becomes one of the principal magazines of a certain consensus, a political consensus. Do you feel that the tradition was broken to some degree or was it a transformation? I think I understood you to mean that you felt that you didn't honor the tradition.

COUSINS

I had the feeling that I was leading the magazine away from its predominantly literary center of gravity. That the struggle for survival, which was what we were all in at the time, which the magazine tried to reflect, led it away from its earlier emphasis. So I recognized that as quite deliberate. But it was made possible because of the support of people like Amy and Henry for what I was doing. Going back to Harry Scherman ' s advice, if I didn't see them as resisters or opponents, neither did they see me as someone who took the magazine from where they thought it ought to be at that particular time. I like to think it was a good relationship and that we were shaped as much by the times as by a conscious decision to move away from the heritage. But it's inevitable that any editor is going to put his own stamp on the magazine. The stamp I put on the magazine had their support. They felt that the times called for that kind of emphasis in the magazine. Amy's editorials, Henry's editorials, were very much in step with my own.

BASIAGO

You represented another generation and someone who felt responsible for amplifying concern about some of the principal issues of our time and the potential for all- out destructiveness and the need for world government. Being so young and rather talented, were you ever frustrated with any of the members of the staff? Was there any generational conflict? I realize that you have great respect for these individuals. I'm just trying to put myself in your shoes and realize that there must have been some forces of inertia that you were tugging against as you tried to pull out of that tradition--which was so literary-- versus the political direction that the magazine took.

COUSINS

Yes, I suppose there was frustration, but not with Amy, Henry, Chris, or Harrison Smith, not the least. The frustration at times was with the business departments. It was two years before Jack [Jacob R.] Cominsky became the publisher. I did have some frustration with the business side of the magazine.

BASIAGO

Were there fears that you would alienate the readership rather than expand it by--?

COUSINS

No, but just in terms of their competence in doing their job. I got only encouragement from Amy and Henry or Harrison Smith. But the business department would use what we were doing as an excuse for not doing a better job themselves. It's been general with advertising departments. I was somewhat frustrated by bad publishers. We got as much support as we did in the old days under Amy and Henry, but that never was enough to assure the continuation of the magazine. One of the important things about Jack was that he recognized the need to extend our reach in other areas without at the same time losing our gravitational center. Jack was an ideal partner in that respect.

BASIAGO

Was there ever any talk from the advertisers that Norman better stop writing about the bomb here or we're going to lose the magazine? It seems that quite the opposite seems to have happened commercially,

COUSINS

Now, we're talking about different sets of advertisers. Some of the publishers wanted me to write more literary editorials. I never regarded the editorial page as a private preserve. I encouraged Amy and Henry and in fact requested them and Hal to do editorials. In one of the surveys we took of publishers about changes they would like to see, one of the things that turned up quite high in the surveys was that the publishers wanted me to write editorials more frequently. They felt that just one editorial every other week or one even every three weeks was not enough. But a lot of that was perhaps implicit rather than explicit in terms of their support for the magazine. Max [L.] Schuster of Simon and Schuster told me after I came to the magazine that we couldn't possibly get book advertising with a tiny circulation of 18,000 to 20,000, whatever. I said, "What do you think would be impressive to you?" He said, "If you get 50,000, you couldn't keep the book publishers out." When we got 50,000, I wasn't aware that Simon and Schuster was knocking down any doors to get in. Publishers' advertising budgets were so low that it was obvious to me, and it certainly was obvious to Jack, that the magazine couldn't survive on publisher advertising support. So we had to get out beyond the publishers. My editorial emphasis, which was on ideas and culture in general, fit in with Jack's notion of broadening the base. We fit together very well in that respect. The magazine began to grow not only in circulation but in advertising. We had many milestones: passing 75,000 circulation, passing 100,000 circulation, passing Harper's [Monthly], passing the Atlantic [Monthly], finally passing the New Yorker. Also in the general profitability of the magazine, after so many years of being subsidized.

1.9. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE ONE (FEBRUARY 24, 1987)

BASIAGO

When we last spoke, we mentioned the influence individuals like Amy Loveman and Henry [S.] Canby had on you.

COUSINS

Oh yes.

BASIAGO

Reviewing your memories of them in present tense, I get a sense of how much you admire them.

COUSINS

You read the piece I did after Amy's death.

BASIAGO

Yes, I did. But I'm still wondering about their backgrounds. We started to talk about the way in which Amy seemed to personally contest defeatism and also wrote about it and then perhaps even influenced yourself in writing about that idea.

COUSINS

You probably read some of her editorials in the old Sat [Saturday] Review [of Literature]. Good.

BASIAGO

Where might that have come from?

COUSINS

In her case? Amy came from a southern family, one branch of which had the Loveman Department Store. I think that was in--may have been--Atlanta, I'm not sure, although she grew up in the East. I think she went to Barnard [College]. It surprised me to discover I'm as old as Amy was just before she died. One of the interesting things about life is the speed with which you become older than your grandparents. She became a researcher for the 108 New York [Evening] Post and became Henry Canby's assistant on the Post and then began to write for the Post. And gradually she came to occupy a very respected position in the book industry, augmented when she became the head of the review assignment desk at the Book-of-the-Month Club. She assigned out books for the Sat Review. As I said the last time, the Book-of-the-Month Club and the Saturday Review became rather intertwined through Henry, Amy, Chris [Christopher Morley], and also Harry Scherman's involvement with the Sat Review, which I told you about--the fact that he would help finance the magazine. A lot of money those days was in the vicinity of $10,000 a year. Occasionally, he would put that much into the magazine. He also made available the list of the book club for the Sat Review's own subscription campaign. He would also write the promotion for it. He's one of the promotion geniuses, I think, of the twentieth century. That's how he started the Book-of-the-Month Club, as the result of the mailing pieces that he set out.

BASIAGO

Some of your best writing has come out of personal struggles, such as your collagen disease in 1964 that gave us Anatomy of an Illness. Were there struggles in her life that you had become aware of?

COUSINS

No. No. Her family was the magazine. She had a very large constituency. And while she wasn't the Elsa Maxwell type in terms of being a social radiating center, nonetheless her home was a gathering place for authors and publishers and editors. An invitation to her home therefore was highly prized. She had many friends in the literary community. I met a great many people there who became my own friends. She wasn't one who scattered blessings, but if it became known that you had her blessing you would not find that disadvantageous.

BASIAGO

One thing I find remarkable about your writing is the tendency to celebrate remarkable individuals, self- actualizing individuals, such as [Jawaharlal] Nehru, [Dag] Hammarskjold, [Albert] Schweitzer, Adlai [E.] Stevenson. We know who some of Amy Loveman's heroes were- -Winston Churchill--you wrote about that. Who were the heroes of Canby, Morley, and [William Rose] Benet?

COUSINS

Canby had literary heroes. I don't know about Morley and Benet, except for one or two incidents which I'll talk about. But for Canby, I believe-- I didn't know him intimately and we never discussed this, but I believe his pantheon would include the transcendentalists and the nineteenth-century literary giants: [Walt] Whitman, [Henry David] Thoreau, [Ralph Waldo] Emerson, [Margaret] Fuller. He was a mild-mannered man but occupied a position of considerable importance in publishing. Not just because of the Sat Review and the book club but because of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, of which he was secretary, I believe, and for a period perhaps president. But he didn't command universal support or admiration. The new wave of writers tend to [view him as] perhaps a little academic and bloodless. Chris Morley seemed to have more juices coursing through him than Henry, in the view of the younger people. When you asked me who were the people he admired, at first I started to say I wasn't sure. But as I thought about it after a moment I wasn't sure either of that because Don [R. P.] Marquis was certainly someone he admired. He was one of the finest essayists of his time, much loved by booksellers. This was not altogether to his disadvantage because booksellers pushed his books. He would take pains to visit booksellers. He was a good friend of Vincent Starret's, another bookman. He wrote some novels. The two that are perhaps best known are Thunder On The Left and Kitty Foyle. Kitty Foyle was very, perhaps, revealing. Any man who writes a novel has to be prepared for that, and that's why Jean [Anderson] is very reluctant to have me publish the novel I've just written, for that reason.

BASIAGO

What was revealed? What was revealed in Kitty Foyle?

COUSINS

Relationships with secretaries which people almost automatically associated with him. He seemed to know too much about it for it not to be true.

BASIAGO

Even Morley's titles reveal a lover of life-- titles like Born in a Beer Garden. We see a very lighthearted side.

COUSINS

And the books, the one he did about Hoboken, the Seacoast of Bohemia. What did he call it?

BASIAGO

I'm not certain. You speak of it as an attitude of sagacious merriment that seemed to enshroud him. At the same time, he was a high-powered intellect. What did the serious side consist of? What was he searching for? What was his compulsion?

COUSINS

We assume that he had a serious side. That was never really confirmed. Amy would tell me of meetings at the Book-of-the-Month-Club where he had to have a serious side because he had to appraise books. He would have enthusiasms but not what one might consider measured evaluations or appraisals. He could argue for something with greater cogency because of his enthusiasm [and] then oppose it because of his scholarly criticism. But he was a bookman first and foremost- -regarded as such.

BASIAGO

Was the study of Chinese as much--?

COUSINS

Yes, Mandarin.

BASIAGO

That came out of his intellectual curiosity, or just--?

COUSINS

I don't know.

BASIAGO

You write about him that his favorite quotation was a line in a letter from [John] Keats to [Joshua] Reynolds. "Now it appears to me that almost any man may, like the spider, spin from his own innards his own airy citadel." Did you have a sense that he was striving for literary greatness, or was he too much in love with life to pursue that? We find a lot of novels. How do you put him into perspective as a writer?

COUSINS

I think that the verdict on him is apparent in the fact that he's probably been largely forgotten. One has to respect that verdict, which is that he was a product of his time, well liked by many, a very talented writer and essayist. People feared him, as they fear anyone with a good sense of humor. But he was not one of the major figures of the twentieth-century literary landscape, not even as an essayist, although he was certainly talented as one.

BASIAGO

This question might be a little bit too specific, but I'm going to pursue it anyway for those who seriously study humor or comedy. You write that he knew the difference between wit and humor.

COUSINS

Oh yes.

BASIAGO

Can we define that any further?

COUSINS

Yes. Humor is packaged. Wit is generated. Humor is a commodity and wit is spontaneous. Wit is invented. Humor is contrived. Wit is spontaneous. Humor is recirculated. Wit produces smiles or chuckles. Humor, belly laughs--but both are successful.

BASIAGO

Something I find, in getting back to Henry Canby, is a tendency in a lot of intellectuals from his era that approaches what historians have called the theory or ethic of mind mastery. I'll go a little bit further. He wrote that a sanguine, full-blooded man thinks well of his universe, a melancholy man thinks ill of his. We find this in a lot of individuals from this time--representative people from Marcus Garvey to Woodrow Wilson. Did you get any sense of that, that he was one of these individuals who was--?

COUSINS

I'm glad you picked out that passage, because it's a quintessential statement in terms of thoughtfulness, writing style, allusion, and perhaps sums up the man very well .

BASIAGO

There's a saying, of course, "As a man thinketh, so he is." In some sense this would come to further flowering in your own work, in your medical writings, this idea that psychologically we could pull ourselves up out of our physical troubles.

COUSINS

Well, Cardinal [John Henry] Newman I think was the one who made that characterization epigramatically, so that's associated with him. I think this is true, because I think that the formulation of language is an infallible index to a man's mind. The way words are used, the way they're joined together, the way they are shaped into paragraphs, all this, it seems to me, says a great deal about a person: about education, about outlook, about thought patterns. I've always had a great admiration for anyone who can express himself in a paragraph, who knows where the commas belong, who can even speak in semicolons. That was certainly true of Canby and to a lesser extent of Morley, though Benet was perhaps less measured, more sentimental, rather spontaneous, very open, very disarming--and very vulnerable perhaps because of it. People tended to step on him because of that.

BASIAGO

Can you think of examples that stick in your mind?

COUSINS

About Bill?

BASIAGO

Yeah.

COUSINS

Yes. Yes. He was self-abnegating. I always had the feeling that he was taken advantage of commercially, something that never happened to Chris Morley. Chris was a good businessman when he had to be. Bill was not. Bill never looked out for himself. Amy found herself in the role of sort of a mother protector for Bill and would intercede when she thought the people were taking advantage of Bill. He very seldom made demands for himself. You almost found yourself, without realizing, taking advantage of him. We did an anthology of poetry [The Poetry of Freedom] together. Before I knew what was happening. Bill took on most of the work. We had a tacit understanding of what the division of labor would be. I found myself reluctant to protest that he was doing too much. Perhaps I took advantage of him by letting him do it. But what I'm trying to suggest is that he almost positioned himself for being disadvantaged. I would guess, too, that in his relationships with his publishers he would go along with whatever they proposed in terms of royalties or anything else. I would think he never made any requests. I'm not sure he even had a literary agent.

BASIAGO

When you sat down with him to arrive at the selection criteria for The Poetry of Freedom, was it mostly your input then? Was he yielding to your design?

COUSINS

Well, I had put out a little volume called A Treasury of Democracy, in the course of which I had many items, poetical items, that couldn't be included. So I had a head start and I turned over to him, as I remember, a great deal of historical material, just to indicate to him what was available. I wasn't prepared for the fact that he would do all the dirty work in connection with following it up, looking up the originals, checking on the translations, checking on copyright, clearing poems that were not in copyright. So I would just shovel the stuff in. The tough part was clearing it for publication, which he did. He brought in a great many contemporary items and much more from English literature than I did. I'd been working historically within the English, French, German, and Italian. Sometimes the material I would send him would be drawn from longer poems. Bill would run this down, get the full poem and sometimes, perhaps, enlarge the selection to include what he thought was a more representative passage, but he never complained. On the Sat Review, he never asked for a pay raise, nor did Amy as a matter of fact. Chris, yes. Bennett [A.] Cerf, most of all. Bennett needed it least. Bennett would make demands that I wouldn't dare tell the others on the staff about, because I thought they would never talk to him again. For example, Bennett wanted an understanding, not just about how many précis he would write, but he wanted to know in advance how many times he would be listed on the cover. I forget what the number would be. Also, he had tricks in his bookkeeping. He wanted us--this was a tax advantage--to buy his furniture instead of paying his fee. That sort of thing. I couldn't imagine two more contrasting types than Bennett Cerf and Bill Benet. Bennett published our book, which he put in the Modern Library series. From that day to this, I'm not aware that we received a cent of royalties.

BASIAGO

You mentioned the way in which this period was a time when the literary community was involved in an American renaissance. Was there a sense of historical rediscovery? Looking back as a college student in the eighties, we find Emerson, Whitman, and Thoreau there, and they seem to be literary standards. Was there a sense of excitement being generated, that they were saying we'd forgotten this essay by Emerson?

COUSINS

No, you see the war, whether in terms of proximity or actuality, was a profound generator of traditional American materials or even heroes. In the 1940s, we had a spate of books on Whitman. Henry Canby did one on Thoreau. Ralph [L.] Rusk did a two-volume study of Emerson at the time. There was a biography of Margaret Fuller. There was an attempt to recognize a tradition, and some of those who denied that we had a tradition were the most prominent in discovering that we had one after all. But it was part of the introspection and proclamation of values that would attend a war such as that.

BASIAGO

Canby had been a professor of English at Yale [University] and an enthusiast of John Masefield, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Thomas Hardy.

COUSINS

That's right.

BASIAGO

Here's someone many years senior. Did you ever feel that he was in a professorial relationship? Was he actually suggesting things that you should read and put in your literary quill?

COUSINS

Well, I don't think I've had much difficulty with older men, men of authority or tradition. When I look back, I feel I've been very lucky in my relationships with these older men. At Current History with M. E. [Merle E.] Tracy. On the Sat Review and during the war, it was with men you've mentioned. Also with men like Elmer [H.] Davis who brought me onto OWI [United States Office of War Information] during the war to edit USA when he was the head of it. I in turn hired someone in his seventies to work with me on USA. This was a man named Edgar [G.] Sisson. I found him-- Do you know about this at all?

BASIAGO

I recognize the name. I wasn't aware of the hiring at all.

COUSINS

We're skipping around, of course. But during the war, the Office of War Information was on Fifty-seventh Street, off Eighth Avenue. When I would come into my office through the long hallway, I noticed a rather diminutive and very elderly gentleman seated at what usually is the guard's desk. I discovered that this was the desk the guard used at night just outside the front door, and this was the only place that they could find for this man. When I asked questions about him, they said Bob Sherwood had sentimentally hired him and that's all he knew about him. This was Robert E. Sherwood, the playwright. Well, I looked into it and discovered the elderly gentleman was Edgar Sisson, whose position in World War I corresponded to that of Elmer Davis in World War II. In fact, he went with Woodrow Wilson to Europe. Then you had the--what at one time--well, the infamous Sisson papers. [One Hundred Red Days; A Personal Chronicle of the Bolshevik Revolution] . But here he was now, a little man in an eyeshade with garters on his sleeves. I made a point of introducing myself and talking to him. I brought him onto USA and made him one of the editors. And I treated him with great respect, which of course he deserved. But the same thing was true with John [C.] Farrar of Farrar and Rinehart [Inc.], the publishers. An older man, not very old as I look back now, but maybe twenty years older than I was. I found out that he was being sidelined and I brought him onto USA. There was the relationship with James T. Shotwell and Schweitzer, of course, before I joined their ranks as an older man myself. The fact that Canby was much older and was regarded even by Harry Scherman of the Book-of-the-Month Club as someone I might have to contend with didn't seem to me to be valid concerns. Quite the contrary, I relished my association with him. I did everything possible to increase his role on the Saturday Review and try to persuade him to write editorials for it and other pieces. I think he was aware, not just of my respect, but that I regarded SRL [Saturday Review of Literature] as his magazine--and I still do. Not only his, but Amy's, Henry's, and Bill's. No, I didn't have that feeling about him.

BASIAGO

Perhaps I stressed the idea that he was older too much. I'm wondering-- Here you had a Ph.D. in English from Yale. Were there opportunities for him to suggest reading material or were you just--?

COUSINS

For me personally?

BASIAGO

Yeah, I'm wondering the way in which your education continued in this circle of people.

COUSINS

Well, you're right. It was a profound educational experience, a beautiful educational experience. They transmitted their enthusiasms to me just as Tracy did. Tracy's enthusiasms were among the Greek and Roman writers, and he provided more than an introduction to them. He set the table for me. Henry's enthusiasms, as I say, tended to emphasize the transcendentalists . Amy's was in English literature: the Brontes; in the United States, Ellen Glasgow and Edith Wharton. Chris was somewhat more adventurous. [Ezra] Pound and [T. S.] Eliot, although he didn't make a religion of them as some of the others did outside the magazine. I have regarded this as a great opportunity and never really felt that I fully occupied the editor's chair--perhaps I did towards the end. I would meet people whose acquaintance with the magazine began during the days of Canby, Loveman, Morley. But then suddenly I realized that that readership was dying out, and also it was a very small readership. There were perhaps 15,000 readers or so. Then one day I looked and we had 650,000 readers. So they couldn't all possibly have been reading the magazine or come on the magazine during that time. The approbation of men like George [P.] Stevens, my predecessor at SRL, meant a great deal to me. Stevens would have lunch with me at the Century Club and surprised me by approving of the way the Sat Review was developing. Stevens was the editor for a short period after Canby, as you know, but he had been with the magazine for some years as managing editor. So he was part of the group, although he had gone to [J. B.] Lippincott's [Company] when I came, while the others were there. One of the things that deeply touched me and surprised me was that Stevens, in his seventies, would ask me to come to lunch at the Century. He said he would like to have me write his biography for the Century Club after he died. I honored that request. It will be coming out very shortly. That says a great deal about a man's feelings. And again I hadn't realized that the relationship on his side was as deep as that. I was rather touched by that request. I'd always had a curious diffidence about whether I really belonged in that crowd, I suppose. Even as the magazine grew and developed, I still think in terms of the original 15,000.

BASIAGO

You mentioned that your association with some of the early world federalists, like Beardsley Ruml and Clark [M.] Eichelberger, began at the Century Club. Were Canby and Benet and Morley members?

COUSINS

Yes.

BASIAGO

It's an interesting connection.

COUSINS

Yes. The Century was not just a club. It's not even called a club. It's an association. But it was something of an academy, like the Atheneum of London. It was a fixed membership, and the entering age was fairly well along. John Mason Brown was the one who proposed me for membership in the Century. I was then maybe thirty-one or thirty-two. I think I was the youngest member of the Century at that time. Then Frank Crowninshield--who was a highly literate man-about-town, editor of the old Vanity Fair, superbly developed intellectually, beautifully rounded, and a fellow who always sat at the head of the table--very graciously proposed me for membership at the Coffee House Club, which is more select because it's smaller. It was right across the way from the old Sat Review at 25 West Forty-fifth Street. You went up a flight of stairs over the restaurant right next to the Seymour Hotel and they had this rather large suite, two rooms. One had a long English table. Everyone would come there for lunch and sit at the same long table. Then there was the living room. At night they'd put tables up in the living room for individual dinners. It was a marvelous facility. It was formed by John Barrymore and Bob [Robert C.] Benchley and some playwrights. Someone had to die before you could get in. Crowninshield told me that he had a friend who was pretty well along in years and was ailing, and that this friend had agreed to make me the heir to his place at the Coffee House Club. Three weeks later I discovered that I had been, in effect, appointed for membership because of the fact that Frank Crowninshield had died. He was the one. He didn't tell me that he was ill, but he was. An older man, a great guy.

BASIAGO

What was the total membership?

COUSINS

I have no way of knowing. Couldn't have been more than seventy- five or eighty or so.

BASIAGO

That was at the Coffee House Club.

COUSINS

Yes.

BASIAGO

How about the Century Club? Was it larger?

COUSINS

About four hundred.

BASIAGO

I found some invitations to Council On Foreign Relations [CFR] functions from around the same era. Any relationship besides maybe some shared membership?

COUSINS

No relationship, but the Council On Foreign Relations represented the establishment, not just in New York City, but nationally. Here's where you had all those in and out of government who were involved in foreign policy and the making of public opinion in that area. Hamilton Fish Armstrong was the editor of Foreign Affairs magazine when I first became a member of the Council On Foreign Relations, but he would have people leading discussions like Dean [G.] Acheson or John [J.] McCloy, who was the American [high] commissioner in Germany after the war, who was with Midland, Tweed, [Hope, Hadley, and McCloy], the top law firm in the country.

BASIAGO

He had been assistant to [Henry L. ] Stimson during the war.

COUSINS

That's right, he had been assistant secretary of state at one point. Tom [Thomas W.] Lamont. I should have mentioned Tom Lament most emphatically when I spoke about older men who influenced me.

1.10. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE TWO (FEBRUARY 24, 1987)

COUSINS

So this was the New York City establishment, the upper echelons represented by Council and the Century Club. It was perhaps a good overlap, rather considerable overlapping membership, but not among business types. John McCloy was a member of the Century. There's a very interesting story about the Century which illustrates perhaps the nature of the club and the place it has in New York life. Ordway Tead, then one of the editors of Harper's [Monthly] and the chairman of the [New York] Board of Higher Education in New York City, met with a Wall Street friend. He was surprised that the friend asked him to propose him, the Wall Street man, for membership. Tead said, "You know, that's not really the way it happens. We're not so much a club as an academy. We recognize achievements in the arts and sciences." "Well," said the broker, "look at Thomas Lamont. He's a member of the Century." "That's true, but we have a provision," Tead said, "in the by-laws called 'amateurs in the arts.' Mr. Lamont qualifies under that. After all, he's a highly literate man. He's had an important part in the cultural life of the city, helped the library. He also takes care of the mortgage of the Century Club." "And how much is that?" asked the broker. "It's about $60,000 a year." The broker said, "Well, Mr. Lamont is now seventy-two, and I expect that before long you will be looking for someone to take his place. I want you to know that I'm prepared to put up $60,000 by way of demonstrating my own amateur standing in the arts." Tead said, "Thank you very much. I'll be glad to relay this information," which he did. In due course, Tom Lamont did die, and Tead remembered this man. He, too, was elected to the Century and was true to his word. But he never set foot in the Century from one year to the next. Tead asked him about it. He said, "You've worked so hard. You asked me to get you in the club. How is it that I never see you in the club?" He said, "Well, actually I hate midtown. I have no intention ever of going to Century." He said, "Why did you want to become a member?" "Well," he said, "I think it would be nice if, when I'd died, the New York Times ran an obit [obituary] on me. They would say, 'He was a member of the Century Club.'" In due course, he did die and the New York Times neglected to say that he was a member of the Century Club! I thought it was a rather wistful story, but I felt a little reassured, because I thought he died thinking that he would be mentioned. That's what counts.

BASIAGO

Can't leave it here either. I've noted that some of the recent members of the Council on Foreign Relations have been journalists, as opposed to public policy makers or people tending more toward political science. Were literary men like Canby and Benet excluded?

COUSINS

I don't think they were excluded. I don't think they came to the minds of the nominating committee naturally. I had a deep interest in world affairs, you see, and wrote about it and spoke about it and knew McCloy and David Rockefeller and Ham [Hamilton F. ] Armstrong and some of the other major figures of the club. Frank Altschul was a very good friend, an older man who was a very good friend. It was Altschul who asked me if I'd like to join.

BASIAGO

In the subsequent years, how many meetings did this entail and how significant an involvement did you have with, let's say, first the Century Club and then the CFR?

COUSINS

The Century was purely social. I would go there for lunch, very seldom for dinner. I would go to the Coffee House Club when Ellen [Kopf Cousins] and I wanted to have dinner in town or take someone to dinner. In the Council, they would ask you about your areas of interest. Mine were India, Soviet Union, and Japan. So they would notify me about meetings that concerned those countries and occasionally would have me introduce authorities who came to speak on those subjects and lead the discussion. Once or twice, I was asked to talk at the Century in those afternoon meetings and once at an evening dinner meeting. about the changes in the Soviet Union. You asked me how often? Well, confining myself to those three areas, I would say not very often. If I went to one meeting a month that probably would be a lot.

BASIAGO

We'll have to gather some more information on Henry Canby. He had edited a book in 1919 entitled War Aims and Peace Ideals. Apparently he had also been active with John Dewey in Dewey's work with émigré intellectuals. Do you have any recollections if this continued into the time when you made his acquaintance?

COUSINS

Dewey's?

BASIAGO

Not Dewey's, but Canby's work as an actual political activist.

COUSINS

No, Canby was supportive by that time in his life. There was a real question whether the Sat Review was justified, as a literary journal, in publishing non- literary pieces. Both Canby and Amy supported me in my writings. At the end of the war, for example, I did a piece on the atomic bomb called "Modern Man Is Obsolete, " which had their full support. It seemed almost to set the course of the Review away from the predominant literary emphasis to a philosophical and political emphasis.

BASIAGO

Canby read that manuscript or contributed ideas? What was his level of supportiveness?

COUSINS

I didn't show Canby the editorials before they were published. He read it in the early copies of the magazine. Amy read it before it was published, of course, because she would edit all the copy that went down. Chris was rather airy about it. He said, "It's a fine piece, Norman." But he said, "You used the word 'shall' when you should have used the word 'will.'" That was his main comment about it.

BASIAGO

Now that we've brought it up, I have several follow-up questions on that particular essay. One that I'm wondering is, you talk about Malthus several times. Of course, the Malthusian dilemma of geometric population growth in a world of arithmetic life-support increase has been described by some as one of the roots of war. When you were writing the essay, were you working from that mind-set?

COUSINS

No.

BASIAGO

How did you put Malthus in perspective as a--?

COUSINS

In surveying the totality of the problems, population obviously was one of the major ones. But it seemed to me that the world ' s big problem then was not that it might have too many people, but might have too few.

BASIAGO

I noticed that in the Malthus reference there's a qualification right after that. One thing I'm also wondering about the essay-- Part of it is an appeal for another meeting of the UN [United Nations] that would arrive at some inventory for the atomic age that you would introduce in that particular essay. When was that finally realized? In 1970 with the [United Nations] Conference on Human Survival?

COUSINS

That's right.

BASIAGO

So it took twenty- five years to get that put together. Was there anyone working with you following that lead of that being introduced in "Modern Man Is Obsolete, " right in 1945?

COUSINS

Yes. We had, as I told you, an organization called Americans United for World Organization, which was designed to educate the American people about the need for membership in world organization, unlike World War I. Now, this gave way to Americans United for World Government with the dropping of the bomb, where it became clear that we didn't have that much time, and that we could not move in a very orderly sequential way of a period of years, but we had to take longer steps. One had to do with world controls. We were afraid at that time that once the atomic armaments race began, nations wouldn't give it up. That was why we called for genuine world controls. The piece that I did was not so much an analysis as a sort of a personal manifesto and commitment that carried over for the rest of my life.

BASIAGO

Another question that comes to mind after rereading the essay again last night-- Toward the end you present in a rather, I think, Emersonian fashion an all-or- nothing choice between world government and the option you present.

COUSINS

And the destruction of all laboratories.

BASIAGO

Yeah, dismantle civilization without the bomb.

COUSINS

It was really metaphorical.

BASIAGO

I was going to ask if you really--?

COUSINS

It was an attempt to get people to face up to the implications. Obviously, if they aren't going to smash all laboratories and all the appurtenances of civilization, they'd better do some other things. That was the way in which it was cast.

BASIAGO

So you weren't entertaining the possibility for some scenario somewhere between intentional dismantling and--

COUSINS

No, no. It was a poetical allusion.

BASIAGO

Another thing that I found (I don't know how significant it is) is the fact that Canby and Morley were Quakers--Morley by descent and his family, and Canby apparently wrote about it.

COUSINS

Yes.

BASIAGO

I found one reference to the fact that they utilized the Quaker principle of "concurrence" in their editorial meetings. Were there any other ways that Quaker life impacted the staff, transformed it beyond the general pacifist commitment?

COUSINS

The Quaker syndrome was not in any greater evidence than other religions would be, which is to say these are articles of faith that you proclaim. With Quakers, however, you did have a considerable spillover into life-style. But it would have been a mistake to think that it dominated every discussion. It did not, anymore than it did with Richard [M.] Nixon in bombing Cambodia.

BASIAGO

You would go on to correspond with A. [Abraham] J. Muste and cofound SANE [Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy] with another Friend, Clarence [E.] Pickett. Beyond this connection with working with Quaker Friends at Saturday Review, when was the actual connection to the American Friends Service Committee? Was that in '57, '58 with SANE or--?

COUSINS

I had a deep respect for the Quaker philosophy. I was identified publicly more than once as a Quaker.

BASIAGO

Something to be proud of.

COUSINS

As a Quaker. We get along pretty well. I don't know whether I told you that one time I got a telephone call from a man representing the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Dallas. Did I tell you about this in connection with Mr. [E. L.] De Golyer?

BASIAGO

No, we haven't spoken of Mr. De Golyer yet.

COUSINS

He identified himself and said that he understood that I was going to speak at a Quaker regional meeting in Dallas. I said, "That's right." He said, "Well, we thought we ought to let you know that we intend to put a picket line around the auditorium. I don't know whether you know anything about who these Quakers really are. Do you realize that they're pacifists?" I said, "Yes, I'm aware of that." He said, "Well, this is an insult to anyone who believes in the United States. We thought we'd let you know so you would at least have the option of not coming if you felt this would embarrass you." I said, "I'm sorry that you're going to put a picket line around the place, but I really think that you ought to look into the history of Quakers in America. They made great contributions to the founding of this country, and were so regarded by the American founding fathers, a number of whom were Quakers themselves." He said, "If you won't be embarrassed about it, what about Mr. De Golyer? Don't you think that he would be embarrassed when you come to Dallas?" I said, "You know, that never occurred to me, and it should have. I just want to tell you that if Mr. De Golyer would be embarrassed by my coming to Dallas to speak to this Quaker meeting, I won't come. Have you spoken to Mr. De Golyer?" They said, "No." I said, "Well, why don't you speak to him? I just want to give you my word that if this would be of the slightest embarrassment to him, I'll withdraw. " So I sat back and waited for the inevitable phone call. Now, Mr. D was one of the most prominent citizens of Dallas, highly regarded. They wanted him to be the chairman of the Community Chest fund drive, the Red Cross fund drive. When any distinguished guest came to Dallas, he was always the one who would be on the reception committee. He was a man of great culture, and also represented-- He was the founder of Amerada [Corporation] , you see, so he had this combined role. Well, the call came. It was Mr. D. "Norman, " he said, "I understand you're coming down to Dallas next week." I said, "That's right." He said, "Well, I just want to be sure that you're going to stay at the house as you usually do." I said, "Yes, D. Was there any immediate occasion for this call?" He said, "Oh. Well, some goddamned fool from the one of the veterans groups called me and told me they're going to a picket line around the place. You really are coming, aren't you?" I said, "Yes, I am." He said, "Okay." He was about to hang up, I said, "D, did you drop both shoes?" He says, "Oh well, I suppose you'd find out anyway." He said, "After I got that call, I phoned the Quakers and found out who was running the meeting and asked who was going to introduce you. Someone there was thinking pretty fast and said, 'We haven't decided yet.'" I said, "I just want you to know that if you can't find anyone, I'll be glad to introduce him." "Mr. D, we'd be very happy to have you do it and make that firm right now." He said, "Just one thing, I suggest that you put in the newspapers the fact that I'm participating in this program." Well, when they did, all opposition to the meeting of course collapsed. There was no picket line. Instead there were an awful lot of mink coats at the Quaker meeting, more than I'd ever seen at any Quaker meeting in any part of the United States. It went off without incident. D's introduction was more than just adequate. He didn't confine himself to the usual introduction hype. On the way home in the car, he congratulated me. I thanked him, of course, for the introduction. He congratulated me on the talk and then said in a very matter-of-fact way, "Norman, it was a good talk, but I didn't agree with a goddamned thing you said." That was Mr. D. He never agreed with the [United World] Federalists, but supported me in my activities. And when we wanted to hire a new executive director for the federalists who'd had business experience and needed the $50,000 to do it, I called D, and he gave me the money . The Petroleum Club in Dallas has a very limited membership, as you might imagine. These are the movers and shakers of petroleum in the world. Mr. D took me to the club for lunch, then beckoned. "You see that fellow with that table in the middle, the tall man?" I said, "Yes." He said, "That's H, [Haroldson] L. Hunt. Do you know who Hunt is?" I said, "Yes, I do." He says, "Let's have some fun." Well, Mr. D, being number one in the oil industry, had beckoning privileges at the Petroleum Club. He called over H. L. Hunt and introduced me and then said, "As I understand, you're looking for an editor for your Facts Forum." This was a right-wing hate sheet. "Yup, sure am. Got any candidates?" He said, "Norman here is the best editor I know. You ought to talk to him. " He said, "Well, thank you, D. Mr. Cousins, I would like to talk to you about this." He said, "Do you have editorial experience?" D said, "Yes. He's a damn good editor. He's the editor of the Sat Review." Hunt just went, "God damn it, D. You always pull my leg, " and he went storming off. That's the way D was.

1.11. TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE ONE (OCTOBER 20, 1987)

BASIAGO

Today, I'd like to turn our attention to your years at the [United States] Office of War Information [OWI]. Broadly speaking, the Office of War Information sought to communicate American aims during World War II and at the same time tried to convey the ideals that could give rise to a peaceful democratic world. I found in your archives that you got your appointment as editor of USA magazine on your birthday in 1942.

COUSINS

Which I didn't realize.

BASIAGO

How were you drafted to edit USA? And what was the specific propaganda mission of that journal?

COUSINS

Elmer [H.] Davis, who at the time was perhaps the most highly regarded of American newscasters and commentators, had been on the editorial board of the Saturday Review [of Literature]. [He was a] Rhodes scholar, classicist, Greek, Latin. He once gave the annual lecture at the New York Public Library in Latin, which was published in Latin. He became the head of the Office of War Information. At this remove, I believe that two men were responsible for my coming to OWI . One was Elmer Davis, who was head of the organization. The second was John [W. ] Hackett, who had been editor of then Look magazine and who had previously been on Current History. I seem to recall that Hackett said that he had been discussing the government's publication plans with Elmer Davis and recruiting. Davis had suggested that I be brought in. Hackett had known me and called me. We spoke about it, and in particular he told me about the concept of a new magazine, USA. It was to be printed on lightweight stock, Bible paper almost. A quality magazine but almost a miniature, so that it could be dropped from the air.

BASIAGO

I was wondering about that.

COUSINS

Millions of copies coming down like cornflakes out of the sky. We were to have a first-rate art department with Brad [Bradbury] Thompson. After I accepted the post, we worked on the format. I really thought that it was a gem, like a beautifully made Swiss watch-- distinctive, without seeming to be elegant, accessible to the eye, uncluttered. The writing was to be the same, very straightforward, informative, and nonpropagandistic.

BASIAGO

I noticed that this was a time when the--

COUSINS

Did you see different copies?

BASIAGO

I read through several issues. I noticed that this was a time when things as practical as surrender passes were being dropped among enemy troops, passes of safe conduct, and that sort of thing. Yet this seemed highly idealistic. I was wondering, was there an actual belief that it would sway the values or present a different world view to the population? Who was it intended for? The soldier, the citizen?

COUSINS

Both. Everyone was involved. This was an attempt to show that the United States had a history of democratic values, that we were not vindictive as a nation, that we were interested in getting on with the work of the world and believed in the possibilities of progress. I found it very congenial in terms of my own philosophy. We could in USA write about Emerson and William James and the transcendentalists. We had no limitations. We weren't called upon to try to advertise or propagandize. We could roam across the full face of American history, institutions, and values. It was an interesting challenge in terms of what did this country really mean to us--to the editors. The fact that it could be propaganda free, that it could deal with issues going back 50 years or 150 years. The fact that we could talk about American writers, artists, musicians, and about aspirations and also about our flaws. It was an interesting challenge, it seems to me, and I enjoyed it.

BASIAGO

I'd like to go back to the foundation of the Office of War Information and get any insights that you have. I know that you were drafted to serve with it in 1942. Its founding went back to the year earlier, 1941. Here's some background. FDR [Franklin D. Roosevelt] had appointed William [J.] Donovan to head what was then called the Office of the Coordinator of Information. A month later Robert [E.] Sherwood was appointed to head of the Foreign Information Service. Various individuals joined them--men like James P. Warburg, Joseph [F.] Barnes, John Houseman, Thornton Wilder, and Stephen Vincent Benet . Was this the team that became influential, or was there another phase of development there?

COUSINS

That was, I think, the first wave. It was more, it seems to me, philosophical than operational, with the exception of persons like Joe Barnes. But Bob Sherwood had worked directly with President Roosevelt. Warburg didn't have much journalistic experience, but he was very knowledgeable in the field of foreign affairs. These men, the ones you mentioned, are perhaps more in the nature of brain trusters than engineers. They were concerned with policy. We were concerned with the product.

BASIAGO

In what ways did they express their policy? I know there was a debate among Donovan on one side and Robert Sherwood and Archibald MacLeish on the other about the direction propaganda should take. Do you recall any of the squabbles over that?

COUSINS

I was not involved in that, and I don't have any keen recollection of it. Just in terms of my knowledge of the men themselves: I never knew Donovan, met him once or twice; but Archibald MacLeish and Bob Sherwood were very good friends. They had a very keen sense of American history. It was almost lyrical. They were not interested in dirty tricks. They were not interested in propaganda. They were just interested in perhaps adding to the world a view of the United States that was fairly well formed in terms of our history or at least our values. I think they wanted to strengthen it. I don't think they were particularly interested in getting down into the gutter and having a struggle that would involve the human windpipe. MacLeish was a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet. So was Stephen Vincent Benet. Bob Sherwood-- We had at that time a Writers War Board, and they were involved in that too as I was. Other members of the Writers War Board [later Writers Board for World Government] would include Rex [T.] Stout, Clifton Fadiman, Howard Lindsay, and Russel Crouse, the play- wrights. They were available to write copy for different agencies of government involved in the war effort. We tapped some of them for the work on USA. My impression at this remove about the difference between Donovan and MacLeish and Sherwood was that it fell well within the range of differences that one might expect in anything involving interpretation, both of American history and world crisis, and how best to deal with it in terms of what we might say to the world. It was interesting, but I'm not sure how critical it was.

BASIAGO

There was a lot of talk of how Donovan tried to steer the OWI toward essentially deceptive propaganda, dirty tricks, if you will. Do you remember any specific instances where there was a showdown between the two teams?

COUSINS

When did Elmer Davis come on?

BASIAGO

Elmer Davis was appointed June 13, 1942. You praised the fundamental clarity of his thinking in a Saturday Review of Literature editorial.

COUSINS

That was just before I came on, too. I didn't realize it was that close.

BASIAGO

I was wondering whether you were just praising someone you respected very much as a journalist, linguist, and historian, or were you already intellectually concerned about what direction the OWI would take?

COUSINS

That had nothing to do with the OWI. It had only to do with Davis.

BASIAGO

Since we're on Davis, he had himself recommended Edward R. Murrow, Bill [William L.] Shirer, or Rex Stout for the job, and didn't feel he was qualified. But FDR asked for that radio commentator "with the funny voice, Elmer something." He was later criticized by a few for, while being a profound historian, lacking administrative ability to marshal the forces at OWI. How do you feel about his performance? Were you satisfied?

COUSINS

If you were going to mount such an organization, the man you would look for would not be primarily an administrator. It would be someone who had a very keen understanding of the underlying problem and whose view of American history gave you confidence that the message he would bring to the peoples of the world would be both creative and useful. And it was true with Elmer. He was not, never was primarily an administrator. But he got good administrators to work with him. It's the same as the presidency of the United States. We're lucky if we have a good administrator.

BASIAGO

Do you favor one or the other, administrator versus a lyricist?

COUSINS

It's easier to get an administrator than it is to get someone with ideas and a rounded philosophy. But OWI was a far-flung operation, had many parts to it. Elmer did bring in some good administrators. I think he brought in Lou [Louis G.] Cowan and John Hackett and Sam Williamson.

BASIAGO

In John Hackett, are we discussing the individual who went on to write several works of speculative military history. The Third World War, August 1985?

COUSINS

I don't think Hackett did a work in military history. Hackett was a first-rate editor. We were all really amateurs at the game. We were not professional propagandists. There's a big contrast between World War I, when you had men like Edward [L.] Bernays. I'm trying to think of the--

BASIAGO

The director.

COUSINS

He was the assistant director. The key man in World War I was--

BASIAGO

George Creel was the director, I know.

COUSINS

That's right. When we met around the table at the OWI, we would have a lot of amateurs. We had no professional propagandists. The discussions would have to do with what the basic situation was that had to be interpreted and how we would go about interpreting it and how we would break it down in terms of media- -what we'd say in print, what we'd try to say over the air that the radio division of course of the OWI-- I'm not sure whether Lou Cowan was the head of that or not.

BASIAGO

What office were you posted at? Was it the New York or the Washington?

COUSINS

New York. We were in the Fisk Building.

BASIAGO

I've learned that the New York office developed somewhat of a reputation for its independence. How did that happen? You mentioned this group of essentially amateurs.

COUSINS

It was a reflection, it seems to me, of what was perhaps an occupational disease, which is that writers and editors like to have as much scope as possible and tend to resist outside control . I remember very few sessions when the chairman at the table would say, "This is what Washington wants. This is how we think we ought to do it." Harold [K.] Guinzburg was chairman of the editorial committee at one time. John Hackett another time. I was chairman at a later time. We had a great deal of independence, in terms of our evaluation of the situation, how we might best do our job. I had no doubt that Washington resented the independence of those in the Fisk Building.

BASIAGO

Did it involve at all a rebellion against various forms of prior restraint? I'm wondering to what extent that independence was exercised.

COUSINS

We had no feeling of restraint. At least, I didn't.

BASIAGO

As members of OWI stationed in Europe began to learn about such things as the Nazi atrocities, the death camps, etc. , were there any attempts among this independent group of professional writers to broadcast things the military might have been wishing were not broadcast?

COUSINS

Yes, what we learned we tried to process intelligently. But my part of the job was not to deal with things on a day-by-day basis but to deal with the projection of the United States and its history and its culture. Physically, your deadlines were similar to those of regular magazines, which is to say you had to go through the planning of an issue, the dummying of an issue, the production of an issue, and the distribution. You're talking about a three-month lead time between conception and delivery. So that necessarily we couldn't deal with day-by-day events nor try to capitalize on what happened yesterday or the day before yesterday. That was more the job of the radio, informing the world about the atrocities.

BASIAGO

Let's dwell some more on what were USA's particular accomplishments. You mentioned in earlier interviews how as the war loomed you were concerned as much about the destruction of values as much as mere physical destruction. It seems that what you're saying is USA became something of a repository and a broadcaster of those cultural values that you and others wished preserved. You mentioned as a magazine what a gem it was. Were there any particular issues or articles or contributions that you thought were particularly apt in the projection of American culture?

COUSINS

Yes, I think that the feeling about the country that was reflected in the kinds of articles that we might get from Sherwood or Archie MacLeish or Steve Benet, or Bill [William Rose] Benet, or Henry Steele Commager or Allan Nevins. The objective but deeply perceptive quality of the historical materials that we wrote, the pieces about American art and literature which could have appeared in the Atlantic Monthly or Sat Review or Harper's [Monthly], the quality of the writing. All these seemed to me to add to the joy of editing the magazine. I had fairly strong ideas about how articles ought to be processed. I felt that the ideas ought to come off of a spool very evenly without any lumps in the thread or without any breaks; and that people--the reader--ought to know exactly what he was getting into. There should be no tricks in writing. I felt then that the best approach would be to describe the article in the opening sentence, "This is a story of, " or "This is about, " or "This is what happened when, " and that it should be extremely very straightforward, very clear throughout. It ought to be free of literary tricks or clouded metaphors or strained images, and that's how it was edited.

BASIAGO

Sherwood had been injured as a soldier in World War I, I understand, and had very profound antiwar views, yet he would embrace Lincoln's example as the war progressed, the necessity to fight. He seems to some degree a person who must have been experiencing some great turmoil during that period. How did you view him?

COUSINS

I got to know about Sherwood more after his death than while he was alive--largely as a result of the fact that I was asked to continue or bring to completion the biography of Sherwood by John Mason Brown. Sherwood had been antiwar through the twenties and thirties, heavily antiwar. He knew about--as most of the intellectuals of the time did--The Merchants of Death: [A Study of the International Armament Industry] , which was the title of the book that [Frank C.] Hanighen and [Helmuth C.] Engelbrecht wrote about how World War I began. He recognized the futility of war. But little by little, under the impact of nazism, and then very swiftly as the world moved towards war in the late thirties and finally into war, he recognized that disarmament by itself could not make peace. He recognized too that we had perhaps done a disservice to the United States by making the antiwar arguments seemingly absolute without respect to circumstances under which people might have to fight. The change in Sherwood, as in many others, was very deep. He had a commitment to winning the war. I guess he recognized that all of our history was at stake but also a great deal of our values that preceded our history. He was passionately caught up in it, as many of us were at the time. He reflected this consuming passion and drive in the various meetings that we had. He saw no reason to apologize for his passion, nor did he feel that his earlier views concerning war itself should dictate the course of his life just to prove that he was consistent.

BASIAGO

I've learned how insistent MacLeish and Sherwood were on the idea, the directive that your effort- -not you in particular, but the OWI ' s efforts--would bear as little resemblance as possible to those propaganda efforts of the fascists, such as [Josef] Goebbels's operation in which there were constant appeals to the instincts and the emotions and not the rational processes. Yet at the same time you were working for or with an administration in a military establishment that had to win the war in a practical way and had various information to protect. Was there a contest, what kind of contest was there between--?

COUSINS

I don't think so. We would receive each day copies of memoranda or communiqués coming from military or concerning the military. But we regarded--at least in our division, the editorial division--this as being more relevant for the radio section of the OWI than for the publication section where our job was to deal with long- term situations and aspirations. We assiduously stayed away from what might be termed "selling" of the United States. It was more a matter of reflecting the United States than selling it. And we hoped that the integrity of purpose would be so recognized by the people who read it. I think people tend to know when they ' re being propagandized. One of my jobs at the OWI was to monitor the texts of the Axis radio, and every day I would receive translations of propaganda against us. For example, I would see the text of the broadcasts by Ezra Pound, his fulminations against the United States, his contempt for American institutions, his blatant anti-Semitism. Having been exposed to that day after day, when at the end of war they wanted to give the Bollingen award [Bollingen Prize in Poetry] to Ezra Pound, I opposed it in the Saturday Review. I was accused of blocking a literary award on political grounds, but it seemed to me that what was happening was that on political grounds they were trying to rehabilitate Pound and use this award as the means of reestablishing his position in American letters or at least to give him greater acceptance. Pound's friends, of course-- Whether or not they knew what the man had been up to or not I have no way of knowing, but the fact of the matter was that it seemed to me to be a purely political move. At the same time, I thought it was important to make a distinction between a private award and a public award. If this had just been awarded by Yale University, I would have had no objection to it. But if it was to carry the seal of the United States, which it did through Library of Congress, then all the other questions would come up which would say his crass and gross anti-Americanism, his vehement denunciations of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the viciousness of it. I remember him calling him, "That Jew, Rosenfelt." So, as I say, anyone listening to or reading the texts of those broadcasts day after day would have been appalled at the notion that the United States would give him this honor. But Pound's friends-- A lot of them came by way of [T. S.] Eliot and thought that they would rehabilitate him this way. He would have been imprisoned as a traitor if it weren't for the fact they had this device of committing him to Saint Elizabeth's Hospital for mental illness. But, too, if the man had been mentally ill, his poetry reflected that. That did not seem to me to be an adequate basis for an award.

BASIAGO

You mentioned this all came about through one of your other tasks, which was listening to the broadcasts while editing USA. Were there other tasks that you had? Significant research, military tasks?

COUSINS

No, I don't think so. Elmer Davis would come to New York. We'd have lunches together at the Algonquin [Hotel] and talk both about the overall problem and about the specific aspects of OWI activities for the publications or otherwise. I enjoyed those meetings with Davis.

BASIAGO

You mentioned your disgust with Pound, and of course I've mentioned how MacLeish and Sherwood were so dedicated to providing an alternative to the fascist version of seeing things. How did this translate into day- to-day issues? For instance, I've learned that Davis thought the military services were unnecessarily hiding their losses and urged a more truthful policy. What was the impact of--?

COUSINS

Well, you've got to make again a distinction between how we handle the news and how we handle our history and our culture. Davis, as a first-rate journalist, saw no reason as I remember it to fabricate. He felt that we could gain credibility if we disclosed everything, including our losses. The military, however, which had to take into account not just the impact of the news on others but what the effect of that news might be in their own positions, were very eager to proclaim their successes and conceal their losses. Not surprising. The syndrome continues to this day.

BASIAGO

As in?

COUSINS

Iran-Contras, where we try to hide our mistakes.

BASIAGO

Do you think it continued into Vietnam with--?

COUSINS

Oh, yes. I think it's a nationalist syndrome.

BASIAGO

I understand that during the entire course of the Vietnam War there was only one American battlefield death broadcast on American television. What was the impact of the way the military and the OWI had to collaborate? What was the ultimate impact upon the media?

COUSINS

Again, I'm just giving my impression at this distance. I think there was pretty much of a wall of separation between the two. We took no direction from the military. We received the bulletins. We read the news and the wire services and had complete freedom in what our approach would be to that. But again, we had the luxury of a three-month deadline, so we could deal with long-term aspects of issues, rather than with the need to explain away what happened yesterday.

BASIAGO

I guess the sources I'm referring to must relate to other individuals within the OWI, because I've read much of the disputes between OWI and congressmen, military officials, even various members of FDR's administration, over the direction OWI's efforts would take. So you weren't privy to much of that?

COUSINS

I don't know. I don't know. I would get all the bulletins, and I'd be informed. I'd have discussions with Davis. We had our own editorial meetings where we discussed problems. But my dominant impression is that we were not instructed about the past and didn't have to concern ourselves about the present, which was a news operation problem. So we perhaps had the best of both worlds.

BASIAGO

A few other significant individuals in the hierarchy-- Below Davis, actually next to him in the organization chart, we find Milton [S.] Eisenhower. What was the future president's brother's role in the operation?

COUSINS

Yes, he was an educator- -very enlightened, very progressive, and very supportive. I got to know him on a number of different levels.

BASIAGO

Another individual you mentioned in an earlier session, somewhat below MacLeish but next to Sherwood-- Sherwood was head of the overseas branch, Gardner "Mike" Cowles [Jr.], head of the domestic branch. You mentioned somewhat your relationship with Cowles. How did it progress as the war progressed?

COUSINS

It's so interesting to think back now on all these names. It was almost a community that included the Writers War Board, the key people in the OWI , the key people in broadcasting outside government, like Sherwood. Without having any single source for a point of view or a party line, we all had a similarity of outlook with respect to the war. It was I think best expressed by--or reflected in--Sherwood's own thinking. It was shaped largely by the awareness of implications of nazism and what was at stake. That awareness produced a very keen appreciation of our own history and brought us back to Walt Whitman, Tom Paine, Jefferson, and writers who would be dismissed as sentimentalists, Paine, Jefferson, Emerson, and [William Lloyd] Garrison suddenly became key figures in American history and were reclaimed as a result of that experience. There was a tendency in the 1930s to favor the debunking of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, for example--and Jefferson. And then, suddenly, we discarded all that debunking and rediscovered the fundamental values that are associated with Paine, Jefferson, Adams, Emerson. Emerson had been regarded in the 1930s as rather pallid, sort of an uptown Elbert Hubbard. One of the good things that came out of the war was an unabashed appreciation for such writers and thinkers. You recall that we had two or three biographies of Walt Whitman at that time. One by Newton Arvin, as I remember it. We had new biographies of Paine. Jefferson was the subject of four or five different studies. Dumas Malone was engaged in a multivolume study on Jefferson. It was a time of rediscovery and renewed appreciation. It felt rather good.

1.12. TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE TWO (OCTOBER 20, 1987)

BASIAGO

I found something from your files from 1944 from your publicist that suggested you were planning a biography yourself on Tom Paine or assembling materials on the founding fathers. Did that project related to the founding fathers start during this period?

COUSINS

It started when I was on USA, when I told the staff that we were going to try to deal with some of the key thinkers in American history. I was fascinated with it. I was fascinated with all the contradictions in Paine, especially interested in his involvement in the French Revolution and how he discovered that it ' s what happens in the counterrevolution that ultimately determines a large part of history. Paine was caught up in that great undertow, and so he didn't prosper at the hands of the Jacobins.

BASIAGO

How did this relate to the antifascist struggle? I understand you were already wondering about the postwar order? Who else was? You mentioned all these individuals. Were there other minds from history who were being reconsidered, in light of the way in which the new world would be formed after the war?

COUSINS

Well, we're talking about two things now. We're talking about the reinterpretation of the American past-- the rediscovery of certain aspects of our culture that had been inadequately treated or mistreated. And now you raise the question about attempts to anticipate the problems-- philosophical, ideological, political--in the postwar world. One of the responses to that latter need was the recreation of the Writers War Board into a Writers Board for World Government. Also, a group in New York City that was interested in paving the way for American participation in world organization, in order to avoid the mistake we made after World War I when public opinion was not ready to join the League of Nations, even though [Woodrow] Wilson was its foremost champion. These two groups, the Writers War Board, which became the Writers Board for World Government, and Americans United for World Organization, which became Americans United for World Government, were specific responses to that. On the matter of congressional ratification of our membership in the United Nations, we helped organize and support trips across the United States by Senator [Joseph H.] Ball and [Harold H.] Burton--or [Carl A.] Hatch.

BASIAGO

I believe it was Hatch.

COUSINS

Hatch, to talk to the American people about importance of world organization. We were writing about that. We were no longer part of the government, but we had our own group. We enlarged it to the members I think I mentioned a moment ago.

BASIAGO

I'd like to clarify this transition further. We've discussed it in past sessions. One thing I've uncovered that I think might be a bridge between these two periods is the long-range directives you received from OWI . The overseas branch was instructed in 1943 to maintain some of the following values. One was to convince the people of the world of the overall power and good faith of the USA. I find an interesting connection there to the way in which the [United] World Federalists were trying to essentially advance or mirror the early American revolution.

COUSINS

Yes. Now if you would just repeat that first point, I'd like to comment on what the interpretation was.

BASIAGO

I'd like to take these one at a time.

COUSINS

Can you repeat that first point?

BASIAGO

The first objective was to convince the people of the world of the--

COUSINS

--overwhelming power--

BASIAGO

--and the incontestable good faith of the USA.

COUSINS

I'm trying to think my way back into the period close to the end of the war when we were trying to bring the war to an end. Some people might read that and think in terms of sheer military power. We were never concerned, either in USA or Victory magazine--which is a sort of life- sized picture book--with the projection of American power in military terms. We were concerned about the projection of America in terms of the capacity of the American people to make commitments-- far-reaching commitments- -and to carry them out. The power that came out of our education, our capacity to help the world industrially. Our understanding of what was meant by a decent future for the world ' s peoples. That was and would have been our interpretation of what was meant by American power. As for the matter of good will, this was nothing that you advertised. We couldn't say, "We have good will towards you." That's not what we do. We talked about our institutions and our history. Here I think Bob Sherwood was right about the fact that you don't proclaim your goodness, you get people to know you and they make their own judgments.

BASIAGO

The second objective was to demonstrate to the people of other countries the unshakeable determination of the American people to win the war and to assume its full share of the burdens and responsibilities for making and maintaining a just and lasting peace. How did this particular plank evolve?

COUSINS

Again, I'm going to try to think my way into that situation, because I have no original memory of that. I think that what I said before would be consistent with my reaction to this question, which is to divide that directive between the particular and the general. The general approach would follow along the lines I referred to in the previous question. The particular would be affected by chronology. We couldn't refer to things that happened last week. But we would try to talk about the kind of man President Roosevelt was, the kind of woman that Eleanor Roosevelt was, with specific examples so that the people wouldn't think that we were synthesizing. Those kinds of things that were not subject to political divisiveness in the United States. And to create a background for the evaluation of day-by-day events. I think that, since I know that that was what our interpretation was for our mission, it certainly would apply to that second point.

BASIAGO

I find the last two directives particularly prescient, even prophetic, of what would happen. I guess what I'm trying to delineate is the way in which visions of a "One World" would progress. Then we'd have the atomic bomb and how those would change or evolve under the pressure of atomic weaponry. The last two are showing solidarity for the members of the United Nations, bonds which would outlast the war, and also to establish or demonstrate to the peoples of other countries that the U.S. wasn't fighting just to establish the old order but anticipated a new order.

COUSINS

And also that we were not going to turn our backs on the rest of the world when the war was over. There's an interesting, as I recall it, philosophical but very natural and very friendly difference of opinion between Elmer Davis and Bob Sherwood on the question you mentioned of "One World." That was the term that came out of [Wendell L.] Willkie's book. But the concept, if not the term, was very real in the minds of many people at that time. Davis was perhaps more pragmatic than Sherwood, Warburg, Steve Benet and the others. He felt that the world had been completely transformed as a result of the war and that even without respect to nuclear weapons that the ability to destroy had reached a point where it became necessary to think of a far-reaching design that would do two things. One, provide an adequate basis for security; the other, provide for the conditions of progress.

BASIAGO

I know that Robert Sherwood and Rex Stout would become quite active in world government.

COUSINS

World government, that's right.

BASIAGO

Who else was prominent, and who begged off after the war?

COUSINS

Davis went another direction, but most of them--

BASIAGO

Why did Davis leave the movement, if you will?

COUSINS

Well, Davis seemed to feel that by trying to move too soon, too fast--I mean too soon and too far--that we would lose more than we would gain. Also, Davis felt that the Soviet Union was an emerging force and that we weren't sufficiently aware of the dimensions of that problem,

BASIAGO

How about Archibald MacLeish? Did he remain active?

COUSINS

Yes. Very interesting group. Laura [Z.] Hobson, in her autobiography--in the last volume of the autobiography, which was published posthumously--deals with aspects of the Writers War Board and later the Writers [Board] for World Government. You might want to consult that, because she had taken notes at the time on a great deal in the history of the group, and certainly a great deal about Rex Stout.

BASIAGO

I'm intrigued by members of OWI who might not look back as fondly as you do to those years. I know a number resigned angrily. In 1943, Henry [F.] Pringle, Francis Brennan, and Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. , resigned, saying that the activities of OWI on the home front are now dominated by high-pressure promoters who prefer slick salesmanship to honest information. Bruce Catton reported a steady absorption by OWI of sales promotion ideas and techniques. Bernard [A.] De Voto complained that it's cynical for American leaders to make speeches about the basic freedoms of our way of life, having a press among them, and then permit the army and navy to prevent OWI from serving the function assigned to it. Do you recall any ill will among this group? How they might have developed these feelings?

COUSINS

You're talking about 1943?

BASIAGO

The resignation of this group, or at least Pringle, Brennan, and Arthur Schlesinger, came--

COUSINS

Francis Brennan was an artist, as I remember, and a very good one. He'd been the art director of Time, Inc. and also an idea man. Henry Pringle was the historian. Arthur Schlesinger was then maybe twenty-two or twenty- three years old. But I'm not sure that they were involved in the actual products of OWI . Maybe they were on some advisory aspect of writers, but I don't recall that that quake--if it was a quake--shook up USA any. I was then editing USA, and we continued on our course. Davis was committed to an independent approach, both in terms of organization and in terms of presentation of the news or in interpretation of American history. Archie MacLeish, who as I say was very close to the president as well, could hardly be called a tool of the military. The military had their own journals with respect to the armed forces, and that was their business. So at this distance, I'm not sure they understand exactly what the detailed differences might have been. Do you have any idea what those detailed differences might be?

BASIAGO

I just suspect that they felt that the operation, particularly out of New York, was becoming too heavily influenced by advertising men. They feared a return to the days of [George] Creel and some of the distortions that developed during World War I.

COUSINS

Well, they were probably complaining about Cowan, but I'm not sure who some of the other advertising men were . Do you have any names there?

BASIAGO

No, I don't.

COUSINS

As I said earlier, one day when I came to my office, I saw a man sitting at a desk not far from the receptionist's desk--rather elderly, rather diminutive, green eyeshade, garters on his sleeve. After a while, I learned that Archie MacLeish had spoken to Bob Sherwood about him, and Sherwood gave him a job at the OWI . I think Harold Guinzburg had him doing clippings. When I looked into this, I discovered he had been the right-hand man to George Creel during World War I. His name was [Edgar G.] Sisson. I had known about the Sisson papers from World War I [One Hundred Red Days; A Personal Chronicle of the Bolshevik Revolution] , He was the author of the Sisson papers, had taken trips, and he was involved in the Arkhangel'sk expedition in the Soviet Union. He was very quiet. I took him out to lunch and found him a fount of information, good newspaper man, aware of all the mistakes of the committee of information under Creel. I gave him a job on USA, and he turned out to be very valuable. Another man was John [C.] Farrar. He was floating around, not doing very much. I invited him to be an editor on USA. He was the Farrar of Farrar and Rinehart [Inc.]. He had been thrown out of his own firm, after falling out with [Stanley M.] Rinehart. His wife said that that saved his life. Gosh, now that you've opened up some of these sluices of memory, I see Edgar Sisson very vividly sitting at that old desk. In the hierarchy of the OWI--or any organization, I suppose- -you start at the top with a corner office, a one-man office, with your own water cooler and your own John. That's at the very top. Then you go to the offices next to that--how close are you to the corner office, how many windows do you have, how many desks are there in your office? Do you have an outer office with a secretary? All these things. Finally, when you go to the end of the line, you have someone sitting out in the hallway next to the receptionist. And this is where Sisson sat, this man who was number two in World War I information. I found his advice very, very useful in the editing of USA.

BASIAGO

You mentioned the Arkhangel'sk expedition. I'm drawing a blank there. What was the significance of the Sisson papers and the Arkhangel'sk expedition?

COUSINS

I couple the two only in terms of the fact that he was connected with both. Whether there was an organic connection between the two, I don't remember at this distance, but the United States at the time of the Russian revolution went into Russia. If I'm not mistaken, we had the notion that we might be able to block or influence the course of the revolution. The Sisson papers had a great deal to do with the relationship of the United States to the revolution--what we did. You may find this of interest when you look it up, although I'm not sure that what is in the history books reflects as accurately as it should the full story. We also had at that time a mercy mission that canceled out a great deal of the harm that had been caused by the Arkhangel'sk expedition. This was the [Herbert C.] Hoover project [Russian Relief Administration], mercy project, where we helped to feed the Russian people at that particular time. This is still remembered by many Russian people today in terms of their friendship with the United States. Sisson resisted--or urged me to resist--attempts to make USA into a propagandist journal. He thought we were very wise in putting out a magazine that people would enjoy reading, which would give them a feeling of what the United states was all about, rather than try to make claims that might or might not be accepted.

BASIAGO

One thing I find interesting is some of the pressure that Davis received. For some reason he urged the president to reorganize drastically the OWI in 1943, changing its name, even its director, and its assigned functions. Otherwise, its enemies and FDR's were likely to cripple it or even destroy it. Were there any prominent enemies of the Office of War Information that you can recall?

COUSINS

Only in Congress--as I remember it--of any consequence, where the old question of liberalism would come up and whether we're trying to get across a view of America that suited particular fancies rather than the fancies of our critics. But that was part of the game. After the war--maybe it wasn't after the war--you had attempts to restrict the books that American soldiers would have access to. Here they found some astounding things: that even a biography of Oliver Wendell Holmes would have been regarded as subversive. I found an ally in Robert [A.] Taft, who at a critical moment was able to shut off that nonsense. I had a very interesting relationship with Robert Taft.

BASIAGO

I remember reading in one of the articles in the New York Times that he invited you up to Congress one day? Is that related to the same affair, or was that something different?

COUSINS

He had been a reader of the Saturday Review, as had his wife, Martha [Bowers Taft] . I'd been very friendly with Charles [P.] Taft, who I think was also involved in the war effort in the OWI in some way. But Taft and I had this very interesting relationship that lasted until his death. He was very pragmatic, conservative in the best sense, but was open-minded. When I proved to him, for example, that the attempt was being made to reorganize the library services along very narrow lines--I could give him the evidence--he stood up for library services on the floor of Congress and in the appropriations bill was the most influential man, seeing that appropriation went through. This is my memory.

BASIAGO

I'd like to ask you two related questions in closing. One, what you think the ultimate impact of the Office of War Information's view of the world and of the United States was? And, two, what was the ultimate impact of those years at OWI for your career and development? Some have said that the OWI sponsored a particular image of the United States as mighty, dedicated, and wholesome. It had convinced the world that somehow the United States did have the best interest of all mankind at heart. What do you think its actual impact was?

COUSINS

I don't think there's any way of assessing what impact it will have or even had at the time. There's no way of measuring public opinion on the issue. The magazines would be distributed in a variety of ways. You could only hope that they would catch on. My own guess is that the person of FDR was far more important in projecting a view of America than the millions of publications we put out--not just magazines but issue papers, handbooks, even paperback books. The president's own speeches, his genuineness, his lack of artifice as people saw it, the fact that he seemed to symbolize the prospects of a decent future for the human species, not just for Americans. This I think counted far more heavily around the world than everything we did in all the years of the OWI or any other special effort. That legacy continued to be an asset for the United States even after his death, long after FDR's death. He died in '45, before the end of the war, but the view of the United States symbolized by Roosevelt continued. Then it was given additional substance in terms of our economic program, the Marshall Plan, in Europe after the end of the war and the rebuilding. I felt that Americans could feel that the absence of cynicism in the way we spoke about the United States, our recognition of the best in our history, were factors along with the Marshall Plan in what the world thought of us. But I don't think we overestimated the particularized role of what we were doing, whether with respect to USA or Victory. We were undergirding, we were lending additional substance to viewpoints which I think had been created as a result of what people knew or felt about our history, and most of all by the person of FDR. I'm amazed at the way FDR's whole place in the twentieth century has receded from public awareness and how little the present generation knows about FDR- -all the sentimental attachment to him by most Americans- -even by Americans who disagreed with him politically. Today we tend to be rather cynical about leadership and perhaps for good reason. But I think it's useful to be reminded that in the lifetimes of many now still alive we not only respected but had the deepest feelings of affection and trust for the man who was the president of the United States. It would be difficult for anyone who didn't live through the experience to understand the love that the American people had for that man and not capriciously so--it was well earned. That feeling was shared by peoples around the world and made the job of the OWI much easier than it would have been. We had as a leader a symbol of what we're talking about, an active symbol .

BASIAGO

Also in retrospect, I know it's often hard to assess, but what did you leave OWI with as a writer that you didn't enter it with? In what ways did it shape your particular public voice as your writing evolved?

COUSINS

I don't know, because what I was thinking and writing went into OWI and to other things and didn't come out of it. I had, to be sure, an increased sense of the destructive nature of war as a result of my connection with OWI, not just because I would see all the photographs as they came through every day of the war, but because of the sense I had of the role of science in destructive warfare. That was certainly underlined by my connection with the OWI. I remember having discussions with other people in the OWI about the long-term implications of the new weapons. Other than getting an interior view of the war, I'm not sure that it contributed much that was not available to me through other means. It was part of my growth. Like Sherwood, I had a sense of passionate commitment to the underlying issues, and I didn't need anyone in the OWI to tell me how to delineate them or how to present them, nor did they try.

1.13. TAPE NUMBER: VII, SIDE ONE (NOVEMBER 2, 1987)

BASIAGO

Today, I'd like to explore the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and contrast your perceptions at the time of the bombing with the scenario that you paint in The Pathology of Power regarding [Harry S.] Truman's decision to drop the bomb and other issues. At the time of the blasts, you'd just been attached to the Office of War Information [OWI], Did you have any awareness that we were developing such a weapon?

COUSINS

No. There were some indications that new weapons were being developed, and we were certainly aware of the fact that leading scientists were working with the government to do this. But I had no specific knowledge about the atomic weapon. It was a total surprise to me, as well as a shock.

BASIAGO

Were you still in communication with individuals within the Office of War Information who were responsible for drafting some of the announcements to the Japanese and to the world about what had been developed and what it would mean?

COUSINS

No one in the OWI had to my certain knowledge been involved in preparing materials. Such announcements as were made flowed out of the event itself, rather than the basis of advanced planning. I don't think there had been any advanced planning for that.

BASIAGO

So you're suggesting the announcements they did make came down from the top, and they were just passing them along?

COUSINS

That's right.

BASIAGO

The two that I found, the only ones that I could find, were that the OWI was asked to instruct the Japanese that if they failed to accept the terms of the ultimatum of July 26, they may expect a rain of ruin from the air the like of which has never been seen on this earth. They were also asked to print a leaflet which would announce that we are in possession of the most destructive explosive ever devised by man. What I'm wondering is, if the OWI was so instructed, wouldn't this suggest that there was a rather realistic mind-set at the time that an invasion of Japan was an untenable option, that the losses of casualty in man-to-man fighting would be significant? In other words, doesn't this support the idea that Truman was attempting to intimidate the Japanese into surrender with the bomb?

COUSINS

You're asking me to respond on the basis of what I thought at the time. I had no knowledge at the time of anything approximating an atomic weapon. The rain of fire that you speak of was I think explicit in the bombing of Tokyo, where we dropped more bombs than we had dropped on Germany. That could have been construed by the Japanese in that light. I see nothing in there that-- It is not quantitative. They'd already experienced air bombing. They knew exactly what it was. It was just a warning of an effect of much more, catastrophically more of the same. At least that would be the way I would have interpreted it at the time.

BASIAGO

You're saying they wouldn't have been intimidated by warnings like this.

COUSINS

No, I didn't say they wouldn't have been intimidated by it. They would have interpreted it as a vast step-up in what they had seen. Whether this would have impressed them as hoped was something else. But if I had seen it I might have treated it as more of the same, and maybe that's why I don't remember it.

BASIAGO

There was an issue at the Office of War Information regarding how the war would be concluded. Apparently, some of the views might have been shared by members of the [Franklin D.] Roosevelt and then Truman administration. The specific issue was that the United States might have been-- That by insisting on a policy of unconditional surrender, the Japanese would be made more desperate and in fact increase their own casualty list. Do you recall this debate going on?

COUSINS

No. In any event, I would not have been included in those discussions. I was operational rather than policy.

BASIAGO

It's apparent that with the advent of atomic weapons, a qualitative change in warfare had occurred. You apprehended this and constructed essays regarding how humanity should respond to this, really for decades. How and when did you reach the conclusion that Truman's decision wasn't based on any of the rationales that we have traditionally believed? I find in your book The Pathology of Power that you ultimately conclude that the bombing was done on the part of Truman and of Secretary of State [James F.] Byrnes to make the Russians more manageable after the war. What rationales were you assessing as credible?

COUSINS

Let me answer your first question, which is when did I come to the conclusion that the bomb was a mistake? In fact, that's what you asked me. That would be at about 7:30 in the morning of [August] 5 [1945], when I picked up the New York Times and saw the headline. That was when I came to that conclusion. I experienced no elation with that headline in the Times. I read the various stories in the New York Times that appeared in that connection--the story by William [L.] Laurence, who was a reporter selected to do the basic story, and Truman's announcement. That afternoon I had to give a talk before some business group at the Waldorf-Astoria [Hotel]. I remember saying that I'd never known such sadness as I did at the time over the decision to drop that bomb on human beings, because even then it was apparent to me that they could have had a test demonstration of the bomb. It was not necessary to kill as many people. I felt there was something else that we weren't told. And then in subsequent days, the argument that it was dropped to spare the casualties of an invasion was even more ludicrous to me, since no such argument favored an invasion. I immediately pointed out the need to have a demonstration bombing. Then I had asked myself what were the factors in the demonstration bombing, to the people who made the decision that made a live bombing necessary. It could only be the time factor, that there would not have been enough time to carry out a demonstration. Then when the bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, that clinched the argument for me. Then I knew that we were racing against the clock .

BASIAGO

How did you assess the Japanese as an enemy? For instance, the readings we get from history and journalistic accounts at the time stress the strength of the Yamato spirit, the aggressive nationalism, beliefs in national traits of superiority, almost a mystical reverence for the empire, and these things that might have led the Japanese to even suicidally press on. How can those forces be discounted?

COUSINS

It was precisely because of that that it seemed to me that unless we kept the institution of the emperor, the Japanese would fight on irrationally. Truman made the great mistake of telling the joint chiefs that he would not negotiate with the Japanese about surrender, that he would not permit them to keep the emperor. He felt that American public opinion wouldn't support it. He didn't assess the role of the president in educating the American public opinion. And eventually he did accept the institution of the emperor. If he was right in accepting it then, why was he not wrong in refusing it earlier? How many people were killed in the meantime? The people in Hiroshima, the people in Nagasaki, the Americans. I think that historically, Truman, who has been regarded as a gutsy little man who was one of our better presidents, will eventually be recognized by historians as one of the most limited in terms of moral imagination and in terms of historical insight.

BASIAGO

When did you decide upon the fact that he had erred in insisting upon unconditional surrender and essentially creating more casualties as a result?

COUSINS

On 7:30 of the morning of [August] 6. As I say, when I got up to speak that afternoon before this business group, I said that I felt the decision to drop the bomb was perhaps the greatest single mistake in American history. I recognized that it was very unpopular at that time to say it, because it meant in the minds of many Americans that their boys would not have to take part in a possibly catastrophic invasion. There was elation that meant the end of the war was now at hand. I realized that. At the same time, I felt that it was not necessary to take those lives.

BASIAGO

Bearing in mind your critique of Truman's moral imagination, do you count for any of the factors that he was working under the time factor?

COUSINS

From this vantage point in time, yes, I can account for some.

BASIAGO

Such as--?

COUSINS

His fear that if it became known that they had the means of ending the war by one day earlier than they did and he didn't utilize the means to end the war, that it would be a political liability. This was the argument, apparently, that he accepted, with or without prodding. That, I think, was primary. It was a political decision to drop the bomb, not really a military one.

BASIAGO

Have you ever traced the source of the claim that five hundred thousand to a million American boys would have died in an invasion of Japan?

COUSINS

When you say ever, you mean from this present vantage point?

BASIAGO

Was there ever a point when you came upon a telling document suggesting that this was a fiction?

COUSINS

I'd always believed it, and nothing that I had come across in my reading in the war diaries changed it. The diaries in books of [Dwight D.] Eisenhower and [William D.] Leahy years ago confirmed my view of it. The [James V.] Forrestal diaries were equally so. My conversations with [Douglas] MacArthur in Japan, which I reported in the book [The Pathology of Power]. So that from the very start I was on this path, and nothing that happened in subsequent years deterred me. The real impetus for writing that chapter in my book, however, came the night I did a broadcast from Hiroshima on Ted Koppel's "Nightline." This was on the fortieth anniversary of the bombing, when I was in Hiroshima for the ceremonies. You recall that the city had invited me to lay the wreath at the memorial on behalf of the victims. But that night, following the ceremonies-- Well, late that afternoon, I went to a studio in Hiroshima where they had a satellite hookup with the Ted Koppel show being broadcast live. Koppel's people had asked me to come on the show in connection with my earlier recollections of Hiroshima and about my feelings in meeting some of the people I had worked with in those early years, the Hiroshima Maidens Project, the Moral Adoptions Project, and so forth. To my great surprise, the program began with Koppel making the statement that on this anniversary we can all look back with great relief because of the hundreds of thousands of American lives that might have been lost in an invasion. And to my great surprise, for the next twenty minutes or more, they had a mock dramatization of the invasion, with simulated bulletins from the White House, and the difficulties in the landing in Kyushu, and then casualties mounted. Then, finally, after we'd secured the island at a loss of four hundred thousand lives, whatever, the announcer said all this was spared because of Truman's decision to drop the bomb. I was enraged. I didn't know, as a matter of fact, who had prepared this. Let me say parenthetically, since that time, when I read about programs being planted by the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] or the State Department, that doesn't ease my mind at all about what happened and how this program was utilized to spread a falsehood. I spoke from Hiroshima. Dean Rusk spoke from Atlanta, Georgia, where he was at the time. Dean Rusk completely supported that notion. I had had, by this time, seen documents prepared by the joint chiefs of staff with respect to what the casualties would be, but also their conclusion was that the invasion was not necessary. But my experience that night stepped up, turned up the heat inside me on this issue, so that I completely rewrote my chapter in The Pathology of Power, pushed it forward in the book, and then did the additional research, including Truman's diary, which I hadn't seen beforehand. That diary definitively established the fact that Truman knew an invasion would not be necessary.

BASIAGO

Regarding the diary, I imagine you're speaking of Truman's entry at Potsdam [Conference] in July, '45. He made a reference. I paraphrase, the moment the Russians turn up on the battlefield--

COUSINS

"Finis Japs."

BASIAGO

Yeah, "Finis the Japs." How did you decide upon your interpretation of what he meant? To me, it's this rather abstract Latin reference here, for which there are probably a number of interpretations of what he meant by "Finis the Japs." Could he have meant that's the time when we should finis the Japs, because it will be a one- two punch?

COUSINS

No. It meant that--if you read the rest of the diary--the Japs wouldn't even turn up on the battlefield the next day. This would produce the collapse by itself. You see, once we had the bomb, thinking about getting the Soviet Union involved changed drastically at Potsdam. So much so that Stalin became aware of it and put the question to Truman, "Do you still want us to come in?" Truman very politely said, "Of course, of course."

BASIAGO

Let's look at Truman's advisers. One thing I find remarkable about The Pathology of Power and your retelling of these events is that almost all the military men around Truman, who you might assume would have asked him to drop the bomb because of their commitment and their background, apparently advised against it. I'm referring to General [Henry H. "Hap"] Arnold, Secretary of War [Henry L.] Stimson, General Eisenhower, and Admiral Leahy. Where did you find proof that these individuals had taken this stance? What were the specific documents? How did the documents emerge?

COUSINS

Leahy reviews his position in his book, I Was There, in some detail. [He] recalls the conversation, recalls exactly what he told the president. Eisenhower, in two places in his memoirs of the war, spoke about his conversation with Stimson and this growing wave of sickness passing over him when he heard about the fact that Truman actually intended to use the bomb on human beings. Because, as he said, he knew that the outer defenses to Japan were down, and that Japan was looking for a way out, and that the way out was to give them a chance to keep the emperor. But, as I say, he said whether on moral grounds or military grounds, this was a terrible decision. Leahy said exactly the same thing. He said that he was not taught to make war on women and children in this fashion. The joint chiefs of staff had prepared a document showing that they recognized that Japan couldn't continue the war much longer and had notified our commanders in the field to be ready and to accept surrender. The only thing that was involved was the Japanese were fighting on because they wanted to hold onto the emperor. That was why the war was being prolonged, and not for any other reason. So Truman's notion that war was being prolonged because they were fanatical in wanting to fight to the last minute just wasn't true, as he knew it. Truman-- I spoke to him several times- -was very assertive, and curiously paradoxical, when we spoke about the kind of peace we would have. I would try to press on him the argument that this was the time to anticipate the long-term problems to the peace with respect to world organization and how the United Nations, as then contemplated and constituted, couldn't do the job. He had no hesitation in agreeing with me, reached in his pocket and took out Tennyson's "Locksley Hall," with its reference to "A Parliament of Man," and a world government. Truman said, "This is my favorite poem." This was the paradox. But he was not qualified to make great judgments that involved not just political concerns but historical and moral considerations. Four hundred thousand lives were lost needlessly.

BASIAGO

Although it's difficult to question the veracity of President Eisenhower, let's suppose these individuals had conceded to Truman's and Byrnes ' s desire to drop the bomb or not shouted loud enough in the Oval Office. Wouldn't they have an interest in the telling of their memoirs to suggest that they had been opposed to the decision, considering how barbarous it might be viewed later in history?

COUSINS

Truman's memoirs may or may not be complete. Charles Ross had borrowed them--the president's press secretary- -for his own use, and then they disappeared from sight for seventeen years. No one knows whether all the papers were returned. All we can do is to go on the basis of what's in the papers that were returned. No one has questioned the authenticity of the entries made at the time of Potsdam, which are fairly complete. Therefore, it's very clear that the president himself knew that an invasion was not necessary.

BASIAGO

Given that, do these individuals escape culpability? In the sense that here you had a nation geared for a tremendous war effort. They were military men. They thought in a military fashion, hierarchical fashion. They respected the commander in chief, carried out his orders, even when they were expressing disagreement. Is there any evidence that they did try to resist Truman's desire to drop the bomb?

COUSINS

Now, you saw the report turned in by the joint chiefs when they reviewed for Congress some months later the events attending the end of the war. In that you read about the fact that the thinking in the military about an invasion changed as additional information came in and as it became apparent that Japan was not in a position to fight on militarily and that the only reason it was doing so was because they wanted to keep the emperor. They themselves felt that if we made that concession the war could end rather promptly. But again, Truman feared he could be criticized later for not having used this weapon at the earliest possible moment. He felt that American public opinion would not have supported a conditional surrender. I think that the president had allowed himself to be caught up in certain myths. We had this great, apparently unchallenged notion about unconditional surrender, which was a term with a great deal of gloried respect. School children were told about unconditional surrender. It always seemed as though you don't win a war unless you have unconditional surrender on the other side. I think Truman was caught up in that nonsense. There are always conditions, as we discovered when we made peace. So I feel that the case for Truman's decision has yet to be made.

BASIAGO

You're saying they made a strong case in their report against the decision to drop the bomb.

COUSINS

The chiefs, the joint chiefs.

BASIAGO

That was where the maximum figure, they believed, of American casualties would be two hundred thousand. Were other reports being overestimated?

COUSINS

It's a matter of time here. In the early part of the year, the invasion was a probability rather than a possibility. It didn't seem at that time that we'd be able to defeat Japan otherwise, so there was a great deal of planning that went forward for the invasion. That's quite real. But after the defeat of Germany, and with the rapid advance of U.S. forces in the stepping-stones of the Pacific, the thinking about what would be required to defeat Japan changed and the eagerness of the military to have the Soviet Union come into the war in the Far East began to be modified. Finally, as the report of the joint chiefs shows, when we recognized that the outer defenses to Japan were down, we alerted our commanders in the field to be prepared for her to surrender. In the minds of the military, the real question then was political, whether the president would allow the Japanese to retain the emperor.

BASIAGO

I'd like to explore your degree of involvement with each of the individuals who you essentially absolve of moral responsibility for the dropping of the bomb. The first person you list as a significant critic of the decision was Hap Arnold. Did you have any involvement with Hap Arnold?

COUSINS

No.

BASIAGO

How about Secretary of War Stimson?

COUSINS

No.

BASIAGO

I know we've touched on this in the past.

COUSINS

No, no.

BASIAGO

He, of course--

COUSINS

I know.

BASIAGO

Yeah.

COUSINS

No, I had no contact with Stimson nor with Byrnes.

BASIAGO

How about Admiral Leahy?

COUSINS

No.

BASIAGO

And, of course. President Eisenhower, you were an emissary for.

COUSINS

And also [Douglas] MacArthur, where I spoke to him about this, and then he told me that he had not been consulted about the dropping of the bomb, which was a great surprise to me. Here, after all, you've got your commander, and he wasn't even consulted about this. When I asked him what his advice would have been if he had been consulted, he said, "I would have told him that it was not necessary to drop the bomb."

BASIAGO

Did you ever have any discussion with Grenville Clark over Stimson's opposition, for instance? Clark being an aide to Stimson.

COUSINS

No.

BASIAGO

So most of your position emerged after 1979, when the Truman diaries served as the--

COUSINS

Ninety-five percent of it emerged at 7:30 in the morning on August 6. Everything after that was corroboratory.

BASIAGO

You've criticized President Truman. I'm wondering if you could respond to the following other motivations he might have had. It seems that every person involved had one explanation for why they were for or against that. You mentioned how Truman believed that he wouldn't have been in a very good position had he not used this weapon to end the war. How about other elements that might have been shaping history at that time? For instance, revenge for Pearl Harbor.

COUSINS

Well, Truman learned about the successful test of the bomb at Alamogordo, while he was at Potsdam. In the first diary entry that he wrote, you had a sense that he realized that restraint was necessary because of the nature of this new weapon, and he also indicated in that first entry that this thing shouldn't be dropped without a warning. So something happened after that. I think that Secretary Byrnes was primarily responsible for persuading the president that there were other factors other than the military in the war, having to do with the Soviet Union, and (a) the kind of claim the Soviet Union would have on the occupation, cheap claim, and (b) the fact that we'd have problems with the Soviet Union, not only in the Far East but in Europe, and that it was necessary for us to brandish our strength, and that the bomb would make the Soviet Union more manageable. That, I think, was the primary consideration.

BASIAGO

We find in the historical treatment of this era the tremendously slanted view of the Japanese, characterized as subhuman or demonic or monstrous. Might there been some racism involved? I just want to explore all the possibilities.

COUSINS

I've often wondered whether we would have dropped the bomb on a European nation, although it could be pointed out that the mass air raids over Berlin and Aachen and Dusseldorf and Hamburg were certainly not teatime stuff. We didn't hesitate in the course of the war to do what we had to do there. But even so, I've wondered whether we would have dropped an atomic bomb on a European country.

BASIAGO

Another factor I'd like to explore would be the dynamics of the politics surrounding Truman. It's often said how Hubert [H.] Humphrey, for instance, might not have been able to open up relations with China, where Richard [M.] Nixon could achieve that. Is it possible that Truman, as a nonmilitary man, someone who would come into office under these conditions, under the conditions that we're aware of, was in a position where he would have been forced to such a barbarous weapon, where a stronger or--

COUSINS

No one forced him. He received some arguments in favor of it, I think by Byrnes, but if he wanted to listen to his military men, he would not have dropped the bomb. Certainly, Eisenhower didn't support it, Leahy didn't support it. If he would have consulted MacArthur, MacArthur would not have supported it. Hap Arnold did not support it. Forrestal did not. These were men who knew what the Japan situation was at the time. But he was weighing political factors.

BASIAGO

Another theme that comes to mind- -one that I find in your essays after the war--is your characterization of our era as an age of acceleration. We find some degree of ill-preparedness on Truman's part. Of course, his vice presidency had lasted only eighty- two days, during which time he had met with FDR only twice. He was then expected to make vital decisions, one of which was this immense question of whether he would inaugurate the age of atomic warfare. Was there any possibility that he didn't have enough time to weigh the moral consequences?

COUSINS

I think he had enough time. I don't think his thinking would have changed. He wanted it known that he could make big and bold decisions. No, I don't think that he was handicapped by want of time. He was not the kind of person who would probe and study and brood the way [Woodrow] Wilson did or the way Adlai [E.] Stevenson did. Nor would he be profoundly affected by moral questions-- contrasted to the military — which he probably regarded as weak and soft. Roosevelt, I think, would have been far more imaginative in dealing with that particular situation, as he had with others. And Roosevelt didn't hesitate to step up military force when he had to. I don't think that the seriousness of that decision historically is appreciated even now by the American people. Because even in warfare you have to ask yourself, is all this killing necessary? I don't see how we can escape asking that question of the use of the bomb. Were all those deaths, all that torment, really necessary? And also did we, by dropping the bomb, limit our initiatives following the war in trying to head off an atomic armaments race, one which jeopardized the very life of the United States itself? So one wonders whether there's almost a law of retribution, which is to say that the blindness which led us to make a morally unjustified decision, whether that blindness would cause us to continue to move in certain directions until the inherent error of that approach would turn on us. Maybe that's what's meant by retribution.

1.14. TAPE NUMBER: VII, SIDE TWO (NOVEMBER 2, 1987)

COUSINS

Sure, that was that with the passing of years. These thoughts don't down with me. The lump in my throat gets bigger all the time. I had hoped I ' d be able to swallow this and get on with it. But I find that it's omnipresent. Every time I look at our adopted daughter from Hiroshima [Shikego Sasamori] and look at those twisted fingers and massive keloid burns on her face and hands, I think of that decision, and I also think of the lost American lives that have to be charged to Truman's delay in getting into negotiations based on the retention of the emperor, which he did anyway later.

BASIAGO

In The Pathology of Power, you cite two unlikely sources, John Foster Dulles and General MacArthur. You cite Dulles 's claims about the untoward influence of the weapons manufacturers on governments. Is that a general heuristic point he was making, or was there a specific claim he was making regarding the influence of munitions makers upon, let's say, Truman's administration or his decision. That he had a responsibility to them, let's say, to utilize the weapon?

COUSINS

Well, like Eisenhower, Dulles was in a position to see it firsthand, how a number of what appeared to be public issues concerning military preparedness were actually attempts of the arms manufacturers to get on the gravy train and to create episodes and to do lobbying based on national insecurity. [He] was also aware, I think, of the fact that the military could create such situations which would dramatize the need for more money, a lot more money. This was a matter of great concern to President Eisenhower, because he knew what the military situation was, and he also knew how easy it was to create episodes and get the United States [involved] --forcing him to fall in behind the flag. He was terribly frustrated by the U-2 episode. He was on the eve of negotiations with the Russians. He'd been waiting for a long time for the right circumstances. He knew that you couldn't come to the Russians with hat in hand. He wanted to wait for a moment of balance where you could get into effective negotiations. The circumstances were right, and then you suddenly have the U-2 episode. We've seen since how on the eve of other important negotiations that trick of the military to create an episode which knocks that out has been in full play. I myself had one such episode. It came it years later in the Vietnam negotiations.

BASIAGO

What happened?

COUSINS

I was asked by the president to go to the Far East for the purpose of getting word testifying to the good faith of President [Lyndon B.] Johnson. I was a layman, you see, and so I could do this from outside government, but I was also in a position, as I had before on the [John F.] Kennedy mission to [Nikita S.] Khrushchev, to be a witness to the good faith of the president. It was felt that some similar approach might be useful. The president was interested in fighting a limited war and wanted to explore the possibilities of a nonmilitary settlement. And the occasion, it seemed to the president, was presented by the inauguration of [Ferdinand E.] Marcos of the Philippines. The idea was that I would be appointed presidential ambassador to the inauguration of Marcos, which would be sort of a cover. But then I would work my way up to Vietnam and get word to Ho Chi Minh about the position of the president, his desire to end the war around the peace table. In Tokyo, I met an old friend, a Japanese Christian minister by the name of Nishimura, who had just been in Vietnam and who was a school chum of Ho Chi Minh's. It seemed to me that if I could persuade Nishimura of the good faith of the president and have him carry that word, that might even be more effective. So I asked him, I got permission to do this. He did go to Hanoi, and he came back and reported success. I'd asked him if he could get some tangible indication of their desire to start negotiations, looking towards a nonmilitary settlement. The word that he brought was that they were prepared to meet with Americans at any time, and suggested some neutral place recognized by both the United States and North Vietnam. I had had some contacts with Poles who were also in the International Control Commission. [Bohdan] Lewandowski at the United Nations, for example. The Poles had decorated me because of the project involving the survivors of the concentration camps, when I negotiated- - since the Poles were not recognized by West Germany- -in the behalf of the survivors successfully. These were good contacts. So I suggested that he find out whether Warsaw was acceptable as a place. We recognized the Poles, and the North Vietnamese recognized the Poles. We had good relations with the Poles, the government would be useful. Hanoi sent word back that they said yes and suggested a date, February 13, 1967. I came back to Washington, and it was decided that I would meet with the representative from North Vietnam in Warsaw on February 13. I had conversations with the president and with [McGeorge] Bundy and Bill [D.] Moyers and [Jack J.] Valenti--Valenti, in particular. And there came a point in the briefings where Valenti disappeared from the discussion, went inside, came out again, and handed me a paper for me to sign, saying that I would never reveal what had happened either in my discussions in Washington or my discussions with the Poles. That seemed to me to be completely out of order. I didn't sign it. In any event, I prepared to leave for Warsaw, came to Washington again for my final briefing, and stayed at the Hay-Adams Hotel . Arthur [J.] Goldberg was coordinating the president's strategy to persuade the world that we were definitely interested in a nonmilitary settlement, and towards this end we were declaring a pause in the bombing. My mission was part of that total effort. Other people were going to the different places in the world, India and Canada and so forth, to educate those governments about the sincerity of our efforts. The purpose of the pause was to see whether there was any interest on the part of North Vietnam to begin discussions with the U.S., however unstructured those discussions might be. I came from the Far East with the agreement of Hanoi to begin talks. So the strategy was successful. But Goldberg met me that day in the White House and said, "They are going to resume the bombing." I said, "How can they resume the bombing when we've obtained the assurance we sought about starting talks? The whole purpose of declaring a pause in the bombing was to persuade North Vietnam and the rest of the world that we're sincere in seeking negotiations at whatever level. And now we've got it. I'm meeting with North Vietnam on [February] 13 in Warsaw." He said, "They're going ahead with the bombing." I said, "In which case North Vietnam will never go ahead with these discussions." I went in to see Mac Bundy, who told me he thought I ought to go anyway, just to be able to persuade the North Vietnamese not to attach the wrong significance to the bombing. I told him I didn't think I could be persuasive under those circumstances, and I didn't go. That's responsive to your question.

BASIAGO

I note, when one considers your diplomatic career, the Marcos trip seems to be the final episode. I don't know if that's correct.

COUSINS

It is correct.

BASIAGO

Was your refusal to sign the confidentiality agreement and then your refusal to talk out of both sides of your mouth following Mac's second request--did that effectively end your diplomatic career?

COUSINS

I had no further requests from the Johnson administration.

BASIAGO

I guess it kind of outlines it.

COUSINS

I was appointed by the president, however, to be chairman of American representation on the International Cooperation Year, but I'm not sure I remember if that was before or after that particular episode. They did invite me down to the White House for subsequent dinners. I remember one with Chancellor [Helmut] Schmidt, I guess it was.

BASIAGO

When one considers what you've just said, it seems to be kind of an object lesson in the influence of the military-industrial complex. Where is the seat of power? Are you suggesting that the presidency lacked control over the bombing in some kind of substantial way?

COUSINS

I think something happened with that. I say this not just on the basis of the episode I just described, but on the basis of what happened to Ambassador [Henry Cabot] Lodge's initiative that fall when he sought to restore these negotiations and again used the good offices of the Poles. A meeting was set up for Warsaw where he was to attend to start the process of a nonmilitary settlement. That meeting was to take place in early December of 1967. It took a long time to get back to the point where the North Vietnamese or the Poles would accept our good faith. But the president gave assurances to the Poles that nothing would stand in the way of this- -that they were genuinely sincere. They went ahead and reopened the contacts, and a date was set for December. Then once again on the eve of the meeting, Hanoi was plastered far more devastatingly than the first time. And that was the end of those initiatives. The president was furious about the bombing, because the military had not consulted him on the decision to bomb Hanoi. He issued an order that set specific limits outside the city, a perimeter inside which the military was not supposed to go in terms of military operations of bombing. But the president didn't want to make a public issue of it. I think he'd been sensitized by the MacArthur-Truman situation. He had been able to work very well with the military. But it was another example of the fact that the military were taking actions that negated presidential decisions. It's not just the military. I think that in 1947 we took a turning with the establishment of secret agencies, not realizing that these secret agencies could have a profound effect on foreign policy, creating situations in which the president had to fall in behind the flag. Our involvement in Vietnam was not done without these secret agencies testing their strength or the strength of the United States. The business of probing and testing apparently is the standard operating procedure at those levels. See how far you can go, and you have the option to pull back or go ahead. I think the Russians did the same thing when they put missiles in Cuba. Probe to see what would happen. If it worked, the Russians had missiles close to the U.S. And if it didn't work, they could withdraw. But Truman, to his credit, said his greatest mistake was supporting the concept of the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency].

BASIAGO

You mentioned, although this doesn't relate to our original topic, which was Hiroshima-- You mentioned your apprehension that there might have been some influence behind Ted Koppel's "Nightline" program. Are there any other significant operations that you'd care to identify and that might find their way into this record that will be deposited for quite a number of years?

COUSINS

I've written about our initial involvement in Laos. It was done out of miscalculation. I don't think that the full dimensions of that episode are fully understood or the anomaly represented by the fact that both sides in the Laos civil war wore American uniforms. Soldiers of both sides were being paid by the United States because of the fact that the CIA was on one road and the State Department was on another. So we're really having a war over that, but we're fighting with other lives. The ease with which error can be translated into loss of life as a result of poor government has been one of the most important lessons that I've learned in my life. The ease with which small events can suddenly erupt into events of considerable consequence would be another such lesson.

BASIAGO

Which in a such strange way gets us back to the atomic bomb. I'm thinking of the way in which Alexander Sachs and Leo Szilard then asked [Albert] Einstein to approach the president about discoveries that had been made which would have dramatic consequences. You mentioned in an early interview that you had a significant friendship with Alexander Sachs and with Lee [A.] DuBridge.

COUSINS

Einstein and Szilard.

BASIAGO

Could you discuss each of these individuals? Because another thing I find interesting about The Pathology of Power is that, in addition to these military people who it seems were not responsible, many if not all of the atomic scientists you describe as having asked that the bomb be demonstrated rather than dropped.

COUSINS

Yes, including General [George C.] Marshall. Szilard was probably the most explosively creative mind I'd ever known. Brilliant, exotic, unpredictable, lovable, witty, enigmatic, all things that one would expect to find in a play by [Ferenc] Molnar, a Hungarian view of the world. I met him not long after the bomb was dropped. We had taken a very early public position at the Sat [Saturday] Review [of Literature] about this. We revealed publicly the [James] Franck letter that had been sent to Truman and ignored. We beat a pretty big drum and became suddenly the clearinghouse for the scientists. The first of them to approach us was Harrison [S.] Brown, and he brought in Szilard. That was the beginning of a fairly intensive association and certainly a warm friendship. When Einstein was trying to figure out a way of getting to Roosevelt, he learned that Sachs knew Roosevelt. Szilard was pivotal in getting Einstein to go to Sachs. Sachs relished that role. DuBridge--intelligent, rational, measured, very genuine, careful thinker, responsible--tried to think through the implications of the bomb. [J. Robert] Oppenheimer was in stark contrast to DuBridge or Szilard. His thinking was rather convoluted, and his brilliance didn't lead him in a straight line to accurate judgments. Other things were involved. For example, Oppenheimer supported the May-Johnson Bill for military control over atomic energy. His rationale for doing it was that he would be there to protect the country. Intimations of immortality, I suppose. But you see, he had been made a pet of the military. His brother [Frank Oppenheimer] had been brought up in [Joseph R.] McCarthy's hearings. His brother had involvements on that extreme leftist front. I don't know whether Oppenheimer felt the need to go the other extreme to clear himself. Oppenheimer had the gall to recommend to [Leslie R.] Groves that Einstein be deprived of top-secret clearance because of Einstein's German connections. That sort of thing. It was a shocking example of irresponsibility. Oppenheimer has been able somehow to come through these invidious episodes without too much of a stain. But he threw someone else to the wolves, an old friend of his. during the time of McCarthy. Is the name Hoffman? I can't think of his name at the moment. It was not a demonstration of sterling character. I had gone to a number of meetings with Oppenheimer, and found him very calculated in his approach to things. He would speak in a very low voice, so that everyone at the table would have to lean forward to hear what he had to say. I would contrast Oppenheimer ' s complicated personality with the clarity and directness of Leo Szilard or Harrison Brown or Lee DuBridge or many of the others. You knew exactly why they were doing things and what they were doing. I couldn't imagine, for example, Szilard ever sacrificing a friend--tossing him to the wolves of the [House] Un-American Activities Committee or, nor could I imagine Harrison Brown doing that, or Lee DuBridge doing it, or [Arthur H.] Compton, or any of the other kingpins. But Oppenheimer had a great reputation. He managed to ingratiate himself with the military, as I have said. Einstein, whom I got to know during this period, had written a letter of congratulations on the editorial appearing in the Sat [Saturday] Review [of Literature]. Einstein felt that I didn't go far enough, that I was too much of a minimalist in terms of my ideas of world government. He felt that I was trying, I suppose, to take too many things into account. I was giving more weight to obstacles of world government than existed. On the other side, there were those who felt that my notions were farfetched and completely unachievable. But we had a very good relationship. Einstein didn't oppose me because he thought I was being too gradualist. He just wanted to draw me out and to encourage me to be a little bolder. Einstein had no apologies to make for having gone to Roosevelt about the bomb. He felt that it was absolutely essential with the facts as known to him at the time, but he didn't believe we were right in dropping the bomb at Hiroshima.

BASIAGO

All of the atomic scientists--including, surprisingly, Edward Teller, who would later become such a defender of U.S. military policy--seemed to escape blame in The Pathology of Power. I'm wondering why? There's been a big debate over the moral responsibilities of scientists.

COUSINS

Well, they did try to persuade Truman--including Teller, who, as I said, thought that it was a mistake to drop the bomb. I don't know what more they could have done. Should they have immolated themselves?

BASIAGO

Well, withheld their labor. That would be a moral path. If they believed a mutually suicidal armaments race was evolving, it would take their know-how to implement it.

COUSINS

I don't think they would have gained any credibility by such dramatic tactics. The United States doesn't respond well to Joan of Arc forays.

BASIAGO

I'd like to assess your degree of involvement with the significant atomic scientists. How well did you know Sachs? It's hard to ascertain.

COUSINS

I didn't know him very well. He came to the house one time. I had lunch with him another time. Met him at a meeting called by Beardsley Ruml at another time. But I didn't know him too well. There's one rather amusing episode. Szilard and Harry Brown had come out to the house one day. This happened to be the day when we had a Sat Review picnic. We had a softball game on the lawn. Sachs telephoned, asking to speak to Brown. But before that, he wanted to talk to me about some things, and he kept droning on. He was reviewing a thousand years of history. I quietly put down the receiver, went out, took my turn at bat, hit a triple, silently came back, picked up the phone, and he was still going on! It's a curious historical excursion. He'd come forth with some three hundred years in history. Then I had to do something else. I put down the phone very quietly, did it, and came back. And there he was, still going on. He was not inarticulate. Brown was much amused by this, and felt it was entirely in character.

BASIAGO

Harrison Brown, of course, in addition to being concerned about the advent of atomic weapons, developed a body of work around really the fate of the earth in general. Environmental crisis.

COUSINS

Yes. I had the highest regard for Brown. Our relationship lasted many years, enlivened by joint membership on the boards of organizations. I proposed him as a trustee for the [Charles F.] Kettering Foundation. When he became the foreign secretary of the National Academy of Scientists, he brought me into some of their discussions. I tried to help him raise funds for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. At the end, he became the editor of that. He had cancer and would edit the magazine at a distance. I have great sadness when I think of his later years. Who are the others you've mentioned?

BASIAGO

I'd like to draw out some of those who became significant disarmament figures. Hans [A.] Bethe.

COUSINS

Didn't know him, except on the basis of attending meetings. Didn't know him personally the way I did Szilard.

BASIAGO

How about George [B.] Kistiakowsky, who has been credited--

COUSINS

Kistiakowsky took part, I think, in one of the Dartmouth [College] meetings, and I enjoyed meeting him and listening to him, but I don't consider we were friends.

BASIAGO

Luis [W.] Alvarez?

COUSINS

Same.

BASIAGO

Neils Bohr?

COUSINS

Didn't know him at all.

BASIAGO

Vannevar Bush?

COUSINS

Yes, but the same way I knew Kistiakowsky .

BASIAGO

From the Dartmouth conferences, or rather just in passing?

COUSINS

The former.

BASIAGO

How about Marvin [L.] Goldberger?

COUSINS

Curiously, I got to know him on a friendly basis only after moving out here. We could reminisce about those early days. But we were both still caught up in the fight to turn back the arms race.

1.15. TAPE NUMBER: VIII, SIDE ONE (NOVEMBER 23, 1987)

BASIAGO

Today I'd like to spend some time discussing various ways you've interacted with official branches of the U.S. government. The first question I have is a follow-up question regarding your years at the [United States] Office of War Information [OWI]. There was a debate which occurred in March of 1944. The setting was a Town Hall meeting in New York City. In the debate you joined Major George Fielding Eliot, a prominent military analyst, in defending mass bombing of enemy cities. Charles C. Paulding, literary editor of Commonweal, and Norman Thomas, the socialist-pacifist leader, opposed. How was the debate organized? I'm wondering, since it occurred during the time you were with OWI, whether you spoke under their aegis?

COUSINS

No, I'd come to know George V. Denny, who was the moderator of the Town Hall, New York [City], and also the "Town Hall Meeting of the Air." He had me appear on his program on a wide variety of subjects. We had had a debate in the Saturday Review [of Literature] that had a bearing on the subject of mass bombing. It has some history to it. I had been at a meeting of the PEN [International Association of Poets, Playwrights, Essayists and Novelists] in New York. I was distressed when I heard my good friend Clifton Fadiman say that the only good Germans are dead Germans. What distressed me very much was that this seemed to be a throwback to World War I. While I felt that Hitler could not have come to power without enough public support to make it possible, I also felt that it would be a terrible mistake to regard all Germans as evil. Circumstances make changes in people. One of the circumstances that existed in Germany at the end of World War I was that the country was wide open for the kind of nonsense that Hitler came to represent. After the meeting of the PEN, I wrote something in the Sat Review differing with Clifton Fadiman on that issue of collective guilt. That led to other questions. Did it mean that we were just to sit back and accept all the devastation meted out by Germany? Certainly not. After Germany carried out the mass raids over London, it seemed to me the pattern of warfare was set, and the notion that Germany could carry out these mass bombings without fear of retaliation didn't seem to me be supportable. Yes, I was troubled by my position about mass bombing. I knew that a moral act has certain absolutes to it, and the notion that we're justified in committing an immoral act because someone else did it has always been troubling to me. But in that particular instance in the war, I felt that the quickest best chance we had of ending the war was not through invasion but through continuation of our policy, which was of total retaliation, clearing the way for actual invasion. You may observe certain discrepancies between my position then and the position I've taken about the bombing of Hiroshima. It seems to me that one of the dangers and perhaps flaws in my position about the mass bombing of Germany was that having started down on that road we could justify almost anything that we did through the same reasoning. But the situation in Hiroshima was, it seems to me, basically different. We didn't have to do it. It was done, as we later discovered, more for the purpose of making an impression on the Russians than for speeding up the end of the war.

BASIAGO

That's really the issue that I wanted to clarify. Major Eliot, your colleague on your side in that particular instance, argued that the way to stop the killing was to bring the war to an end, as you said, and the way to bring the war to an end was to smash on to victory with every weapon and every means available. That phrase kind of stuck in my mind. I'm wondering if that was the mind-set with which the people who were eager to end the war confronted Hiroshima.

COUSINS

It's precisely because [Harry S.] Truman regarded the atomic bomb just as a weapon that we incurred this terrible moral liability. I don't think he saw atomic energy as the beginning of a new age in human history. I don't think he fully understood the implications of setting a torch to a civilization or the fact that we were dealing with absolute power and what the implications of absolute power meant. If, for example, we had developed superbombs, so that instead of dropping ten or fifteen bombs, you just drop one, that would qualify as a superweapon in Major Eliot's formulation. We're talking here about one bomb that contained more power than all bombs dropped on Europe up to that point combined. So there's a point at which a difference in degree becomes a difference in kind. I think that Truman was probably thinking about this as a difference of degree. We established the principle of mass bombing. What was the difference between the mass fire raids of Nagoya, for example--the city that was burned down to the ground--and Hiroshima?

BASIAGO

Which was the more significant fact? The fact that with the advent of atomic weapons any use of them could mean mutual suicide between warring nations? Or the fact that it was a step-up in the scale of destruction?

COUSINS

Several things. Even in warfare, and even recognizing the validity of a great deal of Major Eliot's argument, it becomes necessary to ask, "Is the intended destruction necessary?" Would it really, as Eliot had said, bring us closer to victory? Or is it random and extraneous destruction, where the loss of lives becomes more than a wartime fact, but something that is the result of a political--rather than military--decision? So there is a difference it seems to me between the mass raids over Germany and Hiroshima. In Germany, it was absolutely clear that this was probably the only way the war could be ended. In Hiroshima, the president had been informed by the joint chiefs of staff that the outer defenses to Japan were down, and indeed our commanders in the field had been alerted to the possibility of the imminent collapse of Japan. So we were dealing with a wide variety of political factors. The president was meeting in Potsdam with Churchill and Stalin. Earlier we had finally persuaded Stalin to come into the war and fight a two-front war. All Stalin asked was that once the war against Germany was over, he'd be allowed sufficient time to move his troops. A date was set, August 8, 1945, for that purpose. Just to be absolutely certain that the Russians would fulfill their commitment, Truman extended it by a week to August 15. He'd written in his diary that he was pressing for that because he knew that the moment the Russians turned up on the battlefield in Japan, Japan would quit the war. He said, "When that happens, finis Japs." So we did know that it was possible to win the war without the bomb. Truman had said so in his diary. The fact that we dropped the bomb then was not so much a military matter as a political matter. [James F.] Byrnes, as we later saw, had said that we wanted to make the Russians more manageable in the postwar world. Truman told the American people that the invasion was necessary. But that statement was not true at that particular time. It may have been true earlier. But once we knew that Japan was ready to collapse, that Russia was coming in, then Truman himself said that he was certain that Japan would quit. We knew that the Soviet Union was coming in by August 15, and Truman and Byrnes wanted to end the war before Russia established a cheap claim on the occupation. Then you had, as I said a moment ago, the fact of the demonstration on a live target in order to make an impression on the Soviet Union. Well, that's a pretty expensive impression; almost three hundred thousand lives, ultimately.

BASIAGO

I'm curious whether you began to adopt or endorse or adopt the view that your opponents took that night in the debate. Let me just outline what Norman Thomas said and then what Paulding had to say. Thomas argued that concentrated bombings should be just on military objectives, for mass bombing of enemy cities would have social results disastrous to the winning of a lasting peace, which he reasoned was the ultimate purpose of the war itself. He urged that no matter where they existed, homes, museums, schools, hospitals, and churches should not be destroyed. Paulding echoed this sentiment, saying that the peace will not be furthered if there is one single family wandering homeless when their homes might have been preserved. How did you respond to those humanitarian claims, which seemed to foreshadow the views you would take later in your life?

COUSINS

I should suppose the position I would have taken at that time was that this was not a matter of what would happen to Germany, but what would happen to Europe, the rest of Europe, what would happen to the United States. Germany had demonstrated that it had no such compunctions. The question was whether our forbearance-- and I could understand the moral argument offered by Thomas, for whom I had great admiration--would actually result in a much larger assault on homes, hospitals, schools, and churches. The war against Germany was a fearsome thing. We were dealing there, not just with the destruction of property and the destruction of lives, but the destruction of values. We were also dealing with an attempt to create a Nazi mold for world society. It was an evil thing. The position I took was a difficult one for me to take. I always had had great admiration for Thomas. We'd been very close friends. That friendship continued for many years. I gave the eulogy for him. I would have no difficulty in accepting his position under other circumstances, because, as I'd said, you always had to ask yourself, is this absolutely necessary? I was afraid that it was in the case of Germany. I saw no other way to defeat Germany. But when it became clear after the defeat of Germany that Japan was looking for a way out and that it would quit the war if we had allowed them to retain the institution of the emperor (which we did ultimately, anyway), that war could have ended. Therefore, the destruction that took place after that fact- -after Japan was seeking a way out--was extraneous, unnecessary, and a great moral liability, I think, on the United States. We didn't have to do it.

BASIAGO

Thomas, at the time of the debate, was chairman of the Postwar World Council. Did you have any involvement with this operation?

COUSINS

No.

BASIAGO

How would you describe the difference between his views of world socialism versus the views regarding world federalism that you would expound upon later? I know that's a broad--

COUSINS

Socialism is an ideological doctrine. It has to do with the social and economic organization of a nation. Federalism bypasses the question of differences between social and political systems but seeks to create a structure among nations which can contain their differences and keep them from becoming combustible. Federalism doesn't seek to eliminate differences between political and social institutions. It respects cultural differences between nations. All it tries to do is to find some means to keep these differences from setting the world on fire. Thomas was advocating a specific form of economic organization which could be debated on its merits. But that was quite distinct and apart from how nations arrange their affairs, how they deal with another in the world arena, what code is to be set up, and what structure is to be set up to deal with violators of law in the world community. So we're dealing with two quite distinct approaches. A house is an abode for people and people live in it. A bridge also enables people to do things. But there is a big difference between a house and a bridge. They're both structures.

BASIAGO

Why did the world federalists choose to exclude economic issues from their vision of a better postwar world order?

COUSINS

Matter of timing. Federalists were thinking in terms of limited governance. The problems of a world government, true world government, which would take on political questions, economic questions, social questions, we thought was beyond human capacity and perhaps even beyond our imagining. On the other hand, it was necessary to deal with basic causes of war, to deal with tensions, to have a world court with effective jurisdiction, compulsory jurisdiction. It was important to have a machinery in all of those matters concerned with common dangers and common needs. While some of the federalists felt that ultimately we would have to consider these broader needs, it didn't seem to us that we ought to sacrifice that which was absolutely essential, namely a structure for effective peace, in the attempt to do everything. So you might say that the federalists were divided into three groups, the maximalists, the minimalists, and the miximalists. The maximalists were concerned, not just about codifying the relationships among nations in creating a structure for enforceable peace, but they were also concerned with the conditions of human society and felt that no government could be sustained unless it did deal with these questions of social justice. The minimalists were those who wanted to strengthen the United Nations into an effective world order, where its principal concern would be keeping the peace, and where the individual nations would pursue their own ideologies and their own economics and politics. The miximalists were those who recognized the need, as the federalists did, to build a floor over quicksand. They recognized that ultimately the maximalists may be right in terms of the problems of social justice. But they didn't believe that it was necessary to pursue both goals concurrently. They wanted first to create a security structure and use this as a foundation for pursuing social justice.

BASIAGO

I'm fascinated by your friendship with Thomas. He seems representative of some major trends of that period of intellectual history.

COUSINS

Thomas was not a world federalist. Thomas seemed to believe, and this was perhaps inherent in his earlier position about the bombing, that if you create social justice other problems would probably take care of themselves. My feeling was that social justice was not possible under circumstances of combustible tensions, where it became necessary for a country to put so much of its resources into military approaches, because that affected everything, just as conscription did. However, if we can create a situation of security, we're in a position to consider questions of social justice. That was the difference between us, but that didn't interfere with our friendship. We came together, as a matter of fact, in the founding of SANE, the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, where we could both address ourselves to a specific and immediate issue and defer the larger philosophical questions between us.

BASIAGO

Were there any economic determinants to who endorsed world federalism? In other words, those who might have the most personal economic benefit at risk under world socialist organization?

COUSINS

Repeat that in other words.

BASIAGO

Apparently, Thomas's movement of world socialism, and that group of people which organized themselves around world federalism, differed in some substantial ways. Do you think that-- I guess I'm trying to avoid asking a leading question, which is: Did world federalism become more of a magnet for people who had economic interests that they didn't want to surrender? I see some very well-heeled individuals in the movement.

COUSINS

Yes. That was a criticism, and that was leveled at us. We were accused of being a status quo device for protecting the existing social system. The militant socialists, of course, were showdown-minded. As a result of showdown, there would be the redistribution of wealth. Consequently, anything that preserved the present situation, which they would call the status quo, was regarded as a device for the retention of an unjust economic system. But just as they were seeing the world through their own prism, asking what would serve the purposes of world revolution or world socialism, so were we seeing the world through our prism, which would be to protect the world against war. It seemed to me that those two issues shouldn't be confused. We could talk them out or work out those issues on separate grounds, but I didn't think that we should risk a world war, or withhold our support from something that would keep a world war from occurring, because it didn't fit into the plans for those who had a different agenda, an economic agenda.

BASIAGO

Thomas's work had its roots in World War I and the socialist movement which had been developing in between the wars. I'm wondering if the world federalists began to adopt various tenets of socialism, while rejecting the economic agenda, as nuclear fear increased in the world. I noticed some similarities between the two groups. Both seemed to agree that the nation-state was obsolete. Both were interested in outlawing war. And both generally preached a fellowship of mankind. Do you think to some extent the advent of atomic weapons began to force some socialist questions?

COUSINS

One would think that the logic of an ultimate weapon which would destroy all opportunity for progress would cause some of the socialists to feel that we had to have a world before we could have socialism. But such was not the case. The perception, on the other hand, of the ideologists was that we were a fig leaf for capitalism, that our main aim was to preserve capitalism. They pointed to all the people prominent in the industrial sector who were involved in world federalism to prove their point. So, as I say, if those similarities were real, they were not so perceived by either group at the time. We didn't feel that the situation then represented an additional argument for Marxism, quite the contrary. They didn't apparently feel that the danger to world society represented by cataclysmic war should interfere with the march to Marxism. So we never really got together.

BASIAGO

Thomas seemed to lead with the idea that economic inequality was at the heart of warfare. Would you say that in their view of warfare the federalists included other factors more prominently?

COUSINS

Well, the economic interpretation of history emphasized by Marx and taken up by leaders such as Thomas seemed to us to be a simplification of history. We felt that it ignored the history of warfare. It ignored even the history of the United States, where you had the breakdown in the organization of the states during the Articles of Confederation. We tended to agree with the position described in The Federalist Papers, which is that nations have habits in their relationships with one another. In the pursuit of their own interests, abstract moral questions are bypassed, and the retention of power, especially in the international sphere, leads to a conflict of national interest. So we had a fundamental difference about the interpretation of history. We felt that the economic interpretation of history tended to minimize national factors, national rivalries, accidents, misunderstandings, rivalries, all the things that happen when you have distinct entities and when you have groups in each of these entities determined to increase their power by pointing to the other as the reason for retention and enlargement of power. We did have this very fundamental difference. We were rather rigorously opposed by the left, the ideological left. I suppose we didn't debate the question among ourselves as much as we should have. I knew what Thomas's position was. He knew what my position was. We just never debated it. When the time came to deal with the specific question that had a deadline to it, namely the spread of nuclear weapons and nuclear testing, we had no difficulty in working together then. I enjoyed working with him. I had a profound respect for him as a human being.

BASIAGO

The second topic I would like to explore with you today is the consultation you conducted for General [Douglas] MacArthur, which I suppose, following your activities for the Office of War Information, marked the second time you stepped out of your role as an editor to involve yourself with official activities of the government. Is that true or--?

COUSINS

Well, chronologically, if I remember correctly, I went to Germany with Arthur Garfield Hays, at the invitation of General [Lucius D.] Clay, the head of the occupation there, to examine the program of the occupation with respect to human rights.

BASIAGO

We're dealing with August of 1948?

COUSINS

Yes. Clay was very appreciative of that visit, as he wrote to us. They did accept some of our key recommendations, as I remember it. Then MacArthur learned of this. I think I went to Japan one year later in '49.

BASIAGO

I had trouble finding a date on the MacArthur consultation. Let's talk about the Clay trip, then, first. You joined Arthur Garfield Hays, general council for the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] , and Roger Baldwin, I imagine, its founder. Why were you and these other gentlemen invited, and what did your participation represent to the military? What were they trying to achieve?

COUSINS

The democratization of Germany had the highest priority in the planning of the United States, reflected in the work of General Clay as head of the occupation in Germany. The ACLU was the premier organization in the United States concerned with the protection of civil liberties, human rights, and democratic institutions in general. It was therefore not altogether surprising that General Clay should have invited the ACLU to send a committee or commission to Germany to consult with him, to look at what was happening, and make recommendations. While Roger Baldwin was the director of the ACLU at that time, I don't think he went with us, did he?

BASIAGO

Yeah. In fact, at least the New York Times reported that he had joined you.

COUSINS

When did they report that?

BASIAGO

Upon your return from a seven-week tour of the American zone of Germany.

COUSINS

But was he there for the entire time?

BASIAGO

I'm not certain.

COUSINS

I'm not sure of that, because my recollection was that Hays and I duoed on that thing. Maybe Roger did. Maybe that was a lapse of memory, but Hays and I spent a great deal of time in various interviews with people in the occupation. But I could be wrong about that, which would be a remarkable lapse of memory indeed. In any event, we met with Clay several times and met with his lieutenants a number of times. My particular part of the forest there was the youth sector. I spent time with the students at the universities. It was a fascinating excursion, because it brought up the questions that you had raised earlier with the respect to the bombing and good Germans and bad Germans. What was it that the German people should have done? I felt that while it was all too easy for an American to pronounce judgments and to say that they did have a choice, nonetheless I didn't think that Hitler could have been sustained if he didn't have mass support. True, there was a reign of terror. Again, it's hard for someone else to say what others should have done. But your ultimate option is your own life. Where you're dealing with the life of civilization, the next generation, you may not want to withhold that power, whatever the risk may be. So when I spoke to these kids, I wrote an article with the title "Dinner for Twenty-six in Berlin" in the Saturday Review.

BASIAGO

You mentioned that in a Saturday Review editorial, scaring up all these provisions for a dinner.

COUSINS

I had a very interesting discussion with the students about these issues. As I remember it, they said that if you were faced with that yourself, you probably would discover that your convictions would not be as strong as you now make them out to be. Maybe they were right. I certainly feel that the danger of fascism for any nation, whatever its history--and the other direction up to that point may have been that dangerous--is great and it must be taken seriously. We did have an interesting discussion there. I did express the viewpoint to these young people that you can't have ultimate power--which in the definition of democracy the ultimate power belongs to the people-- unless you have a sense of ultimate responsibility yourself, unless you exercise that ultimate option.

BASIAGO

Were you suggesting that they had failed in that mission?

COUSINS

Yes.

BASIAGO

I believe they all reported that they were operating under fear. That they weren't anti-Semitic, or particularly pro-Hitler, but in fact felt they couldn't operate.

COUSINS

That's right.

1.16. TAPE NUMBER: VIII, SIDE TWO (NOVEMBER 23, 1987)

COUSINS

All these questions are matters of proximity and degree. I would suppose that most people would hold back on expressing viewpoints if it involved specific dangers to themselves. You can't blame them for that. But when the issues become transcendent, the question of responsibility becomes transcendent, too. That's what I meant when I said that we always had that ultimate option of what you want to do with your life. I think there comes a point at which we all have to decide what we want to give our lives to.

BASIAGO

When the group that joined you in Germany returned to New York City in October of 1948, Hays asserted that the Russians were the greatest democratizing influence in Germany. The Russians, he said, have given the German people such a bitter taste of totalitarian rule in their zone that they appreciate the values of democracy. Any danger of Germany becoming communist has been completely upset by what the Russians have done in East Germany. Is that from direct evidence or hearsay of what he was getting in the American side?

COUSINS

We went into East Berlin. We spoke to Germans under circumstances in which they felt secure. We spoke to union leaders in Germany. There's no doubt-- just look at the difference between what was happening in East Berlin and West Berlin--that the greatest argument for a free society was being supplied by the Russians in East Berlin. You could see it in the difference between the two societies. Same people--change the format--and you get tremendous differences in terms of the energy of people, the energy they put into their lives on different levels. It was not just the bright lights of West Berlin or Frankfurt. It was not just the cabarets flourishing in West Germany and almost totally absent in East Germany. It was not the lack of visible energy, which is generally represented by new buildings. It was represented by the way the people looked, the way the people talked, and what was happening to human beings. I think that the Russians were giving them a great demonstration of what the difference between the two societies was. I was not aware of many people from West Germany who tried to defect. But they had put up the wall to keep the East Germans from defecting, and they didn't always succeed. These things had to be taken seriously. It was not just a matter of American propaganda, either.

BASIAGO

I was going to address that issue. It seems that the Germans were learning about democracy from negative example. Hays--

COUSINS

Hays was being ironical, of course.

BASIAGO

He suggested that he was disappointed, because he felt the Germans thought the Americans were treating them like kindergartners.

COUSINS

Well, I disagreed with Hays, because I felt that on the negative side--learning about the virtues of democracy by experiencing the horrors of totalitarianism-- was less than they'd already learned out of Hitler. Hays was giving the Russians too much credit, it seemed to me, even though he wanted to make a point of the contrast between West and East Berlin. So he was being ironical, but it didn't seem to me that the Germans especially needed instruction in that regard, after a dozen years or so under Adolf Hitler.

BASIAGO

I found a dissonance between realizing that these people had been under a fascist government for twelve years and then his suggesting that the Russians were teaching them something. He did seem to suggest, though, that he was disappointed with the U.S. government effort. He foresaw the day when the U.S. government's control over the German media would have to be dismantled. He felt that all the initiatives toward freedom were not coming from the German people but from the Americans, apparently to little effect even on the western side. Are you saying that you disagree with that summary on his part?

COUSINS

There was ample evidence at the time to support the summary, but it's possible that we were extrapolating from a rather narrow base. I had the same feeling in Japan, where the officers in the occupation were complaining that the Japanese had no initative, couldn't understand democratic institutions, were an immitative society economically--it would be very difficult to get them moving. I remember thinking in Japan that we might be due for a rather interesting surprise in terms of whether they had the energy or not, whether they had any initiative or not, or ingenuity. And in Germany, I could wonder too at the fact that as we walked down the street, the Germans would step off the sidewalk to clear the way for us and tip their hats because they knew we were Americans and they regarded us as conquerors. The subservience which had grown up under Hitler of course- -certainly had been fostered by it--was carried over, but this didn't mean that underneath it all there was a total absence of arrogance. I think they were accommodating, just as the Japanese were. They wanted us to get the hell out of there as fast as we could, and they were perfectly willing to do everything possible. They would say anything or do anything just as long as they could get us out of there.

BASIAGO

He said, in regard to the Germans, they want less preaching and more example. Interesting comment there. Upon your return, you voiced the following sentiment. You said, "the world today is no closer to a real workable peace than six months ago. We do not have a platform on which we could build enduring peace. We lack the machinery through which peace can be achieved." Was there anything in particular that you saw in Germany that contributed to--?

COUSINS

Well, of course I was blowing my world federalist bugle, just as my wife [Ellen Kopf Cousins] tends to view the world through the optics of nutrition. I was viewing the world through the optics of federalism, making every case I can--or using every case--to support that particular objective. It was true, of course, but I was perhaps glossing over immediate factors in the attempt to get support for my particular cause.

BASIAGO

You mentioned that Baldwin apparently didn't join, even though the Times had reported that. I found in the archives that you were a member of the national board of directors of the ACLU.

COUSINS

That's true.

BASIAGO

When did that start, how long did that tenure run, and why did you dissociate yourself from the ACLU, if in fact that's what you did? I'm just wondering about your relationship with that organization.

COUSINS

Yes. I was invited to join the board of ACLU perhaps in the forties, while still in my teens, I think. We would have weekly lunches at one of the hotels, at which civil liberties [cases] that had come before the ACLU would be discussed, as well as the affairs of the organization itself. I think back now on some of the people whose names that I remember: Osmond [K.] Frankel, Morris [L.] Ernst, Arthur Garfield Hayes, Whitney North Seymour, who was a very prominent Republican, Baldwin- -there could be a dozen or more. You had the feeling you were in the boiler room of human rights issues. What was especially interesting to me was to see the way the legal aspects--it was Osmond K. Frankel --intertwined with human ones, where each case would be discussed, not just in human and political terms, but in terms of legal precedents. You had a great many lawyers who gave you the kind of education that we had during the intricate Iran-Contra hearings, where they talk about constitutional law, and also in the confirmation hearings of Judge [Robert H.] Bork, where [George P.] Shultz was talking about American constitutional history. So these were, for me at least, sessions of profound educational value. I never left my ACLU concerns, but as my work became increasingly cumbersome and I became the president of the [United World] Federalists--and that took a great deal of time too-- I had to make a decision about how much I could expect to carry responsibly, so I just drifted away from it organizationally, but not in terms of moral commitment.

BASIAGO

Did any particular cases in their discussion leave their mark, during the time when you still were associated with them?

COUSINS

Yes, there were some cases that involved protection of Nazis and right-wing totalitarianisms. The consensus of the board, especially among the lawyers, was that you're dealing with constitutional rights. We had the obligation to protect the rights of Nazis to denounce the United States and to express their viewpoints. These made for some interesting debates. I raised the question- -not just with respect to the defense of Nazis, but the defense of communists- -whether it was essential to draw the line, as Justice [Oliver Wendell] Holmes did when he said free speech doesn't guarantee the right of anyone to shout "Fire" falsely in a crowded theater. It seemed to me that to protect the legal and human rights of those who would destroy the legal and human rights of others was stretching a bit. I suppose I'm a Jeffersonian, and he went very far in terms of his defense of the principle of free speech, feeling that any exception results in a danger for all. I could recognize this, but the nature of the exception had to be considered nonetheless. If free speech didn't include the right of totalitarian vandals to deface a synagogue, was that defacement any less real or significant in terms of oral defacement, people shouting on a street corner, which would have the effect of depriving large numbers of people of their basic rights? Did they have an absolute right to do that? I found it very difficult to accept the notion of absolutism in any area of life.

BASIAGO

Do you ever discuss this with Baldwin as the ACLU seemed to drift farther and farther in that direction--in the absolute direction?

COUSINS

I had some interesting discussions with Baldwin. Of course, Baldwin, you must understand, was a philosophical anarchist. He's a wonderful free spirit, he loved nature, would go off in the summertime, take off all his clothes, and be oblivious to other people around. You need people like that in society, just to leaven life, I suppose, and to keep things from going to the opposite extreme. As I think I indicated before, I'm sort of a miximalist. I think there's a point at which the free speech of society itself can be jeopardized, confronting us with a problem: What do you do about those who use free speech to end free speech? Not an easy question, and I don't think you can formulate a code that can deal with all situations. But neither do I think that you can formulate an absolutist code without a danger of bringing down the house.

BASIAGO

You suggested that you left the ACLU board for your work with the world federalists. I guess that would be in the mid-fifties, then?

COUSINS

Yes. I've had some differences with the ACLU since that time. For example, I resigned my membership in ACLU over the issue of advertising. A question came up: Did free speech require that newspapers take advertising for cigarettes? ACLU locally or nationally, I forget which, contended that newspapers had to take such advertising. It was difficult for me to accept that decision. I don't think that free speech was involved in that question--whether advertisers could force newspapers to take advertising that was against the public interest. Again, it's very difficult to define the point at which the principle comes to play, and you had to take each case on its merits I suppose, but where do you draw the line? Does this mean that newspapers not only should accept condom advertising, which I can understand in the present circumstances, but should accept graphic illustrations to go with it? Does that involve free speech? The question of public taste, good sense, is involved in all these issues. While you're trying to adhere to a principle, you can't exempt yourself from the necessity to apply as much intelligence as you can bring to bear on any issue and ask what the consequences of any action may be.

BASIAGO

When you left the ACLU board in the mid-fifties, were you entirely content with the ideological positions they were taking up until that point?

COUSINS

Probably as much as any single member of the board, and we all had disagreements. I mentioned some of them, especially whether the principle of free speech is absolute as it concerns those who would destroy free speech. We all had a difference of opinion about that. I would not have left the board on that account.

BASIAGO

So your disagreements really came then in the sixties? Or even later, with the Skokie [Illinois] march and other test cases or--

COUSINS

I don't think I would have left the board over those particular issues, anyway, taking into account the large good being done by ACLU.

BASIAGO

Let's take a look at the MacArthur consultation. Here's your account of your dealings with MacArthur. It's very brief: "I had an opportunity to get to know Douglas MacArthur during the period of the American occupation of Japan, of which he was head. I went to Japan at his invitation, as a consultant on the broad range of problems associated with the democratization of Japan, more particularly the area of human rights. I had several meetings with the general, apart from separate sessions with key members of his staff. Our discussions covered a wide range of subjects, including the decision to drop the atomic bombs and the prospects of peace in the postwar world." I want to take these facts one at a time and kind of expand.

COUSINS

Did that come out of our interviews?

BASIAGO

That's from The Pathology of Power. You mentioned that you had gone at his invitation, I imagine as a result of the Clay trip.

COUSINS

That's what I think, yes.

BASIAGO

Now, you were apparently developing credentials in the area of human rights at that point. Had he read your editorials from the Saturday Review? Were there other things that--?

COUSINS

There may have been some people on his staff who suggested it to him.

BASIAGO

So he knew about you primarily from the Clay connection, then?

COUSINS

I think so, that would be my guess.

BASIAGO

What did you discuss during the separate sessions with the key members of his staff, and who were they?

COUSINS

I was especially interested in education and was given briefings about the wide range of problems involved in restructuring the educational system of Japan. I found the members of the general's staff to be extremely well informed. They were highly credentialed educators in the United States. I had a chance to visit several universities--International Christian University, Tokyo University, among them--to talk to professors and students, through interpreters, to be sure. I gave several lectures there and also in Hiroshima. Names like Alley, Professor Alley, and Nugent, somehow stick in my mind. I may have written about some of that, I don't know. But I had a very high regard for what the occupation was doing. I thought Americans would be somewhat surprised to learn the extent to which we were seeking to create a society and not just to pacify it. I had long talks with Wolf Ladejinsky, who was the architect of the land reform program in Japan. He introduced me to other members of the staff, young, vigorous, farseeing, excited by the opportunity they had to do something significant. Especially excited about the implications of land reform and other social measures, as representing an alternative to what the Soviet [Union] was trying to offer, and to prove that you could have social justice and freedom at the same time. Which has been the real issue, it seems to me. One tends to be juxtaposed against the other. So this was an adventure in learning for me. I got much more out of it than I gave. There was very little that I had to offer of any value.

BASIAGO

By 1955 in his Los Angeles speech that you refer to in The Pathology of Power, we find MacArthur expressing his views on the scourge of war and calling for the abolition of war through world law. You mentioned that you had discussed the atomic bombings with him, I guess, in 1949. What was his position? He was another of that group that believed it was a mistake that Truman had made.

COUSINS

He saw no justification for the dropping of the bomb.

BASIAGO

There's a paradox--

COUSINS

At least not in terms that had been advanced by Truman. Paradox, you say?

BASIAGO

Well, the paradox I find in MacArthur is that if we explore his disagreement with Truman over pursuing military victory in Korea, we find a leader who believed-- in this case, even at the risk of encountering the Chinese--that once a war has begun, it's essential to win it. We find MacArthur really advocating both positions, it seems, during this period in the late forties and in the fifties.

COUSINS

Well, as I think I've said in various places, a man comes to life in his paradoxes. MacArthur the soldier was not always consistent with MacArthur the philosopher or MacArthur the Jeffersonian. The war in Korea did not, I think in MacArthur 's view, involve the underlying principles that he later defined in his speech in Los Angeles in 1955. MacArthur was talking about a war between major powers. He was talking about the implications of nuclear energy in warfare. If he could have avoided the Korean War, I have no doubt he would have done it. But once the war had started, he was called upon to fight it. He didn't understand how you fight a war without fighting it. The notion of limited warfare was also basic in Vietnam, in terms of the American position. It's a very difficult one. You send an army into the field and then try to calibrate the amount of action they can take. You send an individual into combat and try to have a measured response, so that you won't get into political problems. It's not easy. I thought the notion of limited objectives, both in Korea and Vietnam, was absolutely correct, considering the larger implications. But I've often wondered what my position would have been if I had been an officer in either Vietnam or Korea and led my men into battle to what end? To hold the line? What line? To shoot back? How many times? How many rounds of fire would be legitimate under these circumstances? Warfare itself denies all this reason. Perhaps it is more necessary to try to apply it, as I've suggested, in the case of the decision to drop the bomb. But I can certainly understand the position of those who operate in a different context, as MacArthur did at the time. I believed that Truman was right. I still believe that Truman was right, but that doesn't mean that everything that MacArthur did in his whole life was wrong, or that MacArthur the philosopher should be spurned because MacArthur the general had a dispute with Truman. It's rather ironic that, just in terms of how far you carry a military principle, you had MacArthur identified as someone who wanted to go all the way in Korea. But what about Truman in Japan with the atomic bomb? Truman was super- MacArthur, with respect to the decision to drop the bomb. MacArthur there wanted restraint, because MacArthur, like [Dwight D.] Eisenhower and [George C.] Marshall, said that you don't apply force where it's not needed. At least he held to that. He felt it was needed in Korea. He may have been wrong about that. These situations are full of grays and infinite gradations of colors. We always try to construct a principle, I suppose, that holds up under all circumstances, as between MacArthur in Korea and Truman in Japan. The idea was, let's press through the victory. We can ask ourselves which one was the more violent. Certainly not MacArthur, who felt that you could end the war without the bomb.

BASIAGO

You write how MacArthur viewed Japanese militarism as one of the greatest threats to free peoples in the twentieth century and that rearming Japan to check the Soviets would be a disaster, he felt. Instead, the U.S. had to develop, nurture, and strengthen countervailing democratic forces in Japan. Did he outline any role for you or other journalists in that mission?

COUSINS

For example? I'm not sure I understand your question.

BASIAGO

Well, in your discussions with him, apparently he made you aware that there was a need for a democratizing influence in Japan?

COUSINS

Yes.

BASIAGO

I'm just wondering, later-- For instance, could the Hiroshima Maidens Project be viewed as a bridge to that?

COUSINS

Yes, he would have supported-- As a matter of fact, when I told him that I was interested in carrying out some medical programs in Hiroshima, not knowing exactly what they would be at that time, he was very encouraging. It was then that he said he didn't think that the bomb was necessary, as a matter of fact, repeated it then. So like his successor. General [John E.] Hull, I think he would have supplied his own plane, as General Hull did when the State Department opposed the project.

BASIAGO

I see. MacArthur viewed as a great accomplishment, of course, the Japanese peace constitution, limiting their defense expenditures to 1 percent or less of their GNP, What's your view of the way in which their economy and ours evolved in the decades since then? How much can be credited to MacArthur ' s attempt to check their militarism? How much of their economic growth--?

COUSINS

Well, as I've written, Japan has been very shrewd in this respect. Whether or not they made a deliberate calculation to achieve a certain economic end, I don't know. But if they had made such a calculation, what has happened would not be inconsistent with it. What has happened is that the Japanese, in their attempt to achieve economic power in the world, knowing that they'd failed in terms of their effort to exert military power-- But in the pursuit of economic power, they've been very wise. First of all, they recognize that a military program for a country such as Japan, which lacks resources of its own, would deprive the economic sector of resources. Or if it didn't deprive them of it, it would increase the price for it, and make that competitive advantage that they sought a little more difficult. They also recognized, it seems to me, that a military program uses up national energies. They needed those energies for their program of economic power in the world and competitiveness. On the matter of taxation, the money has to come from somewhere. And if it comes out of Japan, it comes out of a total national entity, which is how they see themselves. So that program of militarism, they were wise enough to realize, interfered with the emphasis they wanted to put into their economic thrust. I've often asked myself, suppose someone else would have paid Japan to rearm, would they have done it? I suspect they might have. But if it came out of their own hide this would be disadvantageous to them. They've been very farseeing, by identifying manufacturing as a potential source of power and greatness in the world and at home. They've been consistent, they've been correct. They've achieved, and are achieving, their objectives. I think back to the occupation and my discussions with some of the American economic people. I remember seeing them spread their hands and say that it was going to be very difficult to make Japan self-sufficient or a functioning economy. Some of them were saying: They can imitate, they can't create, the initiative is somehow lacking. I look back on that now with sort of a wistfulness. All those discussions about how to get the Japanese moving and how their products would break down. I remember one of the members of the MacArthur staff showing me a pair of binoculars he had bought at a knocked-down price. He said, "Let me show you something." He unscrewed the end of it and showed that one of the prisms was cracked. He said, "This is the way it is with most of their products." That man, if he's still alive now, is probably driving a Japanese car because he can't get an American car to perform as well. So there's a certain quality of unreality to my experience in Japan. But Japan, I think, is on its way to world economic supremacy. I think China's going to follow suit and accept Japanese leadership in that respect. I think that the real challenge to American capitalism is coming not from communism but from another capitalist state, Japan, which is using the human mind in ways that demonstrate the proof of its contention that the ultimate resource is the human mind. At a time when the United States is cutting back on higher education, Japan is putting everything it can into the education of its people and into initiative and encouraging its people to think for themselves, a society which, according to convention, is hidebound and where no one steps out of line. But the Japanese people, it seems to me, refute the notion that people can't change. You walk around Japan today and you see six-foot Japanese, long-legged, willowy Japanese women, young to be sure. When I spoke to one of my Japanese friends about that, it seemed to me he was ascribing it to free will. He may well have been right. Because what he said was that the Japanese got tired of being looked down upon, and they didn't like looking up to others. At international conferences, there would be these psychological disadvantages, where others would tower over them and look down on them. They felt disadvantaged and belittled, quite literally. They decided that that was a lot of nonsense. They didn't want to put up with it anymore, so they decided to become six-footers. They were smart enough in the attainment of that objective to realize that you don't sit on your feet as kids--which had been a part of their culture- -and not be short- legged, and that you have to have a much more balanced diet than they had. So they deliberately set about sitting on chairs, giving kids milk, good foods, vitamins, and exercise. They responded as other peoples have done. So as I say, you now find baseball teams in Japan that physically measure up. The next development in Japan would be football teams. Whether they will have three-hundred-pounders right off the bat no one knows. But physically they will not be giving away too much. So as I say, the scope for free will in producing individual development or in fulfilling potentiality also applies to a nation. I expect that the center of world leadership, economic and therefore political, will gravitate towards Japan in the next fifty years, maybe sooner.

1.17. TAPE NUMBER: IX, SIDE ONE (DECEMBER 21, 1987)

BASIAGO

I want to explore your relationship with Jawaharlal Nehru--

COUSINS

"Waharlal," as he called himself.

BASIAGO

--prime minister of India during its early years as an independent republic. Your Talks with Nehru came at the end of a two-month tour of Ceylon, Pakistan, and India. Authorization for the trip had come under the Mundt-Smith Act of 1948, which aimed at improving understanding on a fairly direct basis between Americans and other peoples. Who invited you on the trip in which you'd represent the American people?

COUSINS

George [C.] McGhee was then assistant secretary of state for that part of the world, which would run all the way from Turkey right up to Burma, I believe. George McGhee- -Rhodes scholar, engineer, petroleum geologist--was the son-in-law of E.[L.] De Golyer, who had owned the Saturday Review [of Literature]. Before McGhee became assistant secretary of state, I spoke to him about my concern about India, and the pressures on India from two sources, the Soviet Union and [the People's Republic of] China. I'd been reading about all the political pressures inside India, which seemed to me to have all the ingredients for a revolution. Historically, communism had come in by way of counterrevolution, and you always had the intermediate democratic-socialist government. I felt that if Nehru's attempt to keep India free of outside control failed, or if Nehru's attempt to keep India democratic and free failed, that the world majority would slip over. So I had a great sense of urgency about India. I shared this with George McGhee several times, probably at De Golyer ' s house in Dallas. He was equally concerned. When he became assistant secretary of state for that part of the world, he arranged for me to go to India under the terms of the Smith-Mundt Act. I think I was probably the first under that act to go to that part of the world. They arranged lectures for me in a number of places: India, Pakistan, and Ceylon. In India, there would be Delhi, Madras, Bombay, Bangalore. In Pakistan, there would be Lahore. And in Ceylon, as it was then known, Colombo. I went I think around Christmastime, probably just after the beginning of the year. When I was in New Delhi, I got a note from the prime minister inviting me to lunch. I thought this might be a good opportunity to get his views on a wide range of subjects. I arranged with the USIA [United States Information Agency] to have subsequent talks recorded. We met several times in the garden, and on a few of those occasions his daughter Indira [Nehru Gandhi] sat in the circle listening to it. He also invited me to have dinner at the PM's house. I got to meet other members of the family--his sister, his brother-in-law, and some of the other members of the cabinet. There were some fun evenings, as I remember it, when he was in a playful mood. There was a yogi who was very adept with a bow and arrow who could hit a string at thirty paces. I'd been subjected to this myself in Aligarh, so I was familiar with it. You sit in a chair and the garland is suspended by thin strings. The marksman takes dead aim at the strings--the garland's only a foot or so above your head--and hits the strings. The garland comes down on your shoulders, to the cheers of all concerned and to the great relief of the man who's garlanded. Nehru looked around the room, and he said, "If the marksman slips, which of the gentlemen here would produce the greatest celebration in the country?" He said, without being personal, "Anyone who is the minister of the treasury would undoubtedly have that effect." This poor man smiled rather wanly, I thought. Nehru pushed him into the chair, and the marksman, pretending to be drunk, staggered to his position, and very shakily aimed the bow and arrow at the head of the treasurer--being cheered on--and then let fly, of course neatly cutting the chords above the garland. Nehru went around making jokes with everyone. I had never seen him as playful .

BASIAGO

I'd like to take the conversation back to the initial trip that led to this fascinating encounter with Nehru. Operating under the aegis of the State Department, were you obligated to make certain points, or was there an understanding that your talks would have certain themes?

COUSINS

They never asked me what I wanted to talk about and imposed no requirements at all. It took me a little while to get into a groove, because clearly what I was talking about at first was not getting across. I got a whiff of this from some of the more cultural officers. I spoke about the origins of the U.S. Constitution and in so doing I spent a great deal of time reviewing historical antecedents, the failure of the Greek states to confederate, the history of the Amphictyonic League. Hamilton's and Madison's observations about those failures, or historical events that were scrutinized by the American founding fathers, Adams's and Jefferson's misunderstandings, the supposed rivalry between Hamilton and Jefferson, which unfortunately had been made into absolutes and were not as severe as we seem to think. But in any event, in talking along those lines, I'd lost my audience. Little by little, I tried to focus on America in the contemporary world, and that seemed to go a little better.

BASIAGO

You wrote that you encountered astounding misconceptions about life in America and about our purposes in the world at large that were not far removed from the stereotyped pictures generally associated with deliberate propaganda. What were these misconceptions, and how do you think they were fostered?

COUSINS

Thirty-five years ago or more the view of American civilization that existed abroad (and not just in the East) had to do first of all with the nature of American capitalism. That view came out of literature, some of it novels. The period of the twenties and thirties was a period in which self-criticism in America was very severe, whether we're talking about the novels of Sinclair Lewis, who was certainly not ideological, or John Dos Passos, who was, or Theodore Dreiser, and then a little later, John Steinbeck. It was a period in the United States of deep introspection and feelings in some respects of cultural inadequacy or inferiority. You had [H. L.] Mencken's "booboisie," the land of the boobs. Then you also had the profound ideological undertone at the time, all during the thirties, where intellectuals were thought to have something missing if they weren't Marxist. That was the fashion. So you had materials originating in America that created impressions abroad. But then you also had other observers abroad who felt that the United States was exactly where the world shouldn't go. There was a combination of serious criticism, scorn, but also there were a great many misconceptions--misconceptions about the economic and social situation of the United States. Misconceptions that had to do with stratification of American society, socially, economically, and philosophically. To many foreign observers it was only a matter of time before the United States would follow the Soviet Union. By 1950, this had been somewhat allayed or modified, largely as a result of the New Deal and the fact that America was victorious in the war. There was new respect, I think, for the United States. The old view of America that had existed twenty-five or thirty years earlier was beginning to reemerge, I thought. Even so, there were a great many misconceptions that were fairly well entrenched, certainly the attitude towards the racial problem in the United States. Everything being relative, the problems with the blacks in the United States- -real and severe in its own terms--could be compared to the situation of the average man in the United States. I was saying that everything being relative, you can see that the situation of minorities in the United States, however severe in our own terms, as certainly perhaps far better than the situation that you can find elsewhere with respect to the general population. But it was important, it seemed to me, that other people have a clear idea of the actual situation. I didn't think that we should minimize the problem, but I thought we should state it for what it was. I don't think that enough people were aware of genuine elements of progress. I felt that these elements of progress ought to be stated for what they were, which I did. But that was probably the number one question that was asked.

BASIAGO

You mentioned that the race relations in the U.S. came up virtually at every talk. You mentioned that if you spoke about education in the U.S. or about journalism or about books on American foreign policy, the first question was about lynchings or segregation. I find that this was in 1951, several years really before the events at Montgomery and Selma and Birmingham pushed civil rights to prominence in the world press. Did you ever get an explanation why racial relations in the U.S. was the number one topic in these nations?

COUSINS

It was self-evident. These people had color themselves, you see, and they identified with brown and yellow skin in the United States, which were the subjects of discrimination. It was just a matter of almost total identification.

BASIAGO

I'd also like to explore the UN [United Nations] vote-representation dilemma in 1951 and test its impact. To briefly summarize, the Asian nations resented as unfair the fact that as populous as they were, they got only one vote each in the United Nations. For example. Sirdar Singh, president of the Indian League of America, noted that twenty Latin American nations, accounting for only one seventh of the world's population, had three more votes than the Asian countries. Did this spark any resentment as you engaged in your speaking tour of these countries?

COUSINS

I don't recall that the voting system of the UN was a major concern expressed at those meetings. Actually, the United States raised exactly the same concerns. At that time we had at least two hundred million people. There were countries in the world--four or five--which might have a total of no more than a million or two. So they had four or five times as much power as we did. This was as much an American concern as it was an Indian concern. But a lot of these places had black populations, so that that would have been an easy question to answer if it had come up. Did I say that that had come up?

BASIAGO

I was just curious if it had. I realize that contemporary with this, it was coming up in American newspapers. The Third World, as it would become known, was being reported as being very concerned about this representation issue. You discussed with Nehru some of the hostility you also encountered in India. Apparently, America's delay in sending wheat to India at a time of widespread hunger and approaching famine was the cause. Just to give some background information, why was the wheat delayed, and what could you say to the people of India regarding our tardiness on that account?

COUSINS

I haven't thought about this for three decades or more so I'm not altogether fresh in my memory. But just rummaging through my mind, it seemed to me that there was an attempt in the Congress to tie wheat to certain political conditions. Some of the congressmen wanted to hold back the wheat until they could get assurances from India politically that they would find satisfying. I was outraged by that. I don't know whether that tallies with your specific research, but this was my very vague recollection.

BASIAGO

Well, you found widespread misconceptions about the U.S. in these nations. You also admitted, in writing about the interview with Nehru, that you had some misconceptions going into the experience. You wrote that, "Education in the United States paid some attention to the history and culture of Western peoples, but very little or none to the people of the Orient. All this resulted in a poor American background for an approach to the Indian people." You later broadened this point in "Confessions of a Miseducated Man," one of your Saturday Review essays. How were you ill-prepared to understand the Orient? What misapprehensions did you have that you found dispelled by your speaking tour or with your friendship with Nehru or other--?

COUSINS

They were not dispelled but confirmed. I think I used the term "provincialism of Western scholars," Those are the years when I would attend--or participate in-- annual meetings called the Conference on Science, Philosophy, and Religion, [and Their Relation to the American Way of Life] , the direct purpose of which was to produce an increased respect for universal factors. But there were very few if any Eastern scholars at those meetings. When they spoke about barriers, it was generally the barrier between science, philosophy, and religion, not the barriers that grew out of geography or different cultures. But even among the advanced scholars, I was aware of a shortage of knowledge. You had the Great Books, a series put out by [Robert Maynard] Hutchins and [Mortimer J.] Adler. These were my good friends. I had written an editorial which they didn't like, talking about the fact that there was a problem in labeling. Later they did, I think, redefine the series to be the Great Books of the Western World. We were half educated, or maybe one-third educated, because that part of the world was certainly less than a third of the whole. It was another indication of the fact that we're still living in a rather primitive period in human history. But you look at the Great Books, which presumably represented the legacy of knowledge, and it was rather arrogant. You didn't find many of the great books of the East, or any of the great experiences of the East, that contributed to human knowledge. I'm not sure if we're completely out of that yet. I don't want anything I have said to indicate that I think we're not still a very primitive species. I think we are.

BASIAGO

Personally, were there any misapprehensions that you had about the Orient that you found dispelled, going in miseducated, any discoveries that you made?

COUSINS

It's not so much a matter of going there with a fund of supposed knowledge that was erroneous, as going there with very little knowledge and being surprised by the fact that they are ahead of us in some respects, or on par at least, in exploring the same questions. Somewhere I think I said that all the basic questions that one would expect to hear at a conference of Western philosophers- - questions about the basic nature of man, or the species, whether humans are basically altruistic or combative and competitive or whether we enjoy free will or are subject to determinism. These same questions that one would hear at Western meetings of philosophers are the ones that animated East discussions as well. I began to realize that in human experience it doesn't make much of a difference where you are. After a while the same basic questions emerge, and we're all forced to confront them. They have different accents, to be sure, because problems may be more intense in one place than another, but the problem tends to dictate the response. Philosophers have always been concerned about finding theories for questions which so far have never been definitively answered.

BASIAGO

Such as?

COUSINS

Where did we come from? Why are we here? What is the meaning of life? Are human beings basically good or basically evil? All the questions I spoke about before.

BASIAGO

Let's move on to a leader you described as someone who'd be right at home in the company of Hamilton, Madison, and Jay. One of the interesting themes that Nehru brought up in the first interview that you conducted with him was this issue of de-individualization and brutalization of the individual man in the modern world. He spoke of it in the context of the mob violence that he had been seeing in his nation. But I suspected that he might have been making a broader point. Was he?

COUSINS

I had come there with my own agenda. While I wanted to make this interview appear to be precisely that, I was trying to force him, lead him, into sharing my own prejudice about world federalism. Almost everything I said was calculated to set a stage for him in which he could emerge as a world federalist, too. He, on the other hand, had his agenda for the interview, and he was concerned about the attempt of the American foreign-policy makers to take a "we-or-they" approach to the world, which is the "you've got to be pro-democratic or pro-communist, and if you're not pro-democratic you're pro-communist." American policy makers were concerned, as policy makers generally are, about balance of power, those situations, and India was seen in that light. He was trying to call my attention to a somewhat different view of the world--that countries had their own problems, which may not be ours, and certainly they had to interpret what was happening in a the world in a perhaps broader, more sophisticated light than we-or-they, or communism or Russia versus-- Or U.S. versus the USSR. This I think probably is evident throughout the talks, where we will talk around it. I would keep coming back to the question of world law. He would keep coming back to the question of diversity. I would bring up the concerns of American policy makers about the world, and he would try to suggest that these are not the only major concerns of the world.

BASIAGO

You seem to disagree over the source of fear in the modern world, to broadly characterize it. I believe this is really what you're just describing. You mentioned that you looked to the creation of "mechanisms of world law to quell the threats of aggression which made the world such a fearsome place, " while he seemed to look to the individual. "Individuals everywhere," he reasoned, "would have to liberate themselves from the prison of their fears." Was this not a kind of a Western and Eastern split in your outlooks?

COUSINS

I'm not sure they were, because he was speaking as much as an Westerner as he was an Easterner. He in fact had been criticized because the philosophical frame within which he seemed to think and speak was more readily associated with the West than the East. He had been educated as much in the West as in the East. He was perhaps closer to being a world citizen than almost anyone in high place I had ever met. But I think that in his emphasis on the individual, he was certainly not too different from Jefferson or Thoreau or Franklin or Locke. This was not so much I think a typical Eastern view as it was his own view. He was an amalgam of East and West. When we think about Eastern philosophies, you're thinking not just about a single school, you're thinking about a wide range. Iqbal, in the Muslim world, Confucius, the whole philosophical component of Buddhism, the philosophical component of Shintoism. We were making a great mistake, it seems to me, in our own view of the East, in thinking that we're talking about an entity known as Eastern philosophies, as contrasted to Western philosophies. It was difficult for me to see a coherent or even dominant Eastern strain, even though today, for example, thirty years later, we still tend to think in terms of Eastern philosophies. This is not to say that a great many of them don't have things in common. But one can also find that they have a great deal in common with the philosophies of the West, too. So the notion of an entity--being able to throw a loop around Eastern philosophies and say, "There it is, and I can rope it in"-- has never seemed to me to have too much validity.

BASIAGO

I'm just broadly characterizing. I felt that you look to things external from the individual, governmental structures, that would bring about world peace, world law, world government, while he seemed to place his faith in the human spirit on an individual level. Was that gap ever bridged as your friendship developed? Was there kind of a cross-fertilization of your views on that?

COUSINS

Well, it's quite possible that we didn't hear each other as fully as we should have. As I say, I was pressing my own agenda. I didn't think these approaches were mutually exclusive. There is always this interaction between what the individual does and what the government does; always an interaction between the conditions of society and the response of the individual; always an interaction between the political framework of society and the philosophical framework of the individual small groups. You have to allow for that under almost all circumstances. I didn't feel that there was anything inconsistent. I pressed him very hard, because whatever one's philosophy may be about the individual, you do have to have government. He wouldn't abolish government in India because of the need to respect the individual. Quite the contrary; he had a very severe problem in terms of the fissiparous tendencies of the Indian states. So he had to cope with questions of structure. I was trying to get him to think of questions of structure as it concerned the world as a whole, because I didn't think that what he regarded as the fissiparous tendencies in India were any less serious for the world.

BASIAGO

In the 1951 interview, he didn't fully embrace the idea of world law. He seemed to speak in terms of the need for both great followership as well as great leadership, and talked about accounting for the historic pace of particular peoples, and these sort of themes. More of an evolutionary approach. Did he ever come to embrace fully, as your friendship progressed, your ideas on the need for a world structure that might enjoy the powers of world law?

COUSINS

Well, before we get to that, you mentioned his remark that you need not just great leadership but great followership. I think I said that was reminiscent of Walt Whitman, who spoke about the fact that you couldn't have great poets unless you also had great audiences. This, of course, was a truism. But I also thought, as I reflect on it now, that he was reflecting some of the problems that he had in the leadership of India, where millions of people were more concerned about tribalism--cultural tribalism-- than they were about creating a nation, which alone, paradoxically, could sustain that kind of pluralism. He was deeply troubled by it. India, having achieved its independence against Britain, was now falling apart, precisely because the parts didn't recognize or respect the need for a whole. Unable to develop the kind of support that would ensure it, he naturally, I think, would probably talk about the failure of great followings. But paradoxically, he had, to a greater extent I think than any leader in Indian history, with the exception, of course, of Gandhi, but it's hard to separate the two. They were a duo.

BASIAGO

He seemed to suggest that despite the forces of determinism and the fatalism associated with Hinduism, and even the sectional strife that the nation was then undergoing- -and I guess still is to some major extent-- India would ultimately embrace democracy, because Hinduism had within itself an impressive universalism. I suspected that you were somewhat bemused by this idea of his. You pointed out to him how the doctrine of reincarnation, for instance, might dissuade Indians from their own attempt at inventing the world over again--that the real world as it is isn't something that we should, or necessarily can, reform. Did you fully accept his optimism on this account, that India would embrace democracy?

COUSINS

Well, first of all, we were speaking philosophically. He was able successfully to divert me from structural problems of government on a world scale to philosophical problems of the individual. This led to a discussion of the basic nature of man and whether the individual enjoys free will or is subject to laws of determinism. He gave his definition. He said that there's no conflict between the two. He said, "Life is like a game of cards. The hand that you are dealt represents determinism; you can't change that. But the way in which you play that hand indicates there's scope for free will, so there's always this interaction between the two." Then when we got into the nature not just of the individual but of collective units and the impact of philosophy on governance, I tried to reflect my concern. Because wherever I've gone in India, I've met people who were resistant to change--even in their own situation, which not infrequently was one of squalor and deep social injustice-- because they felt that they were on a universal wheel and that their situation this lifetime was the result of a judgment about what they had done the previous one. Therefore, they had to accept their lot as punishment. The previous generation felt if they accepted that, that perhaps in the next life things would be better again. It seemed to me that Nehru, who had been educated in the West, would find that approach completely antithetical to notions of progress.

1.18. TAPE NUMBER: IX, SIDE TWO (DECEMBER 21, 1987)

COUSINS

Nehru didn't resist this idea, but he didn't think it was critical. In fact, he'd been under attack ideologically because he wasn't moving fast enough in those directions. So he wasn't worried about the fact that too many people in India were resisting necessary social reform. He seemed to feel the problem was designing the kind of social reform the people were prepared to accept. He understood that you don't just decide whether you're going to have a prosperous nation or a poor nation, or whether you have a nation that enjoys social justice or a nation that is victimized by the absence of it. The leader is not someone who is called upon to decide which of the two he wants. He recognizes that the conditions of society have to be faced. The conditions in India were not congenial to the kind of rapid political and social reform that was necessary. You've got a very complicated equation, which has to do with the economic situation of the country, the productivity of the country, the resources of the country, the way in which social structures impinge upon the economic questions. In India, you have profound religious questions as well, with more than four hundred different sects. Consequently, Nehru's ability to work with all these disparate factors, to advance the condition of the Indian people, was difficult beyond belief. But his job, as he saw it, was to give the Indian people a vision and create a certain momentum--certain energy moving towards that vision- -and then have the government do everything within its power to accelerate that particular process. For him it was a matter of philosophical commitment over the long run rather than a short-term political goal to be achieved. I found it difficult to imagine a more challenging position for any leader in the modern world, taking into account the separatist tendencies of some of the Indian states--Captain Tara Singh, who was trying to get a separate state for the Sikhs, the problem of Pakistan and the threat of additional Pakistans inside India, as that tendency developed. All these different cultures, different languages; it was a universe rather than a country. But somehow he held it together. Looking back, it seems to me, it was probably one of the great achievements of the postwar world.

BASIAGO

One area that I think might point to some telling things about Nehru's personality and form of political leadership is the degree of security that he maintained around himself in this kind of climate. You mentioned that you doubted that the official home of any head of state in the world today was as lightly guarded as was Prime Minister Nehru's. And you mentioned how, shortly after the assassination of Gandhi, he had dismissed a detail of 250 armed guards that were assigned to his palace. However, I find that other biographers point to a situation in which when he finally came into power there as prime minister he surrounded himself with large cars, bodyguards on prancing horses, and the pomp and protocol that one would associate with a major head of state. How can we--?

COUSINS

Well, on this I can speak with some authority in the matter. I was at his home one night when his sister was arguing with him. He'd come home and found more guards around the house. He demanded to know, "Who are these people?" They were plainclothesmen, guards. He said, "Let's get rid of them." They insisted that he had to have it, and there was a very animated discussion. But we're talking about three or four men in a little booth at the entrance to the place, and not very conspicuous at that. He didn't feel that he had to be protected against the Indian people. I don't know whether he thinned out the guard from three or four to one, or whatever, but it was a real issue within the family. If they compromised, it would be on some number between five and two, rather than 250 and armed cars. And then, you recall that while the communal riots were raging in Delhi and stores were being looted in Connaught Circle, he rushed from his house. There were fires, the crowds were swarming. Without any bodyguards, he sailed into the middle of the crowd, was recognized. He took up a station, stood on a box in front of a Moslem store that was being attacked by Hindu rioters, spoke to the crowd and got them to disperse. He could very easily have been pulled down by some Moslems or by Hindus and trampled. Another time, driving in a car into Moslem territory in a time of great tension, there was an incident, some shooting. His daughter, following the example of Nehru when she herself was prime minister, exposed herself and was killed. Once Indira told me that the people close to her warned her to be more careful. She told them, "These dangers, my father said, come with the office, and I'm not going to change the philosophy of this government in order to deal with it."

BASIAGO

You mentioned today how you see Gandhi and Nehru almost as a fused personality. Some biographers, however, have criticized him for surrounding himself with some of the viceregal display that he had inherited from the British. What kinds of accommodations did you find there at the level of his residence? Was it as Spartan as we would associate with Gandhi, Gandhi's ashram?

COUSINS

Well, I'm not so sure that it wasn't half- ashram. As Gandhi traveled around India, he would stay in very palatial quarters. But he had a good sense of PR [public relations], and he wouldn't allow photographs to be taken of him at [G. D.] Birla's mansion or the houses of other industrial tycoons. Gandhi did not reject comfort-- privately. Nehru played it straight. He was not impoverished as a child; he had bearers and comfortable quarters. The prime minister's house was certainly much more modest than the White House, but neither was it a hut. It was very homey. It had a fair-sized living room, a good piano, small photographs of his friends around the place, a good library. But that house was on a street where you had dozens of other places about the same size. A patio and some area in the back. As I said, it was much more modest than one would expect from the head of a state, but it was at a level that Nehru would have maintained if he had not been prime minister.

BASIAGO

In some of your writings you seem to suggest, and I think you just mentioned it with us in an earlier interview, that you seem to admire Nehru more than Gandhi.

COUSINS

Yes.

BASIAGO

That he was your man. In other words, one thing that you just mentioned is that he did play it straight regarding his being a man of means. Are you suggesting that Gandhi didn't, that Gandhi was more deceptive in that regard, or--?

COUSINS

Gandhi was a curious contradiction. I think that John Gunther, in his Inside Asia, described him as a combination of a Tammany Hall chief and your grandfather. But Gandhi was not all that had been attributed to him. One had the impression that he practiced total renunciation in almost every aspect of his life. He made approaches to women. He had sort of a King David feeling about young girls warming his bed. He copped out at times. When Pakistan attacked in the Kashmir, Nehru had a very considerable problem in how best to meet it. The problem with Kashmir was that there were two methods by which accession to Pakistan or India was determined. One had to do with the clear majority of people. Is there a clear majority of Hindus or a clear majority of Muslims? Another was that the head of the state could determine which way this was to go. Well, that worked pretty well, but what did you do when you had a head of a state who wanted to go with one--with either Pakistan or India--though the majority belonged to the other side? This was what happened in the Kashmir with Sheikh Abdullah. The Kashmir had a Muslim majority, but Sheikh Abdullah decided to accede to India for historical reasons. Pakistan felt cheated, and this led to an attempt to change that decision by force. Pakistan's attack confronted Nehru with a severe dilemma. India had achieved its independence through Gandhi's ideas of passive resistance and nonviolence. Was Nehru to depart from that particular philosophy with respect to something inside India? So he put through a call to Gandhi, who was then at Burla's place in Bombay. And to his great surprise, the man on the phone asked him to wait, came back and said that Gandhi was not there. Nehru didn't want to tell the man that he was a liar but said, "I'll wait by the phone. I've got to make this decision immediately. Have him call me." Nehru stayed up all night waiting for Gandhi's call, and would himself--two or three times during the night--call. Then, finally, Nehru had to make this decision by himself. He sent troops to stop the attack on the Kashmir. The resistance was successful, and the raiders from Pakistan withdrew. It was maybe a three- or four-day war, maybe a little more. All this time, Gandhi was incommunicado somewhere. But the moment that the Pakistani troops withdrew, Gandhi turned up in Delhi. Nehru sought him out. "Bahpu, " he said, "we had this situation to face. I tried to reach you, because I didn't want to make that decision by myself. Do you think we did the right thing?" And Gandhi said, "You think you did the right thing?" Nehru said, "Yes." And Gandhi said, "Then it's not necessary to change it, is it?" or some such equivocal answer. But he ducked the tough one on that. Those who knew Gandhi best, Kandghi Dworkadas, for example--who knew that situation very closely, and knew Gandhi--felt that there were many things about Gandhi that ran counter to the world image of the man. But Dworkadas very wisely recognized that that image was necessary to achieve Gandhi's purpose.

BASIAGO

Nehru seemed to keep that image alive, describing Gandhi as a prophet of certain religious or eternal truths--

COUSINS

He was, in that sense. All I'm trying to say is that the picture was mixed. But Nehru called attention to the good side of the picture, and he was right about that.

BASIAGO

In the interview, Nehru mentioned to you that his primary concern at this time was the determination of the Indian people to consolidate their independence and protect it. Yet he's been criticized by some biographers for preaching to the West about world peace, while not really improving the lot of the Indian people. Did he share any of his development strategies with you regarding India?

COUSINS

Curiously, he was very reluctant to talk about his ideas for relieving tensions in the world, precisely because, as he said, the situation inside India gave him no special credentials for dealing with other problems. He didn't want to make it appear that he was looking to the world situation as a way of covering up failures at home. So he was extremely reluctant to get involved in world problems--as in the matter of nuclear testing. But he was a very lonely man--lonely socially and philosophically. He had very few friends, or friends that interested him, but he was hungry for it. He loved to have philosophical and historical discussions. There were very few people who could stimulate him in that respect. And he was preoccupied with the problems of India. He was a remarkable human being, in my mind. Certainly one of the most remarkable men I've ever met. While India would not have achieved its independence without Gandhi, I doubt they would have been able to keep it without Nehru.

BASIAGO

You mentioned that your main concern, during the interview, was to discuss India's position inside the United Nations, particularly involving major differences of opinion with the United States in that regard. What was your understanding of these differences, and what were Nehru's responses?

COUSINS

Nehru was the leader of the Third World. There were great problems in terms of squalor, hunger, inadequacy of resources. Also, the emerging new nations, nations emerging from colonialism. I suspect that--or did suspect that--Nehru felt that the United States, which had had its own colonial background, was identifying itself with those nations that were trying to keep new countries from coming into freedom.

BASIAGO

In discussing the efficacy of the United Nations, which Nehru, in the interview, observed was diminishing, you asked him if the West felt justified in opposing the entry of [People's Republic of] China. You rather rhetorically asked him this: "Shouldn't the West feel justified in opposing China's entry?" Were you asking that on behalf of the U.S., or was that your position?

COUSINS

No, I was asking a question which I thought was in the minds of many people. It was a reportorial question, not a subjective one.

BASIAGO

I see. Another theme that came up during the interview was this sense of how both of you were entertaining the possibility of a cataclysm, a military confrontation between the superpowers. Toward the end of the session you prodded him--if such a disastrous showdown was to come, what role did he think India would play? I'm wondering upon what military thinking that question was based at the time. At that time, were you entertaining the idea that a limited nuclear war could occur or that nuclear war was survivable? I'm trying to put that in the context of your evolving beliefs about nuclear war.

COUSINS

Well, let's go back in time. The United States and Soviet Union had come close to war in the Berlin crisis, '48 and '49. Earlier than that, you'd had the Czechoslovakian situation in '46. You also had [Winston] Churchill's Fulton, Missouri, speech, and the fact that, very rapidly, the situation between the United States and the Soviet Union was disintegrating. [Harry S.] Truman, who invited Churchill to Fulton, Missouri, where he gave that speech, was bitter about the Russians. He had come to-- As a matter of fact, he had-- As I explained elsewhere, his real reason for dropping the bomb on Hiroshima was not so much to spare an invasion as it was to make the Soviet Union more manageable in the postwar world. And then Truman also had the political liability of being thought soft on the Russians. The Republicans tried to get the American people to accept the notion that the Democrats were soft on communism. So Truman probably went too far in the other direction. But in justification of Truman's position, you were dealing there not with a [Mikhail S.] Gorbachev Soviet Union, you were dealing with a Stalinist Soviet Union. So there was some substance to his apprehensions. But India's situation was somewhat different, which is that they were not involved with the Soviet Union in a world struggle for the balance of power. They were not involved in contesting America's concern over the Western Hemisphere. India had its own problems, and Nehru was reflecting this. But even so, it seemed to me that the spillover of the U.S.-USSR confrontation inevitably would affect all nations--every nation in the world. I was very eager to find out what his reaction was to the fact that India's notion that it could stay apart from this confrontation, or the crises, or the tensions leading up to it, may have been misplaced. But he was walking a tightrope, because he knew that Russia was in a position to create a great deal of trouble for India. He didn't want to twist the bear's tail, and so he was being as cautious as he could under the circumstances. But there's no doubt in my mind about what his basic feelings were. It's quite possible that the criticism that had been made of him by his adversaries, which is that he never got over his English education, to some extent may have been true.

BASIAGO

While Nehru was admitting that such a world war would involve massive destruction, yet he noted to you that it might be a very lengthy war. I'm trying to identify what sort of war scenario that he or you or both of you were envisioning.

COUSINS

I've forgotten about that. I have no original memory of that conversation.

BASIAGO

You seemed to characterize the fear in the modern world as stemming from the basic fear of nuclear annihilation. He added upon that theme. He seemed to suggest that this sort of tension was rising, this fear of the consequences of the fatal misstep by those in power. Did you come to embrace this psychology? In other words, did he contribute to its appearance in your speeches and that sort of thing?

COUSINS

I don't think so. I had the feeling from the moment that the bomb was dropped that this was the world's number one problem. The only way out, as I saw it, was for the world to respond--not just the United States or Soviet Union. I may have been disappointed somewhat in the fact that it was not regarded as the number one problem by everyone else.

BASIAGO

I just sense that he seemed to give it a larger definition. It wasn't just a technical issue but a sort of a psychological problem that the bomb had instilled in leadership. I was wondering if that was the first time you'd heard that .

COUSINS

I'm not sure that Nehru's concern about the bomb had the same raw edge as mine. Largely because he was dealing with a lot of time bombs of his own, and they had engaged his attention. As for the other, it was something that the world had to address itself to, I suppose.

BASIAGO

You mentioned that you wanted to probe the place of India in the vast historic upheaval them underway in Southeast Asia. What role did American fears of an increasingly communist-leaning India play in the premise of the interview? I'm wondering-- Nehru, of course, had this reputation for entertaining sort of a Marxist-socialist- planning sort of perspective on economic development.

COUSINS

The United States, talking about government policy, failed to made distinctions. Marxism was regarded by American policy makers as a spreading world disease. It was regarded in monolithic terms. It was regarded as a design for world conquest. There were large parts of the rest of the world, India included, which took a somewhat different view, where Marxism was regarded as a very large smorgasbord from which you could pick and choose. Where each country would give its own particular turn to the philosophy that went under the name of Marxism, and that socialism had to be adapted to the needs of each country. You had Norman Thomas socialism in the United States, you had socialism the Scandinavian way. You even had some aspects of socialism in Britain and certainly throughout Europe. But the United States made the mistake, perhaps, of thinking of this as a coherent, monolithic doctrine, and that once a nation subscribed to it, it would become part of a communist world front. This led the United States to make very serious mistakes in not recognizing the powerful forces of national history that would cause the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China to be almost at the point of war. Or differences between the kind of socialism practiced in the Scandinavian nations and the kind of socialism you had in southern and eastern Europe. We applied the same rigid and undiscriminating yardstick to India. Which is to say, if you are not on our side, you must be on the side of the Soviet Union. Any reluctance to agree with the United States was regarded as taking orders from the Kremlin. Nehru resented this, as his daughter did. But they were not any more disposed to accept Soviet influence than they were American influence or domination. Although if it came to a showdown, of course they would have leaned in the direction of the West. In my discussions with him, I was being reportorial again, and trying to get him to speak about issues which were of concern to the United States, which is why I asked those journalistic questions.

1.19. TAPE NUMBER: X, SIDE ONE (JANUARY 19, 1988)

BASIAGO

As we were discussing, in 1951 you interviewed Prime Minister [Jawaharlal] Nehru of India. You met again with Nehru at the Bandung Conference in 1955 and corresponded throughout 1957 about nuclear disarmament with him. Some twenty years later, you counseled his daughter, Indira [Nehru] Gandhi, about her leadership policies in India. Today a portrait of Nehru by [Yousuf] Karsh of Ottawa hangs in your archives. He seems to be a key personality in your world outlook, someone who left a deep impression on you. I'm wondering-- You said that a basic premise of the interview was the idea that upon India and the United States so much of the burden of world peace rested. How did that outlook develop? Why was this so?

COUSINS

You used the word--if I just may go back a bit-- you used the word "counseled" in connection with Indira. I don't think that I counseled. I met with her as I did with her father, just as friends, not for the purpose of giving advice. But she was very forthcoming in her discussion of her problems, reflected in her letters. I don't know whether you happened to see some of those which are very, very open, as her father had been.

BASIAGO

Very emotional, I found.

COUSINS

But your question has to do with her father, for whom I had a very high regard. He appealed to me on many levels. First of all, he had a highly-developed intelligence--in fact, a panoramic intelligence--a product of both East and West, as I have written. I really enjoyed being with him.

BASIAGO

I know you mentioned that theme--the idea of East and West. You had questioned him on the issue of free elections and other aspects of democracy. Again, in 1975, '77, when Indira Gandhi started to have some difficulties, this issue came up again in your writings. In that way, was he billing himself somewhat as an Easterner? In other words, was he not evidencing some aspects of Eastern culture at the same time?

COUSINS

I'm not sure I get the connection between the question on elections and--

BASIAGO

Well, in the sense that-- You've mentioned his admiration for the American founding fathers and how, in fact, he might have been in that league. I'm just wondering, did you have dialogues with him over some of these issues of democracies, such as elections?

COUSINS

Oh, I see. Yes. Captain [Tara] Singh, I believe his name was, a Sikh, had produced a great deal of unrest representing the Sikhs who wanted a separate state and an independent government and produced quite a dilemma for Nehru on several levels. First, Singh had gone on a hunger strike, and--taking a leaf out of Gandhi's book--now Nehru found that pressure directed against India. I just had the feeling he wished that Singh would go away and wouldn't embarrass him in this respect. Nehru had hardly less success in dealing with hunger strikes than the British did against Gandhi. But Nehru was not about to dissolve the Indian government, even when one of the same arguments that he and Gandhi had used to get freedom for Britain was now being used by the Sikhs to get freedom from India. Nehru referred to this as fissiparous tendencies. There were so many different groups, so many different sects in India, that he was afraid that India's independence would be reversed by a promiscuity of breakaways. These were some of the problems that we discussed.

BASIAGO

You've contrasted Nehru and Gandhi. Pardon the expression, but I think to some degree you've suggested that Gandhi was somewhat of a phony, that he wasn't an ascetic after all, but enjoyed the company of young women, apparently didn't keep vegetarian all the time, and privately socialized with the wealthy that he publicly disdained. Beyond your discovery that Gandhi--

COUSINS

Can we hold up on that for just a moment?

BASIAGO

I don't know if I drew that too sharply.

COUSINS

I would not characterize Gandhi as a phony. Language is very important. It is true that [pause] there were aspects of Gandhi that were at variance with the general impression of the man. In terms of the monastic existence that I suppose was the popular impression, he departed from that image quite a bit. I don't criticize him for his multiple friendships with women. After all, anyone who admires the greatest handiwork of nature, as Nehru and Gandhi did, can't be all bad. But it was just that he took pains to give a certain impression that his own life was different. I spoke about the time that he made himself inaccessible to Nehru when Nehru had to make a very important decision. I wouldn't use the term phony with respect to Gandhi.

BASIAGO

Oh, he created--he helped, apparently helped create this image of him as a saint, and we see the famous photograph by Margaret Bourke-White of Gandhi at his spinning wheel. I think that's the impression--vegetarian, nonviolent, preaching a simple way of life. I'm just wondering if those aspects of Gandhi made you disdain him, let's say, as opposed to Nehru. In other words, I'm wondering why Nehru found his way into your pantheon of people that you highly admire, where Gandhi, whom one might expect would appear there as well, didn't.

COUSINS

I admired Gandhi. As for those flaws, if they were flaws, I take note of them only because of the public impression of the man. I had a great admiration for Gandhi. But I also feel that on some occasions he ducked the tough ones, leaving Nehru alone to face them. My greater admiration for Nehru may actually be a result of the fact that I knew Nehru a lot better than I knew Gandhi. But both were essential for the independence of India.

BASIAGO

Another premise of the interview that I'd like to explore, that is the 1951 interview, is this whole issue of India's role or response to the United States versus the Soviet Union. When you went into the interview, did you have a deep background in writings about Nehru? What was your degree of preparation going into the affair?

COUSINS

I drew upon the usual materials, not in terms of immediate preparation, because I had been reading Nehru for a long time. I especially admired his Glimpses of World History, which was a collection of letters he had written for his daughter while he was in prison. This, to my mind, was one of the great intellectual achievements in the modern world. A man who had no reference books, and yet was able to write a history of East and West. And he had also appealed to me as a modern example of Plato's philosopher-king, someone who could be a philosopher, historian, man of ideas, and still be adept at governance. So when I approached him, it was with a concern for what was happening in India and also in terms of America's relations with India, which at that time were rather precarious. It seemed to me that a great deal of pressure was being brought on India from the outside, and India needed the kind of support from the United States it wasn't getting. I had a certain amount of anxiety and also urgency about India at that particular time.

BASIAGO

That's what I sensed, and I was trying to explore the kind of preparation you had had, what had motivated-- Beyond the fact that this was a very eminent and remarkable personage, I was just wondering what were the other things that had motivated you to explore the topic.

COUSINS

I felt that India represented a balance between East and West. China had only recently completed its revolution, and that same tide was beginning to move against India. And then India, you see, had the pressure-- the geographical and political pressure, and ideological pressure- -from both China and the Soviet Union, East and West. All that stood, it seemed to me, between the loss of India was Nehru. It was a real struggle for the world's majority, and India represented the balance. So I felt that Nehru, who wanted to keep India free, had the most difficult task, and probably also the most important political job in the world, at that particular time. George [C.] McGhee, who, as I said--I think I told you--was Mr. [E. L.] De Golyer's son-in-law, and who had become an assistant secretary of state for that particular area, was someone I thought who might be in a pivotal position. I spoke to him, and he made it possible for me to go to India as the first Smith-Mundt lecturer in India. I wrote to Nehru, telling him I was coming. After I arrived, I found a letter at the hotel waiting for me, as I remember it, inviting me to lunch. We ate in the garden. The rapport was all that one might ask for. I think we had a pretty good time together.

BASIAGO

Seems like a unique subjective position for you to be in. Have you found, throughout your career, that you've found a number of important occurrences like this coming your way, as opposed to you creating them? It's kind of interesting that essentially you were invited by Nehru to establish the rapport. Has that been typical throughout the years?

COUSINS

I think I told you how surprised I was when [John F.] Kennedy [JFK] personally became involved in the attempt to smooth the way for my trip to the Soviet Union to see [Nikita S.] Khrushchev. He got--well, I assume he got Dean Rusk on the phone. Then Adrian [S.] Fisher, of the [United States] Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. He personally called to tell them about my trip. Then when I had gone over to Rusk's place a couple of days later--or the next day--the president called asking to speak to me while I was with Rusk. He then told me to call him--telephone him-- when I had the chance. [laughter] When I did telephone, Mrs. [Evelyn] Lincoln put me right through. The sheer accessibility was something that astonished me. I think I told you that once when I was at the White House we looked out through that bank of windows and could see workmen setting up chairs on the lawn. I don't know whether I told you about this. JFK said that Jackie [Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy] had invited some high school students, quite a large number of them--music students--and he had to play host, because Jackie was down in Florida sunning herself. [laughter] He said, "I don't know what I'm going to say to all these music students, and they've got their teachers with them. Do you have any ideas?" I happened to have an odd figure sticking in my mind, that more Americans went to concerts that year than to baseball games. It surprised him. He said, "Do you think you can do a little speech for me? Ten minutes ought to do it or so." I said, "When will you give the talk?" And he said, "Not for fifteen minutes." [laughter] It was perhaps twenty minutes to twelve. I got my secretary in New York on the phone to check some figures. I wanted to show that the United States was not bereft culturally, in terms of the number of books that had been published the previous year, the number of people who went to concerts or art museums. I thought that America was coming of age culturally. Such at least was the proposition to which I had committed myself in the Saturday Review [of Literature], and I could see the rapid growth of the Saturday Review, as we pursued it. Didn't I tell you this whole story about Kennedy and writing that little speech for him?

BASIAGO

Is this the one that he read-- I think I read about it. He was swimming? Holding it up with one hand?

COUSINS

Yes, yes. While I was writing the talk, every once in a while he would come in and ask me how I was doing. I finished it, gave it to Mrs. Lincoln, and then he suggested that I go downstairs to the White House dining room and have lunch, which I did. Larry [Lawrence F.] O'Brien came up to me. "Now I've seen it all," he said. "The president had just five minutes before his talk, so he rushed down to the White House swimming pool, tore off his clothes, and jumped in. But even then, he was looking at some cards for a speech he had to give, swimming with one hand." [laughter] Being able to go at life the way the president did, in these precious little moments that he had for himself, gave me some idea of the pressures on the man.

BASIAGO

Taking it back to Nehru. You had voiced to him your regrets that it seemed at times during your trip in India that Americans were being held accountable for all the colonial and imperialistic abuses of the English during the period of their rule. Did that comment derive just from the speaking tour, in which you had had a lot of questions about race relations brought up? Or were there other incidents in which you felt, perhaps, that you were being personally treated poorly, or viewed as a Briton, or mistaken for a Briton?

COUSINS

No, but the white Westerner symbolized Western colonialism. Most of the European nations-- A white man was regarded as a European, wherever he came from, America, Europe. In that sense, the identification was easy for the Indian people to make. Most of the nations that were under colonial control were involved in the struggle for freedom at that particular time. And the fact that the Indian people didn't make these distinctions was not surprising. But I spoke to Nehru about it, if I remember correctly. I wasn't troubled by it, I was just calling attention to it.

BASIAGO

Nehru mentioned to you in the interview that, "There are far too many people on the land. We have to draw some of them into big industry or small industry or both. " I would imagine this would involve some dislocation of rural people as they were moved into urban areas, and I note that this was a major policy disagreement between Nehru and Gandhi. Gandhi, of course, feared the exploitation of agrarian people in centralized urban areas and industries. Did you ever discuss with him some of these issues, about land reform and migration and other internal matters in India?

COUSINS

I think the book covers some of that, the Talks with Nehru covered some of that. A sentimental Westerner liked to think that a country such as India, with its Eastern traditions, would be able to hold onto its cultural and historical values without being contaminated by the West. That contamination was certainly represented--in the view of a sentimental outsider--by industrialization. Consequently, when you came to India and you saw the emphasis being placed on industrialization, sentimentally you wished that that were not so. But it was necessary for the people. China's experience, I think, has also demonstrated this.

BASIAGO

You mentioned that you had somewhat of a private agenda as the interview began to sort of portray Nehru as a key world federalist or make a world federalist out of him. You also mentioned that ultimately you'd come to see him as the spokesman of the Third World. I'd like to be very critical and just bring up the worst thing I could find on Nehru, from his very critical biographer Michael Edwardes, who writes, "Nehru insisted, with as much arrogance as any Western imperialist, that his judgment. India's judgment, was superior to anyone else's."

COUSINS

About what?

BASIAGO

About world affairs.

COUSINS

Only as it pertained to India.

BASIAGO

Well, he goes on to say that, "His foreign policy statements often became lectures, suffused with a high moral tone, to the statesmen of other countries. Most of these lectures were directed to leaders in the West. Even criticisms of the Cold War, though ostensibly impartial, were primarily addressed to the U.S." How do you assess claims that portray him as an elitist?

COUSINS

It didn't correspond with my own impressions. I tried to get him to acquiesce in the notion that we ought to have a great crusade in the world directed to the concept of world law. He kept drawing back, feeling that you don't preach, you don't moralize, and it was rather presumptuous to tell other people what to do. So he was the one, I think, who was holding back. If you have a copy of my book--I don't think I have it here--Talks with Nehru, you'll see him drawing back time and again, whenever I try to push him in that direction.

BASIAGO

Nehru admitted to you during the interview that a highly industrialized and technologically efficient nation like the U.S. could give the greatest help to any underdeveloped country like India, in terms of both capital goods and technical personnel. It seemed that he was taking the point of view that this would be a good thing for India, and that it should go forward. Yet, during the interview, he never seemed to really commit himself fully to the West and to the United States. I'm wondering if you had ever engaged in a dialogue with him or others over this issue of the United States supplying this sort of aid and support yet perhaps not getting full measure in return. An issue of fealty, so to speak.

COUSINS

That was the perception in the United States at the time, that India was all take and no give. But my main concern was that the United States was actually holding back, and it was only congressional legislation with respect to Public Law 480 [Agricultural Trade and Assistance Act of 1954] which would make it possible for help to be given on advantageous terms. I wanted to make sure that we got the most out of 480, so far as India was concerned. But it was a time when people were choosing up sides, you see. What concerned me was that a Nehru-less India would turn either to China or to the Soviet Union or to both, and that Nehru's essential quest, which was for the democratization of India, would be complicated by the fact that the conditions for democracy in India were hardly ideal. Not just the grinding poverty and all the economic dislocations, but the heterogeneity of the Indian people. Nehru's own program would collapse unless he did get some outside help. It seemed to me that the United States was being shortsighted in not moving in massively with all the assistance that we could provide. As I say, it was a time of choosing up sides. Nehru, ideologically, was far more attuned to the United States than he was to either the Soviet Union or China, but was not strong enough to stand up against either one or both. The United States, it seemed to me, wanted the kind of public declarations from Nehru that would have been not just awkward but unwise for him to make. We wanted him to make an unequivocal declaration of partisanship with the West. To have been that explicit would have further endangered Nehru inside his own country. He was juggling a great many pressures--not just the problem of separatism, but also the political pressures from many sources which were still throbbing from their anti-colonial experience.

BASIAGO

You portray him as someone quite dedicated to democracy, and I don't have any basis to question that. I do find some other biographers emphasizing to a greater degree the fact that, although he didn't become a revolutionary communist, for twenty years he was influenced by Marxism; it influenced his thought and vocabulary. Some others say that he never lost his view of the Russia of the interwar years--embattled and revolutionary Russia. What motivated you to minimize his commitment to Marxism?

COUSINS

I don't think he had a commitment to Marxism. I think he thought that Marx was out-of-date. As a matter of fact, once at the Asian-African Conference at Bandung [Indonesia in 1955], he and Zhou Enlai were assigned to draft a resolution formalizing a consensus that seemed to have been reached at one of the plenary sessions. He and Zhou Enlai went off to do this with their interpreters. Zhou Enlai spoke enough English, of course. Since the conference at Bandung was in English, Zhou Enlai asked Nehru to prepare the first draft. Nehru said, "Well, shouldn't we discuss it first, to make sure we both agree on what the sense of the assembly is?" And they discussed it, and agreed on what the consensus was. They prepared the first draft, whereupon Zhou Enlai politely took exception to it, saying that this didn't represent his understanding. So they discussed again, and Nehru said, "Well, why don't you do your draft of what we just agreed on?" Zhou Enlai did, and it was translated, and Nehru looked at it and was appalled, because that didn't at all correspond to his view of it. Then he said to me, when he was reporting it, "My God, can you imagine what Karl Marx must be like in Chinese?" I think that Nehru recognized a trend in the world toward collective social institutions. In that sense, Marxian analysis was correct. But the notion of being able to operate privately in some respects in which you had overwhelming national needs--this notion also had to be respected, as indeed it was by many of the Western countries, in Sweden and even by Britain. But Nehru would never accept the notion that there were political totalitarian features of collective social policy that were necessary in order to carry out such policies. He was a very stern critic of Marx in terms of the political translation of Marx's social ideas. I don't think that Nehru accepted for one minute the notion of a dictatorship of the proletariat.

BASIAGO

You mentioned Bandung; this of course takes us up to 1955. You note that he took a rather low profile during the conference, that "far from attempting to monopolize the spotlight, Nehru seemed to go out of his way to avoid it. Some delegates were surprised, for example, when he declined to join the roster of delegates who made opening addresses at the public sessions." I'm just wondering why he took such a low profile.

COUSINS

I don't know. Probably because everyone expected him to. [laughter] That scared him off, maybe.

BASIAGO

Expected him to take a high profile or a low profile?

COUSINS

Well, I'm not sure that he felt entirely comfortable in that company. Symbolically, he was part of it. There was no way that he could have been absent from such a meeting, and that's not to suggest that he didn't favor such a meeting. I think he did. But the concept of a cohesive community, which by its very nature would be exclusive, was bound to trouble him. Such, at least, is my guess. He didn't like the notion of a political alliance of these nations any more than he liked the alliance of SEATO [Southeast Asia Treaty Organization] or the other efforts of the West. He was much more comfortable in crossover and universal institutions than in regional ones.

BASIAGO

Do you think that by 1955 he was following your lead--the points you were making in 1951 regarding that very issue?

COUSINS

What gives you reason to say that?

BASIAGO

Well, it seems that in the 1951 session, you were warning that the world could drift into such coalitions without world law, and by '53--

COUSINS

I see what you mean. I think the logic of history didn't pass him by. Certainly, on his trip to the United States, I think in '56, he had to take a world view of matters. It was at that time that the Russians had gone into [Hungary] . He had had conversations with the president. Nehru was convinced that the Russians thought that the American action in the Middle East which occurred at that particular time, when [Dwight D.] Eisenhower opposed the unilateral action of Britain and France in the area, and they had to withdraw because the United States wouldn't back it up-- It came as a surprise to Britain and France and also to the Israelis. But anyone who knew Eisenhower would recognize that Eisenhower didn't have a double standard. He had strong feelings about the concept of world law. Power plays, such as that represented by the military action of Britain and France, would be opposed by Eisenhower. It is true that [John Foster] Dulles was ill at the time, and Eisenhower was his own secretary of state. But what Eisenhower did was completely consistent with his beliefs at the time. Now, Nehru thought that Eisenhower's action was extraordinarily wise.

1.20. TAPE NUMBER: X, SIDE TWO (JANUARY 19, 1988)

COUSINS

Nehru thought that Eisenhower had a great deal of foresight in acting as he did. Eisenhower's refusal to go along with Britain and France might have averted a great crisis that could have resulted in war. Because Nehru said that the Soviet Union interpreted the action of Britain and France as a forerunner to wider action in eastern Europe. Such, at least, was their intelligence. Consequently, when Eisenhower broke with Britain and France, that they-- Let me back up a bit. The Soviet Union's interpretation of the action of Britain and France was that this was a forerunner to action in eastern Europe, and therefore the Soviet Union moved into Hungary to strengthen its position. But when Eisenhower broke with Britain and France, the Soviet Union realized it had made a mistake in terms of its interpretation. Nehru felt that this was a very fortuitous action on the part of Eisenhower in its effect on the Soviet Union at that particular time. At least, this was the interpretation that Nehru gave me when he spoke to me about it.

BASIAGO

You mentioned, regarding the portrayal of Nehru at Bandung, that the American press desired to show him as flying from one temper tantrum to another, largely because of Sir John [L.] Kotelawala's denunciation of communism as the new imperialism. You deny, of course, this picture of Nehru. I find it interesting, though, that just a month after Bandung, Nehru signed a joint communiqué with [Nikolay A.] Bulganin of the Soviet Union, regarding such issues as territorial integrity, nonaggression, trade reciprocity, and support for nuclear disarmament. In light of the timing of this sort of diplomatic initiative, did their fears seem more justified regarding the potential to be quite favorable toward the Soviet Union?

COUSINS

That was not the way Nehru interpreted it; it was quite the contrary. What Nehru wanted was independence from Soviet pressure, and that declaration could reasonably be read as the success of Nehru's policy. It was not, as some people interpreted it, a reflection of alliance so much as it was a spell out of items of mutual respect but also complete independence. Nehru was very happy to get that document, considering the pressures he had been under to yield to the Soviet Union.

BASIAGO

Yeah, I sensed it wasn't so much an act of collusion as mutual understanding. In explaining India's support for the policy of nonalignment, as pledged at Bandung, Nehru pointed to such cultural foundations as nonviolence, Gandhianism, Buddhism, and pacifism. In addition to these, did he have more pragmatic reasons for supporting nonalignment? He seemed to give more of a mythic or abstract justification.

COUSINS

That was the heart of his policy, you see? You've got to realize, as I said before, that nations were then choosing up sides. The United States and the Soviet Union were putting as much pressure as they could on countries to line up with themselves. Nehru's policy was to resist any tilting towards either China or the Soviet Union. The United States, unfortunately-- Dulles, unfortunately, used the [slogan] "Anyone who's not with us actively is against us, " which was a great mistake. His policy towards the nations at Bandung was a specific example of this. Dulles was so obsessed with bipolar world considerations that he didn't give enough weight to the fact that other countries had needs and policies of their own. Nehru's treaty of nonalignment just gave specific expression to something that had been his primary aim, which was to avoid alliances with the Soviet Union and China.

BASIAGO

Nehru wrote in February of 1957 that none of the outstanding political figures appeared to have the vision to stop the piling up of nuclear weapons, even though all recognized a major nuclear war was out of the question. I'm wondering whether he was the first to suggest that Dr. [Albert] Schweitzer would be an individual that leaders could trust, or--

COUSINS

He was the first to respond to my question in that sense and agree with me.

BASIAGO

Yeah, I was wondering who was leading on that. A month later he wrote to you regarding two things that he felt could be done to reverse the arms race. Or, as he described it, "The race for the latest type of death- dealing machinery." First was a stop to any further atomic test explosions; second, a stop to any further production of atomic or hydrogen bombs. Again, was that a response to one of your appeals? Or were those suggestions that he came--?

COUSINS

Those were his own.

BASIAGO

So the test-ban idea was his idea.

COUSINS

Yes. At that time, we were just forming a national Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy [SANE], the main objective of which was to stop nuclear testing. So we didn't wait for his suggestion to form the national committee. It was a recognition by him independently, just as it was an awareness by a group of Americans that this was necessary.

BASIAGO

He viewed German reunification as vital, not only to Europe, but also to the world. He thought it couldn't be brought about by Cold War methods. Presumably, nuclear war was ruled out of the question. I'm wondering why he viewed German unification as so vital. Did he view that as a possible fuse point of superpower catastrophe?

COUSINS

Well, we had already seen the fact that the Soviet Union and United States almost came to war over West Berlin, which was the quintessential feature of a divided Germany. But I never felt that reunification was necessarily consistent with the total requirements of world peace. We were then too close to World War II, where Germany, which had been devastated after World War I, was nonetheless able, in a very short time, to become a potent force, not for the good. So reunification, I thought, was not necessarily in the world interest.

BASIAGO

I was wondering if you would have disagreed with him on that. This was only twelve years after the end of the war; it seemed rather ill-advised.

COUSINS

I would not have joined any crusade to reunify Germany that soon.

BASIAGO

In one of his 1957 communiqués to you, Nehru mentioned that President Eisenhower was the one great political leader who has it in him to take an effective step toward disarmament. We found the same rationale posed regarding President [Ronald W.] Reagan. Someone with a very clear pro-defense position would be in a beautiful position to bring about a freeze in the early eighties. Was Nehru saying anything more to you with this kind of statement?

COUSINS

We're referring to Eisenhower?

BASIAGO

We're referring to Eisenhower. Was he suggesting, perhaps, that the U.S. shared some blame for fueling the arms race and that only a strong American president coming from the military could help defuse the situation?

COUSINS

He didn't, as I remember it, place the blame on anyone. It was not in his character to do so. But it was in his character to perceive openings and to recognize that some people did have enormous potentialities in that direction. That was the way he felt about Eisenhower. He had a very high regard for Eisenhower.

BASIAGO

He felt that certain personalities had more to offer in this regard, so to speak? They were catalysts?

COUSINS

Yes, I think that his high regard for Eisenhower was reflected a number of times. And in that letter, he felt that Eisenhower was in a position to take a certain measure of leadership. Although he was excessively retiring, in terms of his own possibilities in that direction.

BASIAGO

You've provided some fascinating insights into Gandhi's personality, if you will, as opposed to his political life, political image. I suspect that Nehru's inner life, his spiritual qualities, seemed to have left a deep impression on you as much as the figure that he cut as a public person. You've mentioned several times the stunning intellectual feat of his authorship of Glimpses of World History while in prison, virtually from memory. Others have marveled at Nehru's ability to memorize large passages of spoken conversation and repeat them back years, even decades later, complete with intonation. I'm wondering if you have any insights into his mental gifts or the cerebral aspects of the man, spiritual qualities, even. Did he ever do anything so remarkable when you--?

COUSINS

No, there was nothing comparable to his Glimpses of World History in our conversations. He didn't go off into grand soliloquies on history. He was much too modest for that, and much too responsible a conversationalist to arrogate to himself that particular right. But he was very well-funded intellectually. He didn't draw upon that capital very heavily, but it was there. It made his exchanges in conversation very rich. He, as I suggested the last time we spoke, was a very lonely man, especially intellectually. He tended to operate on the extremes; he loved to have fun conversation, but also relished genuine substance in his intellectual exchanges, and didn't get very much of that, and missed it in life.

BASIAGO

I suspect that he had some superlative abilities mentally, rare gifts. In other words, people have talked about this ability just to memorize what they were saying and repeat it back.

COUSINS

When he was concentrating. But there were times, I think, where he couldn't tell you five minutes later what was said; that was only because he was racing ahead in his own thoughts.

BASIAGO

I'd like to close today by discussing your correspondence, rather than your counsel, with Indira Gandhi. How well did you know her, as compared to her father?

COUSINS

I met her during that time when I was meeting with her father and she would hover in the background. I didn't have an independent or separate relationship with her, although when she came to the United States once, she wrote to me in advance and we did meet. And then, after she became prime minister, I wrote to her telling her I was coming to India. She invited me to the prime minister's house for lunch, and her son was there at the time, Rajiv [Gandhi] . She did not have the abstract intellectual interests that her father did, and so our discussions tended to relate more to specific, everyday matters than to matters of historic principle. But she was certainly as open as her father had been, as her letters reflected.

BASIAGO

When she was forced to declare her emergency program in late 1976, you sent a letter to her in January 1977, questioning the extent of the emergency program. What were you trying to achieve in your communications with her over that issue?

COUSINS

The atmosphere at the time was very heated in the United States about what was happening in India. Even my protégé, Ved Mehta, felt that I was an apologist for Indira Gandhi. The papers were full of abuses, the shrinkage of freedom, and what was described as her departure from the policies of her father. I don't like to be an apologist for anyone. The news was very disquieting. It was out of that concern and that general atmosphere that I wrote her.

BASIAGO

Madame Gandhi accused her critics of great hypocrisy in not condemning civil rights abuses in neighboring countries, such as China, while chastising her regime for what she described as "the detention of a few people and some curbs on the press." Do you think she was accurately portraying what was going on in her nation?

COUSINS

She was accurate but selective. She felt victimized, especially by the press. She didn't regard herself as a dictator, and eventually she was vindicated. When I spoke to her, she had a long laundry list of outrageous provocations, and she didn't quite know how to handle them.

BASIAGO

Are you speaking of the threats upon her son Sanjay [Gandhi] and herself and the actions of some cabinet ministers?

COUSINS

Well, when I spoke, I was thinking more in terms of misrepresentations--or what she called misrepresentations--of a very serious nature in the press, about what happened. She resented the denunciations in the press. They had said that she would never rescind the emergency, and yet she felt that an emergency existed. She was determined to rescind it, and did, as soon as there was a little more calm. I don't say that she didn't make mistakes but that the casual attempt to describe her as someone who worshipped power above everything else was wrong.

BASIAGO

I found a rather remarkable letter in your archives related to this period. Robert Moses, the architect, had written her in a rather rhetorical vein, questioning the role of Americans in criticizing India. I'm not really certain whether he was being serious or sarcastic. He mentioned to you, in sort of a covering letter to his letter to Madame Gandhi, some understanding of the problems she was facing. Here she was running an ancient country, a nation twice as large as the United States, bedeviled by conflicting views of an untouchable caste and an aristocratic system, suddenly launched on democratic government in the midst of a cyclical depression. How did you respond to Moses's argument? I can't really sense whether he was being entirely supportive of her or mildly editorializing about her actions.

COUSINS

My memory is vague, but I had the feeling that he was being reasonable in understanding her problem, but also I think he, like most friends of India, was hopeful that she'd be able to come right side up as soon as possible. And she did.

BASIAGO

He seemed to be dismissing some of the alleged abuses and antidemocratic measures, as if the size of her country and its unique problems justified it. Is that inaccurate?

COUSINS

That was what some of my friends were saying about me at the time, whenever I tried to tell them that their wholesale denunciations were somewhat extreme. They accused me of ignoring the extent of her antidemocratic measures at that particular time. My letter to her did reflect my concern in that direction. But even as I expressed that concern, I knew that it was easy enough for people at a distance to pass judgments, and that she was contending with real and not imaginary things.

BASIAGO

So you, in essence, shared his sympathy, as expressed in his letters.

COUSINS

Yes.

BASIAGO

In June of 1977, Madame Gandhi wrote again to you, reporting that: "The whole administrative machinery seems to be pitted against one small family, who doesn't even have the means for proper legal defense. Unless there is some unexpected development, this government is headed towards fascist functioning with all the outward trappings of democracy." You responded by reminding her of her father's legacy and urging her "not to descend to the level of her malicious accusers." You get the sense in these letters of a woman extremely emotionally involved and beset by these problems. Did you fear that things were spiraling out of control there for her personally, in terms of her own control?

COUSINS

There was a time when I felt that, yes.

BASIAGO

Because I've never read such emotionally distraught writings by a modern head of state.

COUSINS

Yes.

BASIAGO

Your letters seem to be the sort of counsel one would supply someone deeply emotionally troubled by a series of conflicts or outward pressures.

COUSINS

I tried to reflect the fact that there was an awareness of the abuses that she spoke about and also that she was responding on the human, and not just the political level, to what was happening. So what I tried to do was two things, which was to say that I understood, but at the same time to encourage her to persevere. I don't know whether she felt, since I was a close friend of her father, that she owed me a detailed explanation, not just of her perceptions, but of her feelings. In any event, for what little it was worth, I tried to be supportive, but supportive in a certain direction. I was rather amazed that, despite her strong emotional feelings at the time, she was able to retain a remarkable balance. She was a mother; her sons were being viciously attacked; they were accused falsely--one of them was being accused falsely--of graft and attempting to use undue influence. She felt protective about her sons, and yet she had to deal with all these complexities with very little support on the spot. I don't think she had very many advisers whom she fully accepted or trusted or could lean on. It was complicated and poignant.

BASIAGO

She mentioned the mysterious death of Sanjay's father-in-law [Colonel Anand], and she wrote you after his plane crash. Is there any evidence there that when she finally was assassinated, that it wasn't just this religious antipathy that had racked the nation? It perhaps stemmed from some of these--

COUSINS

The assassination was complete vindication of everything that she said was happening and that she feared. She herself, if not in her letters, at least in person told me that there would be attempts on her life; she anticipated that they would try to kill her.

BASIAGO

I felt it was frightening to read these letters. that she had no delusions of persecution, it was evidence that was holding up.

COUSINS

Yes, yes.

BASIAGO

Robert Moses called her "the greatest woman governor in the history of the emancipation of women. " What are your views--?

COUSINS

I thought that she was the second greatest.

BASIAGO

After —

COUSINS

My wife [Ellen Kopf Cousins]. [laughter]

1.21. TAPE NUMBER: XI, SIDE ONE (FEBRUARY 3, 1988)

BASIAGO

According to the Annals of America, which is published by the Encyclopaedia Britannica [Inc.], "[United] World Federalist groups were active in many countries for a few years after World War II, but by the 1950s the movement had largely petered out, " this source contends, "mainly owing to the impossibility of doing anything about the profound opposition between the U.S. and the Soviet Union." I imagine you would believe that such an account leaves many details unsaid. To supplement the historical record, today I'd like to chart the breadth and scope of the United World Federalists [UWF] as a political organization, exploring its history throughout the forties, fifties, and sixties. I guess maybe the best way to start would be to touch upon the important meetings in the early phase of the United World Federalists. The first was at Dublin, New Hampshire, at Grenville Clark's family farmhouse. I guess in some ways Clark became sort of the Ben Franklin of that period of political development. What are your recollections of Clark? When did you first meet him, and how deep was the friendship?

COUSINS

Well, long before the meeting at Clark's place in Dublin, there was a great deal of activity, albeit under different names. The Clark meeting was almost a consequence of, or a culmination of, many things that occurred during that period. Even before the war ended we had a group called Americans United for World Organization. I think we've spoken about that. And then, when the bomb was dropped, it seemed clear to many of us that the timetable that had been the chronological context in which we operated was no longer valid. I did a piece at the end of the war called "Modern Man is Obsolete" that appeared the week after the bomb was dropped. A lot of people got in touch with me about that, including [Albert] Einstein. I remember getting a telephone call from Edgar Ansel Mowrer, the correspondent for the Chicago Daily News, I guess, who said that a woman by the name of Mildred Blake and Mark Van Doren, the poet, thought we ought to get together. That was one such meeting at which we began to discuss world government. Then our own group of Americans United for World Organization recognized, at the very first meeting after Hiroshima, that the organization ought to be changed to Americans United for World Government, and that in itself became something of a rallying ground and a growth center. With all these groups springing up, and there's Stringfellow Barr, and--

BASIAGO

Was he a leader of a different organization before the meeting at Clark's farmhouse?

COUSINS

Oh, yes. Stringfellow Barr and all the members of the Saint John's [University] group were active in this general direction. The Clark meeting didn't take place until fall of next year, I believe, in '46.

BASIAGO

Well, I believe it was October of 1945.

COUSINS

'Forty-five. That's right, it didn't take place until the fall. But meanwhile, as I say, there had been a great many flurries. So that by the time we got to Dublin, you had at least three or four separate thrusts. Then you also had unorganized intellectual centers, one of them built around Emery Reves and his book, The Anatomy of Peace. Dublin, therefore, was something of a confluence of all these streams. A lot of people came to Dublin with different agendas. Grenville Clark put his emphasis in getting up the invitation list, which he did with Supreme Court Justice [Owen J.] Roberts, on youth. He said that he wanted to select the men who, twenty years from then, would be leading the country. Well, there were a lot of people who were not very young, but some of them were. Cord Meyer; Kingman Brewster, who became president of Yale [University] , and also an American ambassador to Great Britain; [Herbert] Claiborne Pell--

BASIAGO

There's a name I hadn't found in the reading. Okay, I guess of course Alan Cranston.

COUSINS

Yes, Alan Cranston. I think that John [F.] Kennedy [JFK] came to one of the meetings.

BASIAGO

I found a source from Alan Cranston, who wrote that "Norman persists in the belief that a slim young man still in naval uniform dropped up from Boston for a few hours one afternoon."

COUSINS

That's right. He thinks that's not--

BASIAGO

I'm uncertain whether JFK was actually there.

COUSINS

That was my impression. Did you see Cranston?

BASIAGO

Personally?

COUSINS

Yes.

BASIAGO

No, no.

COUSINS

I think young Marshall Field [III] was there.

BASIAGO

You probably knew of the other forty-eight. I have some other names, of course, from the older generation, so to speak: Thomas K. Finletter--

COUSINS

Of course, yes.

BASIAGO

--and Manhattan Project scientist Robert [D.] Smith--

COUSINS

Yes.

BASIAGO

--Senator Styles Bridges, and, of course, Edgar Ansel Mowrer. Do you recall any of the other forty-eight that were on the original list?

COUSINS

Possibly Harry [B.] Hollins; Emery Reves; Louis Fischer, the correspondent, political writer. In any event, Grenny Clark began the meeting on behalf of himself and Justice Roberts, who was there. They had sent out the invitations. He gave the background. I'll never forget his remarks or that manner of very calm but unmistakable authority; the way he spoke and used his hands; the reasonableness of the man; the historical background and depth; the personal experience he had had that he could draw upon; and the clear vision of what was necessary. Some of the Young Turks at that meeting thought that he didn't go far enough, because he spoke about limited world government. This was the first time those three words were used together, with capital letters almost. But his approach was designed to take this whole concept out of the orbit of radicalism. Then the way in which he connected it to the possibility of the United Nations 's development into a limited world government. He put his emphasis on the term world law, and he did have a profound effect. Grenny was a man of infinite goodwill, without being a Pollyanna. He always-- I've written about him in this regard-- I've always thought of him as someone who would have been very much at home in the company of the American founding fathers. He had that broad liberalism in the very best sense. He was a born leader; he knew how to bring people along with him because he didn't give the impression of leading them. He gave the impression just of communicating with them in a way that gave you complete confidence that wherever he wanted to go was where you wanted to be. In his opening talk, as I say, he tried to anticipate the problems that the country and the world would face as the knowledge of the bomb spread from place to place. He spoke about American-Russian relations in the long view and how these relations would become exacerbated when the arms race itself became a prime fact for the tension between the two countries.

BASIAGO

I was curious about something in that area. He spoke of limited but adequate powers in the world government. I was wondering, to the degree that he was envisioning nuclear proliferation, how would a government at once limit its intrusiveness in various nation-states and at the same time stem a nuclear arms race?

COUSINS

He was not talking in terms of voluntary limitations but of statutory limitations--limitations that would be placed upon governments. He was thinking in terms of a common authority or an external authority, which would do the limiting, which itself would have enough powers to do the job, but powers that would not be intrusive, and powers that would be confined to those matters concerned with common dangers and common needs. But he never assumed that governments by themselves would limit their activity or their interests. As a matter of fact, that was part of the problem as he saw it. That governments couldn't be trusted to define national limitations or their interests.

BASIAGO

So he was envisioning, really, never trampling on sovereignty.

COUSINS

He had a rather different definition of sovereignty from most people. He would ask himself: What is workable and what are the legitimate concerns? What is the legitimate reach of national governments? [He] made a very clear distinction between the authority that a government would have within its own borders and what it did outside its own borders, by way of attending to what it conceived to be its sovereign concerns. When you asked for memories of Grenny Clark, one of my most vivid memories was at Dartmouth [College], for the first meeting of the Americans and Russians in the Dartmouth Conference series. How in a moment of tension between the two groups, when it seemed almost as though we were deadlocked philosophically, and not just politically, Grenny spoke, oh, maybe for twenty minutes or so, about the Soviet people and their ordeal during the war. How important it was for Americans to understand that the Russian reaction to the war was entirely different from our own. You could almost see the Russians melting as he spoke, because he would say far better than they did why it was that they felt as they did. That not only broke the deadlock but built a bridge, and sometimes I think the traffic is still passing over that bridge that he built at Dartmouth.

BASIAGO

You mentioned some of the Young Turks at the first meeting at Dublin, New Hampshire, felt that he didn't go far enough when he spoke of limited world government. Was that the group that consisted of the younger representatives, such as Cord Meyer and Alan Cranston and yourself?

COUSINS

No, no.

BASIAGO

Who was disagreeing with Clark?

COUSINS

Emery Reves, who felt that we were temporizing, and maybe Louis Fischer. I have him in mind, for some reason. But most of the people there accepted Grenny Clark's analysis of the world situation and how best to go about meeting it.

BASIAGO

As the forties rolled into the fifties, did you remain in close contact with any of the representatives, any of these younger individuals, for instance?

COUSINS

Yes. Because in '47, we went to Asheville [North Carolina] to found the [United] World Federalists, and some of the people at Dublin were also at Asheville: Tom Finletter, Cord Meyer. I don't know whether Alan Cranston was there or not. I'm not sure, maybe he was. Asheville was a cohesive grouping, because you had people from different vantage points, maximalists, minimalists, miximalists. You had the young Chicago group--

BASIAGO

Consisting of who? [Robert Maynard] Hutchins and--

COUSINS

No, a young group, kids. I see their faces. One of them there was with the [Charles F.] Kettering Foundation, superintending such affairs as Dartmouth. One of them became the assistant head of the Peace Corps. All very bright, thinking people, but very impassioned. One of them became the president of [State University of New York] Stony Brook, I believe, and before that of a girls '-- Rollins College, maybe. Or Bryn Mawr, after serving as head of the Peace Corps in India. And Grenny Clark's anticipations were quite correct about these people, and the fact that they were doers. He predicted prominent futures for them. Now most of us are older than Grenny Clark was at the time he brought us to Dublin.

BASIAGO

Cranston wrote that soon after he was appointed chairman of the Dublin conference, it became clear that his principal responsibilities were to help execute Clark's strategies and to actually physically carry out his ideas and his probing questions to people in high and far places. He mentions visits to the UN [United Nations] assembly at Lake Success [New York] , where he met with Carlos [P.] Romulo; visits to India to visit Nehru on Clark's behalf. He sort of admits to becoming somewhat of a junior partner in Clark's endeavors. What was your specific role with Clark? Did you become sort of a protégé as well?

COUSINS

No, I was a follower, I was not a protégé. After Cord Meyer served as president, I became the second president of the United World Federalists, and stayed in close touch with Grenny Clark, who, when he came to New York, would have lunch with me, any number of times. I think Grenny probably felt that I was too conservative myself, because I was the leader of the miximalist faction. We didn't see any real hard lines between minimalists and maximalists. We felt that the goals certainly ought to be clearly defined, but at the same time you did have a tactical problem: how to bring people along. The maximalists wanted to talk about sidetracking in the United Nations, feeling it wouldn't get anywhere. We recognized, as they did, the weaknesses of the UN. But at the same time we also recognized that it had a basic usefulness that couldn't be disregarded or discounted, and that if you lost the UN you might lose a lot of the ground on which you had a stand for building something better, Einstein felt that I tended to be a little too conservative, too. Einstein tended to feel that we ought to declare for world government and not be too concerned about tactical problems.

BASIAGO

I found a letter from Einstein to yourself in which he seems somewhat angry that you were overestimating the resistance of the Soviet Union to cooperating with various visions of world order. He sort of believed that you were helping whip up some of the hysteria about the Soviet Union. Did you ever work out that disagreement with Einstein?

COUSINS

We had some talks about it. I think it's quite possible that Einstein just saw the public or the surface story of my appearance at the Waldorf peace conference [Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace (1949)]. I don't know whether you know about that.

BASIAGO

Yeah, I'd hoped to ask you about that. You're speaking of the "Tell the Folks Back Home" speech?

COUSINS

Yes. It was front-page news, and it almost seemed as though I was just waving antired flags. That is something we ought to talk about, too. Lillian Hellman was very angry with me because of that.

BASIAGO

That seemed to be, I guess, what historians might call a defining moment in that period of history, at least in terms of the world federalists' attitudes toward communism.

COUSINS

You see, I believed that it was necessary to come to terms with the Soviet Union, and I was terrified by the way any attempts to reduce tensions between the two countries was being tagged as communist activity. My talk at the Waldorf-Astoria tried to define an independent position--one that favored a peaceful settlement of issues with the Soviet Union without accepting communist leader- ship towards that end. Margaret Mead said that the text of my talk made it clear that I was not doing any red- baiting. But she said the effect of what I said aligned me with those who were. But I've no apologies to make for the Waldorf speech. We're now talking about the later forties. I'd always felt that while we had to be very careful about issues involving suppression of political views, there was the need for honest labeling. I thought it was possible to call for peace with the Soviet Union, a structured peace, which was what I was always interested in, without allowing the communists to exploit that issue. Certainly I didn't think it was necessary to have them lead the peace parade in the United States, and they were trying to exploit it. That's a position I took then and I've never deviated from it. And I've been active with the Dartmouth Conference series, been very eager to improve relations with the Soviet [Union] , trying to take advantage of any legitimate opening or improve understanding. But I didn't think it was necessary to become a member of the Communist Party in order to do it or to allow the communists to lead that particular issue. Because I didn't think they were really interested in anything except the cause of the Soviet Union, and I didn't think they were an independent political group to begin with. And the flip-flops that they had taken, following the Soviet Union blindly through the [Nazi-Soviet] Non-Aggression Pact [1939], for example, proved that it was not really an independent political movement. Therefore, it was a matter of honest labeling. It was that point of view that I tried to reflect at the Waldorf meeting. Which is to say, serious negotiations with the Soviet Union, yes. Communist Party leadership inside the United States under disguised banners, no.

BASIAGO

You mentioned the structured peace that you endorsed as an alternative to that. I found one source that claimed that Clark had advised President [Harry S.] Truman to share the atomic secret with Russia after the war. How far would this structured peace go? Was that a position that Clark or yourself or the world federalists were endorsing, prior to the Soviet--?

COUSINS

Well, that was a separate issue, really. Clark knew that the Soviet Union was going to get the bomb and that the notion of some American scientists and military leaders that we had a twenty-year lead was absurd and was being refuted by everything that was known about science. Since they were going to get the bomb, he thought that it might be useful for us to use that as a way of heading off an atomic armaments race. So giving the Russians the so- called secret fit into a much larger context, where he wanted to use our knowledge with respect to the bomb actually to head off atomic development inside the Soviet Union. He would not give our secrets for the purpose of getting the Soviet Union into the arms race, quite the contrary. He wanted to use that particular power in a way that could head it off. We would start cutting back immediately, in return for the fact that the Soviet Union would not proceed with its development. For us to think that we had any security with the bomb at that time was illusory. The only real security would be if the Soviet Union could be headed off from the atomic armaments race. He was right in this respect, as history has showed.

BASIAGO

Clark had unveiled his basic proposal in 1944, in the Indiana Law Journal. He had a five-point program for his limited but adequate world government: a legislature which would have a carefully worked-out system of proportional representation; an executive council chosen by the legislature; a world police force; international courts; and a world revenue system. Were these maintained throughout as planks in the world federalist platform?

COUSINS

The world federalists were not being doctrinaire. We weren't so much tied to a specific plan as we were to a general direction. The general direction had to do with governance. We felt there were a number of different approaches to it. There were federalists who, as I said, were maximalists, who believed that nothing less than a fully-structured government of the nations of the world would be adequate. And then many federalists who felt that such a government could not be achieved, and in any case would be undesirable, because of the kind of powers that it had. There were those who felt that what we ought to do is to start with clearly recognized common dangers- -world environmental contamination; the arms race; border warfare; national disputes--and develop a specific machinery to deal with these, and that as this machinery came into being and evolved, it would lead to the kind of governance that Grenny Clark had in mind. That's what I mean when I say that was the general direction rather than the specific plan that concerned us.

BASIAGO

Was he, or others, operating under the assumption that the lack of these things were actually fuse points for war? For instance, were they operating from a theory of warfare?

COUSINS

Precisely.

BASIAGO

So that things like currency fluctuations and the lack of an adequate world revenue system had actually led to war in the past?

COUSINS

In certain areas, in certain regions it did. But the lack of security in terms of definition of borders and maintenance of the integrity of borders, which is to say, territorial disputes as we see between China and the Soviet Union today, was certainly a cause of war. The recourse to history showed many reasons for war, going far beyond territorial disputes, of course. Sometimes naked ambition and aggression led to war. But the federalists were literally federalists, which is to say, they stayed very close to historical concepts developed at the American Constitutional Convention, in terms of breakdown among nations, and addressed themselves not only to known causes, but to the possibility of causes that have yet to make their appearance. Which is to say, do you have the machinery to deal with problems when those problems arise?

BASIAGO

Clark, of course, had been one of the architects of FDR [Franklin D. Roosevelt] 's Hundred Days and was the prime mover toward the Selective Service Act of 1940. As an aid to Secretary of War [Henry L.] Stimson, he had gotten the famous instructions from Stimson to "go home and try to figure out a way to stop the next war and all future wars." What was Clark's degree of autonomy from the official policy of the U.S. government and its foreign policy? How did the subsequent administrations view Clark and the world federalist movement, for instance? And how independent from the government was Clark during the growth of the United World Federalists?

COUSINS

Clark was the patron saint of the movement. He held no position in it, yet he was a dominant figure in it. He also provided connective tissue to people we couldn't reach otherwise and also to government. [He] was widely respected, but it was clear that he was far ahead of officialdom. And the process of change is not just a matter of having people in government, say, the White House, call up Clark and say, "Grenny, you're absolutely right." In government, especially this government, you always deal with the fact of consensus and the need to develop techniques having to do with the engineering of policy and change, which Clark understood very clearly. We met with Truman once, and Truman took out from his wallet a tattered old copy of Tennyson's "Locksley Hall," one of the culminating lines of which is we look forward to "a federation of the world." I remember Truman proudly taking that out of his wallet, saying it was his favorite piece of poetry and philosophy, and reading the last few lines. "Let the flags be unfurled in the parliament of man, federation of the world." But Truman's philosophical commitment to that idea obviously wasn't enough, because he was dealing with forces of motion not just outside the United States but within the government. Well, I've written many times about the limitations in the power of the presidency and how it takes a very extraordinary man to be able to surmount all these competing pressures and bring people along.

BASIAGO

What about John Foster Dulles? I found a few references that seem to suggest that he privately supported the world federalist cause but publicly never made that widely known. Did you have any dealings with Dulles?

COUSINS

With his brother, Allen [W. Dulles]. But John Foster Dulles was an interesting example of someone whose private philosophy is completely overtaken by the world of plot-and-counterplot once you get into government. It is true that the moment you become an official representative of the government, especially if you've got to deal with the Soviet Union, you get involved in a point-scoring system. It's a contest of wills, a realization that the weight of the United States is on your back. You're not going to be bested, and your antennae are up for anything that might take advantage of us. He was a supreme reflection of that plot-and-counterplot psychology that overtakes people. This is not to say that he was going totally against his philosophy, because his ideas about communism were badly dated. He regarded this as a monolithic world movement. He didn't allow sufficiently for the impress of nationalism on ideology or the fact that ideology would be subordinate to national interests. When he would speak about world communism, he lost sight of the fact that you could have communist powers embroiled in controversy and possible war among themselves. This was a very serious failure, because it didn't take into account the severe differences of opinion or the tensions between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. Dulles, in regarding communism as a world monolith, disadvantaged the United States, because we were not dealing with real things, The same thing was true in Vietnam, where we just assumed that we were dealing with a domino game, and that the basic force in that movement to cause these dominoes to topple was communism. We weren't prepared for the fact that North Vietnam and China had historical differences which transcended ideological affinities. We weren't prepared for the independence, or the desire of Ho Chi Minh to be independent of China as well as other countries. We were totally surprised by the fact that communist North Vietnam and Cambodia could be at loggerheads and even at war. So this very simplistic interpretation we made about communism as a world monolith, overlooking the national histories as the basic conditioner, has been very costly. Foster Dulles was one of the primary figures responsible for this notion that we were dealing with a single communist force. But even there, he tended to deal with a stereotype when he spoke about communism.

1.22. TAPE NUMBER: XI, SIDE TWO (FEBRUARY 3, 1988)

COUSINS

He never recognized, or even if he had recognized, did he talk about the difference between theoretical communism and functioning communism. Communism was really a theory. In practice it was something else. He mistook the practice for the theory and the theory for the practice. As a churchman, he was appalled by what he believed to be the godlessness of the USSR. I don't think he ever recognized that more babies were baptized in the Soviet Union than in the United States and that shutting down the churches didn't mean that you could shut down on religion. Nor did he attempt to factor in the experience of the Russians under the czars, when religion was exploited as an arm of the totalitarianism of the czars and the tyranny. It became an instrument of government, an instrument of repression. Well, that whole historical aspect was missing from his view. So that the U.S. was not dealing with real things. Our policy was based on inadequate analysis and certainly didn't take into account the fact that Marxism still was theoretical. Marxism never really worked in the Soviet Union, any more than it has worked anywhere else. Marx didn't understand production. The Russian leaders realized that no country could be strong or great unless it could produce. Meanwhile, they had five-year plans in industry and agriculture and never really made their goals. They weren't producing under Marx; Marx was a social philosopher. Marx took production for granted, something that would happen by itself. And he saw great evils in overproduction, certainly in the capitalist countries, where he felt that this would lead to a race for overseas markets, and that this would lead to war. So he saw war as inherent in the nature of capitalism because of that. Well, the communist leaders eventually realized that the country could not exist unless the country could produce, not just in terms of trade with the rest of the world, but in terms of trying to meet the needs of its people- -grow enough food, produce enough clothes, build roads, vehicles. They also discovered, too, that the attempt to leave production to the party was a serious error, because what the party did was to reward party members with the jobs in industry and agriculture. So party acceptability, rather than specific knowledge and training, became the criterion. You had people in charge of shoelace factories who didn't know anything about making shoelaces, and people walked around with broken shoelaces. The party would protect its own. And mixing cement for the new buildings was-- [laughter] Party loyalty didn't necessarily produce cement that wouldn't crack. So the basis for running a society became not expertise but party loyalty. Well, gradually, the communist leaders, some of them, began to understand that the Communist Party system of running a society wouldn't work. [Nikita S.] Khrushchev realized it, but couldn't get his ideas across; at least his manner of trying to get them across was unacceptable to the central committee. [Mikhail S.] Gorbachev--I'm skipping around here--is not very much different from Khrushchev. But he has finesse and recognizes that he's a Russian before he's a communist and that unless the Soviet Union can meet the needs of its people, it's not going to be able to hold its own in the world. And you can't really produce in a closed society, because the party will run everything. Error will not only be perpetuated, but concealed. And this is part of the total problem. Well, Dulles never really understood what the real flaws and limitations of communism were. He thought he was dealing with classical Marxism. By not addressing himself to real issues, he was disadvantaging the United States. There were many people in the movement who might agree on the objectives, but whose view of the world tended to differ sharply from those of others in the same organization.

BASIAGO

Foster Dulles, of course, wasn't the only voice to influence foreign policy during this era. In a recent book entitled The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World they Made, Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas develop the theory that the following six individuals had the greatest influence: [W.] Averell Harriman, Dean [G.] Acheson, Charles [E.] Bohlen, Robert [M. ] Lovett, John [J.] McCloy, and George F. Kennan. I'd like to gauge the degree to which these six individuals had any dialogue with yourself or Grenville Clark or other prominent world federalists during the heyday of world federalist activity.

COUSINS

These men were highly respected and were called upon by governments, frequently by both parties, as in the case with John McCloy and George Kennan. But they were not deeply involved, or involved at all, in the world federalist movement. Some of them were very encouraging, however. I knew John McCloy, and he was very supportive. But this was his style in almost everything, anyway: very genial, very intelligent, a good listener, and very constructive. He would always attempt to see what the best was in any situation and how it could be applied. He served the world federalist movement, however, or at least served the basic thrust of the world federalists, in his discussions with [Valerian A.] Zorin. Those agreements were certainly in line with the thinking of world federalists on what our approach ought to be to the Soviet Union.

BASIAGO

You're speaking of the McCloy-Zorin Agreement in 1961?

COUSINS

Yes.

BASIAGO

So that was really the only time when the careers of these six individuals intersected with the world federalist party?

COUSINS

Robert Morris Lovett was very progressive in his thinking about foreign policy, and in that sense was certainly congenial--had congenial ideas--so far as the federalists were concerned, because they were moving in the same general direction. Harriman was not a theoretician or an original thinker. Harriman was a superb negotiator and a congenial person to have around the table. Kennan was the most philosophical of the group. Kennan was regarded by federalists in those days as a gradualist. He had been involved directly in the government, and he knew exactly how far you could go. His feeling was that in pressing for everything you might lose everything, and that sequences were important too. But he wouldn't argue against the goal. I think that in his introduction to my book, his philosophy in that respect is rather explicitly stated.

BASIAGO

I find it fascinating that each of these individuals was a member of the New York Council on Foreign Relations. You mentioned earlier in an interview that you were for a time.

COUSINS

I still am.

BASIAGO

Did you know any of them through that affiliation?

COUSINS

I was brought into the Council on Foreign Relations through Finletter and Frank Altschul, who were very prominent in the affairs of the council, especially Altschul. I went to their meetings, where they would bring in heads of state or other dignitaries coming to this country, or people in government who thought it a privilege to be able to speak to the council. Frank Altschul and Tom Finletter were early federalists. They were active participants at Grenny Clark's Dublin Conference. Then Frank Altschul came back from Dublin and wrote a series of pieces for the Stamford, Connecticut, Advocate, on world federalism. Finletter was one of the most supportive members of the movement and one of the officers of it for a long time. They brought me into the Council on Foreign Relations. I have no doubt that there were other people like Altschul and Finletter who were part of the establishment but who did have a larger vision than most of the members of the establishment professed.

BASIAGO

I found it interesting that Lovett and McCloy were spoken of as the "heavenly twins" who had aided Stimson during the war. Of course, Clark had also worked for Stimson. Was Clark also closer to Lovett and McCloy than perhaps you were?

COUSINS

Yes, yes.

BASIAGO

Do you know anything about that relationship?

COUSINS

Well, Clark was respected by all of them.

BASIAGO

A few other names I find interesting. You mentioned of course Allen Dulles, the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] chief. One of the young representatives at the world federalist conference there at Dublin, of course. Cord Meyer, later became associated with the CIA. How well did you know these individuals?

COUSINS

Cord was a very good friend.

BASIAGO

How did you respond to his ultimate break with the world federalists during the [Joseph R.] McCarthy era?

COUSINS

He never really broke with them. But after he became head of the CIA, when I would talk to him, he would inevitably and invariably talk about the we-or-they aspect of the world struggle and the need to cope with the Soviet Union. That dominated his intellectual horizon, I think, as it would for anyone who had that particular job.

BASIAGO

So he sort of fell under the spell of Foster Dulles?

COUSINS

Allen Dulles, you mean?

BASIAGO

Yeah, I'm wondering if-- You'd mentioned that you had known Allen Dulles. How well did you know Allen Dulles?

COUSINS

Not very well.

BASIAGO

Stringfellow Barr, of course, who you've identified as the leader of a different--

COUSINS

Maximalist group.

BASIAGO

Yeah, different strain, mentioned that Clark sort of forced the issue there at Dublin, between the United World Federalists and Federal Union, Inc., which of course was [Clarence K.] Streit's old group. He mentioned how as time passed, more and more members of Federal Union, Inc., felt that Streit was too doctrinaire and too fond of free enterprise, thus making it impossible for socialist countries to join. Louis B. Sohn, Clark's coauthor, put it even more bluntly. He mentioned that Clark's support for a universal world body forced a rupture with the supporters of Streit's Union Now movement. How do you recall it at Dublin? Was there a sort of a parting of the ways there between the Streit followers and Clark's group?

COUSINS

Americans United for World Organization, which in the early months after the war became Americans United for World Government, was a sort of a meeting ground for federalists and for Federal Union people. And we had friendly differences of opinion, none of the bitterness that you implied. It didn't seem to us at that time that we were in totally different arenas, or that we were in competition. But as time passed, the real question was, how do you fit the Soviet Union into a larger organization? Streit's emphasis on uniting the democracies, which originally had, or professed to have, the logic of history behind it--namely that you've got to try to combine with people who belong to the same tradition--gradually seemed to many of us in the literal federalist movement to have the effect of being a legalizing procedure for a coalition against the Soviet Union. We thought that if the basic purpose was to create world peace, that this was a strange way of doing it. In short, we wanted to hold our hand out to the Soviet Union and give them a chance to come in. We didn't feel that tradition should be part of the eligibility requirements; quite the contrary, the need was to keep the differences between the communist bloc and the Western bloc from becoming the fuse to war or conflagration. In limited government, we didn't feel that you had to have a single ideology. Because we, as you recall, were concerned with common dangers and common needs and the limited aspect of it, applied particularly to the desirability of maintaining sovereignty in domestic matters, but being part of a world authority in world matters. Streit accepted, as we did, the logic of larger connections and larger authority, but he felt that you do this with the democracies of the West. We recognized that it would be easy to do it with the democracies of the West, for the reason that he gave, but that the effect of this, as I say, would be to polarize the world. We recognized that it was possible the world might be polarized anyway, but we didn't want to speed up that process. Quite the contrary, what we wanted to do was to create a form into which the Soviet Union could fit. The Soviet Union was already in the United Nations. Therefore, by working within the United Nations, we hoped that we might be able to come out with a stronger UN- -one that would have greater authority in matters concerned with world dangers--and that this would serve as an ameliorating and democratic force or tendency inside the Soviet Union. Such, at least, were the basic differences that we had with the Federal Union movement.

BASIAGO

To avoid polarization, you mentioned that at first certain common needs and problems would be addressed, such as the environmental crisis and the arms race, of course. Were there proactive things that were suggested in that area? For instance, I found that Clark was an advocate of national military service in the U.S., and later Cranston endorsed things like a national youth service corps. Was there any talk of an international youth service corps, an international Peace Corps, if you will?

COUSINS

Yes, these were possibilities, or even necessities, that were frequently discussed. We saw the Peace Corps as a way of getting into a world recruitment to upgrade the conditions of people on the planet. The Peace Corps suggested it. A lot of us believed in the Peace Corps, advocated some such approach; I had written to Kennedy about it, as a matter of fact, and had written about it in the Saturday Review [of Literature]. I don't remember whether we called it the Peace Corps or not, but in some of my editorials before Kennedy you'll find that there was that proposal.

BASIAGO

So the original proposal was for an international--

COUSINS

What we wanted to do, once the Peace Corps was established, was to see if we couldn't get other countries to cooperate in making this a truly international body.

BASIAGO

A close friend and admirer of Granville Clark was Edgar [P.] Snow, author of Red Star Over China, who dedicated the story of the Chinese communists "to Grenville Clark, who stood taller than his time." Do you recall their friendship, and do you have any awareness of what Snow's level of involvement with the world federalists was? Or how he was received by the world federalists?

COUSINS

Grenny made very strong personal friendships, and Snow was a strong family friend. Snow was very close to Grenny's daughter, and therefore his son-in-law, [E.] Grey Diamond, who is the head of the medical school at the University of Missouri at Kansas City. Snow's influence led Diamond to open up contacts--he was one of the first to do this, long before Nixon went to China--between American and Chinese doctors. Diamond also headed many activities, memorial activities, connected with Edgar Snow. Clark had a great admiration for Edgar Snow and knew that the charges that Snow was a communist himself were absolute nonsense. He felt that Snow was performing a very valuable service in his books. Snow was much maligned in his time--this is the early fifties, of course--as we all were maligned at that time. It was the fifties that throttled the world federalist movement.

BASIAGO

As in McCarthyism, how was the movement treated by the national political climate?

COUSINS

Well, the fact that we spoke about sovereignty was anathema to that whole group. They said we were trying to destroy the United States, and that world federalism was a communist plot to undo the democracy or at least the Constitution. We saw it as an extension--as a fulfillment of it. But the fifties, the early fifties, were a bad time, and I don't think that the world federalists have ever really recovered from it. Because until that time the movement was going forward at a very fast pace, very fast, and suddenly people got scared. The very fact that federalism was equated with communism served, I think, to slow down the growth of the movement .

BASIAGO

That's always seemed to be one of the major themes of the John Birch Society- -that world federalism has been a communist plot. Were there any national leaders, or any widely respected Americans, who attacked the world federalists from that viewpoint?

COUSINS

Outside the Birch Society?

BASIAGO

Yeah, outside of the Birch Society.

COUSINS

And outside George E. Sokolsky and Victor Lasky? No. As a matter of fact, some came to our defense. James Kilpatrick, for example, who is a right- wing or at least a conservative writer, would defend me personally and the federalists against those charges.

BASIAGO

Between 1946 and 1958, Clark and Sohn worked out the study and revision of the United Nations charter and published their famous book, World Peace through World Law. During this time, Clark was having Sohn up to his home in Dublin, as they grappled with issues related to world governance. As that book was authored, were you supplying insights or material that eventually got incorporated in Clark and Sohn's work?

COUSINS

No.

BASIAGO

Have you throughout the years ever encountered any world leaders who had read the Clark and Sohn book and been profoundly inspired by it?

COUSINS

No, but I brought it to their attention.

BASIAGO

It's often been said that the difference between Jefferson and Washington was that Jefferson hadn't seen as much bloodshed in battle as Washington and therefore had a more idealistic view of the world and of mankind. I was curious, which of the world federalists had seen combat in World War II or World War I and been shaped by that?

COUSINS

You mentioned one of them at the very start, the first president of the world federalists--Cord Meyer was wounded in the war.

BASIAGO

Were others besides Meyer?

COUSINS

A lot of the young people who were in World Republic in Chicago, who came into the federalist movement, were-- I don't suppose that the average was much different from what you would find in any group of people of that age.

BASIAGO

You haven't really spoken at any length regarding your relationship with Alan Cranston. Of course, he was the chairman there at the-- Was it the first meeting?

COUSINS

I'm not sure, he may have been the rapporteur.

BASIAGO

The rapporteur in Dublin?

COUSINS

Yes. Clark was the chairman.

BASIAGO

How far back do you go with Alan Cranston? Back to the days when he was with UPI [United Press International] and translating Mein Kampf into English?

COUSINS

He wrote a book about the UN, I believe. I ran into a number of connections, and we became friends. There was one period, as a matter of fact, where, when they were between homes, the entire family moved in with us in Connecticut. For a period of some weeks, as a matter of fact. He became, I think, my successor as president of the federalists. So we've known each other very well in a number of capacities.

BASIAGO

Has he been forced to abandon some of his--? Not abandon his belief in it, but sort of downplayed his world federalist sympathies or beliefs as a United States senator?

COUSINS

He hasn't used the Senate as a platform for advancing explicit world federalist ideas, but his position on issues very consistently has moved him in this direction. And we understand this. I think that Ronald [W.] Reagan had played down his world federalist background, too.

BASIAGO

Which consisted of what?

COUSINS

Well, he was very active at one time in Southern California in UWF.

BASIAGO

Did the world federalists have a certain plan of action regarding influencing United Nations members?

COUSINS

Oh yes, oh yes.

BASIAGO

I find a connection between many of the members and Carlos [P.] Romulo.

COUSINS

Romulo had arranged for me to meet regularly with United Nations ambassadors. And we would have dinners at least once a month. That persisted even after he left the UN to become the foreign minister of the Philippines. We were very close at that time in the attempt to develop a cadre inside the UN.

BASIAGO

You mentioned the impact of McCarthyism upon the world federalists. I found a particular source that conjectured that it might have been Clark who was the discreet agent who, with John Foster Dulles, removed Alger Hiss from the State Department and installed him as a successor to [Nicholas] Murray Butler as president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Do you recall that at all?

COUSINS

No.

BASIAGO

I guess we might end by getting back to the reality that had first inspired Clark and others to forge a vision of world federalism, which was the development of atomic weapons themselves. Did your attendance at the atomic bomb test at Bikini in June 1945 connect directly to your involvement with the world federalists?

COUSINS

Yes, I think so. Not that I needed additional evidence. Hiroshima provided as much as I needed in that particular direction. But this kept the public concern alive, and to that extent I thought was useful in getting acceptance for the case of world federalists. Namely, that the weapons of warfare had reached the point where warfare no longer became an instrument that was acceptable. We had to find ways other than war to defend ourselves. That it was the control of force, rather than the pursuit of force, that represented the source of our security. The Bikini tests were useful in that sense, although in many ways the tests were a fizzle. Everyone wanted to get into the act. The navy wanted to have an airdrop rather than the stationary scientific explosion. And the ships were deployed in such a way that when the bomb was dropped it was an inaccurate drop, and the bomb exploded over open sea almost a half mile from the nearest battleship, which may have been the Utah or the New Jersey. And it was not really a fair test. But the lack of depth perception of what this weapon was was symbolized when Secretary of the Navy [James V.] Forrestal came on board the Appalachian and said, "Fellas, let's go swimming." And they did, in the lagoon. We read that many of the people on the Appalachian are suing the government or have had a problem with malignancies. Such an air of unreality about the whole thing--part carnival atmosphere, part (much smaller part) science, part politics, part reportage of the events, never really sorted out.

BASIAGO

Do you think there have been instances in which that air of unreality has reached even the highest levels of national governance, regarding atomic weapons?

COUSINS

I think that's true in Truman's case, certainly. It's certainly true in the decision to drop the bomb. I think, ultimately, history will report that Truman never really understood this force. That [James F.] Byrnes had persuaded him that the real value of the bomb was as a way of making the Soviet Union manageable in the postwar world.

BASIAGO

You've been very critical of Truman in the past, in that regard. How about subsequent United States presidents? Of course, similar charges were made regarding Ronald Reagan at the beginning of his first term, that he didn't really appreciate the advent of nuclear weapons, what that meant.

COUSINS

I don't know whether that particular charge can be sustained, because even before he became president, he had said--and I don't think he did this because he was prompted- -that the trouble with most of the negotiations between the two countries was that they were directed to try and hold the line. Whereas the big problem was cutting back, since holding the line didn't reduce the danger of nuclear warfare, considering what these nuclear weapons could do. So at the very start, he spoke about the need to cut back.

1.23. TAPE NUMBER: XII, SIDE ONE (MARCH 2, 1988)

BASIAGO

When last we spoke, we had discussed the initial summit, so to speak, of the [United] World Federalists at Grenville Clark's family farmhouse in Dublin, New Hampshire. The 1946 meeting took you to Princeton, New Jersey. Now, was that the meeting where [Albert] Einstein appeared and excused himself, explaining, "I'll approve anything that these men decide upon"?

COUSINS

That's right.

BASIAGO

I was wondering if there was a direct connection between the world federalist organization and the universities where the atomic bomb had been developed?

COUSINS

Oh. Only by way of the men connected with the program, but not by way of university sponsorship or laboratory sponsorship. After the bomb was dropped in the early days, I received a visit from Harrison [S.] Brown, and I think Willy Higinbotham. That radiated out in a number of directions and led to the suggestion that the atomic scientists band together, which they did, the Federation of Atomic Scientists, and that in turn led to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Then, from other laboratories, I think English, Spoff [Spofford G.] English, was that his name? And Leo Szilard, [University of] Chicago; [James] Franck from Chicago, I believe; [Henry De Wolf] Smyth from Princeton [University]; [Isidor I.] Rabi from Columbia [University], among others, were drawn into general discussions. It seems to me, looking back, that we went from one meeting to another. There was a great deal of intellectual ferment at the time, and all sorts of things were happening. We had a dinner at which Ben [Benjamin] Sonnenberg was the host at the Pierre Hotel. One of the persons he brought together, included in that group, was Mrs. Robert Lehman, Kitty Lehman, the daughter of Ruth Bryan Owen, the diplomat, former ambassador to Denmark, I guess. Then her home became a center, not just for meetings, but for social get-togethers. And Harrison Brown, as a matter of fact, met Kitty's sister, Rudd, and married her there. So there was a great deal of family feeling about this. What was being created was not just a group of concerned scientists and laymen but a fraternity, one that was very satisfying; we made many good friend- ships. I was best man at Harrison's wedding with Rudd. We summered together at Aspen [Institute for Humanistic Studies]. Leo Szilard went out there with us. And then that brought in the Chicago group, including [Mortimer J.] Adler and [Robert Maynard] Hutchins, and the old Saint John's [University] crowd. These interesting concerns and associations really dominated our horizon for maybe ten years or so.

BASIAGO

So I imagine some of the people in the humanities, such as Hutchins and Adler at the University of Chicago, were directly affiliating with the Manhattan Project scientists at that campus.

COUSINS

Yes. There was, however, something of a division between the Hutchins approach and the approach of the world federalists, or the Grenville Clark approach. They tended to regard us as minimalists. They felt that a government ought to be a government, with all the attributes thereof. We felt that the important thing was to have governance in certain areas. We feared that in the attempt to have governance in all areas, we'd lose everything. So what we sought was a limited world federation, based on common dangers and common needs. Besides, the apprehensions of people about losing sovereignty, however misplaced, were at least understandable.

BASIAGO

I found in the archival record that it was Edgar Ansel Mowrer, the foreign correspondent, who had advocated the founding of a Writers Board for World Government at the 1947 meeting at Asheville, North Carolina. Now he, of course, went back to your early days at Current History in the late 1930s. What was your association with Mowrer? It's something that we've never really discussed in detail.

COUSINS

And which I haven't thought about. But he was a very good friend. Lillian [Thompson Mowrer] was a writer too, and he would come up to the office and we'd do brainstorming together. He was very earnest. I don't remember him ever saying anything without leaning forward in his seat. And he loved staging. He'd want to stage certain meetings in certain ways. He was one of several among that founding group: strong-minded, articulate, resolute, someone who had to be accommodated, but I think a real asset in those early days.

BASIAGO

The 1947 meeting in Asheville was addressed by Harold [E.] Stassen. Do you recall what he might have said or just generally what his association with the world federalists was?

COUSINS

He had some background here in Connecticut. I'd been the moderator of the Norwalk Town Meeting, and I invited Stassen to come to speak to the town meeting. He was not long out from the governorship. I drove him out from New York City. We were trapped in a snowstorm on the way out, and by the time we got to the meeting the people were hoarse from singing songs and waiting our arrival. So we had this survival bond. I'd invited him to speak; he knew exactly what the goals were. I don't remember what he said, but it would not be much different from what he had said on a number of other occasions, which had to do with world law as a civilizing force. He adhered pretty closely to the Grenville Clark approach.

BASIAGO

The 1948 [world federalist] meeting found you in Luxembourg. Why was Luxembourg selected? I note that that's the first European center for an organized meeting of the world federalists.

COUSINS

I didn't do the selection. I can only guess the central location of Luxembourg, the fact that like Switzerland it was fairly neutral and the host wouldn't have undue power.

BASIAGO

The archival record lists sort of an honor roll of European world federalist organizations. So far we've just discussed many of the prominent Americans, and many of the books such as those on Clark's life focus on the Americans as well. Do you recall some of the prominent European world federalists that connected with the Clark group in the late forties and early fifties?

COUSINS

Helmut Lannung, who was a member of the foreign ministry of Denmark and then became the Danish ambassador to the UN [United Nations], was one. They had some Frenchmen who had been in or near the government . They had some English members of Parliament. I think the Danish foreign minister was active at that time. We had meetings with leaders of the Danish political parties, all of which, as I remember it, were very supportive of this view. And then with the endorsements of Einstein and [Winston] Churchill, it almost seemed to us that this thing would become full-sized by the end of the year. Even an endorsement by the New York Times.

BASIAGO

The declaration that was issued after the Luxembourg meeting--this was issued on September 10, 1948-- was an appeal for the development of the UN into a world federal government, with power to make, enforce, and interpret world law, which we've already discussed. The second facet featured in the declaration was mentioned: "The control of atomic energy and other scientific and technological developments easily diverted to mass destruction." I've found in the archives that in collaboration with Thomas K. Finletter, who had been a special assistant to Cordell Hull, you completed an extensive analysis of the [Dean G.] Acheson-[David E.] Lilienthal report on the international control of atomic energy.

COUSINS

Which was published in the Saturday Review [of Literature].

BASIAGO

Was this around 1946, when international control of atomic energy was first suggested, or later in the fifties, when the AEC [Atomic Energy Commission] was actually formed?

COUSINS

The review I did with Tom Finletter I think was in '46, maybe '45, I don't know.

BASIAGO

Was that an independent effort, or did someone sponsor the study?

COUSINS

No, Finletter and I just did it ourselves. We did it in the form of a review of the book.

BASIAGO

Peter Goodchild writes that much of the Lilienthal report was the work of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Did you find that?

COUSINS

He was very prominent in reports issued by or close to the government. If you'd like to talk about Oppenheimer now, I'd be glad to do so. [He was] a very enigmatic figure historically, a highly rarefied intelligence, extremely self-conscious at meetings when he would speak. It almost seemed as though he would speak in a very low voice deliberately, so that people had to lean forward to hear what he had to say. It was rather magisterial, too. Whether or not he expected intellectual genuflection, he got it. But I was deeply troubled by Oppenheimer, especially when he supported the May-Johnson Bill for the military control of atomic energy. His reason for doing so was really the key to the man: Since he was close to the military, he said he would be there to protect the scientists and the country. He was very cozy with the military, very cozy with [Leslie R.] Groves. He concurred with Groves ' s decision to deprive Einstein of clearance on classified information on security grounds. Later, his very good friend became a sacrificial lamb, when in effect Oppenheimer failed to defend him. And whether this gave him increased immunity or not, or whether that was the reason for it, I don't know. But I was shocked at the fact that his friend would be turned over to [Joseph R.] McCarthy-type forces at the time. While I could recognize Oppenheimer ' s brilliance, I didn't always admire the uses to which it was put. His brother [Frank Oppenheimer], you recall, had been declared a security risk. Whether Robert was trying to use his identification with the military as a means of distancing himself from his brother, I don't know. But his position on Einstein's access to classified information was inexcusable, and I don't care what else he did. This is not generally known, although the friend's betrayal I think is.

BASIAGO

In your meetings with Oppenheimer, did you ever get the impression that he had fully comprehended the overriding significance of the advent of atomic weapons? The historical record seems to suggest that he was of two minds. For instance, I. I. Rabi reports that at Trinity he didn't seem to lose his composure, as a number of other people had .

COUSINS

What?

BASIAGO

Well, I. I. Rabi describes Oppenheimer appearing sort of as a casual stranger as he climbed out of the bunker at Trinity.

COUSINS

Oh, I heard about that, yes.

BASIAGO

And then you have some reports of Oppenheimer, later in the fifties at parties describing the atomic bomb as the Plague of Thebes, etc. But did you ever get the impression that he had been viscerally touched by the--?

COUSINS

Well, I was at a number of meetings with him, one of which was called by Beardsley Ruml at Macy's [Department Store] , in which a number of atomic scientists came together with laymen again to consider new developments and to try to plot a course. Oppenheimer didn't seem to me to be overly sophisticated about the political organization of the country or even about political developments. I had the feeling that he expected history to shape itself according to his desires. I'm not bitter about the man. I just felt that the various attempts at biography, whether in print or in TV, tended to accept his own version of who he was, rather than to be guided by what he did.

BASIAGO

I'm surprised that you portray him as someone very close to the military. We find that, I guess it wasn't the military that viewed him as a security risk, but certainly he was being investigated by the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] during these years. Were you aware of any concern in the military about Oppenheimer, this sort of odd personality?

COUSINS

As I say, that was how he got Groves' support. He was very close to Groves, and what the military wanted, the military got. And Groves stood by Oppenheimer in return.

BASIAGO

How close were you to the efforts around Senator Brien McMahon to ultimately get atomic energy under civilian control?

COUSINS

The reason I smile is that Brien McMahon came from Norwalk, Connecticut, too. So we had known each other quite apart from McMahon 's interest in atomic energy. We spoke quite a bit during that time, even before he became chairman of the Senate [Special] Committee on Atomic Energy. He had a man on his staff by the name of Chuck Caulkins. Caulkin's name came up during the McCarthy investigation very briefly, and some of the senators expressed concern. There was a flurry over that, over Caulkins, since he had access to McMahon ' s papers, but nothing much came of it. McMahon was very adroit and very astute, politically. He knew Connecticut, he knew what the senator's job required. He did that job very well, especially in terms of meeting the needs of his constituents. He found himself in this very important station and was not unaware of the political advantages it conferred. But he was not very philosophical. Oppenheimer was very philosophical, almost mystical. McMahon, in dealing with atomic energy questions, was pure cold turkey--who did what and who got what. The interesting thing that happened was that after his death--I think the year would be about 1949--Governor Chester Bowles asked me if I wanted to take his place in the Senate. He had one year to go, and Bowles said that he was talking to two men about filling the unexpired term. One was his old friend, William Benton, with whom he'd had an advertising agency- -Benton and Bowles--his partner, and I was the other, I'm not sure of the year, it may have been a little later than that. But I had known Bowles, of course, and I had been the chairman of Bowles's Fact- Finding Education Commission. He got me out of a barber's chair to talk about it, as a matter of fact. I had a great deal to think about. I had always felt that the United States Senate was probably one of the finest jobs in the world. But also, that even though you might be appointed to office, you'd have to run a campaign, and stand for election, and I've never had any taste for that. Having to sling abuse and having to take it. Maybe I felt that I was above the battle, I don't know. But I had no taste for the battle, anyway. The offer was never really definite, when you think about that sort of thing. "And also I've been talking to Bill Benton about it." So perhaps even if I had been interested in it, Bowles would have decided to give it to Benton anyway. But in the context of our talk now, that came up by way of McMahon's death, which is rather strange. He, like a number of other political people at the time, I think, developed a cancer of the throat. I forget exactly what it was, some sort of laryngeal cancer. It spread very fast. This happened to some others at the time or shortly thereafter.

BASIAGO

Do you think it's coincidence? Was that a seat of stress in their body perhaps?

COUSINS

I don't know.

BASIAGO

The Lilienthal report had concluded that international control implied an acceptance from the outset of the fact that the United States ' s monopoly on atomic weapons couldn't last. What did you and Finletter find?

COUSINS

There's a fatal contradiction in the Lilienthal report. On one hand, as you've just read, they recognized the monopoly would be shattered. That raised an entirely different set of questions concerning American security and world security. Obviously, you couldn't get into that kind of control unless you were prepared to give up something. But the Lilienthal report also said, as I remember it, that one of the fixed points in the thinking of the authors was that no matter what happened the United States should not lose its advantage. Or that if the treaty failed, we'd still have the edge. Well, you had to cross the Rubicon, and the moment they attached that condition to it, you knew the plan was doomed.

BASIAGO

When we last spoke, we briefly touched upon the famous April 1949 Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace at the Waldorf-Astoria [Hotel] . You gave your famous "Tell the Folks Back Home" speech before what was an admittedly overtly Stalinist audience. Today I'd like to fill in some of the whos, whats, and whys of that particular speech. Prior to the speech, did you receive any warning from the State Department or friends or some informed person that this would present sort of an opportunity and a need to adequately portray the democratic point of view?

COUSINS

What happened was that there was a great deal of agitated talk about this meeting long in advance. When it had been planned and announced, it was clear that it was going to try to exploit the presence of noncommunists for something that was really sponsored by people who were deep in it [communism] . I thought that they had a right to their meeting, but I also thought that labeling, honest labeling, was important, too. That was the only issue that concerned me. I thought that they ought not to make it appear to be something other than what it was. [Dmitri] Shostakovich was going to come to that, and a number of others. And that was where Lillian Hellman got some fixed ideas about me, to say the least. Harlow Shapley, the famous astronomer and good friend of mine-- I had sat next to him a number of times at the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion at Columbia University. He was a good friend, also, of Henry [S.] Canby, who would come to the [Saturday] Review. I wrote to him expressing my concern. I said, as I remember, that I saw no reason why such a meeting shouldn't be held, but I did see every reason why the auspices of the meeting ought to be clearly identified. He said they told him that the meeting was not going to be rigged. He said, as I remember, "You come and speak your piece." They brought a lot of pressure on him to withdraw his invitation to me, but to his great credit Harlow didn't do that. Meanwhile, the only advice I got was to be very careful. As I remember it, I got a call from someone in the State Department--maybe it was the New York representative of the State Department- -saying that we ought to have some police protection. My doctor, who was also a police surgeon, was concerned about that. Unbeknownst to me, he had arranged for the police department to have police there, just in case. I sat next to Shostakovich, as a matter of fact, on the platform. When I spoke, I looked over to one side, and I could see some policemen just offstage in the back of the hall. My talk started very slowly, and people relaxed. Then increasingly, as the purport and thrust of my talk became clear, the mood of that place changed. It was almost as though it were being directed by some master Hollywood craftsman the way the expressions changed. Then they began to yell at me and boo me. But it was not a very long speech; I was able to get through it. Then at least some people started to throw things, and then the police stepped out and escorted me from the platform, as I remember it.

BASIAGO

Sidney Hook's Americans for Intellectual Freedom had charged--I found this in the New York Times--that two of the Soviet Union's representatives were actually secret police. You've said that a number of the people involved were deeply communist. What information were you operating on regarding that?

COUSINS

Well, I didn't hunt with Sidney Hook's crowd, of course. There's a difference, it seems to me, between allowing your whole life to be governed by anticommunism and holding onto your independence without allowing your values to become distorted. The names of the people on it were certainly evidence of what was happening. These were [communist] front names.

BASIAGO

You mentioned Lillian Hellman. She describes this event in her memoir, Scoundrel Time. What were your impressions of Lillian Hellman?

COUSINS

[laughter] An acerbic and passionate lady. A grande dame, ideologically, and a very interesting woman.

BASIAGO

Shostakovich urged "progressive artists to lead the fight against new fascists seeking world rule." Where was Shostakovich coming from?

COUSINS

There's nothing to conceal about Shostakovich. He was a representative of Soviet society. He believed in what he said, no doubt. He was entirely in place, and I thought that what he said was appropriate to his beliefs, and perhaps appropriate to this particular occasion in terms of its sponsorship. But for an American to talk like that was something else.

BASIAGO

I believe it was the author William Golding who protested the visa ban. He had written a letter to the [London] Times, urging the event to go forward and for the eastern European representatives to be allowed to speak. Do you remember any other American intellectuals who took up the cause of Hellman and Golding and Shostakovich?

COUSINS

No, as a matter of fact, there was a rather conspicuous silence about the event. I tried to indicate that there's a distinction to be made between the anticommunists who were completely identified as such, Sidney Hook and Max Eastman and Eugene Lyons, and the noncommunists, those who wouldn't allow themselves to be mobilized into the kind of anticommunism that was taking an active form at that time. They certainly didn't want to be identified with those who were trying to use American intellectuals to advance the foreign policy of the Soviet Union. I believed then, as I believe now, that it was important to reduce tensions with the Soviet Union, but I didn't think you had to become a communist in order to do it. Nor do I think you had to applaud communism in the Soviet Union or blind yourself to the police-state aspects of communism in order to recognize that we had to reduce the volatility of the relationship between the two societies. I don't think that my position has ever really been clear in the minds of many people. Some regarded me as Lillian Hellman did, as blatantly and irresponsibly anticommunist . Others regarded me as someone who's naive about communism, perhaps not too far away from Lillian Hellman's own position.

BASIAGO

Joseph P. Lash had pointed out, in response to this issue over visas, the Soviet Union's resistance to offers of cultural exchanges between intellectuals of both countries. Was there an immediate, direct tie-in between this event and your later efforts to sponsor the Dartmouth [College] Conferences? Did you think, well, let's bring the issue to the Soviets on their soil? Let's see how willing they'll be to host a cultural exchange?

COUSINS

I wasn't interested in last tags or nyah-nyah- nyah, that sort of thing, or embarrassing people. You recall that my trip to the Soviet Union took place in the post-Stalin years. Eisenhower recognized the danger of a volatile relationship between the two countries. He had had relations with some of the Russian generals himself. He knew enough about Russian history to know that, quite apart from the political turn, or the ideological turn that it took, there were reasons for the Soviet, as apart from the communist, position on matters. He felt that it was important to widen contacts between the two countries. That was the context in which I went.

BASIAGO

At the Waldorf-Astoria event in 1949, W. E. B. Du Bois spoke. I later found a reference that at this time the House Committee on Un-American Activities had listed some of the communist front ties and cited Paul Robeson. Did you discover any connections between black civil rights leaders of that era and some of these communist-front organizations?

COUSINS

Again, we need to make distinctions. Not everyone who belonged to or was mobilized by these organizations was an enemy of the United States. It was possible to take the position that Paul Robeson did on a human level. It perhaps even required some courage for him to do so. But again, you had to make a distinction between the individual and the group that was trying to exploit him. There are a lot of people in Robeson's position-- honest, intelligent, progressive, deeply concerned- -who are not frightened by labels, but who are certainly not subversive, as had been contended. It was ludicrous to raise these charges against Robeson and some of the others.

1.24. TAPE NUMBER: XII, SIDE TWO (MARCH 2, 1988)

BASIAGO

I recall your perception that the world federalist movement probably didn't recover from the McCarthy era, or that at the very least, took some terrible blows during that time. I'd like to get your perspectives on--

COUSINS

Never recovered fully.

BASIAGO

--on the social forces of that era. In the early 1950s, the New York Times reported a speech that you had given upon the McCarthyite climate that was developing. You warned that "extreme rightists, superpatriots, and the prejudiced might constitute a Fifth Column in America, upon which the communist world would rely to do its dirty work." You warned that "despite the billions in postwar defense spending, America could not defend the nation from the psychological instability that would make it vulnerable to irrational forces." You mentioned some of the things that were going on at the time, such as indiscriminate attacks on schools, libraries, the United Nations, and UNESCO. Generally speaking, what is your interpretation of the McCarthy era and the role he might have been playing?

COUSINS

I've often wondered whether the momentum of McCarthyism surprised even McCarthy. McCarthy as a product I think was perhaps 40 percent Joe McCarthy and 60 percent Roy [M.] Cohn, When some of the things that Cohn pushed him into seemed to capture the headlines, McCarthy knew that he was on a fast track, one that he gloried in. The deeper he got into it, the more Cohn would enable him to capitalize on the opposition. His power became such that even Eisenhower hesitated to confront him head-on. I spoke to the president about that at one time, as a matter of fact. This was in connection with Cohn and [G. David] Schine's expedition abroad, where they were on a book-burning mission, in effect, listing all the communist books that were on the USIA [United States Information Agency] library shelves, or what they described as communist books. Just a broad sweep of the brush--didn ' t make any difference. Then the U.S. Army was brought into it in terms of the fact that it was supplying so-called communist books to its soldiers. I'll come back to all that in a moment, because that involves Senator [Robert A.] Taft. But McCarthy gobbled up the stage directions that Cohn kept feeding him, and got the headlines, and found himself with a great deal more support than he ever dreamt existed out there. And a lot of cheap applause for what he was doing. But Eisenhower, when I spoke to the president about this, said that he felt the time would come when McCarthy would stumble badly. Meanwhile, Eisenhower said, "I'm not going to get into a gutter fight with this man now, but there will come a time--" And the time did come. It was a frightening experience while it happened, and it brought out a great deal of the latent forces that were a carryover from the war. We've gone through several similar episodes since, but I don't think anything that had the impact that McCarthyism had then. I had only one personal encounter with McCarthy face- to-face, and that was a rather amusing one. I was in the Senate--in the Capitol--and I got into the Senate elevator without noticing that it said, "Senators Only." I just walked in. The elevator operator closed the gate, looked at me, and he said, "Excuse me sir, this elevator's for senators only." I said, "I'm terribly sorry." He opened the door, and I started to leave. A senator pulled me back. He said, "You'll be my guest." As the elevator started up, he held out his hand. He said, "My name's McCarthy, what's yours?" I told him, and he said, "Well, I guess it's too late for either of us to back out now." [laughter]

BASIAGO

You've described some of the things that history records of this era--the forces of personality, the promotion of McCarthy's career, and the irrational forces that were being whipped up. But what I'm wondering is sort of this unique perspective that the archival record gives to your views at that time, your thoughts about what might have really been going on. In 1952 you were speaking before eight hundred librarians in New Jersey, and you told them that the communist strategy called for "collaboration with the extreme right wing to do its dirty work, and counted on superpatriots to destroy the American middle ground, to deprive America of its strength, which is its confidence in our government, our community, our neighbors, and ourselves."

COUSINS

These were historical reflections. You see, the strategy of the revolutionary, the communist revolutionary--these are the standard tactics--would be to combine with the other extreme against the middle. When you destroy the middle, you've increased your strength.

BASIAGO

So you suspected at the time that McCarthy might have been a Soviet agent? Is that going too far?

COUSINS

No, I don't think that. When you say he was an agent, that means that he consciously did their bidding. I had no such information to that effect. But I think that was the effect of McCarthy.

BASIAGO

Oh, so you were sort of warning what this climate might lead to, in terms of--

COUSINS

Well, I was speaking historically about revolutions and counterrevolutions, and how communists came to power, and how the extreme right, at the stage in that procession--whether it recognized it or not--had a role to play in destroying the middle ground.

BASIAGO

On June 21, 1952, in Philadelphia, you were elected president of the United World Federalists [UWF], succeeding Alan Cranston. You mentioned that the world was shopping for a revolution, and that the United States was in a position to put up its own flag to counter Russia's world-revolutionary flag, which was being described as the best and only available banner. What I find interesting about this period is how this was contemporaneous with Adlai [E.] Stevenson's campaigns for the presidency. Were there any areas of intersection between his drives for the presidency in 1952 and ' 56 and the world federalist organizers, around Grenville Clark and yourself and Alan Cranston and company?

COUSINS

Well, we're dealing with many disparate elements here. You began by describing the climate in 1952; you referred to an editorial in which I said the world is shopping for a revolution. Perhaps a little stage-setting is necessary at this point before we go on. That period was the high point in the revolutionary surge against colonialism in the postwar world. Many nations were coming into independence at the time. And there was a competition between the United States and the Soviet Union for a world balance of power, as there is today. But at that time the world balance of power was connected to the independence movement of so many nations in Africa and Asia. Social and economic and not just national questions were bound up in this vast upheaval. It seemed to me at the time that the United States was not very responsive to these issues, which is to say the attempt to appeal to the majority. We were seeking world balance of power on a much more limited front. Military alliances, and so forth, NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization], SEATO [Southeast Asia Treaty Organization]. That didn't necessarily identify us with the majority. The Stevenson campaign was coincidental. I had met Stevenson at the home of Edison and Jane [Warner] Dick, in Lake Forest, Chicago. He had been in the State Department at the time and represented us abroad. I liked the man. He had a very lively intellect and [was] a good listener. We swapped yarns. I saw him several times. And then, after the nomination, I was talking to Eddie Dick, Edison Dick, of the Dick Dictagraph, I think it's called, the machine company--Dictaphone. He said, "What are you going to do for Adlai?" I said, "I'd do anything that he wants me to do." He said, "Are you serious about that?" I said, "Yes." The next day, I went I think it was probably to the weekly or biweekly meeting of the American Civil Liberties Union, of which I was a member of the national board. I was called out of the meeting. Adlai Stevenson was on the phone. He said, "Eddie Dick tells me that you can be had." I said, "You've got me." [laughter] He says, "Come on out. Come to Saint Louis, I'll send a car for you. We'll have a good talk." Within a few days, I went out to Saint Louis, and there was a car waiting for me. It took me to the governor's mansion in Springfield, Illinois, and I had dinner with him that night. He put me up at the house. We didn't say much that night, just swapped yarns about various things; he loved stories. The next morning, he drove me out to a little hilltop on the plains outside Springfield. It wasn't more than a hundred and fifty feet high, I guess, or maybe two hundred feet high. It was a solitary hilltop on the plains. We walked to the top of it, and he said, "Lincoln loved to come out here and just reflect on things." He said, "I'm not going to have the time to do that in this campaign. I'd like to delegate you to be my hilltop representative and tell me what you think about life, about the future of this country, and see if we can't translate that into some speeches." Well, I've got a built-in hilltop, so I went back to New York and started to write speeches for him for the campaign. I'm not sure that I helped him very much. As a matter of fact, I suspect that some of my speeches may have hurt him politically because I was writing then about nuclear weapons and about the dangers to the United States of proceeding along this course. At that time, as now, anything that seemed to suggest cutting back or not making the most of weaponry was seized upon as being opposed to the security of the United States. I was opposed to the development of the hydrogen bomb. I didn't see that it made any sense--that it contributed anything to our military power- -and he agreed. That speech was very costly to him.

BASIAGO

You mentioned--regarding McCarthyism, going back a little bit--that there was a tie-in there to Senator Taft.

COUSINS

Yes. Thanks largely to Cohn and Schine, a list of books had been released which were written by so-called communist authors. [laughter] Yankee from Olympus, as I remember, the biography of Chief Justice [Charles E.] Hughes, by Catherine Drinker Bowen. A number of other lists. I went down to Washington. I had known Martha [Bowers] Taft, who was a reader of the Saturday Review. She'd written to us about some things. She arranged for me to see the senator [Robert A. Taft]. We got along pretty well, and I came to admire him. I thought he was intellectually honest, and that if he saw facts that ran counter to what he had been talking about, he would have enough integrity to admit it. I gave him the facts on the book issue, and he decided that he was going to try to reverse the ban. He took tne down to meet his colleagues in the Senate and led the fight against it. And on the United Nations ( he had been an opponent of the UN) , at the end he made one of the best speeches in defense of the UN that I had ever heard. We got along pretty well.

BASIAGO

There are some individuals who we find entering the picture, the world federalist picture, during and after your presidency in 1952. I don't believe they were among Clark's forty-eight original guests at the Dublin meeting, but let's take, for instance, William O. Douglas. He seems like an appropriate person to talk about when you mention people like Hughes and Adlai Stevenson. What was his level of involvement with the movement?

COUSINS

Stevenson admired Grenville Clark, and that was easy to understand, because Stevenson was a progressive gradualist. He believed in orderly processes, but he didn't minimize his goals. There was a certain manner that went along with Stevenson, Learned Hand, Augustus [N.] Hand, and Grenville Clark. It was a sort of an intellectual elite. When I use the term elite, I use it in the best sense. But Stevenson, like James T. Shotwell, felt that while federalist goals were not only defensible but essential, that there was a timetable that had to be respected. And that (to use the old cliché) "Politics is the art of the possible." So while Stevenson's close friends were federalists, the man himself never spoke under a federalist banner, though he would speak to people under that banner. We regarded him as an ally, rather than as a partisan.

BASIAGO

So are you describing William O. Douglas in that same category?

COUSINS

No, just Stevenson.

BASIAGO

Do you recall Douglas's involvement with the world federalists?

COUSINS

It was peripatetic, as I remember it. He'd come in and out. He was a loner in the sense that his speeches on the subject would surprise even us. He did speak at some meetings, as I remember it, but I don't recall his having spoken at a convention of the federalists. Do you have any--?

BASIAGO

Well, I find him in 1954 on the United World Federalist board. I imagine that might have been an honorific position.

COUSINS

That's right.

BASIAGO

We find Clark, William O. Douglas, Oscar Hammerstein II--

COUSINS

Yes, yes.

BASIAGO

What were his activities for the world federalists?

COUSINS

Oscar Hammerstein?

BASIAGO

Yeah. [laughter]

COUSINS

He was great. He wrote shows. He did one called The Myth that Threatens the World, which was put on in a Broadway theater, highly professional. He used people from the South Pacific cast to put on a series of skits.

BASIAGO

I've seen that play mentioned several times in the literature. What was the general scenario?

COUSINS

It was a very fast moving series of presentations, where you had two-minute talks interposed with dramatic sketches. And also some songs were written for the occasion. Oscar had commandeered all the talent. The federalists, especially through the Writers Board [for World Government], supplied some of the scripts for the straight talks. It was a beautifully effective production that traveled to other cities, but not with the same cast of characters, obviously.

BASIAGO

This brings up a point that I've thought about as I've been reading all of the literature about the world federalists, which is funding. Were there any foundations that were providing financial support for promoting that show, or airline tickets for meetings, or renting halls, or anything like that?

COUSINS

No.

BASIAGO

It was all out-of-pocket among the members themselves? I was just wondering because of Clark's role in drafting the will of Andrew Carnegie and of course--

COUSINS

He never got that money from Carnegie. We had hoped we might get. Clark was hopeful of shaking loose some real money from those foundations, because he spoke their language. He was a trustee of the Harvard [University] Corporation, old school tie, everything. But apparently it didn't come through.

BASIAGO

Another individual who I find on the board of the UWF in 1954 was Florence [Jaffray] Harriman, a former minister to Norway. Would that be someone of the New York Harriman family?

COUSINS

Yes. Her home in Washington, like Kitty Lehman's apartment on Park Avenue in New York, became sort of a social headquarters. We had a lot of meetings at that place. Dolly was a good supporter in every way, financial and moral .

BASIAGO

Another individual during that time would be Walter [P.] Reuther, president of the CIO [Congress of Industrial Organizations] .

COUSINS

Yes. Walter was very straightforward. There wasn't a thing that I recall asking him to do that he didn't do. And that carried through to SANE, the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy. And he had me to come down to speak several times before his board in Detroit, at the automobile workers [United Automobile Workers] , and I got to meet Victor [G. Reuther], his brother, who was a federalist, too. These are good people.

BASIAGO

He, of course, had historic significance in negotiating for the United Auto Workers unprecedented benefits, and as a result, General Motors--

COUSINS

Could you excuse me for a moment? [tape recorder off]

BASIAGO

We were discussing some of the United World Federalist board members, one of whom was Walter Reuther. I mentioned that as a negotiator for the United Auto Workers, he had achieved unprecedented benefits for the employees of General Motors, and that year General Motors had had unprecedented profits, so there's sort of a positive feedback effect. Was there any view, with him or other world federalists, that sort of a new industrial era was dawning globally that would lift the standard of living to such a degree that it would require a sort of political--?

COUSINS

I had no discussions with him that would throw light on that. Like you, all I knew is what his position was. But I had no direct discussions with him of that nature. I went to his home several times and met his wife. He questioned me about aspects of federalism and in a general way about the Review. He was a very congenial man. We were good friends, but we never exchanged ideas on that level. Victor was the philosopher of the family.

BASIAGO

Other members at that time, of course, we find Leo [M.] Cherne and Herbert [L.] Block. We find several actors, such as Henry Fonda and Eddie Albert. What were their activities with the world federalists?

COUSINS

Henry [Fonda] was a member. I think he was married for a while to Oscar Hammerstein' s daughter [Alice Hammerstein] or at least went out with her for a while. Eddie Albert was an enthusiastic young federalist, and a regular guy, very helpful.

BASIAGO

Telford Taylor —

COUSINS

Yes. Bob [Robert] Ryan was supportive of the federalist position.

BASIAGO

Robert Ryan, the actor? So was their tie primarily social? They would attend functions, and-- Telford Taylor, the chief of council for the United Nations Commission for the Investigation of War Crimes at [the] Nuremberg [War Crime Trials], was another individual active in the world federalist movement. I'm curious about the degree to which the outcome of the Nuremberg Trials might have shaped the world law movement.

COUSINS

It had an effect on the thinking of individuals. I know I was affected by it, and I wrote about it. Telford Taylor joined the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Wharton, Rifkind, and Garrison, which was the law firm that represented the Saturday Review. John [F.] Wharton was the lawyer of the Saturday Review--my personal lawyer--and he would invite Taylor to dinner a number of times, because Wharton strongly supported the position of the Saturday Review in these matters. Wharton was a remarkable man.

BASIAGO

You mentioned that when the United Nations got around to working on a draft of a code, an international legal code based on the Nuremberg principles--I guess of individual responsibility, that agents of aggressor nations could not be forgiven for their actions--that the United States refused to ratify it, arguing that it would be unwise to put individual Americans under this kind of legal scenario. And you ended the essay by asking rhetorically whether it would be more practical to wait until one billion human lives had been expunged before we decided that something ought to be done about the principle of individual responsibility and make real the mandate of Nuremberg. Were you suggesting that world leaders should be put under, in effect, a legal system in which they could be tried for developing, possessing, or stockpiling, or using nuclear weapons?

COUSINS

Yes.

1.25. TAPE NUMBER: XIII, SIDE ONE (MARCH 29, 1988)

BASIAGO

Today let's talk about SANE, the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy. SANE grew out of concern over the effects of above-ground nuclear weapons testing. I found it interesting that in August of 1956 a small group of professors at Washington University in Saint Louis, notably Barry Commoner, approached you and showed you scientific papers on radioactive fallout. They pointed up the danger that the nation's milk supply was being contaminated, and, of course, via that, the bones and teeth of American youth. Who joined Commoner in the group, why did they approach you, and upon what evidence did they base their claims?

COUSINS

It may be useful first to establish the context. Ever since the first bomb over Hiroshima- -we've discussed this before--the Saturday Review [of Literature] became something of a clearing post for information, an exchange post of ideas, as well as a gathering center for scientists who were eager to reach the public but also were making connections among themselves. We had a way of reaching the public. If you will go back to the editorials that appeared during that time, we did try to get into all the issues that spun off from that original event at Hiroshima. Then in 1952 there's the candidacy of Adlai [E.] Stevenson. And the scientists-- We were all trying very hard to reach the political leaders, to get them to recognize that the matters which were then being discussed as being a prime concern were really only intermediate issues. Things were happening there that were going to shape the course of the next fifty years, especially with respect to the development of nuclear weapons and an uncontrolled nuclear arms race. That was the time, back there in the late forties and early fifties, to stop it. Then came the hydrogen bomb in '52 and '53, and the testing, and then the fallout, the Dragon in the Pacific, Earle [E.] Reynolds and his tests in the Phoenix [Reynolds's ship].

BASIAGO

The Phoenix, uh-huh.

COUSINS

The Marshall Islanders, and this new word, or new concept, began to come into the public consciousness: the fact that it was not just a matter of setting off a big firecracker, but of bombs that spewed out poison that contaminated the bones of human beings and ticked away for years. We are talking about radioactive half -life, a force that would retain its potency for thousands of years, something entirely new. And so we were ushered into this new world, with semantics of its own and with issues that were almost beyond comprehension. It was inevitable that there would be a response. We, the Saturday Review, became something, as I say, of an exchange post, as well as a radiating center. So in this context it was natural that Barry Commoner should get in touch with me, which he did. I went out to George Washington [University] in Saint Louis, saw the evidence, and wrote about it. We lived with great intensity. Seemingly month by month things would happen that would not only not be reassuring but which would increase the intensity. Because what we were dealing with was an escalating situation. We only had a limited amount of time to change the direction of events before those events would sweep us past the point of no return. The thing that obsessed us perhaps most of all was this clock ticking away, symbolized by the clock on the front page of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Fallout was not just a matter of having something happen and sweeping it up. It was a matter of having radioactive materials get into the water tables, get into the life chain, and then having to clean it out. Well, it seemed to us that politicians who are trained to think in terms of two years or four years, or their own term of office, were incapable of dealing with problems that had to do with the next two thousand years, or even the next twenty years. Therefore, we had to try to create a public opinion that would force them to recognize these as present imperatives. At that time, in '52, I was asked by Adlai Stevenson if I would help him. I think I already told you about going out to that place on the plains outside Springfield, where he said that [Abraham] Lincoln used to come and climb a hillock. You had this long, long view of the plains, even though this particular mound was only a couple hundred feet high. But everything else around was low and flat, so it seemed as though you were atop the world. He said that he couldn't go out there to think, but he wanted someone to do that, and that was my job. One of the things I thought about had to do with the role of a candidate in educating the American people to the issues, whether or not he would win. It was at that time that the thermonuclear weapon, posing these great dangers--not just in terms of devastation, but in terms of fallout--had just become a reality. By getting into the testing of that, there were people around Stevenson who felt that politically this would be a very poor thing to do--that it would alarm the American people, and the American people didn't want to be alarmed, they wanted to be safe. That [Dwight D.] Eisenhower represented safety and comfort and assurance. [They] didn't want Stevenson to rattle the chains in the atomic barrel. But, as I say, win or lose, I thought Stevenson had the obligation to hit as hard as he could on the issues as he understood them. Some of the people around Stevenson later blamed me for the fact that he lost the presidency. I don't know how they can say that, but in any event it is true that I urged him, with everything I had, to get into this fight, and to use the candidacy as an arena for bringing these issues front and center, as he did. It was during that campaign that I met Barry Commoner in '52. We didn't work actively together for some time, but I kept track of him. Then came his findings about radioactive strontium[-90] turning up in plants, in milk, and in the teeth of children. So we were really dealing there with nothing that was new; it was really a continuum from '45.

BASIAGO

I noted that when Lawrence [D.] Scott approached you to join him in the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, you made two requests: one was that Clarence [E.] Pickett join you; and two was that the issue essentially be depoliticized. That instead, the clergy should lead the moral quest for the end to nuclear testing.

COUSINS

Where 'd you get that information?

BASIAGO

That's from a doctoral thesis by Milton [S.] Katz, one of your historians--one of your biographers. You had mentioned how you'd been credited with harming Stevenson's chances politically by bringing up the issue of--

COUSINS

The thermonuclear bomb.

BASIAGO

Yeah. I'm wondering why right after that you sort of-- Were you worried that politics would harm the disarmament movement as well?

COUSINS

In forming the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy?

BASIAGO

Well, when the committee was being formed, it seemed that you wanted to tone down the political ramifications. That was your second--

COUSINS

Yes. There was no connection with Stevenson. It seemed to me that the nuclear issue transcended politics. It was very easy for people to associate such issues with politics--"peacemongers"--that sort of thing. I felt that SANE ' s mission was to cut across every single political strand and weave a pattern of its own. We did, in fact, get business leaders, labor leaders, church leaders, civic groups, women's groups, all of them, under that banner.

BASIAGO

I'm just wondering if that came out of a discovery you made that partisan politics wasn't the environment in which the quest to ban the bomb should be carried out.

COUSINS

Well, I don't think I was making any fresh discoveries, but my quest was to communicate with people who had different affiliations, contrasting affiliations or opinions. That's just a matter of personal style.

BASIAGO

I'm fascinated by the confrontation you had with Willard [F.] Libby and, to a greater degree, with Edward Teller.

COUSINS

Yes.

BASIAGO

When Commoner and company brought you the news about the strontium problem, Libby sought to mitigate their claims. In fact, in May, 1957, he wrote the Saturday Review, seeking to demonstrate that the risk from nuclear testing at the present rate was small. He believed that the small controlled risk from weapons testing was far outweighed by the defense effort's interest and the quest for survival of the free world. How was Libby able to assess the risk from above-ground testing as being rather small, whereas Commoner's group was highly alarmed by their findings?

COUSINS

Again, a matter of context. Libby was looking at the effects of testing, whether in terms of the dusting of crops, or ingestion, or strontium, which was turning up in the bones of children. Looking at that in comparative terms, suppose two hundred thousand people, twenty thousand, two thousand, were affected. How does this compare with the large number of people who are going to be affected if his assumptions were right about the weakness of the United States? It's very easy, when you take a position based on what you think is necessary for the defense of America, to have everything pale into insignificance. Commoner was looking at this as a doctor has to look at a patient. The individual's important. You don't take a triage approach to a patient. What you say is, let's do the best we can for this particular individual. Or if someone is suffering, let's try to get at the cause of the suffering and eliminate it. So everything depended on the lens through which you were looking. And the defense lens was one, of course, where nothing was as important as the things you wanted to attach importance to--where you could arbitrarily rule out anything else because of what you conceived to be the greater danger. The lens through which Barry Commoner and his associates were looking had to do with specific things which, in themselves, represented a great cause and were not to be brushed aside because of someone else's speculations about what the national security required.

BASIAGO

I'm fascinated by the role language played in the statements of Libby and of Teller. You're suggesting that they were essentially scientifically biased, because they had a political commitment to the defense establishment. I'm fascinated by a claim that Teller made, along with Albert [L.] Latter of the Rand Corporation, in an early 1958 edition of Life magazine, when this furor was at full heat. Latter and Teller claimed that the risk from nuclear testing need not necessarily be harmful--in fact, there was no risk--and that nuclear testing may conceivably be helpful. I'm trying to put that into perspective. How could nuclear testing conceivably be helpful?

COUSINS

Over the years. Teller has come up with some bizarre notions to justify large budgets that would be going into military science. Once you have a device or an idea and someone comes forward with arguments against it, the natural tendency is to downplay those arguments and to support your own. So you get a great deal of tilting. But if you're interested in the measured truth of a situation-- where you were not going to listen to advocates who had a stake in a certain program, or opponents who had a stake in defeating it, that would benefit themselves-- [If you] just looked at this thing in terms of public policy and what it would contribute to the security or insecurity of the United States and other values, you'd come up with a different answer. I don't doubt that there were some people who were opposed to any development of weaponry just out of a dislike of war. You had a pure pacifist position which respected men like Clarence Pickett would take. And they were entitled to express their opinion, too. But the effort to weigh all these factors, and then decide how they balanced out, was a legitimate one. Libby was committed to the AEC [Atomic Energy Commission]. Libby was a very respected scientist; he'd been here at Caltech [California Institute of Technology] and had a very good record. Teller was the one who conceived of the fact that you could make a superbomb, a thermonuclear bomb, and use a small bomb as a matchstick to ignite one that would be a thousand times more powerful. These were people who were justifying their position, doing everything they possibly could to win the American people over to their position. They could rationalize their beliefs in terms of the national security. If you accept the position that the security of the American people depended on being stronger than anyone else in the world, and then didn't look too carefully at what was involved in the weapons that you wanted for that purpose, it would be easy to agree with them. Strength is always a very seductive argument. We're going to negotiate out of strength, that sort of thing- -proceed out of strength, the other side understands only our strength. These are approaches that a lot of people readily accept. Libby and Teller were appealing, I think, to this ready response for anything calling for greater strength. But if your context was not just what was going to happen to the United States, but what was going to happen to human beings on this planet, where it might lead, and what its ultimate effect may be, then you might come up with a different answer.

BASIAGO

When Teller, in particular, spoke of "clean bombs" and "sunshine units," I'm wondering if he was involved in some doublethink there? [laughter] Or newspeak, if you will?

COUSINS

I confess that I've met very few truly evil people in this world--very few truly evil--but I had that feeling about Teller. From the first time I met him, that he was one of these. His brilliance in science was not matched by a concern for the effects of his science. If something could be done scientifically, that to him, I thought, was the most important thing in the world. It would strengthen his laboratories, keep a lot of scientists busy at their desks. It would be good for science as he saw it. But whether this would also be good for the human condition on earth was something else. He would talk about the effects of radiation in "sunshine units" as though he were dealing with the ultimate in human refinement, and that is a form of evil, too. I found myself juxtaposed against Teller at that point in a number of ways-- politically, philosophically, scientifically, organizationally. It almost seemed that wherever I would turn he would be on the opposite side. All this came together in a grand confrontation on the issue of nuclear testing, where he also said that the amount of harm that was represented by the radiation was no greater than you would have on the radium dial on your watch. Well, it was a good analogy, but the analogy fell down when you recognized that the only way you could compare the two was by actually ingesting that radium. Because people were ingesting the radioactive materials in their food. And so I felt that there was a basic intellectual dishonesty. [Leo] Szilard disagreed with me about Teller personally. He thought Teller, a fellow Hungarian, was deluded perhaps, self-delusion. But he didn't see him in the same evil terms that I did. He felt that he was a charming man. Maybe he was, but I don't think that charm and evil are mutually exclusive.

BASIAGO

Those were the insights into his character that I was searching for. I noted that Libby would later recant his position. By 1959, he was voicing a real concern over contamination resulting from nuclear test explosions. He cited evidence--

COUSINS

I respected Libby. He wrote to the Saturday Review, as you say, and we had a good relationship. He was intellectually honest.

BASIAGO

I also found some evidence that a few individuals joined you in an attempt to discredit Teller's claims about safe nuclear energy. Was there sort of an alliance of leaders there that operated privately to arrange some sort of public clarification of Teller's position?

COUSINS

Whenever we met, as I say, the number one subject was: who was this man who was running around the country, using his prestige in connection with the bomb, to push the country into policies that were, as we saw them, very dangerous? [Albert] Einstein was terribly distressed about Teller capitalizing on his role in the development of the thermonuclear bomb to create public policy. Einstein's frame of reference was entirely different. Teller was thinking in terms of numbers and weapons, and Einstein was thinking in terms of effects and where the human species was going.

BASIAGO

Was there some alliance between yourself and Hubert [H.] Humphrey and Carey McWilliams and others?

COUSINS

Walter [P.] Reuther, especially.

BASIAGO

Regarding Teller?

COUSINS

Yes. And [James B.] Carey, another prominent union leader. These were favorite subjects, because these were the most important subjects of the time. Teller was identified with everything that had to do with accumulation and monopoly, rather than control.

BASIAGO

I'm fascinated by [Albert] Schweitzer's position on Teller. And also, I'd like to get some clarifications of the events surrounding his "Declaration of Conscience" that you sought from him. Schweitzer felt that Teller was the evil genie to whom President Eisenhower and [John Foster] Dulles had bowed. To Schweitzer, he was the one who would influence them to shatter the London conference, which had been going along all right under the direction of [Harold] Stassen, during July 1957. If Schweitzer had such passionate feelings regarding Teller and the whole issue of contamination stemming from the tests, why was he at first reticent to issue a public statement?

COUSINS

The reticence was by no means a limited matter. It ranged over a very broad area and had a significant, it seems to me, background. He had come to Lambarene [Gabon] to get away from the sound and the fury of contemporary life, especially as it concerned politics. He went off to Africa. He shook his head when I first brought up the nuclear matter. He felt his voice would lose all its effectiveness if he ever got into this thing. And yet he was interested in hearing about it. As I wrote in my book, little by little with the materials that were sent to him-- this was reflected in his letters--there was a 180-degree turn, from someone who felt that he should have no part in it, to someone who felt that everyone, everywhere in the world, had a vital part to play in this great fight.

BASIAGO

I'm also interested in your relationship, at this time, to Linus [C.] Pauling. Now, was he operating on a second track, or were you collaborating in terms of his campaign to get the scientists to sign a petition?

COUSINS

It was a separate track. I had no direct contact with Pauling until the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy had been in existence for a couple of years at least, maybe longer. He succeeded me, I think, as chairman of the committee. Or maybe he came after [Benjamin] Spock, I don't know.

BASIAGO

Well, I know in 1967 he requested that you be a cochairman, I believe, along with Pickett, when Spock 's--

COUSINS

You've got the documents on that; my memory's a little faulty.

BASIAGO

So during this time, really, was your first involvement with Pauling when he was called before the [Thomas J.] Dodd committee [Senate Internal Security Subcommittee] in 1960?

COUSINS

Possibly.

BASIAGO

Did you later collaborate in any disarmament activity? I know that his petition drive in 1958 was mirrored in 1981-82, around the time of the Bilateral [Nuclear Weapons] Freeze, when there was another drive to get world scientists to support the freeze.

COUSINS

As you say, we were running on different tracks; I hope they were parallel.

BASIAGO

When Pauling was asked by the Dodd committee to discuss others who were involved with him at that time, he refused, stating that those names named would be used for reprisals against idealistic, high-minded workers for peace, and because it might dissuade others from advocating peace. Who were some of the others he was protecting? I want to clarify what individuals were working with Pauling?

COUSINS

I don't know.

BASIAGO

You mentioned sort of the distinction between the radical pacifist wing of the disarmament movement and the internationalists--men, I guess, who came from the world federalist camp. How well did you know A. [Abraham] J. Muste?

COUSINS

Pretty well.

BASIAGO

Let me just say that Muste gave the world federalists and the atomic scientists little support. He said that world government seemed to be a way to impose peace, rather than growing out of it. He noted how the pacifists took a functionalist rather than a federalist approach to international problems. How did you view Muste and his branch of peace activism?

COUSINS

I had great respect for Muste. He was the grand old man of pacifism. I was not a pacifist; I'm not a pacifist now. I can't take an absolutist position and say there is nothing I would fight for or that there are no circumstances under which it is necessary for a country to try to defend itself or retain its freedom. The atomic bomb has muddied those waters, of course, and old distinctions which could readily be made are not so easy to make now. But at that time, while I respected his position of pacifism, it was not one that I held. I think that Muste, recognizing that we were not pacifists, found it difficult to embrace us.

BASIAGO

Muste and those in his group asserted that justice, not force, would be the primary element for international order. He commented that, "We shall be well advised to concentrate on the economic, cultural, and spiritual conditions of peace, rather than the legal and military." How would those sort of conditions be fostered without a concern for the legal and military? I'm just wondering how, as the SANE--

COUSINS

It's the old debate between structure and function. It is true, as he said, that habits of peace generate institutions of peace, but how can you create habits of peace unless you have the means for peace? Our reading of history was that it was necessary to create a form; it was necessary to define the rules of the game, it was necessary to have enforcement. Habits of peace, like acts of peace, took place inside such a structure. The fact that we were federalists was evidence of our commitment to that particular principle. If Muste ' s ideas had prevailed at the time of 1783, 1787, there would have been no United States. What the American founding fathers said was that you get war because you lack the machinery which makes peace possible. You don't have the conditions of peace, you don't have the forms in which peace can assert itself. That, at least, was our theology. And it brought us into sharp conflict with men like Muste, who didn't recognize that even between friends you could have hostile situations, if the circumstances pushed them in those directions. So we were concerned with the circumstances which made for peace. We didn't think that peace was just a matter of asserting purity of heart, any more than you could feed yourself by having a pure heart. You had to go out and get food, you had to prepare the food. Someone had to make sure that the food was not contaminated. You had to have a whole structure of society to support life. So we had a difference of opinion on that, but I respected him.

BASIAGO

In 1957, when you joined Pickett, I imagine a Friend, a number of the [Society of] Friends, would represent more the Muste position. Were there plans to sort of ameliorate these distinctions and disagreements within the structure of SANE?

COUSINS

There was, it seems to me, a tacit understanding, strengthened by mutual respect, that we would confine ourselves to certain issues on which we could agree. I had a very deep affection for Clarence Pickett, and I saw him as representing a point of view that was necessary in any rounded equation leading to peace. He represented a certain sector and represented it very well. We had no problems at all--doctrinal problems or philosophical problems. There were clear-cut issues on which we agreed. No nation had the right to contaminate the air that belonged to the world's people. It was a species of arrogance for any one nation to ignore the rights of others just because they didn't have power. What was required was to stop these obscene acts, which is how we saw testing of nuclear weapons. On those issues there was no difficulty in agreeing. That in fact was the function of SANE, to draw together people who could unite on that issue.

BASIAGO

SANE proposed that President Eisenhower go before the United Nations [UN] with recommendations such as that all nuclear test explosions, missiles, and space satellites be considered apart from other disarmament problems; that all nuclear test explosions by all countries be stopped immediately, under a UN inspection system; and that all missiles and space satellites be put under UN control, with the pooling of world scientific personnel. Did you ever directly discuss these proposals with President Eisenhower? I know in the discussion of the Dartmouth [College] Conferences, you mentioned that President Eisenhower had suggested some pathways to you.

COUSINS

I can't speak historically here, because these things are still perhaps too vague, but I can just give you my impressions. President Eisenhower went through a number of different stages in the presidency. In the first stage, he recognized that military men were not really qualified to govern, a position he had long held. He took pains to hand out franchises--one in foreign policy to Dulles, one in domestic policy to Sherman Adams. He would represent integrity in government and also would oversee what was happening, getting the best advice he could. The best advice that he received at the time favored development of nuclear weapons, of which testing was an integral part. Phase two of Eisenhower came when Dulles became ill, and it became necessary for him to become his own president. When Sherman Adams had accepted some favors, it became necessary for Eisenhower to become directly concerned with domestic policy as well. This led into the next phase, when he actually was president, by which time it was too late, really, to do too much about it. But in the latter days of his administration--the last six months--he began to think in terms of basic principles. Here he felt that the security of the United States depended on the control of these weapons, rather than on the pursuit of these weapons. He was very strong in support of ideas of world law and the structures that would make it possible. He'd always had a tendency in this direction, anyway. But now, in the light of his own experience, these things became strengthened and tended to fall in place. It would not be inconsistent, in that light, for him to modify some of the views of Dulles and the others, Libby, with respect to nuclear power. But I never directly asked him, so far as I remember, about fallout. I think we stayed with the bigger picture and about U.S.-Soviet relations.

1.26. TAPE NUMBER: XIV, SIDE ONE (MAY 9, 1988)

BASIAGO

About SANE, the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, one thing that I was interested in was the mission of the organization as you saw it and sought to develop it. SANE is often treated in histories as an organization which sought to, as the slogan goes, "Ban the Bomb." I wonder if we could go a little bit deeper than that in terms of its mission as an organization. I noted that in 1960 you described SANE ' s mission as that of strengthening America's relationship with other peoples through the creation of a nuclear policy that can serve as a basis for world leadership.

COUSINS

That was the aim. You have also asked about genesis and initial purpose. There's a tendency to think of SANE as one thinks of most organizations, whether [United World] Federalists or the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Which is to say, as a basic long-term need, an organization that would educate the public, converting people into members who could work for long-term policy. This was not what happened with SANE. We had a specific goal. It was finite with respect to purpose and time. It was certainly not to be a membership organization. The need for it was related to nuclear testing and the prospect that President [John F.] Kennedy [JFK], if he saw enough public support, might propose such a treaty. That was the very well defined objective. It seemed to us at the time that you do this, not by creating a new citizens' organization, but rather by mobilizing existing organizations, even though their stated purpose might not have anything to do with nuclear testing. So we conceived of SANE as a campaign committee. This meant that you would want to bring together representatives of leading organizations--political, educational, professional, business, labor. What we did, therefore, was to try to create a committee of committees. In this way, we got Walter [P.] Reuther and [James B.] Carey, representing labor, business leaders, the League of Women Voters, other women's organizations, the world federalists, the American Association for the United Nations, as it was then called, mobilizing them to achieve a specific objective. The committee, therefore, consisted of heads of committees. Such, at least, was the original--both the concept and indeed the implementation. As it developed, it took on a life of its own. After the [nuclear] test ban was achieved, I felt that this organization, having accomplished its purpose, should disband. But what had happened was that in the very act of working for a test ban it created a specific constituency of its own apart from the organizations. We had run an ad something along the lines of: we're facing a crisis unlike any crisis we've ever faced before. That ran in the New York Times--we discussed this once before--and I think it pulled in about $55,000 or some very generous sum, far beyond the cost. People who read that ad around the country wanted to do the same thing in their own communities. So before we knew it, we had gone beyond an organization of organizations to an organization of individuals and small organizations, local organizations. The impetus that that created led many people in the group to feel that there were related objectives, and this was an instrument more powerful, perhaps, than any that had been created so far, and that it ought to be maintained for that purpose. I respected that, but I went back to the federalists, since that was my main commitment. The power implicit in such an organization was a fact that wasn't lost on a number of people in the organization. Linus [C.] Pauling and Ben [Benjamin] Spock came in at somewhat separate times. Meanwhile, as you say, there was stormy weather. Any organization as powerful as this was certain to attract not only attention, but opposition, and especially in Congress. That led to accusations that SANE was communist-controlled or badly infiltrated. And since we'd made our impact through Congress, the people on the losing side in Congress were not too enthusiastic about SANE and felt that such an organization could only be the work of Russian devils. Meanwhile, we're passing through a bad period. This was still a hangover from the [Joseph R.] McCarthy period, and the [James O.] Eastland committee [House Committee on Un-American Activities] and the [Thomas J.] Dodd committee [Senate Internal Security Committee], where peace organizations were suspect, supposedly the tools of Russian foreign policy. We came under attack in connection with a rally in Madison Square Garden. Among the luminaries at that Madison Square Garden rally, as I remember it, were Governor [Alfred M. ] Landon, of Kansas, a Republican candidate in 1936; Mrs. [Eleanor] Roosevelt. I doubt that there's ever been a peace rally in Madison Square Garden that had more candlepower than this one. The treasurer for SANE was a man named Abrams. What was his first name?

BASIAGO

Henry [H.] Abrams?

COUSINS

That's right. The congressional investigations tended to focus on Henry Abrams, who apparently had had a record with various committees. I could see SANE going down the drain through this issue, as other organizations had. I went to see Senator Dodd, who at one time had been the head of the world federalists in Connecticut. He was my senator, and I was his constituent. I knew the people who worked for him, and Dodd knew enough about me to know that my position was an independent one, and that I wasn't being pulled by strings by anybody, least of all the Soviet Union. But he was concerned, nonetheless, I didn't want people in the organization to be hurt. When I met with him, he said he had a list of x number of names of people, in addition to Henry Abrams, who were known--he said-- members of the Communist Party. Being a member of the Communist Party was not a crime; it was a legal organization. But it was damaging in public opinion nonetheless. Also, to raise charges against these people would be damaging to them; it would hurt them in their jobs. I told Dodd we had nothing to hide, we had open books, and that I just hoped that he would not make a circus out of this thing. He said that that was not his intention, but he did want me to know that people who held office in the group, such as Abrams, were in fact members of the party. We had a long talk about this, and I sought from him assurances of protection for the individuals who would be called up--that they would not be publicly accused or even identified. I spoke to Henry Abrams. I said, "I'm sure you understand that we're trying to protect this organization and also the members in it. But we're not going to be able to protect them unless we have information. If you are a member of the Communist Party, that's your right. But on the other hand, we do have a right to deal with this issue. Dodd has assured me that if you're called up, he will not make a holiday out if it. But I suspect that you will be called, and I'm not going to ask you to do anything except to tell me whether the statement is untrue. If it is untrue, we'll fight it with everything I've got." He said he couldn't tell me that it was untrue. Dodd kept his word; he didn't attempt to destroy the organization because of the fact that a few people did have records that were known to the government. But on the other hand, it did produce a crisis inside SANE itself. Pauling, who was a member of the executive committee of SANE, telephoned me to say that he thought that I'd handled this thing just right. He said that he had had a similar issue in California at the laboratory. He said, "I had to handle it the way you did. It's a messy business, but I want you to know I'm backing you in what you've done." That's what he told me. But later, he said some other things, and that was a great disappointment to me. We're still good friends, but I didn't understand why he would say one thing to me and another thing to other members of the committee. I stayed at SANE long enough to make sure that SANE would weather this crisis, as indeed it did.

BASIAGO

I found that when twenty-seven members of the Greater New York Committee for SANE testified before Senator Dodd's committee, twenty-two invoked the Fifth Amendment when asked about the issue of communist affiliations. However, Dodd went on to defend the integrity of the distinguished Americans who constituted the national committee. What I'm wondering is, beyond the taint of communism or past communist affiliations that these members apparently had, did Dodd have any information that they were infiltrating the movement to use the issue of nuclear testing to foster any demands that wouldn't be in the interest of the United States? For instance, to foster an attitude toward unilateral disarmament or to damage the U.S. in its relations with the rest of the world?

COUSINS

You have to separate the issues involved here from Dodd ' s standpoint. He was a key player in the test ban treaty. He had objected to any treaty. In an attempt to bring him around, we had to meet what he considered to be--and what some others considered to be--reasonable questions having to do with verification. There was no problem with verification with atmospheric tests. There was at the time, in his mind, with underground tests, although many scientists felt that seismic techniques had been developed to the point where you couldn't get away with testing of any weapon of substantial size and anything under a certain threshold was no problem. But in any event, if he was going to support a treaty banning limited testing, he didn't want to get involved in seeming to knuckle under in terms of the questions he himself had raised. So he did have that problem. His vote was essential to the treaty. So I was glad that we were able to avoid a head-on confrontation, which could have meant possibly his unequivocal opposition to any treaty. And he had two or three votes that he was going to bring along with him, and that would have tilted the balance. So it was a very delicate matter at the time, having to pick our way through this minefield in a way that would protect SANE, keep that alive, protect the members. Although a lot of people who didn't know what was happening assumed that we had joined in Dodd ' s witch-hunt. Milton [S.] Katz, from Iowa, has written about this.

BASIAGO

Yeah, Milton Katz has written about it. I was wondering about Dodd's--

COUSINS

My memory may be a little vague, but I think that his paper was pretty detailed on this, was it not?

BASIAGO

Yeah. You mentioned that you felt Dodd kept his promise not to turn the committees into a circus. I was just wondering whether he actually disapproved of the group's charter. You suggested that he did at first, but then that you were effective in swaying him?

COUSINS

Well, I don't know how effective I was, but he did vote for the treaty. And when he received letters about the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, he made a distinction between the New York chapter and the national organization. We regarded that as an act of good faith.

BASIAGO

Some SANE members felt that Dodd had hurt the peace movement and had actually betrayed your agreement not to turn it into a circus. Do you think it was constructive or destructive to introduce the issue of loyalty tests into the disarmament movement?

COUSINS

I was against loyalty tests under any circumstances. But in terms of the basic question you raise, the fact that SANE survived and flourished is the definitive answer to the point you made.

BASIAGO

We had spoken last time about the two traditions, or the two houses of the American peace movement: the radical pacifist current, and what might be called the liberal internationalist current in the movement. I'm wondering if this event was pivotal in splitting those two branches farther apart. For instance, I noted that A. [Abraham] J. Muste, as a representative of the first group, believed that you had--as he put it-- "committed a grave error in dealing with Senator Dodd, " and the threat of exposing SANE to this sort of process. Muste felt that "standing up to Dodd would have meant that SANE was really against the war-makers, the cold warriors in the U.S., as much as on the other side." Muste saw it as a clear-cut issue of civil liberties, and actually went on to accuse you of "modified McCarthyism. " I'm wondering whether the two branches ever have gotten back together following that schism.

COUSINS

Some people are very comfortable living in a black-and-white world and prefer not to deal with the gradations--sometimes infinite in number--that involve political process and also political definitions. You always have the problem of getting from here to there, and I didn't want to just make a grandstand play, attract a lot of attention, and go down in flames but flailing out as I did so, calling names and other things. My whole exposure to the American experience was of an entirely different nature. I was not a Jacobin, and I had no intention of relearning the hard lesson that Tom [Thomas] Paine had to learn in France. It's so easy to make grandstand plays and to be a hero to a select group. If that's your main aim in life, you can achieve it. But if your main aim is to get something done, and you have to take into account everything involved in the processes of consent and pluralism in this society, and working with people you may disagree with, then you take a different course.

BASIAGO

I was wondering--in light of what you just mentioned--about the processes of consent, etc., in government-- I find in President Kennedy's American University speech [June 10, 1963], which you were so instrumental in contributing to, the theme that JFK was decrying a "Pax Americana, enforced on the world by American weapons of war." I'm curious as to what extent you shared a vision that the United States could at once possess nuclear weapons, in fact develop them, even test them underground, stockpile them, and at the same time renounce a Pax Americana. In other words, I'm questioning the subtitle of the SANE organization, the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy.

COUSINS

Intellectually, I saw no security capability in the possession of nuclear weapons, as I tried to point out in the first editorial I wrote on the subject, and as I kept hammering away in subsequent editorials. But I also had to ask myself, if I were in government, would I just get rid of the weapons altogether? Is this what I wanted Kennedy to do? Could he do it? And so I did have that ambivalence between my own conviction that nuclear weapons were a form of insanity, and added to a nation's insecurity, and the specific problems that [faced] a president of a country which already was in possession of such weapons. [He required] a policy that would be acceptable in terms of a consensus that he clearly was required to create and lead. I therefore was thinking in terms of stages by which we might move toward sanity and what form American leadership would take in a world which was itself moving towards collecting and stockpiling such weapons. Not just the Soviet Union but, potentially at least, a dozen or so more nations. That was my own ambivalence. I continued as an individual to talk about the folly of such weapons. But in doing things for the president, I tried to recognize that he was working inside an entirely different context. In that context, it seemed to me that that leadership could define the military and the moral issue with respect to nuclear weapons and move in the world arena as effectively as possible towards a comprehensive ban.

BASIAGO

This is a sort of a historiographic point of order. I find in Arthur [M.] Schlesinger [Jr.'s] biography of the Kennedy years, A Thousand Days, Theodore [C.] Sorensen crediting you with providing JFK a letter that he then modified into the American University address. In your archives, I find more extensive correspondence between yourself and Theodore Sorensen and several drafts of the speech. What was the extent of your role in producing that particular speech, which I understand Khrushchev called the greatest speech by an American president since Roosevelt.

COUSINS

When I told President Kennedy, after my return the second time, that the time had come for a breathtaking peace offer to the Soviet Union--that the situation in the Soviet Union was one which I thought would be responsive to it, though not for very long, because of Chinese pressure-- The president caught on immediately, and telephoned me, in fact--and I think you'll find this in my notes somewhere-- afterwards, saying that he'd been thinking about it. He'd also spoken to Ted Sorensen about it, and he hoped that I'd get some notes down and work with Ted on it. I got a call from Ted, and we met at some restaurant in Washington, in which I reviewed for him what I told the president. He also had the letter that I'd written to the president at that time, and I told him I'd be glad to send him a draft, which I did. You probably saw the draft. I felt that the spirit of that draft was beautifully reflected in the speech the president gave. And I thought that Sorensen 's own way of dealing with it was very poetic. But I don't know where Schlesinger got his information. I found some other curious things in Schlesinger. He said at one point, "If Norman Cousins is to be believed, Khrushchev thus-and- so." Well, Kennedy had no difficulty in believing it. So I don't know what-- It was rather grudging, I thought.

BASIAGO

I found twenty major phrases and sentences that found their way verbatim into the speech, which I think was an immensely eloquent address and very powerful.

COUSINS

Kennedy himself credited me with the idea and the impetus for the speech, and Sorensen himself had said the suggestion came from me, and that I'd sent some notes for it. But to me the significant thing was that the speech did exactly what I hoped it would.

BASIAGO

Had President Kennedy read your book In Place of Folly? I know that several ideas from In Place of Folly found their way into the speech, such as the idea that radioactivity would be carried on wind and water, poisoning the planet.

COUSINS

It may have come out of our discussions. I don't know whether he read the book or not. But the thing that always surprised me about Kennedy, as I told you, was that he encouraged a direct relationship. Even dealing with President [Dwight D.] Eisenhower, I had to go through Miss Woods, I guess her name was. Rose Mary Woods, is that her name?

BASIAGO

That was President [Richard M.] Nixon 's--

COUSINS

Oh, Nixon, that's right.

BASIAGO

Was it Evelyn Lincoln?

COUSINS

No, Lincoln was Kennedy's.

BASIAGO

Oh, yeah, yeah.

COUSINS

Her name begins with a "w." Not Woods, but-- But in any event, I would call her, and she would talk to the president, and then I'd get a note from the president, or she'd put through the call, or I'd come down to Washington. But with Kennedy, he would call on the phone and say, "Now, don't hesitate to call me directly," that sort of thing. Well, that's-- This is all petty, anyway.

BASIAGO

Studs Terkel reflects in his autobiography that when Bertrand Russell was trying to bring together world leaders following the Cuban Missile Crisis over the issue of nuclear proliferation, that President Kennedy was a little bit colder to the idea than he thought. Do you have any recollections of Russell's initiative during this time?

COUSINS

No, Russell was not very adroit. He made it difficult for his ideas to be processed properly, because he'd gone public with them first. When you're trying to work with the president, you don't put him in a position where it seems as though he did something only because Bertrand Russell suggested it or because the public forced him to do it. I always had the feeling that Russell's approach, which was to beat a drum in public and in effect dare the head of the state to do something, was not the way to get that done. If you wanted to work for a president, you had to contrive to make sure that he gets the credit for the idea.

BASIAGO

Predating your involvement with Kennedy was your conflict in 1959-60 with Governor [Nelson A.] Rockefeller of New York over both the issues of above-ground nuclear testing and the issue of fallout shelters. What are your recollections of those battles?

COUSINS

Very vague. Until you just mentioned it, I would not have referred to it in connection with all the things leading up to the treaty. If you were to ask me about Nelson Rockefeller, I probably would have said that during the war we were under the same roof. I found him very congenial, very outgoing--gregarious, in fact. But now that you mention it, there were a lot of people of reputation who opposed a test ban. I remember some problem I had with Allen [W.] Dulles, John Foster Dulles 's brother. I don't know whether Nelson, at that time, was as close to Henry [A.] Kissinger as he was later. But Kissinger was his guru at one time. And Kissinger was unpredictable about positions he might take, but never unpredictable in terms of the fact that those positions would reflect his own desires to be front and center and to stand in well with the establishment. Just as you find Kissinger now opposing INF [Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty] on points which have validity, but which are not as important as the need to have the treaty- -or not sufficient to defeat the treaty. So at that time he was reading the small type to Nelson, I think. But apart from that a side issue, it would not have been easy for Eisenhower--we' re talking about the fifties--to move inside his party. Once it became Kennedy's show, then, of course. you had political advantages or factors to be taken into account, which complicated the picture. But by and large. Nelson was a constructive force in the country, and if you have a final reckoning, he would come out on the plus side.

BASIAGO

You had called Governor Rockefeller's fallout shelter program "dangerous nonsense."

COUSINS

That's right, that's right.

BASIAGO

I guess during this time the idea of nuclear war survivability planning was pretty much killed off. I know throughout the early sixties that schoolchildren were still rehearsing to protect themselves from a blast. What were your fears in this regard?

COUSINS

Well, you see, the entire fallout shelter phenomenon was not confined to how best to protect civilians during a war. It had at least as much to do, if not more so, with the way nations play games with each other and how they send signals to each other. It was a large group, and I have no doubt that Nelson belonged to it, which felt that the Soviet Union wanted to see how far it could go in Berlin and elsewhere. Only by demonstrating to the Soviet Union that the United States was prepared to face up to the reality of nuclear war could you establish your credibility in dealing with the Soviet Union and stop them from undertaking these probes. So it was a geopolitical device, and not something that had any real substance to it, in terms of whether the American people could be protected or not. But the fact that we were getting ready to protect ourselves in the event of a nuclear war was the main thing that the proponents sought to achieve. So it was part of the dishonest chessboard-- the game we were playing with the Soviet Union- -and not anything that had any genuine validity of its own.

BASIAGO

In early 1962, you would break with Freedom House, the foundation dedicated to the One World principles of Wendell [L.] Willkie. The board of directors of Freedom House, over your dissent, said that the testing of nuclear weapons may prove the only means of forcing the Soviet Union to negotiate seriously for an effective treaty on nuclear control. Do you recall any of this dialogue with the directors of Freedom House?

COUSINS

Oh, I sure do. I sure do. In my files, you'll find a memorandum that I wrote, point by point, after I came back from the Soviet Union. And this memorandum corresponds, I think, rather closely with U.S. foreign policy as it has emerged since, in terms of changes inside the Soviet Union. The essence of the memorandum was that we're not dealing with a Stalinist Soviet Union, that it was infinitely more sophisticated, not without opportunities so far as the United States was concerned. [It] called for reevaluation, in any case. The Freedom House people, Leo [M.] Cherne and Harry [D.] Gideonse, were locked into the notion that we were still dealing with a Stalinist Soviet Union. That things don't change at all, and that we were being taken in. That you couldn't have any treaty, no matter what it was. They had other formulations. Freedom House was born as an antitotalitarian movement, and I supported it on that basis. But some of the people in it--in an attempt to prove they weren't soft on communism, it seemed to me-- tended to lose their balance on specific issues, and couldn't adapt to change. But if you read some of [Ronald W.] Reagan's speeches justifying INF, or speeches of President [Gerald R.] Ford and President [Richard M.] Nixon on the subject, you see that even the Republicans are far to the left of Freedom House on how we deal with the Soviet Union. They were not dealing with reality; they were dealing with outmoded concepts.

1.27. TAPE NUMBER: XIV, SIDE TWO (MAY 9, 1988)

BASIAGO

Your book The Improbable Triumverate: [John F. Kennedy, Pope John, Nikita Khrushchev] pretty well clarifies your role with President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev and Pope John XXIII. I'm wondering. Something that doesn't find its way into that work and other writings that you've done on that period was the impact of President Kennedy's death on your activities. By late November 1953, I imagine that you were rather close to the president; the American University speech was in June of '63. What was the personal impact of the president ' s assassination?

COUSINS

Well, the president told me he looked forward to working with me on many fronts. And, as I think I told you, he asked me about coming down to Washington. I was at that point involved with the Saturday Review [of Literature]; I couldn't extricate myself at least for six months. I was thinking seriously of having a close relationship, whatever that would mean. But apart from that, I really felt the bullet that struck down the president. That bullet also struck down many things that might have made a safer world. I was looking forward to what the president might do in his second term of office. He'd won a great deal of praise for the test ban treaty, which he regarded as his outstanding accomplishment. He was able to rise above the bickerings and the kind of pettifogging nonsense that people close to presidents unload on the president in the name of strategy and presidential perquisites, presidential options. He was able to see beyond that. I didn't know how long it would take after his death to get back to the high platform he had built. It was a disaster for the world, not just for the United States. Personally, I felt the loss, of course. It changed the course of my life, at least in terms of what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. Every time I went down to the White House after that and saw that rocking chair-- [tape recorder off] One time when I went down to Washington, met with President [Lyndon B.] Johnson, and he sat in Kennedy's rocking chair, I had mixed feelings about it. Seeing him sit in that chair and talking, I could also visualize Kennedy sitting there, addressing himself to the same issues, and wondering what he would say. Instead of the tentativeness and indecisiveness that Johnson had about Vietnam, I could almost hear Kennedy talking in terms of, "Well, let's see what the underlying principle here has to be. Where will it lead? What happens if it doesn't work?" The things that he would ask the generals, you see. I know it would be a mistake to think that I was less scarred by that bullet than anyone else.

BASIAGO

You mentioned that it changed the course of your life and redirected the future that you were anticipating along another path. How so? I find you still working for the cause of peace.

COUSINS

Only in the sense that I thought there was a strong possibility that I might go down to Washington and work on a more regular basis with the president.

BASIAGO

Had you discussed any particular position or role or office that he might--

COUSINS

He had not discussed it in any particular way, but he said he hoped I might work with him; it would be more of the same thing that I had done before. The political arena was one to which I was drawn, but never on an elective basis. When, in 1949 or '50, Senator Brien McMahon died, [Chester] Bowles asked me if I'd be interested in considering an interim appointment. It would have meant serving out one year of the unexpired term, but then running for office. My molecules didn't take too well to everything involved in an election. I had written out some speeches, as a matter of fact. What I would say in my first speech was, "I've a very high regard for my opponent. I don't seek the position because I think he's not qualified; I think he is. And I don't intend to wage a campaign based on things that are wrong with him. But this is what I believe, and if it has any appeal to the people, that's what I intend to do." (I had even written that speech out.) But in the end, I-- Besides, I don't think that Bowles was doing anything more than going through a checklist. I think he had always intended to appoint his buddy, or rather, former partner. Senator [William] Benton, to whom I was also very close.

BASIAGO

We discussed the earlier conflict in SANE in 1960. In 1967, the group split again over the position it would take on the Vietnam War. Generally speaking, what was the position you were taking on the war, and how did that differ from the group represented by Dr. Spock?

COUSINS

I was not in the organization at that time, so I took no part in the debate. But as I remember that debate, it was not on a clear-cut issue of should we fight. Should we be in Vietnam, or shouldn't we be? But how do we extricate ourselves from Vietnam, and what were the stages of extrication? My feelings about Vietnam were reflected in the pieces I did on the subject. When I went to the Far East in U.S. Air Force One, with [Hubert H.] Humphrey as presidential ambassador, at the inauguration of [Ferdinand E.] Marcos, I sat with the official party in the president's part of the plane. The president's plane is divided into two sections. You have the president's office and his immediate entourage up front, where you've got a special layout. And in the back, it's as what it would be on any coach flight, three and three. That's where you had the press corps. Jack [J.] Valenti would have to give the press corps briefings. One day after he came back into the president's section he said, "The fellows back there want to know what the hell you're doing up here. They say that you're absolutely opposed to the war in Vietnam and wonder if the president knows that or not." He said, "I told them that you take a very constructive attitude towards the entire problem. I'll let it go at that." [laughter] Of course, I was opposed to the war.

BASIAGO

It seems that inside of SANE you had those who were strictly pullout-minded versus those who were negotiation-minded. Would you count yourself among those in the negotiation-minded camp?

COUSINS

Yes.

BASIAGO

Why so? Why that position rather than a unilateral pullout? What was to be achieved by negotiations that an American withdrawal, such as we saw in '75, could not achieve?

COUSINS

Every great change involves negotiations in terms of what is going to happen. The big mistake that we made in getting out of the war with Japan was to assume that you had to have unconditional surrender. Well, there are always terms. I thought we had to talk to the North Vietnamese and establish a kind of relationship that would enable us to maintain our own world participation--or participation in the events of the world--beyond the end of the war. Yes, I felt that negotiation was possible. Now, I believe in a phased withdrawal, which is the only way it could have ended anyway. I don't know, the other was unilateral pullout--and there was no possibility that the United States would do it. Politically, the president could not have done it. The president would not have walked away from it. So we had no choice, it seemed to me, but to have a negotiated peace.

BASIAGO

I'm unclear when your departure from SANE came. I was under the impression it occurred in 1967 when Spock took the group in a different more radical direction.

COUSINS

Much earlier. Just after the test ban treaty.

BASIAGO

What were your feelings on the direction the group took after that? At least, during the Vietnam period, and since then.

COUSINS

Well, I'm probably wrong about that, but I felt that it started as a committee of committees and had accomplished its purpose. One of my main ambitions in life was to be responsible for the dissolution of a committee, whatever it was. [laughter] We had accomplished our purpose, and we-- I wanted to go back to the federalists, which I did. Seymour Melman and some of the others--

BASIAGO

H. Stuart Hughes?

COUSINS

He was not a prime mover. It was a powerful committee, there's no doubt about it, and people don't turn in their seals of office lightly. We've discovered that about government in itself. There was an honest difference of opinion between us. They may have been right.

1.28. TAPE NUMBER: XV, SIDE ONE (JUNE 7, 1988)

BASIAGO

In July, 1963, you were invited to membership on the Citizens Committee for a Nuclear Test Ban, which was chaired by James J. Wadsworth, President [Dwight D.] Eisenhower's adviser on disarmament. Individuals such as Walter [P.] Reuther, Reverend James [A.] Pike, New Jersey Governor Robert [M.] Meyner, HEW [Department of Health, Education, and Welfare] Secretary Marion [B.] Fulsom, and the former undersecretary of state, William [L.] Clayton, were some of the 167-person committee of prominent Americans, which included thirteen Nobel-[Prize] laureates. What was the specific responsibility of the committee, and were you assigned any specific tasks on it?

COUSINS

I was not invited to join the committee. I was the founder of it. I was the one who invited Wadsworth, a former member of Congress, to be the chairman. He was a Republican, commanded great respect, was an excellent speaker, very forceful. It seemed to me that he'd be a good chairman, and the president [John F. Kennedy] agreed. This committee was designed to accomplish that which the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy [SANE] could not accomplish. At least, not as readily. The Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy was a coordinating committee, bringing together many organizations, and working for a nuclear test ban. But it seemed to many of us that now that we ' d entered the phase where we had to get support for ratification, that a somewhat different strategy was called for--one that brought in some of the elements that were missing in the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy and one, most certainly, that would make more of a dent on the Senate of the United States, in particular. Business representation on the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy was rather sparse. But by getting the general who is the head of Eastman Kodak [Company] and a number of other business leaders we were able to show much more clout than the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, even though many members of the board of SANE also went on the Citizens Committee, including, as you mentioned, Walter Reuther. The president, in fact, reviewed with us the names of those who were going to be brought onto the Citizens Committee and made some suggestions. He was particularly eager, as I remember, to get the support of Cardinal [Richard] Cushing, and agreed to call Cushing himself, as well as to telephone certain business leaders himself. He said, "Use me. I want to work alongside you with this." The Citizens Committee was very effective. We were, you see, in the home stretch of ratification. I had a woman--I think her name was Lillian Schultz--who was the executive secretary of the Citizens Committee. She prepared a master loose leaf book describing all these operations. Have you seen that? You might ask Jean Anderson if she can get that master book. If it's not under Lillian Schultz's name, it might be under Mary Harvey's name. In my book dealing with the test ban, the- (I've seen about six patients today. I'm so weary, really. Especially women who are very sick, it can be dispiriting.) But in the appendix to The Improbable Triumvirate, I think we may in fact have that report or a large part of it that I'm referring to.

BASIAGO

I've seen that, yeah.

COUSINS

Is that under Mary Harvey's name, or--?

BASIAGO

I believe so.

COUSINS

Well, that describes the work of the Citizens Committee pretty well.

BASIAGO

In regard to this, what was your level of involvement with the bipartisan Senate committee, which included Senators [J. William] Fulbright, [Hubert H.] Humphrey, [John] Sparkman, [John O.] Pastore, [George D.] Aiken, and [Leverett] Saltonstall?

COUSINS

We were giving them the nutrients that they needed to justify their position, nutrients in terms of effective public support for their position.

BASIAGO

Do you recall any of the political strategy that was being discussed among these senators, which would--

COUSINS

Well, I had a talk with [Senator Thomas J.] Dodd, as I remember. Now that the proposed treaty took into account his criticisms, he felt obligated, in fact, to be helpful. And Humphrey--an old friend, as you know--was there to do anything that was necessary in terms of bringing other senators together. He helped to discuss strategy with-- We're dealing now with the year 1963.

BASIAGO

In several years. Senator Fulbright would become an outspoken critic of United States Vietnam policy. Do you recall any particular involvement with Senator Fulbright in the sixties?

COUSINS

Certainly not on a par with Humphrey or Dodd or [Senator Edmund S.] Muskie. I think Muskie may have been there at that time, too. But I'd known Fulbright in other connections, mostly in connection with education programs here and abroad.

BASIAGO

I'd like to get your ideas in terms of assessing the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy. A prominent chronologer of both your career and SANE ' s history is Milton [S.] Katz. He credits SANE with helping to create the [United States] Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Yet in looking through the archives I have trouble finding any direct connections or interconnections. What were they?

COUSINS

It was not the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy. If that was your point of entree into the filing system, I can understand it. It was the [United] World Federalists. At that time Paul Walter was the president of the federalists nationally. Walter had been the campaign manager for Senator Robert [A.] Taft of Ohio. This gave us a very good bipartisan approach to the issue. But Walter, also as a world federalist, was interested in the deeper issues and long, ongoing institutionalization of the attempt to control the arms race. We approached Humphrey. I had just sold the Saturday Review [of Literature] with a letter of intent, which meant that I couldn't sell my stock for a year or two. But I was able to borrow money from Lenore Marshall, the poet, and this enabled us to put fifty thousand dollars into the attempt to create the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Everything was done out of Humphrey's basement office in the Senate building, in terms of generating support for it. The year would be somewhere around '61, '62, or '63. What year do you have for that?

BASIAGO

Well, I'm kind of unclear, because you mentioned that you just sold the Saturday Review. I believe that was in 1971.

COUSINS

No, '60.

BASIAGO

But of course, the agency was created much earlier.

COUSINS

I sold the Saturday in 1960.

BASIAGO

Hmm. I see. It was then again sold in 1971?

COUSINS

In 1960. I sold it to the McCall Corporation, to Norton Simon, I was with it ten years. When I left it, I was not the owner of it. But I reacquired ownership of it after the bankruptcy, and then sold it again, in 1976, to [Carll] Tucker. We felt it was necessary to take the entire structure of arms control out of the Pentagon [Department of Defense], and also out of the State Department, and give it a life of its own. It might otherwise fall victim to or tend to reflect positions of the State Department and the Pentagon, which were moving in the opposite direction, moving away from arms control into massive military spending. In short, we felt that the negotiations for arms control should have a separate agency where their loyalty would be to that objective and to nothing else. Humphrey felt this was extremely important, and world federalists, not SANE, were the ones who worked alongside him for this particular purpose. The federalists have always believed that the creation of that agency was due in large part to the alliance they had with Humphrey at the time.

BASIAGO

Milton Katz concludes that, "Although the nuclear test ban treaty seemed a major accomplishment for their organization, SANE was overly optimistic regarding its impact." He concurs with Lewis Mumford, who was rather critical of course, that "this was a classic example of too little, too late." Katz blamed SANE for a "euphoric feeling over what was an insignificant victory. " How do you assess the significance of the test ban victory to the overall arms control problem?

COUSINS

The same way that [John F.] Kennedy did. We tend to make a mistake in looking for concrete sequela and overlook the importance represented by a change in climate which can prevent ominous downside developments. The test ban, which Kennedy highly valued and felt was his principal achievement in office, was the first specific accomplishment in the direction, not just of arms control, but of a relationship with the Soviet Union that would permit further such efforts. In Kennedy's mind, this was the first step. He felt that the momentum created by it, as well as the logic of events, would make it possible for him to propose a comprehensive test ban within a fairly short time, certainly within his administration. The opponents of a test ban treaty were disturbed precisely because it was accomplishing what many of its backers hoped it would do, which is to create an environment conducive to further efforts in reducing the threat of nuclear war and also reducing the need for massive military spending. But once you have a stake, or are committed to massive military spending, then anything that weakens the case for it tends to be bad. And that point of view, and those forces, still persist. A lot depends, it seems to me, on the yardstick that is used to measure events. With respect to the test ban, we can look at the long trail of events following 1963 and ask ourselves, "What, after all, was accomplished? We're building up weapons, we're conducting underground tests; the world crisis has not been eased. Why do we make it sound as if the test ban was such a triumph?" The answer is that the very fact that it was done enabled people to believe that we were not altogether at the mercy of an irreversible tide. The very fact that it could be done indicated to many people that more could be done. It's too easy to be a scoffer or a cynic and say, "Well, what good did it do? After all, look where we are." The fact of the matter is that it was one of those cubits of hope, the absence of which could have radiated out, it seems to me, in a number of very unfortunate directions.

BASIAGO

One follow-up question regarding SANE and the test ban. When we last spoke, you mentioned that you left the organization effectively well before the split that occurred in the organization in 1967 when Dr. Benjamin Spock became much more prominent in the group and Vietnam policy became the issue rather than disarmament per se. But I found a 1967 article in the New York Times, which reports you leaving the organization with thirteen others. That is, leaving the board over Dr. Spock's positions--what you described in the article.

COUSINS

I got out long before 1967. The reason that I left was not that I disagreed with anyone on the board, but that I felt that SANE had come into existence for a specific reason. It was an organization of organizations. As a coordinating agency, it had a very well focused objective, and that was to bring about an end to nuclear testing. Having accomplished that purpose, I decided to go back to the federalists. That was my particular accent, just as other groups that were part of SANE had their own accents. If I didn't agree with Spock-- I'm not sure that that would have been enough cause to leave the organization, although he represented certain positions and approaches that didn't conform to my own prejudices.

BASIAGO

This took the form of an official resignation from the national board in October 1967. Could it be possible that you had, in terms of your own contributions, already left the activities of the board?

COUSINS

Yes.

BASIAGO

I guess something of overriding relevance to the discussion becomes the conditions surrounding President Kennedy's assassination. During the summer and fall of 1963, President Kennedy began laying the groundwork for further agreements with the Soviet Union on nuclear nonproliferation, step-by-step disarmament, enlarged cultural exchange, security arrangements for Southeast Asia and Berlin, and a more robust United Nations. Indeed, his speech at American University on June 10 of 1963--which you, of course, helped write--was probably the most impassioned plea by an American president for nuclear disarmament. By the end of the year, he was assassinated. I was wondering, as one close to the president during this time, did you ever learn facts or entertain any beliefs that he was murdered, perhaps by forces within the United States government who might have been opposed to his vision of a peace for all time?

COUSINS

It was very difficult to escape altogether from such apprehensions or forebodings. If you recreate the atmosphere that existed at the time, the events did very little to quiet public speculations. Even before you try to speculate on the inner history, you have the factual history of the assassination, with a great many contradictions. You had an official story, and then you had specific evidence that the official story either omitted or overlooked or ignored. The number of bullets. You had the [Abraham] Zapruder film. You had witnesses talking about shots fired from a knoll, back of which they were standing. Then you had testimony about the direction of the bullets, which seemed to come from the knoll. And the denials were so prompt, of course, and so emphatic, that you wondered why these things were not fully investigated. There seemed to be at the start an attempt to limit it to [Lee Harvey] Oswald. The entire episode with Jack Ruby--why he was able to get so close to the assassin. The story of Officer [J. D. ] Tippit. The death of Ruby himself in prison before trial. All these things did little to reassure the American public that the full story had been told. Meanwhile, there was no shortage of material in books or articles fueling such speculation. Years after the Warren Commission Report [Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy], the questions continued, and it became necessary to reopen it again. Obviously, any such event is bound to produce suspicion and speculation. But when, in addition, you have genuine questions raised, which have never been satisfactorily answered, the worst-case scenario is bound to gain attention.

BASIAGO

In your mind, what were some of the unanswered questions or the questions that were too quickly dismissed from the official version, and what would that worst-case scenario be?

COUSINS

The bullets; the gun; the direction from which shots were fired, not just from the Texas [Book Depository] direction, but from the knoll; the entire Jack Ruby episode, his proximity, how he got so close to Oswald, why he died in prison. All these things inevitably raised questions in the public mind. I still don't think that they've all been satisfactorily answered.

BASIAGO

As one who had been very close to the president at this time and working with him over the issue of nuclear disarmament, do you recall the disagreement he had had with the Department of Defense over nuclear missile procurement levels?

COUSINS

No.

BASIAGO

I ask this, because after our last recording session ended, it seemed that you'd left me with the impression that he may have been killed by a clandestine agency of the United States government. I was wondering whether that was a speculation that you thought was possible, or whether you had any--

COUSINS

I've heard such speculations. The revelation about the existence of a secret unit, under Nixon. The revelation in this book that I've told you about [Secret Warriors: Inside the Covert Military Operations of the Reagan Era, by Steven Emerson] , about the formation of a group in the Pentagon with power which used government funds without any reporting as to how they were used. The interaction of such events with mysteries concerning the assassination, not just of Jack Kennedy, but of Bobby [Robert F.] Kennedy. All these things have been profoundly disquieting. The assassination of Allard [K.] Lowenstein, who was looking into the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, who came to see us at the Saturday Review to present his initial findings on this, which in turn served as a basis for an article that he wrote for the Saturday Review. I don't know whether you saw it or not. All these events are much too numerous, it seems to me, to be retired or dismissed.

BASIAGO

You mentioned that even after JFK's passing you remained involved to some degree with White House affairs. You mentioned that in 1965 you were invited by the president to join Vice President Humphrey at [Ferdinand E.] Marcos's inauguration. When the Warren Commission report was issued in 1964--and much of the evidence was sealed for seventy-five years--did you ever get any credible explanations of the need for such a measure, from those in the [Lyndon B.] Johnson administration, that you're still in touch with?

COUSINS

No.

BASIAGO

Was it ever discussed?

COUSINS

No. I had a discussion with Ted [Edward M.] Kennedy in, of all places, I think it was Tbilisi, the Soviet Union, during one of the Dartmouth [College] conferences. Among the wild speculations about the circumstances of the president's death was the fact that Madame Nhu, the sister of the president of Vietnam [Ngo Dinh Diem], who had been assassinated, had been to Dallas just a few weeks before the assassination, where according to the report, she'd met with Mr. [Haroldson L.] Hunt and several others, and--

BASIAGO

That was E. Howard Hunt? One of the Watergate conspirators? Or the Hunt family, the billionaires from Texas?

COUSINS

I'm trying to think of his full name.

BASIAGO

There were several brothers. There was a Nelson Bunker Hunt--

COUSINS

This is the father.

BASIAGO

The father? Patriarch.

COUSINS

Now this came not long after the assassination of President Diem. The CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] had been accused of complicity in that assassination, as you know. Among the questions that had occurred to some people was whether the death of Jack Kennedy was the revenge. The fact that Madame Nhu had been in Dallas and the question, "Why would she go to Dallas?" fueled that speculation. Teddy Kennedy said he had had no information on that- -that that particular possibility had not been raised with him. The Kennedys were very uncomfortable being subjected to such speculations. They didn't quite know how to handle it, naturally and understandably.

BASIAGO

When we last spoke, you recalled how painful it was to view President Kennedy's deserted rocking chair, or see it occupied by another, such as President Johnson, Without seeming insensitive, I'd like to explore whether the collagen disease you then encountered in 1964 might have been related to the stress of the assassination. I'd like to put it in perspective so I can better understand Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient: Reflections on Healing and Regeneration. Is it possible that it played a role?

COUSINS

Well, this was the theory of Dr. [William M.] Hitzig. He noticed that for some time after the assassination I seemed in a daze, and I was not thinking sequentially. He would talk to me, he said, and then wondered whether the sounds ever got through. And he noticed that I was losing weight. There were millions of Americans, I think, who felt that bullet. I don't think any bullet in history, including the one that was fired in Ford's Theater [where President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated], I don't think any bullet in history traveled as far, or in so many directions, as that bullet. Also, it was hard for me to adjust again; I'd just about made the adjustment to the decision to accept the president's invitation to work with him on matters concerned with an imaginative approach to peace. It had permeated my subconscious, these were the things I was dreaming about, writing speeches in my sleep, trips that would be taken, living them before they happened many times. Then suddenly there was this grotesque discontinuity, as though I'd walked off a cliff. Which was as nothing, of course, compared to the tragedy itself, its implications. That tragedy had to do with the future of the United States, and in a very real sense, it seems to me, of the human future. The assassination inevitably limited Johnson's options. It tended to fix the walls around him. Any president who comes into office under those circumstances is confronted, first of all, with the need for reassuring the country, avoiding issues which could tear open some wounds. While those policies or attitudes were necessary in the aftermath of the assassination, they didn't necessarily move along the path that Kennedy had set for the country, a path that I'd been contemplating very intensively. When I went to the Soviet Union the next summer, I had a very deep sense of lost opportunities because of Kennedy's death. Not that Johnson didn't want to pursue those openings. He did. In fact, at the Leningrad meeting with the Russians, I had been asked by Bill [D. ] Moyers--I talked to the president and also Bill Moyers--that when I met with [Nikita S.] Khrushchev to explain that the United States had limited objectives in Vietnam and that we sought a nonmilitary settlement to the war. Since the meeting was in Leningrad, and I was presiding--I don't know whether we went over this--I asked David Rockefeller to carry out my assigned task: go to Moscow, talk to Khrushchev, and try to emphasize to him that we had limited objectives in Vietnam, and that those objectives were to get North Vietnam to give up the notion that it could force its position through military means or achieve its position through military means. That we were not out to conquer; we were not out to destroy. Rockefeller absented himself from at least two of the Leningrad sessions of the Dartmouth Conference, went to Moscow, and came back rather sheepishly. He said while he was meeting with Khrushchev, Khrushchev was handed a note. He [David Rockefeller] said, "Khrushchev looked up and said, 'You say the president doesn't want to widen the war? They just handed me a dispatch saying the United States has bombed the Gulf of Tonkin, bombed ships. What kind of assurance is this you're trying to give me?'" So Rockefeller was rather nonplussed by the turn of events, although he asked Khrushchev to recognize that many things happen during the course of a war. The important thing was to know that the settled objective of the president, whatever might happen on a day-to-day basis, was to bring about a nonmilitary settlement. Then Rockefeller told me, he said, "I'm not sure I was able to convince the old man. Certainly the background of the Gulf of Tonkin episode was not very propitious for the undertaking." Johnson represented a very interesting amalgam. He had always been identified as a military supporter. He was the one in Congress who was able to get through military appropriations. But now, when he had to orchestrate and balance off one force against another, he tended to tilt towards the military. It was natural for the military to think that it could achieve a military solution. But the president of the United States had to take other possibilities into account, too. But the juggling in his case was made, perhaps, more difficult than it would be for most, in the light of the assassination, in the light of his own connections with the military, as their spokesman on the hill, and in light of the conflict that was being stepped up. Meanwhile, the president was being besieged by a lot of macho advice. The nations in Southeast Asia, and the governments in Southeast Asia, were saying that, "You don't really mean it" and that they can't count on the United States to help them. We've got to demonstrate to them in an unequivocal way that we're not going to let them down, that we will stand up for the noncommunist world in that area where the noncommunist world is threatened. They're pressing us, "What are we going to do, Mr. President?" They feel that it's not necessary for us to actually go to war, but just to show the flag, bring American uniforms into their thing, and make a strong nonmilitary commitment. But to do it in a very positive, dramatic way, "We're not going to back down." So it was, as I say, this macho argument. That carried the day. But what was required to persuade X, Y, and Z that we were very resolute, escalated, almost on a daily basis, until such time that they say, "Well, you are willing to sacrifice, to use other men, to do this, but the rest of the world is not going to believe that the United States really means it, unless you put your blood into the battle." And then it happened. We put an awful lot of blood into the battle and didn't prove anything except that we didn't really understand that the central issue in Vietnam was not communism or the spread of communism. Because there was a long history of antagonism between Vietnam and China, centuries old, as there was antagonism between the other nations of Indochina. But we persisted in being influenced by a domino theory, which is that the collapse of North Vietnam would lead to the collapse of Thailand, and the collapse of Thailand would lead to the collapse of Cambodia, and that would lead to the collapse of Laos, and the collapse of Indochina would lead to the collapse of Indonesia, and Singapore, and then Burma, and then India and Pakistan and so on, westward. That was based on the notion that there's such a thing as a central, monolithic communist plan. What we didn't realize, even though history tried to tell us differently, was that the dominant forces in the world were not ideological but national. You could have conflicts between communist nations based on historical national considerations. So now we see that Vietnam and Cambodia have been shooting at each other, that there's been border warfare between Vietnam and China, and one wonders whether all those arguments that were used to justify the loss of American lives, and American involvement on that scale--

1.29. TAPE NUMBER: XV, SIDE TWO (JUNE 7, 1988)

COUSINS

In the end, we realized that there's no substitute for knowledge. There are prejudices and assumptions. John Foster Dulles had certain notions about the monolithic nature of communism. He didn't take into account the conflicting national histories of the Soviet Union and China, any more than he did the differences between Vietnam and China, or Vietnam and Cambodia. He had that very rigid conviction, and that was to come down the straight line and lead to what happened in our involvement in Vietnam. Well, now we realize that there are communists in North Vietnam, and communists in Cambodia, and the two of them can be fighting, and the United States has not been attacked by communism, militarily, and that the Far East is still a cauldron as it was then. So the basic assumptions which led us into the war have turned out to be incorrect, but I don't think that we've yet come to terms with the seriousness of that particular era, or that it can be repeated, as indeed it has in other forms. [tape recorder off]

BASIAGO

Were there any other contributing factors to your illness in 1964?

COUSINS

Well, when I was in the Soviet Union, as I say, the implications of Kennedy's death were still raw and very visible. I was trying to deal with the Russians in terms of the various issues between the two countries, and I had these daily reminders of lost ground. Meanwhile, we were staying at a hotel, the Sovietskaya Hotel, some miles from the center of the city. It was the VIP hotel, and there was a housing project under round-the-clock construction near the Sovietskaya. We were on the second floor. All night long these trucks with their elevated smokestacks were pouring [carbon] monoxide and hydrocarbons into the air, and I woke up each morning feeling terribly nauseated with those fumes. I became ill while I was in Moscow but insisted on going home. I had a fever at the time, and while I was on the tarmac at the airport, one of the Soviet jets turned around, and we caught the full force of its jet spew. That probably played into or exacerbated the original problem. By the time we arrived in Copenhagen, I had a very high fever on that plane. I almost had to be carried off, as a matter of fact. When I was examined, they said that there seemed to be apparent symptoms of heavy metal poisoning. It's quite possible that the spew at the hotel each night and at the airport may have had something to do with it. I think I probably could have handled that pollution--certainly my wife [Ellen Kopf Cousins] did--if it hadn't been for the fact that I had been under some stress for some months, especially in Moscow, when all these reminders of the great loss to the world were very real to me, and very fresh again.

1.30. TAPE NUMBER: XVI, SIDE ONE (JUNE 28, 1988)

BASIAGO

Today I'd like to discuss the Dartmouth [College] conferences. In 1958, President [Dwight D.] Eisenhower wondered aloud to you whether people-to-people contacts could have a direct impact on negotiations at the government level. A question that occurred to me as I was reading through your Dartmouth Conference archives is once the conferences unfolded, how independent were they from official U.S. government channels? What was the relationship between the conferences and first-level negotiations with the Soviets?

COUSINS

The State Department was involved in the funding of the initial conferences, with the Ford Foundation. We were not asked by our government to advance any particular position but, obviously, we felt an obligation to report fully to our sponsors. After those early meetings, the State Department would arrange briefings, at which they would invite different parties--the foreign desks of the White House, the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] , the assessments branch of the military, various [people] from the State Department. I remember Chip [Charles E.] Bohlen at one or two of those early briefings. There may have been maybe twenty people around the table, as I remember it. But we didn't receive at any time any request from the State Department to advance a point of view or seek information on certain subjects. What generally happened was that we would avail ourselves of the offer of the State Department to bring us up to date on its own discussions, as well as its own information on events pertaining to or inside the Soviet Union. Those briefings have continued to this day. Sometimes they have involved White House personnel. For example, I remember [Robert C.] MacFarlane, when he was National Security [Council] adviser, participating in the briefings. These briefings, in fact, have become perhaps even more structured in recent years than they were in the early years. David [O.] Mathews, president of the Charles F. Kettering Foundation, is very systematic, and prepares the agenda very carefully, and then seeks information in advance from government agencies, concerning their own views regarding those particular issues, as well as to obtain information. Thus, we've had the Soviet desk in the White House, the Soviet desk of the State Department, as well as military briefings. The participation--at least in advance- -of government agencies, is perhaps stronger now than it was many years before the Kettering Foundation was involved. But all this is on the informational, rather than instructional level. I think it's important to make the distinction between the two. They're spreading the table for us in terms of what they happen to have. It's up to us to take what we think is of value to us. I'm very grateful for these sessions, because a great many times there is information of genuine value that we can use. But we've never been used by the State Department as a conduit or as an informational channel.

BASIAGO

You mentioned that the conferences have been used as a "diplomatic back-channel." How would you define that?

COUSINS

Providing information on our return which may be useful to them. What possible openings there may be. If we perceive possible answers or compromises, then we want to be sure to pass that along so they can be pursued. I have no way of knowing what use the government makes of our debriefings, but we're very happy to provide an account of what went on.

BASIAGO

I was wondering, as I was looking through the rosters--both the Soviet and American rosters--reading all the distinguished individuals who have been associated at some time with the conference series, how the American participants were selected, and how the Soviet participants were selected.

COUSINS

On the American side, it's been an evolutionary process. At the very start, since Dartmouth was involved, John [S.] Dickey and Stone--you'll find his first name--

BASIAGO

Shepard Stone?

COUSINS

Shep Stone, yes, of the Ford Foundation. I surveyed the list of possible participants, which we drew up ourselves. Then, with the passing of the years, with David Rockefeller occupying an increasingly important part--he was cochairman for some of the conferences- -we would meet at his office and go over the list. We would generally start, you see, with the list of the previous participants, and add at least a third to a half of new members, year by year. Also, the nature of the list was shaped by the subject to be considered. Generally, we had people who were just out of government and therefore who were well informed about what was happening on the official level to mix with the group. We had business leaders and scientific experts--especially in the field of arms control--some of whom had been involved in the official discussions. It was and always has been a rather interesting mixture. The unofficial nature of the conference was, of course, the main characteristic of the group. But at the same time it was close enough to government in terms of experience to have a fairly good idea of what was happening on those levels, so that we wouldn't be totally irrelevant in what we were talking about. On the Soviet side what generally happened was that they would wait to receive our list of names, and they would try to pair them off at the very start. For example, they would have someone who had an editorial post plus some cultural background as my own opposite member. One year, it may be the second or third, we brought over Marian Anderson as a member of the delegation. They had an operatic star, too. So they try to be symmetrical to the fullest possible extent.

BASIAGO

You've written that the most important thing about Dartmouth was, "Lines of effective communication were opened up. Human relationships were established." Who among the Soviet delegation became a friend or an important correspondent with you? How did this happen, and what's been the impact of any personal alliances that have formed?

COUSINS

At the very start, Aleksandr [E.] Korneichuk, playwright and editor, was the cochairman of the Soviet delegation, and I suppose that he was selected as my opposite member. He also was close to [Nikita S.] Khrushchev; he was from Kiev in the Ukraine. I would receive messages from Korneichuk periodically. He would have friends who were coming to the United States, wanted me to know about it, and was hopeful that I might be able to help them with their visit. And this I was glad to do. The same thing was true of Boris [N. ] Polevoi, the novelist. Then they'd always be very thoughtful at Christmastime or on my birthday. There would always be messages and sometimes some fruit or flowers that were sent. Then on those occasions when they would visit the United States themselves between meetings they would come out to the house; we'd have good visits. As I did when I was over there on purposes other than the Dartmouth Conference. We had some very searching conversations. At these conversations I didn't find as much evidence of the party line as I would in other meetings, including the Dartmouth conferences themselves. That was why I think I wrote that the most effective exchanges were away from the conference table.

BASIAGO

I wanted to explore that point. During the first Dartmouth Conference in 1960, you commented to the Soviets that "censorship in the Soviet Union had a psychological effect on American reporters, which was affecting their coverage of Soviet life." From the very start, did you find any evidence of self-censorship by the Soviet participants?

COUSINS

It was apparent to me that at the regular meetings--the plenaries--there was some degree of orchestration on the Soviet side. It almost appeared that certain people were assigned to cover certain points. I suppose too that there may have been one or two at the table on the Soviet side who were there for the purpose of making sure that the thing wouldn't get out of hand. That, for a long time, was a standard operating procedure. To me the great surprise was not that there was an orchestrated presentation but that, under the circumstances, we didn't have more of the party line.

BASIAGO

Another issue I found that was introduced at the very first conference in 1950 was the issue of American wheat sales to the Soviet Union. I noted in the rapporteur's report that the American side had discussed President [John F.] Kennedy's decision to permit the sale of American wheat to Russia. What role have the conferences played in U.S. grain sales to the Soviets?

COUSINS

Perhaps indirect. We would bring key Soviet participants to Washington and have meetings with government officials, and this probably had as much effect on them as it had on us. But it did represent an additional vantage point from which they could view America and attempt to register their opinions, as well as for us to receive it and advance our own.

BASIAGO

I found many instances, in your addresses to the Soviets--some comments which later found their way into a number of your essays on the conference series--that you often found yourself sort of educating the Soviets about your views regarding the significance of the atomic bomb. In the very first conference, you said, "No truth in the modern world is more difficult to comprehend and act upon than that nuclear warfare is a supreme form of collective suicide." I'm wondering when, during such comments, you discovered that the Soviets had comprehended that the advent of nuclear weapons had represented a qualitative change in the nature of warfare.

COUSINS

Well, I hope I didn't indicate, because it would have been presumptuous for me to have done so, that I was educating anyone. And I doubt that I would use the word, that I "educated" the —

BASIAGO

No, I think that was my commentary or characterization.

COUSINS

What generally happened was that I would become increasingly restive in the chair as the discussion seemed to spiral down into minutiae. "This is what we said, this is what you said." It began to sound more and more like a diplomatic meeting. I would carefully bide my time and then erupt with some such statement as you had there, calling their attention to the fact that we were not there to imitate the diplomats but to address ourselves to what was really the overarching problem. I didn't think we could justify our existence, either at that table or back in our own countries, if we didn't use all our energies and powers of persuasion to do something about the number one problem, both at that table and among the citizens of our countries. That was the one note on my bugle that I would keep playing in conference after conference. Inevitably, there would always come a time when that would be in order to remind us of what our central purpose was. It was interesting to me to see the effect on the Russians of this, because they were extremely responsive to it. If you go through the minutes, you can see they would refer back to it, to the number one issue. But it's very easy to retreat into familiarities--to take comfort in being able to get involved in small issues or intermediate issues. I probably made a pest of myself by coming back to that big question. But also, I would try to do so in the context of the need for both countries to understand what was meant by creating new world institutions. I suppose the Americans were as annoyed or bored with me as were the Russians.

BASIAGO

Reflecting upon many of the things you've incorporated in your work, as a writer and as a political person, did you ever discover that there was a parallel individual in the structured Soviet society? Someone who became very prominent in discussing the advent of the atomic age and the related need for world order?

COUSINS

I kept hoping that the Russians would invite [Andrei D.] Sakharov for precisely that reason. I thought that there was a junction where science, philosophy, and ideology met, and I thought that he would be very comfortable at that junction. Sometimes, [Georgi A.] Arbatov would ascend to that plateau, as he did this last meeting, at the LBJ [Lyndon B. Johnson] ranch. But they seem to be more comfortable on the specifics that they've been schooled in, generally speaking.

BASIAGO

In August of 1961, the USSR announced that threats to its national security were forcing it to break the informal joint testing moratorium. You immediately sent a strongly-worded cable to your friend, Aleksandr Korneichuk, trying to dissuade the Soviet government from a dangerous course, which you felt was filled with hazard for all mankind. I'm wondering, specifically, what impact the communication had, and about other instances when such overtures transcended the actual structure of the conferences .

COUSINS

Well, there were many times when I was upset. I'm talking not about the meetings, but at other times when there 'd be very clear abuses with respect to Sakharov or anyone else. There was one point at which I got so upset that I wanted to quit my participation as cochairman in this. That could have happened half a dozen times. As a matter of fact, once or twice I erupted at the meetings themselves and said that I wondered whether all the effort that we had put into Dartmouth Conference was justified, whether we were all being pulled along by a great undertow. I'm trying to think of some of the specific events. Some of them had to with writers. There was one time I was upset over the treatment of [Aleksandr] Solzhenitsyn. I may have fired off one or two telegrams or cables or more on that, I don't know.

BASIAGO

These would be to their representatives to the conference? A question that I really can't pass up is, I found that a remarkable observer of the human condition, Margaret Mead, joined you at the second Dartmouth Conference in 1961 in the Crimea. How did she view the Russians? Did you have any discussions with her, just anthropologically what her views were, regarding the Soviets and their society?

COUSINS

She had a bone in her throat about me. She had interpreted my Waldorf-Astoria speech almost as a war drum, as a slogan that would lead people in the wrong direction. But she hadn't looked at the context in which I was saying that. At the Waldorf peace conference [Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace (1949)] I tried to explain the dominant position of the American people, as best I understood it. I said, "Americans don't believe in peace at any price." Well, if she had read the next few sentences, she would have understood what I was talking about. While most Americans would go the extra mile for peace, they're not going to surrender their freedoms. But neither will they be oblivious to opportunities to reduce the tensions that could result in a threat to freedom. She had seen the headline in the newspapers. After I gave the talk at the Waldorf, there was a lead story on the front page of the [New York] Times and [New York] Herald Tribune in New York, and there was a cartoon in the [Chicago] Tribune, I believe, where Uncle Sam had a balloon that says, "We don't believe in peace at any price," that sort of thing. So she was taking this at the level of sloganeering, rather than at the level of substance. She never could get that bone out of her throat. She perhaps identified me with people who were obsessed with hate for the Soviet Union. Fortunately, the Russians understood what I was talking about. They never made the mistake of identifying me with unthinking or unfeeling feelings about their country. They knew that I was opposed to communism in the United States. They understood the reasons for it, as I had explicitly said in my talk, and I think they respected it. As a matter of fact, the Russians gave me the impression that they would much rather deal with Americans who believed in their own country--their own system--and were strong in their belief in those values, and articulate, than with people falling all over themselves to advance the Soviet point of view.

BASIAGO

In writing about the Crimean conference, you tell an anecdote about the American group encountering a group of Russians who were taking a rest cure as a result of nervous disorders caused by months of enormous labors, inadequate diets, crowded living quarters, and lack of creature comforts. I imagine, over the long course of this series, you've developed an understanding of the Russian people and their way of life. What are some of the most important things you've learned about their character and culture?

COUSINS

I have to hesitate before assigning characteristics to a collective entity, whether the Russians, or the Americans, or anyone. But just speaking about the people that I met, I seemed to perceive a very great hunger, a craving for contact with the outside world. Almost a desperate need to crack through these crowded walls and low ceilings, and break out, quite literally. They were hungry, especially hungry for contacts with Americans. They are a very human people. I don't think that they particularly relished being told to be very guarded in their contacts with Americans. I don't think they particularly relished limitations with respect to people they could invite into their homes. And all this, I think, figured in this fierce desire to break out. They have a great admiration, I thought, for the United States and for its people. This was almost part of a love-hate relationship: Hate in the sense that we were officially, at times, tagged as enemies, especially under [Joseph] Stalin. They never quite believed, I think, what their government told them about this, and when they had the opportunity to reach out, they would not only do that, but embrace Americans. It's almost a heartbreaking experience to meet with people who have great intellectual capacity, depth of feeling, innate values that we would respect, who were captives in their own country. So the relations with them became rather wistful. I had the feeling that they were looking at me like a little child pressing his nose against a windowpane, looking at things they could never have. There was something in the atmosphere that affected even visitors. This transcended conscious awareness, so much so that when I would get on a plane and the pilot would announce that we'd just crossed the Russian border and we were now in Poland or Czechoslovakia--whatever--even though we were still in Central Europe, just the fact that we were beyond that border produced an astonishing release of the spirit. It's nothing that you could explain, because I didn't go through a process of saying, "Good, I'm out beyond the Russian border, we don't have to worry about being bugged. We don't have to worry about all these other things." But there is, as I say, this spontaneous and almost instinctual response of the spirit to release. I've spoken to other people who have had somewhat the same feelings. If we have them, you can imagine what so many Russians must feel. That is why I was so thrilled at the recent meeting of the Dartmouth Conference when I could see their eyes and hear in their voice the tremendous surge of hopeful energy or energetic hopefulness that came from their expectations of what is happening, might happen, under [Mikhail S.] Gorbachev. The combination of glasnost and perestroika. It was, it seemed to me, as I listened to it in Austin, [Texas], nothing short of a major revolution. When I would use that term in talking to the Russians, they didn't back away from it at all. But their hope, of course, is that it will be a bloodless revolution.

BASIAGO

As I was reading through the American and Soviet statements for the second conference, I found statements-- Perhaps this one is representative. This is from the American side. "Both the United States and the USSR are revolutionary societies concerned with human good." I'm curious about the informational strategy that ' s sort of reflected in the American statements. Was the American side just being diplomatic, or was there a certain intention to the sort of statements they would make, to try to reach certain understandings?

COUSINS

It varied with the individuals. For example, Grenville Clark was extremely sensitive to the impact of Russian history, especially during World War II, on the Russian people in general, and the participants in our meetings in particular. He, and others like him, were always aware of what the psychological bridges might be to the Russian consciousness. That when they would speak about societies with similar historical aspirations, they might be making a distinction in their own minds about the aspiration and the fulfillment. But so long as the aspiration was there, it was possible to construct a bridge over which some intellectual traffic could cross.

BASIAGO

During the first several conferences- -or after them, actually--the Americans felt it important to make the point that the U.S. economy does not really need an arms race in order to prosper. I'm wondering about the strategy of that point. If the two nations were engaged in a competition psychologically, might it be a disincentive for disarmament for the Soviets to realize that we weren't bound by a war economy?

COUSINS

There was a view, not just among Soviet intellectuals but in the United States, that the American people were dependent on military spending for prosperity or even well-being. We didn't get out of the Depression until World War II came along, which either fostered or strengthened this notion. And there was the assumption that the Soviets might feel that we were holding back because of our dependence on military spending for a viable economy. So not just at that meeting, but at meetings over the years, this thing would come up again. We would generally be pretty well armed with information to refute it. There had been a number of studies in the U.S. Seymour Melman and other people, some of them associated with him in various parts of the United States, had made studies showing actually how the economy of the United States might be bolstered if we could free it from these constraints.

BASIAGO

After the second Dartmouth Conference, the Soviets thought it important to declare, "We must forever exorcise war, both small and large wars. Governments should never resort to force or threats. We must employ collective reasoning," etc. I'm wondering to what degree you could gauge that this was just rhetoric on their part, considering some of the abuses of their society, and their policy of wars of liberation around the world? Or, to what degree they were truly moving out of the shadow of Stalinism, when the conference began in the early 1960s?

COUSINS

Probably a mixture. What the exact proportion might be of each, I can't say. Away from the conference table, the balance would shift it seems to me in the direction of a greater opening up or restructuring. At the conference table, I don't think they ever strayed very far in their early days from the official position. Although they might have very clever ways of articulating those positions, so that we could hear between the lines.

BASIAGO

Another comment the Soviets issued after the second conference was, "The Cold War is dangerous, in that it is likely to become hot, and it builds increasing hatreds and tensions, which become more difficult to transcend." Reflecting upon JFK [John F. Kennedy] 's dilemma--he discussed this issue of the hardliners in both nations ratcheting up the arms race--I'm wondering whether the Soviets were aware of this mutually destructive tension and what they were doing about it to cope with it within their own structure? To what degree did the participants at the conferences reflect either a more hawkish or a dovish Soviet position? The American side seemed sensitive to this phenomenon. Were the Soviets?

COUSINS

To a surprising extent that conference was some- thing of an arena of mirror images where the same issues were reviewed in the same way, whatever might be said. That was natural. After all, the Cold War was having a devastating effect on both countries, and we might allow doctrinal differences to distort that reality. But if you were to look at a transcript of what was said on these issues, without respect to who was saying it, looking back on it today you would find it very difficult to know whether it was being advanced by an American or by a Russian.

1.31. TAPE NUMBER: XVI, SIDE TWO (JUNE 28, 1988)

COUSINS

There were, to be sure, almost conditioned reflexes in the way people would respond at the Dartmouth Conference. Especially if it was felt that a point was being scored against the United States, rather than for a common position, or a point was being scored by us against the Soviet Union. Where it becomes necessary to defend home and country, that sort of thing, you had a certain amount of that, perhaps inevitably.

BASIAGO

One thing I found fascinating about the Soviet response to American intellectual life is an apparent tendency to overstress the importance of certain key intellectual leaders or commentators upon the arms race. They mentioned after the second conference their fear of such individuals as [Karl] Jaspers, or [Sidney] Hook, or [Thomas C.] Schelling, or [Herman] Kahn, or [Henry A.] Kissinger. And later they were disturbed by Barry [M.] Goldwater ' s presidential bid in 1964. I see in the mid- seventies they had a problem with Zbigniew Brzezinski's views. Why was this so? They seem like such intelligent people. Were they misinformed, or were they getting limited information?

COUSINS

In that monolithic society, where no one says anything except as it may represent settled government opinion, it was very difficult to recognize that what appeared in the press in the United States did not to some degree reflect the official view--or didn't have some significance officially--either as a trial balloon or as an indication of what was intended. It became very difficult for us to get them to understand the complexity of the American political system, to get them to understand how the press actually worked, to get them to understand that when Goldwater was quoted as saying something, that this was not a reflection of something that was happening in the White House. Their educations were very slow in this respect. But I think that they finally have now developed some sophistication about the United States. I think that the USA and Canadian institute [Institute for United States and Canadian Studies], Arbatov's group, which has been working very steadily now for some years in understanding the United States and applying a weighting system to what appeared in the press-- I think that, as I say, in recent years they've become a little more sophisticated. But for a long time it was very difficult to help them avoid the confusion that came from following events in the United States, statements by prominent Americans or articles in the press. That difficulty, as a matter of fact, was one that Kennedy had to face in his discussions with Khrushchev. Khrushchev would say, "Well, they give me these quotations, this is what your press says." And the president would have to explain that that didn't represent his view, or the official view of the government. Since Khrushchev operated under a different system, it was difficult for him to shift gears, as he had to.

BASIAGO

The overarching issue of the conferences, of course, was preventing nuclear war. I guess you could say there were doctrines on both sides, various doctrines of arms control. They seemed to hit on this issue quite frequently, trying to describe American arms-control advocates as not really believing in general and complete disarmament. What were some of the mutual apprehensions about the arms control doctrines of each side of representatives?

COUSINS

The fascinating thing about the positions of both countries is that they periodically climbed into each other's underwear. You go back over the years, there 'd be one year where the Americans would be advancing a partial position and the Soviet Union a more universal one. Then you'd have terms like general and complete disarmament advanced by one and rejected by the other. And you can track this. It would be interesting to see what a psychograph would show of all these positions. You'd realize at times that the position at any one time was actually a maneuvering tactic. That if the United States was bent on resisting cutbacks or ceilings, but didn't want, for public opinion purposes--not just here but in the world--to make that explicit, we would raise the antes so that the Russians would be responsible for refusal. Vice- versa, they would do the same thing. It was very difficult, many times, to know exactly what the real objective was. It's difficult now, even with all the meetings that have taken place, and the various pronouncements, even with the INF [Intermediate Range Nuclear Force Treaty]. While there's some clarity--certainly more clarity than there was some years ago, concerning the basic intentions, what was it we really wanted, what was it the Russians really wanted--I don't think that all the murkiness has been dissipated. It's hard to tell whether items that are being put on the table are there because they're obsolete and were not of much consequence anyway, or whether other things are taking their place. So we've had, for some years now, bargaining based on actual or anticipated obsolescence and point-scoring. It's been very hard to identify areas involving genuine substance in bringing these weapons under control. But certainly, the INF Treaty took a bite. It was not just shadowboxing, to mix a metaphor. The ICBMs [intercontinental ballistic missiles] would be even more so, if that is concluded. So I don't think we must allow the accumulation of past suspicions to obscure present possibilities.

BASIAGO

I noted that very early both nations were very concerned about the expanding atomic club and, as the Russians described it, the problem of the Nth country engaging in expanding nuclear proliferation. What concrete strategies were developed by the Dartmouth Conference for superpower cooperation, regarding the growing number of nuclear nations?

COUSINS

We were wringing our hands in two languages. Neither country was willing to face up to the reality that you can't expect other countries to forego what you have just because you want them to, or because it would be disadvantageous to you to have them proceed. Not until we were willing to give up would it be realistic to expect others to forego. So the conferees would generally be confined, as I say, to handwringing. "Oh, the hell and the shame of it." And, "Isn't this a threat to both of us?" "Oh, yes it is." And then, "How do you persuade them not to do it?" It became a matter of persuasion rather than a plan of action in which we would be part of the equation ourselves.

BASIAGO

Various ideas have taken shape over the past several decades regarding the problem of nuclear proliferation. Such things as a joint U.S.-Soviet crisis center. Was the Dartmouth Conference responsible for any innovations in thought regarding the problem of nuclear proliferation?

COUSINS

I don't think so. I don't think that they came to terms with the basic facts, namely that you can't control weapons at the point of numbers. Weapons are the result of underlying situations. These underlying situations are related to the exercise of unfettered national sovereignty, mutual insecurity, tensions genuine or artificial. That you really had to address yourself to the need for effective world order if you're going to get adequate control over weapons. You had to control the circumstances which would result in their use. That was where I would put on my federalist cap. I didn't see how they could make any fundamental progress unless they had a fundamental change in the concept of what security required. After I had advanced this point of view--I tried to do it as logically as possible, and historically-- everyone would listen very respectfully. Then after two or three minutes, they'd jump back into the familiar we-or- they arguments.

1.32. TAPE NUMBER: XVII, SIDE ONE (JULY 6, 1988)

BASIAGO

To continue our discussion on the Dartmouth Conference, fifteen minutes into the third Dartmouth Conference, President [John F.] Kennedy [JFK] went on television to discuss the ramifications of the discovery of Soviet nuclear weapons on Cuba. As the thirteen-day Cuban Missile Crisis ensued, Andover [Massachusetts] became, as you described it, "One of the few places in the world where Americans and Russians were talking, walking, and eating together." I was wondering--

COUSINS

And also trying to find a resolution together.

BASIAGO

I wanted to gauge the extent of that and the degree to which that particular meeting moved up to the level of first-level negotiation. According to Gail Warner and Michael Schuman, in their work Citizen Diplomats: Pathfinders in Soviet-American Relations and How You Can Join Them, much of what was said at the conferences was rapidly relayed to government officials on both sides. Did the participants become actual intermediaries for the superpowers at that point?

COUSINS

Not officially. Nor were we requested to get specific answers to specific questions. But some specific things did come up. For example. Father Felix [P.] Morlion, the president of Pro Deo University in Rome, whom I had known in other connections, came to Andover with a message from the Vatican. Pope John XXIII, recognizing the gravity of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and recognizing, too, that its effects would be felt far beyond the nations directly involved, wanted to appeal to the leaders of both countries to draw back out of a common respect for the right of other people to live. By drawing back, he proposed specifically that the Soviet Union withdraw the shipping and the United States withdraw the blockade. Shemienko and [George K.] Zhukov, I think, relayed that message to the Kremlin and received word that the Soviet Union would welcome such a statement. The pope didn't want to make any proposal that would be turned down, you see. I telephoned the White House, and then got a call back from [Theodore C.] Sorensen, saying that the president asked me to thank the pope and to say that he recognized, as did the pope, the implications of what was happening, and realized, too, that the entire world was involved and not just the two contending nations. But the president insisted that the issue was not really the shipping or the blockade. The issue was the existence of Soviet missiles on Cuban soil. That this is what posed the threat, as the president saw it. He asked the pope to realize that if the missiles didn't come down by Saturday at six o'clock, the United States would have to knock them down. But JFK encouraged the pope, nonetheless, to proceed with his public declaration, with respect to the responsibility of all parties. This the pope did, although he omitted the request with respect to shipping and blockade, just called attention to the gravity of the crisis, and called on both countries to recognize a higher mandate than national concerns alone. That was one specific example where the conference was something of a switchboard. But the governments did not use that conference to advance positions or to get reactions to them.

BASIAGO

You've outlined your involvement, as you've described it in The Improbable Triumvirate: John F. Kennedy, Pope John, Nikita Khrushchev. I'm wondering about this reference that Warner and Schuman make, that many of the participants in that particular meeting were feverishly working to exchange information with their governments. Was anyone else busy, besides yourself, serving as a switchboard?

COUSINS

That description, "feverishly working," conjures up images of the conferees darting in and out and rushing to telephones, almost like reporters at the World Series. The conferees stayed at their posts. I wasn't aware of anything of a feverish nature. But we did have people who were very close to government. You have the list of those who were at that conference, so you can see that there were people there with a sense of responsibility, who were using the information at their disposal for possible benefit to their governments. I have no doubt of that. But I was not aware of any hyperactive situation that would justify the use of the term "feverishly."

BASIAGO

In addressing the conference during the crisis, Grenville Clark called for a "strong world police force, world tribunals, a world development authority, and a world revenue system." I notice this was a key moment, where the basic structure of world federalism was advocated- -perhaps the premier instance, in terms of a pressing historical event occurring at the same time. How did the Soviets respond now that the need for such institutions was set in such telling relief by the crisis?

COUSINS

As I think I told you earlier, Grenville Clark made a profound impression on the Russians. He did so because he was smart enough to realize that he would talk to them in terms of their own experience with war and would not superimpose views that were developed in another context. When he began to speak--and it's still very vivid in my mind--he spoke of the [siege] of Leningrad, he spoke of the suffering of the Soviet people, he spoke of the proximity of the German advance to Moscow, and he demonstrated that he had a real sense of what that experience meant to the Russian people. Once having done that, there wasn't anything that he could not have had. That was what made Grenville Clark a great man, because he had no difficulty in putting himself in your position. You knew that he was representing you. Yes, his talk did make a strong impression on them. They were not, of course, in a position to move forward with his suggestions, any more than he was in a position to dictate to the American government. But this is how public opinion works.

BASIAGO

I notice that, just generally speaking, the conference began composed primarily of cultural leaders, and then there was a gradual shift toward political, economic, and even military representatives. How and why did this occur? And just generally over time, how have those forces ebbed and flowed? For instance, I notice in the mid-seventies, there were several generals and several U.S. officials involved in defense policy who found their way into this conference room.

COUSINS

This was a natural evolution. We began with citizens of both countries getting to know each other. But as we went along, and specific issues were involved in the confrontation between the two countries-- And realizing that we could not avoid addressing ourselves to these issues, but neither would it be responsible for us to do so without the fullest knowledge of what was involved-- That led, perhaps inevitably, to people in both delegations who had been or were very close to government and who dealt with these very problems while they were in government. But when the context changed from official discussion to unofficial discussion, and there could be more frankness, because there was no penalty to either side, you discovered that their experience in handling these issues officially was really an asset in the discussions, just as being able to go much further in these informal discussions was an asset to the governments. As people who were in the governments would come back, and we would have briefing sessions--or debriefing sessions--the Dartmouth Conference became institutionalized. I think that figured increasingly in the general preparations of both countries for their meetings with one another or in policies. We felt that in discussing military matters it was important to bring to the conference responsible military leaders who were no flamethrowers, who were very knowledgeable, restrained, who were genuinely searching for alternatives. General [David C.] Jones, for example, made a profound impression on the Russians, because of his moderateness, his realization of the folly of nuclear war. Well, that was part of our evolution, and it was inevitable that people who made a profound impression on these conferees on both sides would be called back, and that we'd get others like them. The military never really dominated the conferences, any more than ex-under secretaries of state, or national security advisers like [Zbigniew] Brzezinski, or men like [Helmut] Sonnenfeldt, [Henry A.] Kissinger's right-hand man. But they represented a good resource, and their effect was, on the whole, very constructive.

BASIAGO

You mentioned, when last we spoke, that David Rockefeller played an increasingly important role in the conference series. What was he seeking to achieve through his participation in the conferences?

COUSINS

The same that I was seeking to achieve and everyone else was seeking to achieve- -improved access, a chance to eliminate misunderstandings, a chance to learn, to contribute perhaps a smidgen to the chances for peace.

BASIAGO

I noted, when reviewing the conference dates, that the conferences weren't held in the years 1965, '66, '67, and '68. Why not? Why didn't it occur during these critical years of the Vietnam crisis? How did the continuity break down after 1964?

COUSINS

The Soviet position towards Dartmouth meetings tended to reflect the temperature of the Cold War. On our side it was the same. During the Jimmy [James E.] Carter administration, for example, a specific objection was raised to holding one of the Dartmouth conferences, because official policy was not to be talking to the Russians. I felt, and David Rockefeller agreed, that the government misread the purpose and the usefulness of these meetings, which was to serve as a bridge even when the governments were not talking or when there was a breakdown. And that it was important to maintain a lifeline, not despite these breaks on the official level, but because of them. So we went ahead, despite the opposition of the Carter administration. I think that that demonstrated to the Russians, as did nothing else, that we were in fact an independent body, even though we did have access to government, and even though we had people who were very close to it--as I say, former officials in the State Department or the military, or in other branches of government. Governments can be little children at times. All the immaturity that one sees in squabbles among kids are present, omnipresent, one should say, in the dealings among nations.

BASIAGO

So you were working throughout the [Lyndon B.] Johnson years to keep the conferences on track?

COUSINS

Yes.

BASIAGO

Did you have any particular adversaries within the administration who were trying to squash the conferences?

COUSINS

No.

BASIAGO

It seems that it took a while to get them back on track.

COUSINS

Bill [D.] Moyers was very close to the president, and he understood those issues. McGeorge Bundy was supportive, and he played an active role in these meetings. We had no trouble. Brzezinski, as a matter of fact, took part in one at the time, just before the Carter administration, when the probability of his appointment as national security adviser had been pretty well bruited about and the Russians were aware of it. This was a very interesting and useful experience for Brzezinski, as he himself said.

BASIAGO

I notice that he observed several times during his participation with the conferences that the primary concern of the superpowers should be to institutionalize their activities at greater and greater levels. Yet he remained one of the chief people the Soviets seemed afraid of. Why was that? He seemed to rank with Barry Goldwater and Herman Kahn and some of the others.

COUSINS

He was assiduously courted in Moscow when he went there with the Dartmouth Conference and on the trip. He himself was very much impressed with the attention that was paid to him. He would talk about it, and I think that his participation was not without educational value for him. He was able actually to meet with Russians and reason things with them. It was very useful in that sense. It was useful for me, too. Because he told me that he had had the mistaken impression that I was one of the softies. Then when he heard me holding to a certain position very frankly and very openly, he recognized that the fact that I believed in having access to the Russians didn't mean that we had to tell them everything they wanted to hear,

BASIAGO

The Dartmouth conferences during the [Richard M.] Nixon- [Leonid I.] Brezhnev years took place at Rye, New York, in 1969; at Kiev in 1971; back at Hanover [New Hampshire] in 1972; and in Soviet Georgia in 1974. Generally speaking, what were the compelling issues during these conferences? And I'm wondering, given that during four years of the Vietnam crisis there were no meetings, what impact did these meetings have on the latter stages of the Vietnam War and the Vietnam peace process?

COUSINS

Did you say that there were no meetings for four years?

BASIAGO

I couldn't find any--

COUSINS

I can't remember when there was a four-year hiatus .

BASIAGO

I couldn't find any files or rosters for the late sixties, for the whole Johnson--

COUSINS

Did you check with the [Charles F.] Kettering Foundation about this?

BASIAGO

No, I didn't.

COUSINS

Why don't you check with Kettering, because they put out a brochure on the Dartmouth conferences, that you ought to see.

BASIAGO

Well, there have been some missing years--

COUSINS

Yes, but not four years successively.

BASIAGO

Hmm.

COUSINS

Yes, there were missing years. And then we developed the concept of special interests, of subject groups, and they met during the intervals.

BASIAGO

I just saw the fifth Dartmouth Conference represented as being in 1969, in Rye, New York. Perhaps there's a missing block in your files.

COUSINS

What was the previous one?

BASIAGO

In 1964 in Leningrad.

COUSINS

From 1964 to '69? No.

BASIAGO

Were they meeting in terms of work groups, but there was no--

COUSINS

No, there would be a plenary between.

BASIAGO

A plenary? Well, I realize that by 1988 you were on Dartmouth [Conference] fifteen or so?

COUSINS

No, this one that was just held was Dartmouth sixteen, wasn't it?

BASIAGO

Oh, yeah, Dartmouth sixteen. So that would be--

COUSINS

Well, let's count it off.

BASIAGO

That would be twelve missing years in twenty- eight.

COUSINS

What was that?

BASIAGO

Wouldn't that be twelve missing years in twenty- eight?

COUSINS

That would be twelve missing years over thirty, almost thirty; we were alternating. But I don't think we had five successive years without a meeting, that's all I'm saying.

BASIAGO

Well, I know throughout Nixon 's--

COUSINS

Here, let's start. Nineteen sixty at Dartmouth. Nineteen sixty-one and '62 in Yalta. Nineteen sixty- three --

BASIAGO

At Phillip's Academy in Andover.

COUSINS

Andover, that's right. That was the Cuban Missile Crisis. Nineteen sixty-four, in Leningrad. That's four.

BASIAGO

I have that jumping to a Rye, New York, meeting in 1969.

COUSINS

All right, that's five. Go on.

BASIAGO

And then you were back two years later in Kiev in '71.

COUSINS

Six.

BASIAGO

And then in '72 you were back at Hanover where you had started.

COUSINS

Seven.

BASIAGO

Soviet Georgia in 1974.

COUSINS

Eight.

BASIAGO

Moscow in '75.

COUSINS

Nine.

BASIAGO

Rio Rico, Arizona, in '76.

COUSINS

Ten.

BASIAGO

Then you had that memorable meeting in Jermala, Latvia, in 1977.

COUSINS

Eleven.

BASIAGO

Williamsburg, Virginia, in '79.

COUSINS

Twelve.

BASIAGO

Moscow in 1981.

COUSINS

Thirteen.

BASIAGO

Then you were back at Hanover in 1984.

COUSINS

Fourteen.

BASIAGO

Then you had a meeting-- I'm not really certain where that last one was. Was that back in Moscow, number fifteen? The one before the Texas conference.

COUSINS

We may be missing one somewhere, but I-- My memory may be faulty, but it's hard for me to realize that there's a five-year gap.

BASIAGO

It seemed that the correspondence was continued, but I couldn't find any instance of official meetings during the heart of the Johnson years and the early years of the Vietnam peace process negotiations.

COUSINS

Well, let's look at possible reasons for that, if it were true. The State Department was out as a source of support; they stopped it. The Ford Foundation was no longer active. We did get, I think, some money from the Rockefeller Foundation--not until Kettering moved in. And Kettering's first meeting, I think, was at Rye, wasn't that?

BASIAGO

Did you ever get any reasons why some of the institutional support was removed?

COUSINS

No. But Kettering was not the sole supporter in '69, as I remember it. But the way in which the Kettering Foundation has developed, the conference has been really inspiring to me, especially under David [0.] Mathews. Because he's gone at this thing very systematically, very knowledgeably, and he's been interested in pay dirt. He wanted to see radiating effects of this. He's brought the public into it and persuaded the Russians to do the same. This last one was the high point, of course, both in terms of the caliber of participants and also in terms of supplementary activities--bringing in the public, which they did in Austin and also in Los Angeles. Then, too, Mathews has developed the concept of the task force, from that of a holding company for the plenaries, to groups which had genuine substance in their own right. Their own agendas. We have some cumulative progress.

BASIAGO

I noted that [R.] Buckminster Fuller joined you during Dartmouth [Conference] four and Dartmouth [Conference] five in the 1950s. Did you meet Buckminster Fuller through the conferences?

COUSINS

No, I had known Bucky for a long time.

BASIAGO

What are your recollections of his contributions to the dialogue?

COUSINS

One episode, perhaps, may be representative of his participation. Was he at Rio Rico or the one before that?

BASIAGO

I believe he was at the 1964 conference in Leningrad.

COUSINS

Yes.

BASIAGO

Or, no-- Was he there during the missile crisis?

COUSINS

No.

BASIAGO

He was there in 1954, along with Franklin [D.] Murphy and--

COUSINS

Yes, Norton Simon.

BASIAGO

--J. K. [John Kenneth] Galbraith and David Rockefeller. This is where the Soviets expressed their fears about Herman Kahn's book, On Thermonuclear War.

COUSINS

There was one night when we would usually be regaled in entertainment at Leningrad. [Aleksandr E.] Korneichuk and I--I think it was Korneichuk--said "Let's have--"

1.33. TAPE NUMBER: XVIII, SIDE ONE (JULY 13, 1988)

BASIAGO

When we were last talking, you were beginning an anecdote about [R.] Buckminster Fuller, one night at either the Leningrad Dartmouth [College] Conference in 1964, or at Rye, New York, in 1969. You remembered some--

COUSINS

Yes. Usually, we would have entertainment during the evenings. At Dartmouth, for example, the Dartmouth men's choir came on. In the Soviet Union they would have troupes borrowed from folk dancing, concerts and the like. We had one night that was free. [Aleksandr E.] Korneichuk suggested that we take our futurists--each country, each delegation would have its best futurist--and look at the year 2000. Ground rules: fifteen minutes precisely--or as they say, precis-e-ly, they put an extra syllable in it--and then general discussion. The Soviet futurist spoke first, [Evgeny K.] Fedorov, out of the Academy [of Sciences] . It was a very measured, fact-laden recital, dry but solid. In precisely fifteen minutes, according to the rules, he sat down. Bucky was our futurist. But I had to go over the ground with him very carefully, because, usually, Bucky is still standing in the doorway after fifteen minutes, and hasn't even taken off his coat, and that's about a half an hour. But he understood the ground rules. Bucky was magnificent. When the end of fifteen minutes approached, I began to take out my watch, but Fedorov restrained me. He said, "This is superb. I've never heard anything like it. Please don't interrupt him." And then, after about twenty-five minutes, Bucky was still going. "No, no, don't interrupt him." Finally, Bucky finished, and Fedorov turned to me. He said, "It is no contest. Mr. Full-yer wins, as you say, 'hands down.' Absolutely superb. Tell me, what did he say?" [laughter] Bucky communicates without meaning. He gets you to fall in love with the universe, but if you're asked to do a precise summary, it may not be as easy as generating the enthusiasm for what he said. But the Russians loved him--as American audiences do--just because he gives you a feeling that you've made no mistake in being born a member of the human species.

BASIAGO

I'd just like to clarify, for the historical record, when you met him. I know that you had a great deal of involvement, particularly after the Dartmouth conferences in the sixties. Did you go all the way back to New York City, when he was still rather unknown, writing for Shelter magazine and--

COUSINS

Bucky was a very good friend of Chris [Christopher] Morley, on the [Saturday] Review [of Literature] . Shortly after I came to the magazine, he came up. Chris still had his office in the magazine. As a matter of fact, I have Chris Morley's desk at home. Chris introduced me, and thereafter we had lunch several times. We just got involved in similar enterprises and became very close. I'd go up to Maine with the family to visit his island, which is really something of a shrine. I think he called it Bear Island, but I'm not sure. One year, we decided to vacation on a boat, had a little crew, and sailed from Portsmouth [New Hampshire] in Penobscot Bay to Bucky's island, which took a few hours. As our sailing ship came into view, Bucky waved to us from his private pier, and we got in the ship's rowboats. When I came on the dock, Bucky came running up to me, splay-footed, from the other end of the dock. His eyes were shimmering like watermelon pits in agitated olive oil. He said, "The most wonderful thing has happened." I said, "What happened?" He said, "You wouldn't believe it." I said, "I'll believe it. Tell me, what happened?" He said, "I just discovered the coordinates to the universe!" [laughter] I don't know very many people who discover the coordinates to the universe .

BASIAGO

Quite a phenomenon.

COUSINS

We were on many such jaunts. He asked me to help him with an organization that would support his work. Neva Rockefeller, who met Bucky at Leningrad, was very eager to help him. So was Glenn Olds. But what it required, of course, was money, an awful lot of it. I went to visit Bucky once in the hospital, and he was then writing Critical Path. Here he was, I don't know whether he had fever or not, but his nurse wanted him to be quiet. He said, "Let me read something to you." I said, "Bucky, I don't want you straining yourself," little realizing that anything he read of his own work would not be a strain. He read it, finished it, put it down, and then said, to my great surprise, "Let me read it again to you." [laughter] He could not be faulted for inadequate appreciation of his own work! One time, after he lectured at Yale [University], he received very substantial applause, and then, after a while, silence. He said, "You know, this is the first time in four years when I have not received a standing ovation for my talk." At which point, of course, the audience rose. He said, "No, it's too late." On another occasion, I received a telephone call at home from a woman on Sunday. It was about noon. She said, "I've done something terrible, and only you can save me." I said, "What happened?" She said, "Some time ago, we asked Bucky Fuller if he'd talk for our New Canaan [Connecticut] community. He said, 'That's Norman's home- town.' We said, 'Yes.' He said, 'I'll come on the condition that Norman introduce me. ' Somehow it fell between the cracks and no one called you. I just assumed that Arthur would invite you, and he just assumed that I would--or call you about it--to introduce Bucky. And now we discover that no one phoned you, and he'll be coming here at two o'clock." I said, "I would love to do it, but we've got company coming at four." She said, "Well, that's wonderful. In that case, then you'll be able to introduce Bucky, listen to his lecture, and get back in time for your company." I said, "I don't think that it works out that way with Bucky's talks." Well, we finally agreed that I would introduce him, and then go down into the audience immediately, so I could slip out in order to get back to the house by four. Which I did. At a quarter to four, I slipped out. At five- thirty, I got a call from the lady, saying that there's a slight problem. I said, "What is it?" She said, "Mr. Fuller is still speaking." I said, "Is the audience still there?" She said, "Yes." I said, "Then there's no problem." "But there is, because the auditorium is committed to another group at six o'clock." I said, "Well, why not have Mr. Fuller make the announcement that if anyone wants to continue with him, they all go into the art rooms next door, and you can just pull back the retractable doors and have enough space for a couple hundred people." "Good idea." So she passed Bucky a note, thinking that he would end it right there. But no, he said he'd continue the talk in the art rooms next door. They had pushed back the door. At six forty-five, this woman was on the phone again. "Mr. Fuller is still talking, " she said, [laughter] I said, "What about the audience?" She said, "Oh, they're all there." I said, "Then there's no problem." She said, "No, but there is. They're going to close the school down at seven thirty." I said, "In that case, why not, at a quarter to seven, pass him a note and inform him of that fact." At about a little before eight o'clock, a procession of cars drove into our driveway. Bucky was in the lead car. He came into the house. "It was wonderful," he said. "I was able to round out my talk so beautifully at the end. But I think they wanted more." [laughter]

BASIAGO

He developed this scenario of man becoming a universal economic success, and I guess in that context he interpreted the arms race. I really have two questions regarding that idea. One is, in all the years that you knew him, did you get the idea that this was more a fanciful or mythological understanding that he was developing? Or did you have faith in the cogency and reality and proof that he could muster in behalf of his vision? And the second question is sort of a follow-up. What did his vision of a world-unified society, where you could have "four billion billionaires," etc., contribute to your understanding of the arms race and other world issues?

COUSINS

As I say, when you listened to Bucky, whether in the audience, or one-on-one, his enthusiasm far outran the content, at least to me, perhaps to others. But every once in a while he would come down with something very tangible, such as a geodesic dome. And it worked. Or his tetrahedron structure, and it worked. I had to conclude that the fault was mine, rather than Bucky's . He wrote a piece for the Saturday Review, summing up his ideas. He did it in free verse. He wanted it to be set typographically as a poem in italics. Well, this didn't go down too well with the other editors on the staff, especially with the poetry editor. He said, "This is not poetry. Therefore it should not be disguised or housed as poetry." But I did, I ran it in the form that Bucky wanted. He put everything he had into it. The readers were very enthusiastic about it--it got some very good letters--but most of the readers said, "I just wish I knew what he was talking about!"

BASIAGO

Was there any cross-fertilization of his views in your work? It seems as if you were coming from a different tradition, sort of the heritage we spoke of, in the thirties and forties, and looking into the arms manufacturers, and--

COUSINS

Well, you see, I was trained to believe that words have specific functions, the most important of which is meaning, and that you connect words to each other in the clearest possible way. That murkiness, whether unintentional or calculated, is poor writing at best and at worst incompetence. But after a while, I realized that I had to make an exception for Bucky in this respect, as in all respects. So after a while I began to take Bucky on faith. He sent three copies of his Critical Path, when he discovered that I hadn't seen the first one. Then he called Ellen [Kopf Cousins] and she couldn't put her hands on the second one. He delivered a third one to the house, impressing on her the fact not only that this was the best book he ever wrote, but quite likely the best book that anyone ever wrote. Even that recommendation was insufficient for me to comprehend everything that he was saying. But behind the verbiage, the words you say, were some settled facts or opinions, one of which was that the earth could not only support its present population, but a population several times larger, if necessary. That we didn't have a plan, we didn't have a game. He had a "World Game," you see. He felt that the resource of the human mind, the first resource--and I had no argument with him about that--could meet all existing problems. He used his brain to show how this could be done. I had no doubt that he was right, which is that it was possible. But unfortunately, the mechanisms for doing it had to be filtered through contrasting political systems. I felt that sufficiency was a product of a total approach that included governance- - especially with respect to conflict among nations. I felt that the resources that were necessary for his "World Game" were certainly attainable, and that the conversion of them into plenty was doable, but he tended to bypass all the intermediate mechanisms, especially the political ones.

BASIAGO

He, in fact, described it as myopia to even consider the political dimension of these problems.

COUSINS

Yes. I didn't attach monopoly value to the political process, but so long as the world was organized into these sovereign units, and so long as so large a part of the earth's resources were being drawn off into the consequences of those separate units, especially with respect to war machines, I didn't see how you could ever develop a plan for plenty. But that was the difference between us. It was not a difference that caused us any difficulty in our relationships. I just made a point of not disagreeing with Bucky. I saw no point in it. I could absorb what there was of value to be absorbed let it go at that--was grateful for it.

BASIAGO

Bringing it back to the Dartmouth Conference. On the agenda for the conferences from the very start was the issue of the role of the U.S. and the USSR in the economic development of the emerging nations. In writing about the conferences, you frequently discussed the Soviet bias--that the U.S. would, they felt, fail in its quest for world leadership, because it lacked the economic philosophy to appeal to Third World citizens trapped in economic feudalism. Did the dialogue at the conferences result in any significant victories in terms of redirecting the efforts of the superpowers in the area of Third World development?

COUSINS

The most important thing that developed out of the Dartmouth conferences (and I don't know whether they could be called victories or not) was the very strong realization that the differences that were described and reflected at these meetings were really not a barrier to world survival, human survival. That there was a wavelength on which both countries could broadcast and be heard.

BASIAGO

You mentioned how the Andover conference in 1962 served as a "diplomatic back channel" during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Have any other conferences flowed with information as a diplomatic back channel at the same level of intensity or importance?

COUSINS

Not with the same intensity. After Cuba, we had Angola. We had the breakdown in the Near East, the Six Day War, and so forth. I can't think of a time, in fact, when there wasn't something going of major concern to both countries. The meetings may not have been at a fever heat, but they certainly demonstrated the need for the Soviet Union and the United States to be talking seriously.

BASIAGO

I'm wondering if the 1969 and '71 conferences directly contributed to President [Richard M.] Nixon's May, 1972 visit to Moscow, which the Soviets seemed to hold in high esteem for quite a long while as an important milestone.

COUSINS

I don't know whether we had any part in that. But there's no doubt in my mind that he made a profound impression on the Russian people. So much so that when he had to withdraw from the presidency because of Watergate, the Russians were shocked beyond words. It was difficult to explain to them why the United States would want to deprive itself of such a fine president. There was no American in recent history, with the exception of FDR [Franklin D. Roosevelt], who made as fine an impression on the Russians as Nixon did. They couldn't understand why, as I say, we would allow Watergate to deprive us of that kind of leadership.

BASIAGO

A general trend I noted--perhaps it's too interpretive on my part- -but perhaps there is some difference here that developed. Taking Dartmouth five as an example, it seemed that the contributions of the American delegates were largely expansive. For instance, in Dartmouth five you have Franklin [D.] Murphy recommending the need for exchange of scholars, you have Bucky's spontaneous discourses, you have Patricia Roberts Harris discussing the need to exchange families, and these sort of things. I find in that conference, and in many others, the Soviets in a more recriminatory sort of mind- set: Georgi [A.] Arbatov critical of Zbigniew Brzezinski's idea promoting evolutionary changes in the Soviet Union; Boris [N.] Polevoi talking about the need for the publication of Russian books. Generally, was this difference in the attitudes shared between the two sets of delegates?

COUSINS

What you may have missed there was the moderating influence of other Americans who may not have agreed fully with what their colleagues were saying. Generally, the Americans didn't go at the Russians as a block or a team. The Americans were there as individuals, who could agree or disagree with everyone at the table, Americans or Russians. The Soviets, however- -this may be responsive to your question--seemed to be an entity, and seemed to be orchestrated, certainly in those middle years of the Dartmouth Conference, when we began to get into serious issues.

BASIAGO

It seemed like an issue of optimism, sometimes, versus pessimism. I guess you've ascribed their defensiveness, perhaps, to a group strategy.

COUSINS

Sure, sure.

BASIAGO

During Dartmouth five, the issue of Middle East peace emerged, as it did may times thereafter. You suggested the crucial need for third-party mediation in the Middle East.

COUSINS

Yes.

BASIAGO

What other Middle East peace proposals have you made during the Dartmouth conferences, and what significant ideas have been contributed by others, regarding the Middle East problem?

COUSINS

Let me answer your first question. I regarded all the issues we discussed at the Dartmouth conferences as dramatic support for the proposition that these two countries couldn't settle these problems by themselves, nor should they be expected to. By an authoritative third party, I was thinking not just of a mediator, but of a mechanism which could deal with the specific situations, even though the participating countries might not themselves agree. That's what law is--something that transcends interested parties, especially lawbreakers. So I would keep hammering at that principle, year in and year out. I would not have blamed the Russians or the Americans if they had just politely left the table, because they'd heard it before. But they were very polite, and they didn't.

BASIAGO

During Dartmouth six, in 1971, the issue of ecological preservation emerged for the first time. At this conference. Dr. Thomas [F.] Malone of the University of Connecticut and academician E. K. Fedorov delivered papers on environmental issues of international concern, and particularly the interaction of man and the environment. What was the outcome of the dialogue about the environment begun between the U.S. and the USSR at Kiev?

COUSINS

Context. The mid-sixties was the period in which the word "environment" came into the vocabulary, not just as a neighborhood, but as the delicate balance of factors that could sustain life. You probably recall that in '66, I headed the New York City commission that set up the first major environmental control official body. I'd been trying, from the mid-sixties, to get the question of the environment as the main topic. And two or three meetings later that eventuated. The Russians, if my memory is correct, tended to regard this as a problem that was peculiar to the capitalist world. That industrial waste, or military waste, would be handled with respect to cost that would affect profit, and therefore society could expect to suffer. Whereas, in the people's society, the decision would always be automatic in the people's favor. Such at least was the general context with which they seemed to react to what was being said. But the whole concept of the world as a single ecosystem, where the plankton in the seas if destroyed would affect oxygen levels for them as well as for everyone else; the fact that a sudden thaw in the ice cap because of a hothouse reaction would produce tidal waves--this was not yet in their thinking a major problem. So when they listened to us, I had the feeling that they thought we were just being autobiographical. They could be properly sympathetic, but for themselves they didn't see it as something that could occur in their society. In subsequent years, however, that has changed. Lake Baikal, which is one of the key natural assets of the Russians, began to be contaminated. This came as a very great shock to the Russians, because it's the deepest lake of its kind in the world. The contamination of that lake, as news of it began to seep out, was deeply disturbing. Since that time, especially under [Mikhail S.] Gorbachev, environmental issues have tended to come front and center. So I have no doubt that if that were the topic of discussion today, there would be more of a tendency to regard it as a common problem than as one that is the product of ideology.

BASIAGO

I was wondering. I found as late as the early eighties Jacques [-Yves] Cousteau was identifying the Soviet's environmental policies as the worst in the world. You seem to suggest that there's a more hopeful outlook under Gorbachev.

COUSINS

Yes, much more.

BASIAGO

Regarding Dartmouth seven in 1972, I found that David Rockefeller's working group negotiated in such areas of U.S. -Soviet trade as pricing, credits, and monetary control. I'm wondering, given his chairmanship of Chase Manhattan Bank, etc., who he was representing? Was he representing the U.S. government or American private commercial interests? Was he consulting with the [United States] Department of Commerce and other public agencies at this time?

COUSINS

I don't think he was representing anyone. He's strong enough as an individual to be mindful of all the multiple factors involved. He's aware of the interests of the United States, aware of interests of the private sector, to be sure. He tends to bring all these factors together and gives a proportionate account. The Russians are far more attentive when he speaks than to anyone else on the delegation. All their notebooks come out--they listen very keenly. His own presentations are very balanced, very sober, very respectful of the Soviet problems and difficulties, which the Russians appreciate. I think they are prepared, almost, to take anything he says on faith.

BASIAGO

A stumbling block through the early 1970s-- something discussed at the conferences at great length--was the issue of U.S. congressional approval of Most-Favored- Nation status for the Soviet Union and its attendant linkage to the issue of emigration from the Soviet Union. What was your particular position on that issue? Were you willing to forego the emigration?

COUSINS

No, but let me go back a bit. The momentum of the experience with Rockefeller was still pushing me along, and I began to think of the '74 meeting. McGeorge Bundy and Bill [D.] Moyers had brought me in to see the president [Lyndon B. Johnson] knowing what I had done on behalf of President [John F.] Kennedy. They thought that this would be a very good opportunity to get across a point of view on the Vietnam War. I was asked to tell [Nikita S.] Khrushchev that the United States was interested in a nonmilitary settlement of the war. Did I talk about this?

BASIAGO

I believe so, where you had Rockefeller leave for Moscow?

COUSINS

Then you got that--that was the thing that came to mind. So we'll skip over that. With respect to emigration and Most-Favored-Nation, it was very difficult to separate these issues, or other issues. If the Americans were pressing for something, there was a natural tendency to say to the Russians, "You can't expect much progress while this is going on," or, "You've got to understand what the effect is on Congress of the reduced visas." At Dartmouth, for example, we had our tenth anniversary, I guess it was, or the tenth meeting. We had some congressmen there. Mo [Morris K. ] Udall was one of them, and Senator [Charles M.] Mathias [Jr.], maybe, was there.

BASIAGO

Oh, at Williamsburg? In '79?

COUSINS

Well, no, this would be at Dartmouth. Earlier than that.

BASIAGO

Oh, in '72?

COUSINS

Yes. There was a shutdown of Jewish emigration after a very large exodus the previous year. I think the previous year, or two years earlier, it was almost up to a hundred thousand. Then suddenly it shut down again. Nixon was then in office, I believe, is that right? It seemed to us that the Russians didn't understand the impact of that entire Jewish question, not only to respect emigration in general, but [Natan] Scharansky in particular, and some individual cases. So we arranged for the Russians to bring a group of key people to meet with people in the administration, including Pete [Peter G.] Peterson, who was then secretary of commerce. I think the Russians really understood this problem with respect to all its parts. After they went back, I got the message from Arbatov that I'd be pleased by what was going to happen. They did open up again. At Dartmouth that year, the Dartmouth students put on some demonstrations on that issue, and I think the Russians were rather startled--perhaps even shocked--by the depth of feeling. I don't think that they believed that Americans felt that deeply about it.

1.34. TAPE NUMBER: XVIII, SIDE TWO (JULY 13, 1988)

BASIAGO

One of your original tasks or goals, perhaps, in approaching the Soviets was, I understand, to persuade them to sign a copyright convention and to stop reprinting American authors' works without permission or royalties.

COUSINS

Yes.

BASIAGO

Over the next dozen years after the conferences began, you were instrumental in behind-the-scenes negotiations for the Soviet Union's acceptance of the Universal Copyright Convention in 1973. Did you engage in this mission at the behest of interests in this country? If so, who were they, and were you remunerated or on a consultancy basis? And a third question would be, how were you able to finally achieve a breakthrough on this issue, given the difference in legal structure between the two nations?

COUSINS

The first intervention, as I remember it, came about as a result of a call from Adlai [E.] Stevenson. He had been representing the Authors [Guild], I think. Knowing that I was going over there, he asked me if I couldn't tilt a lance in the right direction. I had already raised that issue anyway, and I wrote about this somewhere, maybe in the [Saturday] Review, I'm not sure. It was quite constant, because the Russians made a great deal of the fact that they published far many more American authors than we published Russian authors, and also that individual books--American books--had far greater circulation than important Russian books did here. When they would talk about all the American authors that they published, I would bring up the fact that it was done without their permission. And I was rather pointed about it. I said that I don't see how any country can be proud of theft. Literary theft is no different from other forms of theft, and that's what it is. They were surprised that I would use language as strong as that. They felt that we ought to be pleased that American authors were being published. The question was, are they also being paid? Well, some were only if they were there, and they would get an envelope with some rubles in it, one hundred, two hundred rubles. But there was nothing systematic or orderly in terms of a royalty statement. When I met with Khrushchev, I brought this up as a major issue and said, "It doesn't concern a lot of people, but it does concern writers that work for a living." He tried to go down the same line that the writers did, or the other people in the Dartmouth Conference did, which is that there's an adverse balance of literary trade, and so forth. But I said, "That's an entirely separate issue. The only issue that's involved here is whether you have the right to appropriate the works of American authors without their consent and without specific arrangements authorizing you to do so." He finally yielded on that. He had me talk to two people, one, the minister of culture, and the other, a woman who was connected with the finance ministry. When I spoke to Khrushchev the second time, I said I hoped he would forgive me for bringing this thing up again, but it does represent in my mind a very important moral issue. I think he-- I'm trying to think exactly how he put it. He said, "I think we're going to work this out," something like that. And we did.

BASIAGO

Thus, they accepted a major element of our Constitution. [laughter] I noted that after President Nixon's departure from our government. President [Gerald R. ] Ford's emergence, it seems that the tenor of the discussions between the Soviets and the Americans broke down significantly. By 1977, the U.S. really had to come out gunning, presenting to the Soviets a list of criticisms regarding military expansion by the Soviet Union. Between the high point of 1972--when they were so pleased with President Nixon, and the conferences resulted in such fruitful dialogue regarding trade and scientific research-- The Apollo Soyuz Test Project, as I imagine, was a fruit of that. What happened? Can it all be attributable to domestic forces, or was there anything manifest at the conferences themselves that resulted, or--

COUSINS

You see, there were a number of flash points during that whole period: the Middle East, Africa, Germany, the Far East, the Jewish question. We were very lucky when only one of those issues was a point of tension between the two countries. The attitude of the Americans at Dartmouth was that the greater the number of issues, and the greater the tensions resulting from those issues, the greater the need to maintain relations and dialogue. Officially, the United States didn't always agree with that. Nations tend to operate on a tit-for-tat basis. Retaliation, rather than moral initiative, seems to be the rule. So sometimes we had to persist, despite and not because of the American position. But even in doing that, we had people there who were able to state the American position, which they did very ably, with respect to those issues. But there were many times when we were approaching a saturation of tension, and even though we met, that was reflected. On one of the meetings on the Near East, I was on the Middle East task force with Landrum R. Bolling.

BASIAGO

Was Steve [Stephen J.] Solarz there at that particular--?

COUSINS

Yes, at one of them. And Charles [W.] Yost, the former American ambassador to the UN [United Nations]. It was at the time of Angola, and I said, "I don't think that you gentlemen seem to recognize that you've come to the limit of your probes. The very next move in this direction--Africa or the Middle East--you will find that the United States will be very hard in its response. We've come to the end of the line. You've gone about as far as you can go without producing an effect that will be not just not pleasing but very disturbing. You've got to decide whether you want to run that risk." On their side, some of the Russians took me aside and tried to draw me out. I think they knew what we were trying to say.

BASIAGO

So you were sort of putting them on notice regarding making one nation captive, through all those years in the mid- and late seventies and eighties? I guess things really did start to fall apart, to some degree, with the tension. As you say, it became saturated. After '72, '73, you had the U.S. going on nuclear alert during the '73 crisis in the Middle East. Was there any direct discussion of how close the superpowers had again come to nuclear confrontation?

COUSINS

Yes.

BASIAGO

With such an extensive background of the '62 crisis, do you remember how this one played itself out in any particular discussions?

COUSINS

My memory is not as vivid on this as it was on '62. But I have the feeling that by this time it was almost a tacit agreement between the two sides that we'd make our representations but not dig in and then go on to see whether we could build bridges. That's my impression.

BASIAGO

When we last spoke, you talked about the questionable result or outcome of discussions about the issue of nuclear proliferation. You seemed to suggest that both nations persist in being unwilling to practice what they preach, and they'd rather sort of counsel other nations not to acquire nuclear stockpiles, while not addressing their own buildups. Weren't there some victories, though, in the step-by-step process of preventing nuclear proliferation?

COUSINS

Well, here, you see, you had people on both sides of the table who had identical views. Which is to say that it was not only possible but necessary to prevent the proliferation. The smaller nations seemed to feel that the large nations had a special dispensation to proceed in this direction. The Russians have always had this view of it, I think, modified recently, to be sure, but for the most part pretty settled around the idea of a bipolar world. The role of the United Nations or any other collective or multilateral approach to peace seemed rather wispy and soft to them. They liked the idea of the United States and the Soviet Union being equal partners. The word "parity" always came up in their discussions. Parity with respect to arms, parity with respect to other approaches in the world. But they didn't talk much about parity in obligations towards the rest of the world. Nor did we, I suppose.

BASIAGO

I noted that as a result of the 1975 conference in Moscow, and the 1976 conference at Rio Rico [Arizona] , it seems that the two superpowers were getting down to brass tacks regarding nuclear proliferation--at least opposition to transfer reprocessing plants and enrichment facilities, creation of a multinational fuel facility, and these sorts of things. Did these eventuate, these sorts of intermediary preventive measures?

COUSINS

They represented a tendency--or a tropism--that eventually, I think, was reflected in policy. But they didn't lead at that time to any recognizable specific steps.

BASIAGO

The 1977 conference in Jurmala [Latvia] was, as I noted, a dramatic confrontation over the issue of the recent Soviet push, military expansion.

COUSINS

Afghanistan, you mean?

BASIAGO

Afghanistan. The U.S. listed six things that they found alarming: increasing effort toward introducing new systems with semi strategic or grey area capability; the improvement of Warsaw Pact forces relative to NATO forces since SALT II; expanded military aid and assistance to liberation movements, including supporting repressive measures in the Third World--

COUSINS

Yes. That laundry list led, I believe, almost in a direct line, to greater emphasis on working groups in these fields. Because it seemed to us that the approach that we'd been taking was one in which we would have catharsis through proclamation, and it seemed to us that what we ought to do is to stick with these issues. Then we developed working groups in each of these areas. When David [0.] Mathews became the head of the [Charles F.] Kettering Foundation, the conferences shifted into a much higher gear as a result, because he had developed considerable experience with such techniques. He was able to put money into the work groups, with the result that there was hardly ever a time when one or more of these groups were not meeting. Some of them would meet two times a year or so. That would help to prepare the agenda for the plenary, apart from the good that it did in the meantime, I think that the work groups probably accomplished more than the plenaries.

BASIAGO

Were you sufficiently pleased by the answers you got, regarding all these issues?

COUSINS

By the what?

BASIAGO

All these issues that emerged in 1977 at Jurmala there. For instance, another one would be their continued testing of anti-satellite weapons, and the disparity between their troop strength, their tank strength, their military R and D expenditures [and ours] . With such an investment that you had made for fifteen years, and trying to reason with them--

COUSINS

My points of disillusion, and possible breakaway, were caused more by treatment of individuals than by these issues, which I just took for granted. The tension over these issues was entirely predictable. We've been able to discount them on that basis. But the human issues--the exile, the imprisonment, or the mistreatment of key figures--that was what really disturbed me and almost caused me to quit at one point, as I suggested to you earlier.

BASIAGO

In [The] Pathology of Power, you describe the Pentagon abuses of the [Ronald W.] Reagan era. Given that to some degree the rationale for the Reagan era defense buildup in this country came about as a result of the Soviet expansion in the late seventies, how did you tie the two together? How did you put the Reagan era defense explosion in perspective? Did you think it was necessary, as the eighties began?

COUSINS

In order to feel that it was necessary, you had to feel that they were useful in the first place. There are two entirely different contexts with which you could view what was happening in the relationships of the two countries. One which had to do with the belief that superior forces were a relevant response to the problem. The other was to look beyond that and recognize that throw weight, megatonage, superiority in this or that respect, all these were part of something that was totally unworkable anyway. To descend into that kind of exchange would have usefulness only for those who believed that they could make a basic difference. They could make some difference, to be sure, in terms of what countries did as a result and whether they would create a context in which they wouldn't be interested in getting on to real things. But if you kept your eye on the main ball--which had to do with the control of force, rather than the pursuit of force--I think you could regard all these fumblings and maneuverings as part of the total but very volatile irrelevance.

BASIAGO

I have two concluding questions. One is that, just generally, as a result of your experience with the conferences, have you developed any rules of thumb that result in the most successful negotiating with the Soviets, given the overriding importance of that pursuit? You mentioned how the conferences have scouted the ground for agreements on cultural exchanges, direct air connections, trade deals, and nitty-gritty things such as the copyright agreement and certain arms control treaties. What accomplishments of the talks do you deem the most important as a result?

COUSINS

Well, let's take your first question. A somewhat different-- It seems to me that a lifeline, rather fragile but nonetheless visible, was being built all these years. You had a solid mutual belief that, despite anything that would be said by either side, this lifeline could sustain the burden of those differences, and that our job was to strengthen it until it became a genuine bridge. That also we were training people for positions in government, whether in Congress, or on the executive branch on both sides. That in times approaching a crisis--when each side was asking itself, "Are there any resources that we can count on? Is there anything useful that might be done or that has been done?"--you had built up a sufficient cadre on both sides of very influential people. They recognized possibilities of dialogue, which before they might have dismissed out of hand. There's always a tendency as you approach a showdown situation to assume that the other side speaks only the language of force. You want to communicate in a way that they will understand. You've seen that. It's especially true in the Middle East. One significant thing that's happening here is that we're training people to recognize that that cliché--the other side understands only the language of force--was very dangerous and also represented a form of international illiteracy. There's the desire to make the extra effort, "Let's go back and see what they think. Let's go back and present this point of view." I recognized through it all that we were limited because of the bilateral approach to world problems. I thought that the main purpose that would be served by the Dartmouth meetings was to create something outside themselves, a mechanism that could be sustained even in times of breakdown, a mechanism that would be useful for other countries as well. I kept harping on that, as I did in fact at the last meeting. I got a great deal more support at this last meeting for that point of view than I can ever remember. This may be because of Gorbachev. They were not chained to the usual rote, and they were saying things to us about themselves that we had said to them about themselves--acknowledging things. So when you could speak to them now and ask them frankly whether you're in a position now, for the first time, you feel, to make a genuine contribution to the peace-- Surely you must recognize that it's not what we say to each other or what we do with each other that's going to be as important as what we do together with respect to the rest of the world. And how we address ourselves to the basic problems that threaten the peace, that will affect us, even though we may not be primarily involved in those disputes. What effective mechanism of resolution are we going to create? I found the Russians at this last meeting being willing to think seriously about what was involved in world order to a far greater extent than ever before. And that, as I say, was a reflection of the fact that they were willing, to a far greater extent, to think seriously about their own society than ever before. It was a very useful meeting.

1.35. TAPE NUMBER: XIX, SIDE ONE (AUGUST 1, 1988)

BASIAGO

With the publication of Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient: Reflections on Healing and Regeneration (1979), you called for the development of medical evidence to show how the positive emotions-- purpose, determination, love, hope, faith, the will to live, even festivity--can affect biological states. "Suppose it could be proved, " you wondered, "that such attitudes could help activate healing forces in the endocrine and the immune systems." Later, with a $2 million gift from Joan B. Kroc and an additional contribution of $5 million from Mrs. Burton Bettingen, you have spent the last decade developing a dream of a program within the UCLA School of Medicine in mind-body studies [UCLA Program in Psychoneuroimmunology]. What have been the program's significant discoveries, and what did this departure in your career mean in your personal life, as you left the Saturday Review [of Literature]?

COUSINS

I had many reasons for leaving the Saturday Review, some of which were unrelated to the sequence of events that led me into the field of medicine. But just looking at the closing events at the Saturday Review, Jack [Jacob R.] Cominsky, who had been my business partner, had died. While we had good business managers to take over, I found increasingly that the publishing responsibility for the magazine came to my desk. I found myself almost a referee between the advertising department and circulation department, to say nothing of their confrontations with the editorial department. It was not just differences of opinion on the staff--these were standard operating procedures. Every business organization has them. But the job of mediator was distracting. I wanted to concentrate on the editorial part of the magazine. The man who took Jack Cominsky's place was intelligent, capable, but didn't have Jack's drive. Then, too, I discovered things that were deeply troubling to me. One of the problems of a magazine has to do with the way in which you acquire and keep your subscribers. This, really, is the lifeblood of a magazine. The rate of renewal subscription is the key number on any magazine, because if you fall below a certain percentage, then you're in a deficit situation. This turns on itself, because it's the one figure that your advertisers look at. They don't want to support a magazine unless it's being carefully followed by its readers. And to them the renewal rate is a critical factor. We had had one of the highest--if not the highest--renewal rate, I think, of American magazines in this general field. I felt, since I found that this was increasingly my responsibility with Jack's death, that you had to innovate, because subscription promotion costs were rising very fast. It seemed to me that the figure that magazines were looking at, namely, what does it cost to obtain a new subscriber, was the wrong figure. The operative figure pertained to renewals. When, for example, you sent out circulation promotion letters, you would look at the return rate, 1 percent, 2 percent, 3 percent, whatever. Again, I felt that was a false figure. The question was not how much it cost to send out a thousand letters, but what was the cost of getting a thousand letters read. The fact that you delivered x number of letters in the mails didn't mean anything unless those letters were being opened. Yet everyone was concentrating on the cost of putting the letter into the mail. It seemed to me that if we actually increased the cost of the mailing and put out a first-class letter, with a stamp that was obviously first-class, that this was the thing that gets the attention of the potential buyers and marks the distinction between junk mail and regular mail. Therefore, if you can have twice as many letters read with a first-class stamp, then you're actually ahead of the game financially. So we innovated in that, and it worked out very well. We were getting a very high rate of subscription return on those direct mail letters. Then I happened to see--a friend gave me- -a new mailing that we had sent out. I groaned when I looked at it, because I saw that instead of the stamp, the first- class stamp, we had the printed permit, with "first class" in small letters. In short, it looked like regular third- class mail, like junk mail, but we were paying first-class prices to make something look like junk mail. I could hardly believe this thing. I came to the office with blood in my eye and found out that Mr. [S. Spencer] Grin had figured out a way of saving a little money by printing it on, so you would not have that miniscule expense of having a stamp attached. The fact that he didn't understand any of this was appalling to me. Other things were happening on the magazine, and I didn't want to have my closing days at the Saturday Review with a winding-down feeling--hating to come into the office, hating to pull people apart, hating to have to look at every single letter to make sure that it was done exactly right. All my wonderful warm feelings about all my years at the magazine, you see, were eroding very fast. So I decided to leave the magazine while my feelings were still warm. Meanwhile, as you say, there was this great question in my mind that had come up as a result of my illness. I became convinced that the way in which I thought about my illness was a factor in getting me out of it. The fact that I did have a measure of control contrasted with the loss of control that most patients feel. The fact that I wasn't helpless, that I wasn't panicky. All these things, it seemed to me, were factors in overcoming a rather serious illness. I wanted to see this belief projected on a larger canvas, to find out whether the observations were correct. If so, then there's a great deal that could be done to help people who were seriously ill. It seemed to me that public thinking about health was almost disastrous, because we were being educated for weakness and not for strength. We were being educated in the inadequacies of the human body, instead of the essential robustness of the human body. So we became timid, insecure, fretful about ourselves, hypochondriacs and sissies. This all fit in, as I say, with the way we thought about illness. We tended to become helpless, panicky, and we're setting an environment for the rapid advance of the disease. All these things seemed to fit together. So my decision to come into the medical community was based on this obsession to find the proof, or help to create it, that the way in which we thought about illness could have a bearing on the outcome of illness.

BASIAGO

I'd like to start at the beginning, organizationally. I understand that Dean Sherman [M.] Mellinkoff of the [UCLA] School of Medicine played a key role in the formation of the program that you now direct. Early on, he created a "think tank" to meet with you for the purpose of exploring the general field of biology of the emotions. This group included Dr. Fritz [Fredrick C] Redlich, former head of psychiatry at Yale [University]. Am I incorrect?

COUSINS

[Milton] Greenblatt.

BASIAGO

You're speaking about the Greenblatt group?

COUSINS

Yes, the Greenblatt group had a different cast, and it included Ivan [N.] Mensh, Shelley [E.] Taylor--

BASIAGO

Was this the seminal group after you met with Mellinkoff?

COUSINS

Yes. Mellinkoff introduced me, as "Jolly" [Louis J.] West did, to the other people, beginning with Fritz Redlich, but I don't think they were on this think tank group that met with me when I first came here.

BASIAGO

I'm just trying to trace the priorities that were set and by whom. What sorts of contributions were made by various key people, as it was founded? This initial group, what did it achieve?

COUSINS

Yes, the initial group formed by the dean was chaired by Milton Greenblatt. It had six or eight persons on it. Greenblatt's office can probably give you the list of participants. But Ivan Mensh, who was one of the key people in the school of psychiatry and frequently mentioned as the successor to Jolly West, now retired, was one of those on the group. We had some good discussions having to do with psychosomatic medicine, I guess would be the best name for it. At least that was the name that was operational at the time. I would use this group as the sounding board and bring to them accounts of experiences I'd had with patients or things that I'd come across in my reading in this general area that I mentioned before-- namely, the impact of attitudes, ideas, and emotions on illness and treatment. I found that Ivan Mensh ' s comments were very helpful. He'd had a great deal of experience in this field, as had Greenblatt. It did play a part, it seems to me, in confirming my feeling not just that the connection was real, and that disease as a reflection of mental states is not folklore, but [that it was] a scientific fact. And that we were right in trying not just to think about the existence of such cases, but about the possible pathways, the physiological pathways through which attitudes and emotions made their registrations on human physiology. So that was an important first step.

BASIAGO

I'm curious how key medical professionals here received your ideas, as expressed in Anatomy of an Illness, and then, what agenda was set for more concrete research applications?

COUSINS

I was not without advice in these matters. Franklin [D.] Murphy, a physician and former chancellor of UCLA, who was instrumental in bringing me to UCLA, spoke to me about the medical viewpoint. He felt that for the most part physicians would be very critical of my notions that attitudes could make a difference in disease. They were looking for hard morphological evidence, and they thought that was the only thing that counted. But he said there are some whose own experience has led them to a wider view of this. Greenblatt told me substantially the same thing, which is that I'd have a hard time convincing doctors that laughter conferred any physiological benefits, especially in disease. Charles [R.] Kleeman, Chuck Kleeman, of the CHEER program [Center for Health Enhancement, Education, and Research] , was sympathetic and tried to explain why doctors were very reluctant to attach value to these notions. They had been trained in science, molecular biology, physical causes, physical effects, physical factors. But far more important than these caveats, to me, was the fact that the medical community here couldn't have been more supportive personally or gracious. I was made to feel very much at home, and I was brought into the inner circle and participated in various councils. The university itself was very supportive. When, for example. Dean Mellinkoff was entertaining the [University of California Board of] Regents' committee, which periodically came to look at the medical school--what was happening--he had me come to speak about my interests and my work. When Chancellor [Charles E.] Young's office wanted to make a presentation about UCLA and selected a faculty member who would talk about his work and interests, I was selected to do that, not just for the medical school, but for the entire faculty, representing that kind of work. By that time, of course, I'd learned the semantics of medicine, and I was able to put my ideas in a proportionate setting, so that doctors would not take exception to it in terms of the approach, by connecting it to a certain tradition. I learned how to make those connections. After a while, I was metabolized. It became interesting to me to see that doctors themselves would ask me to see friends who were doctors who were ill, or doctors who were ill themselves would ask me if I would talk to them. Because they recognized that there was an extra dimension involved in strategy for recovery, other than medications. How they had to think of it themselves, especially if they had a life-threatening illness. Nothing in their training had prepared them to confront those issues, and yet those issues had a bearing on the outcome of the illness. Because it stands to reason that if you're going to be depressed, panicky, as a result of your illness, then the environment of medical treatment can be compromised. As I went along, it was interesting to me to see that somewhere between 25 and 33 percent of the patients I was asked to see for a morale boost were physicians themselves who were ill.

BASIAGO

Was that the sole reason, or was there some strategy here, institutionally, that there would be some maximum benefit from you dealing directly with physicians?

COUSINS

The only benefit, I think, that was an issue had to do with the need to provide optimal care and do everything possible. You see, it was not just a matter of reaching out for the best medical treatment but enabling the patients to reach inside themselves. I'd been involved in a concept of the brain as apothecary and received a great deal of support on that from Dr. [Richard] Bergland of Harvard [University] , who had been itemizing secretions produced by the brain that were of use to the body, especially in illness. He supplied the scientific components. He identified the secretions and also the ability of the brain to combine these secretions in writing prescriptions for the body. The next question is this: How do you make use of it; how do you tap into it? Under circumstances of panic, fear, and depression, the ability of the body to summon these forces tends to be vitiated. So increasingly, what I was talking about began to receive scientific verification. Only partial, to be sure, but at least we were moving along a certain track.

BASIAGO

I'd like to explore how the work that you've conducted here has dovetailed with the research of others here. For instance, you've mentioned Jolly West at NPI [Neuropsychiatric Institute] . Was there any direct collaboration with his ongoing work in neuropsychiatry?

COUSINS

Jolly West, as administrative head of NPI, of course, was not in the laboratory. He was in his office. But he had very deep interests in this field, and he helped to connect me with the people in his department who were in a position to do the good work. For example, he had a meeting in his office with Fawzy [I.] Fawzy, who had been thinking along the same lines that I did in dealing with cancer patients. He felt that we ought to have a structured relationship, because Fawzy wanted to do some research which could prove some of these propositions. So Jolly was very helpful in setting the stage for these developments here at UCLA.

BASIAGO

There are some other individuals on the Kroc [Foundation] advisory committee, and I'm wondering how your activities have complemented theirs, and theirs, yours. How about Carmine [D.] Clemente, the anatomy specialist?

COUSINS

He was the head of the Brain Research Institute [BRI]. After I came here, I naturally gravitated towards the Brain Research Institute, because of its research capability in dealing with the kinds of issues that concerned me. I developed a close relationship with Carmine Clemente. He brought me into meetings of the BRI, and that led to some conferences, as well as to a relationship with one of the key people in the Brain Research Institute. You'll have to remind me to talk about David Murdock, especially in connection with Carmine Clemente. But at any rate, when we set up a task force in psychoneuroimmunology, this was made possible by the Kroc gift. I wanted to get the best advice I could on how to structure this grant or gift. Jolly West and Sherman Mellinkoff and Carmine Clemente agreed to serve as the advisory committee. But I also went to Franklin Murphy, a doctor himself, and all four agreed that we ought to have a working group which could steer the development of this project. This was the background for the creation of the task force on psychoneuroimmunology. By talking to these advisers, it became clear to me that different fields had to be represented on this task force, because psychoneuroimmunology was really a science of interactions, rather than the pursuit of any one branch of medicine, we're looking at the central nervous system, we're looking at the endocrine system, we're looking at the immune system. So we tried to draw together a group with expertise in these directions, but also a group of people whose field of knowledge would lead them into other disciplines, rather than away from it. These habits of work recognized that we were dealing with a whole new set of interreactions, and that was how we created the task force.

BASIAGO

You've mentioned how, in your meetings with twelve to fifteen patients a week, you often deal with cancer patients. What has been your involvement with the work in oncology conducted by Dr. Claus [B.] Bahnson? And you mentioned Fawzy Fawzy. I'm interested in the sort of counseling you do with cancer patients to stimulate their will to live and their recovery.

COUSINS

Counseling with cancer patients involves different doorways. One of them, of course, is the Boyer cancer clinic [Boyer-John Wayne Oncology Center] upstairs. There they have a support group of cancer patients and their families, and I'm asked to meet with those patients as a group. Then you have patients who are in need of deep psychological support, because their emotional needs are no less critical than their physical ones. They come to this office, or I go to see them in the hospital, as the case may be. Some of those patients I see at the request of their physicians, or those who call up themselves. Some I see at the request of the university or the medical school. But the need, in most of these cases, is to help people confront the illness. Nothing in their education or experience has prepared them to meet this challenge. They have a tendency to buckle under it. Suddenly you get a catastrophic diagnosis. How do you think about it? How do you cope with it? Now, physicians don't have time to spend with patients to the extent that this requires. And here we come to a very serious problem in medicine today. Medical students spend years learning how to diagnose, but only minutes learning how to deliver the message of the diagnosis, or coping with the effects of the way they deliver it. The environment of medical treatment doesn't receive as much attention in medical schools as pathological organisms, or anatomy, or physiology, and yet these are primary factors— in some cases, transcendent ones. This requires doctors who understand what goes on in the mind of the patient, understand the cause of the problem, and the way their mind reacts to what the doctor is saying. It always takes time and involves the art of communication. But again, those communication skills are not as carefully developed as diagnostic skills or other skills. Yet they can be as important as any single factor, even if it pertains only to compliance. Doctors have no difficulty in understanding the importance of compliance. Why spend any time with the patient, if the patient's not going to comply? So while the need for compliance is understood, the factors that go into compliance don't receive as much attention as they need. It's hard, too, if the doctor isn't going to talk to a patient. Since doctors don't get paid for talking to patients, and they get paid for technology and procedures, this is what's going to happen. So the technology represents the major aspect of connection between the patient and the physician. So much of the emphasis is on diagnosis that the emotional factors that have figured in the illness may be somewhat obscured, and the emotional factors that get in the way of effective treatment may be obscured.

BASIAGO

You've listed a lack of academic preparation and sort of professional practice, professional demeanor, as two reasons why physicians so often leave patients in a state of emotional devastation following a diagnosis. What are some other factors that contribute to this?

COUSINS

Every patient is an individual universe, and the factors vary with the patient. That's why the doctor's job is to find out who the patient is and try to know at least as much about the patient as the disease that is being treated. Because that patient is going to put his own stamp on that disease. But again, it takes time to find out, so everything is involved here. You get a loop here which tends to put the patient and the physician in different camps. Another thing developing is the conflict of interest between physician and patient. The doctor has been educated by his lawyers to be as explicit as possible about the nature of an illness and not to leave any doubt about things that might happen on the downside. Because if they should, the doctor doesn't want to be sued. But not all the downside alerts may be relevant or necessary. We talk a great deal about giving a patient false hopes. We don't talk enough about giving patients false fears.

BASIAGO

Your work represents a profound critique of medicine though, doesn't it, in the sense that you essentially are describing modern physicians as obsessed with the morphological dimensions of illness and over relying on technology? What sort of reception are you getting at UCLA, which has a state-of-the-art technical facility in medicine?

COUSINS

I'm not departing from the tradition, I'm trying to assert it. The tradition of medicine is one in which the requirements of a patient-physician relationship are primary, not secondary. The tradition calls for bedside skills, and for the art of medicine, not just the science or practice of medicine. The way in which you take a history, the importance given to that history-which is to say, knowing about the emotional causes of any illness- these are traditional. So I ' m not doing anything except trying to work within that tradition. The tradition, however, experienced an abrupt change with the development of modern technology. Because now it is not just the doctor and the stethoscope, the doctor coming to a determination himself, based on his own abilities and not just the book learning, to arrive at an understanding of a patient's problem. But now we turn the patient over to high tech. That is, I think, a departure from the traditional medicine. Now, you ask, how do doctors react to this? Fortunately, there are enough doctors who still are part of that great tradition. I think that Sherman Mellinkoff is an example. So that I'm not a pariah or a carper, I'm not criticizing from without the tradition but from within it.

BASIAGO

I'm curious, what studies have been carried out here, under your supervision or with your informed participation, to increase our understanding of the interaction between the brain, the endocrine system, and the immune system? In your work Head First: The Biology of Hope I see this referred to a number of times. But I wish that to some degree you could flush out your ideas with actual research studies that have been oriented in this direction.

COUSINS

There are different people on the faculty, you see, who have been wanting to test out their ideas along this direction. The Kroc fund enabled us to provide research monies. I decided that when I received the Kroc fund, it would be a good idea to take half that money and provide support for similar research being done around the country or the world, because it was important to replicate the studies and also to have centers come at these conclusions independently. So we set up a number of research projects at UCLA. Each of the members of the task force had one or more projects to advance. These were all complementary. Then you had members of the faculty, not just in the School of Medicine, but in psychology, who were interested in working along these lines. We were able to support that work and maybe a dozen more projects here at UCLA, apart from what the task force was doing. Then around the country, you had a lot of efforts going forward that needed help. So we were trying to pursue our goals on many different levels and then coordinate the work.

BASIAGO

An example of one of the research areas that I'm personally fascinated with, and that I'm wondering what sort of work has been done here or elsewhere on-- You write that students undergoing final exams have experienced declines in natural killer cells, a lower percentage of t- lymphocytes, and lower levels of interferon. How has the program successfully established a bridge--some sort of causal link--between stress and immunity? In other words, why does this happen? If the immune system is designed by nature to protect us from pathological organisms, etc. and various stresses in our environment, why would an intellectual activity, albeit stressful, such as final exams, depress our immunity?

COUSINS

The research into that question was carried out at a number of places, at Harvard [University] under David [C.] McClelland, at Western New England College by Kathleen [M.] Dillon, at Ohio State University by Ronald Glaser and Janice Kiecolt-Glaser . The Ohio State study was perhaps the most comprehensive of all of them and represented an attempt to study students under varying conditions. They were primarily interested in finding out how the human body reacted to stress. So they studied students under ordinary circumstances and then under stressful circumstances. The most stressful circumstance, of course, in a student's life, is final examinations. Here they took measurements having to do mostly with the immune system of these patients, but they also observed the students to see what the incidence of illness was during this time. They discovered that stress indeed was a factor, and that the number of illnesses that took place during this critical time was much greater than at other times. They were able to verify the findings of Hans Selye, who has done some of the primary work on stress, about the deleterious effects of stress on the human organism. Their measurements were very precise. For example, they measured immunoglobulins; you can measure immunoglobulins in the saliva. As examinations approached, you'd actually have a decrease in IgA [class of immunoglobulin]. In short, the body's protective mechanisms tended to weaken under circumstances of apprehensive anticipations. Similar observations have been made of accountants as the tax deadline approaches. They've discovered, for example, that accountants have much higher cholesterol levels--since tension can produce cholesterol--as the IRS [Internal Revenue Service] deadlines approach, than at other times of the year. An interesting question, of course, is whether the opposite is also true. Which is whether relaxation, good feelings, laughter, will actually increase the body's protective mechanisms. McClelland of Harvard was able to show an increase in immunoglobulins with laughter. Dillon of Western New England, on a broader basis, perhaps, was able to show the same thing. So all these were now beads on a string that we were fitting together. We helped to support a great deal of that work around the country.

BASIAGO

When your work here was just beginning. Carmine Clemente mentioned studies indicating that the brain serves as some sort of intermediary between the endocrine system and the autonomic nervous system. How is this relevant in subsequent studies, in subsequent beads on the string?

COUSINS

It had to do with a separate question, which is whether a patient's attitude towards illness, or the emotional effects of diagnosis, has physiological effects. Carmine was talking about the interconnections along which these effects travel. All that was happening, actually, was that evidence was being provided to support certain basic ideas that physicians have always known-- which is that a patient with a strong will to live has a better chance than a patient who is defeatist. These are not very profound ideas, but now that proof is asked for it has to be provided. It's a reasonable request that anyone who makes a statement having to do with the connection between emotions and health has the burden of proof.

BASIAGO

You dedicated a portion of Anatomy of an Illness (and this redounds through later works) to the placebo effect and its negative counterpart, the nocebo effect. In Anatomy of an Illness, the placebo effect is largely discussed in anecdotal terms. Have you developed any hard data here in the psychoneuroimmunology program?

1.36. TAPE NUMBER: XIX, SIDE TWO (AUGUST 1, 1988)

COUSINS

This goes back to the Saturday Review. I was fascinated with the phenomenon of the placebo. Generally, people had been thinking about it in utilitarian terms, which is to say, a way of testing new medications, tested against the placebo result to find out how efficacious a certain medicine may be. But this means that something is happening with nothing, which is to say, if you're measuring something real against something that is not real, and you get an effect with something that's not real, then obviously the reality is that something is happening! I tried to get Al [Albert] Rosenfeld, our science editor on the Saturday Review, to do a study of the placebo for the science section. I had the damnedest time. Even before Al Rosenfeld, I tried to get John Lear to do it. This goes back a few years. I don't know whether they resented having the editor make suggestions, but it never could get moving. So I decided to write an article myself about the placebo for the Saturday Review. This drew upon the research of Henry [K. ] Beecher of Harvard [University], and Neal [E.] Miller, of Rockefeller University, and [Lawrence] LeShan, who had written about placebo. What fascinated me was that the placebo was not merely a device for testing drugs but caused something to happen in the body as a result of expectations. If someone took what he thought was a medication, 50 percent of the time he would get the effects of what he had been told the medicine would do. Obviously, the human body was able to manufacture its own medications. If such was in fact the case, why wasn't this knowledge put to greater use? Or even more important, what was happening in the human body that enabled the body to convert those expectations into medical effects? That was what fascinated me. The placebo, it seemed to me, was the key to the quest in which I was involved. Which is to say, well, here we actually have the evidence that the body was changing in response to expectations. I thought it very strange that while physicians understood the placebo effect--and no one questioned the placebo effect--the way in which the placebo effect worked was not being investigated. The same physicians who, as I say, would accept the placebo effect, found it difficult to accept the concept that disease could be a reflection of mental states. We were working with the same basic materials; that was why I was so fascinated. The placebo became my ally in trying to deal with this problem. The article that I wrote anticipated, I think, many pieces that then came into the public press dealing with it. Science magazines began writing about placebos, and general magazines did. The New York Times carried an article on placebos, the Wall Street Journal ran an article. It still remains a great mystery, but I think it is a wonderful doorway through which to pass if we want to consider this question. The mind that's clear can convert expectations into physiological reality. Consequently, let's find out how this happens and what its implications are in terms of the ability of the individual to cope with disease.

BASIAGO

In a final question for today, I'd like to explore how that effect and those mental powers have evidenced themselves in the most hyperbolic sense here at UCLA. You mentioned that when you founded the program, you wanted to create a "serendipitous arena" for these sorts of things to begin to jell here. What have been some of the most phenomenal displays of mind-over-body powers that you've witnessed over the past decade? You've written in one instance of some sort of demonstration where you watched an individual actually pierce his arm with a lance. In a second anecdote, you refer to your own macrophages increasing by 53 percent, after an episode in which you meditated positively about the kind of world that would come about if we had disarmament. What are some of the most phenomenal instances in which the ability of the mind to affect the body has been demonstrated?

COUSINS

Perhaps the most dramatic such case involved a young woman from San Diego, whose doctor telephoned me saying that she had a breast tumor. It had been biopsied, it was malignant, and he was mandating mastectomy as a life- saving measure. She was reluctant to go through the surgery, because she feared it would be mutilation. He asked me if I would try to turn her mind around on this. My name had come up- -she had mentioned my name in some connection. He thought that she attached importance to what I said, that I might be able to persuade her to go through with the surgery. The tumor was hardly what you would call casual. It was the size of a lemon. It was like a mass of knotted wires just under the skin. The breast was badly corrugated, and I could understand the physician's apprehension about this. Because after all, if you were going to take some coils--knotted coils--and put them inside the human body, the only way you could get rid of them is by taking them out. I had a long meeting with this woman. I came to realize that she felt that men were altogether too casual in suggesting to women that they have their breasts removed. They're thinking rather mechanistically. So I went at it very slowly; I thanked her for coming up, and that I had been thinking about it since her doctor's call. I could only think about it in terms of what my reaction would be if my wife were involved. The first thing I would do would be to get a second opinion; if necessary, a third. She had done that. Then if it became clear to me that the only way we would get rid of this incubus was the surgery, I would try to get the best surgeon in the world. She'd already done that. Then for the rest, I would try to get my wife to approach the surgery in a mood of thanksgiving that we lived at a time when it was possible for modern science to enter her body and pluck out the offendant and free us for a good life. I would try to get my wife to program herself for a good result, so she would be part of it. And this woman said, "Well, how do you program yourself for a good result?" I told her about Elmer [E.] Green's technique, moving your blood around. She sat down here, and I showed her how to do it. When she saw that she had the power to increase the surface temperature of the skin by ten degrees, just as a matter of will--she was astonished when she actually saw the evidence--she said, "Did I really do that?" I said, "Yes, you did that. You have the power to do that. What else can you do?" She said, [whispering] "I can do anything." "Now, the thing you're going to do is to program yourself for a good result. Be thankful you've got the surgery. It's going to work beautifully, and you're going to be able to get rid of it. Practice these techniques every day now, before the surgery, to give you that sense of control." The doctor called twelve days later, which was the date of the surgery, to say he'd canceled the surgery, that he'd taken the X ray, and the tumor had completely disappeared. I found this very difficult to believe. I thought of these wires, this mass of wires. How could they be dissolved in such a short period of time? And by what? He said, "Well, I'll send you the X rays. The breast is soft and supple and normal in every way. There's no point, obviously, in going through the operation." That was the most dramatic case I've had here in ten years. That woman has been very helpful to me, because she has agreed to see other patients, and to talk about their own powers, and the influence of having a partnership with your physician, in which the physician gives you the best that science has to offer, and you give him the best that the human body has to offer. It's a powerful combination. The very first patient that this woman saw had a very good result, too. She had an abdominal tumor, colon. By doing what the doctor had suggested in every respect, but by putting her own resources to work, you got a good result. Chemotherapy doesn't work well under the circumstances, for example, of terror or panic. But if you can just delete the fact of the depression and the panic and program yourself for a good result of the chemotherapy, then you find that nausea tends to be reduced. So we're talking now not about replacing medicine, but about creating an environment in which it can do its best.

1.37. TAPE NUMBER: XX, SIDE ONE (AUGUST 8, 1988)

BASIAGO

When we last spoke, we discussed your arrival at UCLA to set up a program in psychoneuroimmunology. I'm curious about some of the formative experiences you've had in medicine throughout your life that prepared you for this second career in the medical humanities. I understand that as a child you spent a year in a tuberculosis center.

COUSINS

Half a year.

BASIAGO

A half a year? How did this experience contribute to the medical philosophy that you've now developed?

COUSINS

Well, first of all, it enabled me to realize that it was possible to confound predictions, morose predictions, about medical outcomes. At that time, of course, tuberculosis was regarded as a dreaded disease. Today it's been conquered. But sixty- five years ago it was still regarded as a scourge. The fact that you could overcome and actually emerge from it much stronger was a very important lesson to learn. Many years later, I tried to put this down as a philosophical proposition. Namely, that progress is what's left over after you meet an impossible problem. Which is to say, you make progress in this world by overcoming obstacles and not by moving in a path that's all smoothed out. It also, at a very early age, gave me some sense of interactions between patients and physicians. It gave me a sense that while the physician in one sense is omnipotent and omniscient, ultimately the individual has to make the ultimate decisions. I don't think that anything is more exhilarating than overcoming a serious illness. But as [Albert] Schweitzer said, it does leave you with the deep obligation in your bones to pay back and share in some way. Of course, sharing can be regarded as intrusive and oppressive by other people. [laughter] No one likes to hear about illnesses. But if someone comes to you and asks the questions, then you can give yourself permission to answer according to what you've learned.

BASIAGO

Another very fascinating medical involvement you had prior to UCLA, actually many decades before that, was your project in 1955, when you brought a group of young women from Hiroshima who had survived the blast, the Hiroshima Maidens, to come to the United States for plastic surgery. How did this involvement serve to establish some of your credentials in the medical humanities? What insights into the way that the Japanese girls confronted their illness and treatment did you have in mind when you began your mind-body research here at UCLA?

COUSINS

The Hiroshima Maidens came to the United States in 1954.

BASIAGO

'Fifty- five.

COUSINS

Nineteen fifty-five, I beg your pardon. But the project that brought them here had started some years earlier. It took a little time to put all the pieces in place. On one of my visits to Hiroshima, I'd met the Reverend Kiyoshi Tanimoto, who was one of the figures in John Hersey's book Hiroshima. I went to his church, the Nagarekawa Methodist Church [Nagarekawa United Church of Christ] . Tanimoto was American-educated, went to Emory [University], was ordained in the United States, I believe, as a Methodist minister, had his church in Hiroshima. He told me about a rather poignant group of young women whom he had befriended, who came to his church regularly. These were young women--most of them in their upper teens, some in their early twenties--who had been injured or disfigured by the bombing in 1945. They'd come together as a group for emotional support. In Japan, at least at that time, a disfigured person didn't feel very comfortable. So these young women would go out at night, rather than submit themselves to hostile stares during the daytime. They stayed together, and they found a certain communion with Kiyoshi Tanimoto. On my visit to his church one night, I met these young maidens, who were called the Hiroshima Maidens. It was a very warm, very open exchange that we had. As I looked at them face to face, I just wondered whether it might not be possible, through plastic surgery, to restore them to a position where they could go out in the daytime. Then, too, a lot of them had the kinds of injuries that might lend themselves to restorative surgery: fingers that were frozen, or hands, or arms. Some of them were crippled. When I came back to the United States, Dr. [William M.] Hitzig, my personal physician, introduced me to a man who is regarded as one of the world's leading experts in plastic and reconstructive surgery. Dr. Arthur [J.] Barsky. I met with Barsky and told him about these young women. He had two associates, Bernard [E.] Simon and Sidney Kahn. He felt that working as a group they might be able to help these young women. But first it would be necessary for them to get a firsthand view of the problem. So we arranged for them to go to Hiroshima to meet with and examine the Hiroshima Maidens. Barsky, on his return, told me that some improvement would be possible in terms of their facial appearance, although their bodies-- Many of them had been so badly burned that donor tissue on their bodies was already used up. But he would be glad to try his best. He felt that he could get a good result in terms of other physical problems. For example, eyelids that couldn't close because they'd been burned. He thought he could give them the gift of darkness again so they could sleep better. He could unfreeze fingers. There had been a lot of contractions in the hands that had been caused by the burns; he could relieve that. The rehabilitative surgery had perhaps more possibilities than the cosmetic surgery, although something could be done in that direction, too. That part of the problem being attended to, it became necessary to go the rest of the way. What about hospitals? Where would the girls live when they were in the United States? How would they get around? How could we take advantage of their presence here to give them skills, educational training? The problem of dentistry. So I went to the one resource that I knew would be responsive, the American Friends Service Committee. They'd be glad, they said, to take over the hospitality. I went to the American Red Cross, and they agreed to help. Then there was the matter of hospitals. Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City volunteered to supply the hospital services. We wrote to other hospitals around the country, because we wanted this to be a national project, rather than a New York project. The American Red Cross helped with that. Now came the matter of the transportation. Kiyoshi Togasaki, who had been a prominent businessman in Tokyo, whom I met-- He was involved in publishing, and he also knew General [John E.] Hull, who had succeeded General [Douglas] MacArthur as head of the occupation [of Japan] . He sent word to me that the problem of transportation had been handled, because General Hull volunteered to supply an army plane to fly the girls here. Before I knew it, we had a project in our hands. Then came the actual planning for the trip and the screening of the girls. Which is to say, the final selection. I went back to Hiroshima with Dr. Hitzig, Dr. Barsky, Dr. Kahn, and Dr. Simon, for the final medical screening. We felt that we'd have, oh, maybe twenty-five or twenty-six young women in the first group. There were in all maybe forty. But we also wanted to arrange for the others who didn't come to receive treatment in Japan. Plastic and reconstructive surgery was not there at that time a fully accredited branch of medical surgery. So we arranged to bring some surgeons with us who could study plastic surgery in the United States, and we also wanted the medical profession in Hiroshima to be represented in the group. Four Japanese doctors were assigned to the project. We wanted to have someone who could be a spokesperson for the young women--who could attend to their various needs and be liaison. We found an American- educated Japanese with experience as a nurse and as a teacher, Helen Yokoyama, ideal in every way for the job. Thus it was that General Hull's plane picked the girls up and brought them to Tokyo. Then while they were transferring to the plane that would fly them across the Pacific, General Hull received a cable from the State Department requesting the project be canceled, just as the girls were mounting the steps. As I understand the story, he turned the message over to his aide. He said, "I don't have my glasses here. As soon as we get back to the office, make sure that we read this." The plane took off, and back at the office he sent a wire to the State Department saying the plane was already in the air, and he felt that it would make for very poor relations between the two countries to order the plane back. So the girls continued on their way and arrived in New York, where we met them. I might say that before they left from Japan, the State Department was opposed to the project and had so informed me. The reason for the opposition was that the experts--the anthropological experts, cultural anthropological experts whom they had consulted- -said that they felt that the project would have a very difficult time, and would probably collapse, because of the cultural gap involved. That I had underestimated the difficulties of adjustment that would be represented. First of all, the loneliness of the girls, being that far from their homes, never having been away from their parents before; the strange customs in the United States; the language barrier; the strange food; their terror at being in American hospitals. They felt this whole thing was misguided, and requested that I drop this plan. Expert advice is always necessary, but you have the ultimate responsibility and obligation to find out whether it fits the particular case. I mean, you've got to make up your own mind. It seemed to me that the one thing that the State Department experts were missing was that this was a loving experience. Americans were reaching out, the girls were reaching back. It was not just a technical case of fitting parts together that weren't congruent. And the experts were wrong. There wasn't a single case of maladjustment, not a single case in which a girl asked to go back. They had predicted they would- -that at the end of one week the whole thing would collapse. [There was] not a single case of a girl that didn't adjust, who didn't regard the whole thing as an adventure, a loving adventure. I learned a great deal from that, too, about the fallibility of experts when certain human factors are not taken fully into account. The importance of love and goodwill as factors in being able to override what I had to regard as technicalities . The girls stayed in the United States for two years, because their surgery, of course, was spread out, and some girls had to have as many as ten or twelve operations. As the doctors had predicted, they couldn't give these girls brand new faces, but they could improve their appearance, and they could certainly help them functionally and relieve the contractions caused by the burns. We had another problem. That was the problem of return transportation. Apparently, the State Department wasn't pleased that they had been overruled by General Hull in a matter that they regarded to be in their province. They were able to cancel the military flight going back, because they had plenty of time in which to do it. That left us without transportation. Well, I went to Pan American [World Airways, Inc.], and they were delighted to fly the girls back, with the compliments of the airline. How did we fund this thing while it was going on in the United States? Readers of the Saturday Review [of Literature] had contributed money. But most of the money came tumbling down out of the heavens, almost by divine dispensation. What happened was that Ralph [L.] Edwards did a program called "This is Your Life." He did a program around the Reverend Kiyoshi Tanimoto, who came with the girls. Tanimoto told the story of these girls. When Ralph Edwards said, "How are you paying for it?" he described what had happened, that people had volunteered, and that readers of the Saturday Review had sent in money. Ralph Edwards said, "Well, don't tell me that enough is available." He said, "I don't think so." Then the next thing we knew was that mailbags filled with quarters, dimes, half dollars, or dollar bills, began to arrive. We had a large mail sack that was sent to the station. When we got through counting, there was $57,000! [laughter] Much more than we needed . There was $25,000 left, and this belonged to the Maidens. I informed them that it was their money, but they said that there would be other projects and wanted this to be their gift to any future project. That was how the project for the Ravensbruck Lapins was funded. The Ravensbruck Lapins were a group of Polish women who had been used as guinea pigs--medical guinea pigs--by Nazi doctors at the Ravensbruck concentration camp. This was a camp consisting mostly of Polish Catholic women. Caroline Ferriday, one of the readers of the Saturday Review who had followed the Hiroshima Maidens project, had been communicating with a Polish woman who was a survivor of this group. In this way, Caroline Ferriday learned of the plight of these women, many of them crippled as the result of the experimentation, who were in need of medical attention and surgical attention but also psychological rehabilitation. While in the concentration camp, Nazi doctors would test certain drugs on them. For example, they were testing new sulfanilamide drugs. They'd crack open their bones and insert gangrenous materials--broken glass, soiled rags--to produce raging infections. And they would try to cope with these infections with these new drugs. These were the survivors of those experiments, but they'd been left washed up, crippled, and sick. Caroline Ferriday hoped that we might do for them what we had done for the Hiroshima Maidens. Thus it was that we used the same team, basically-- the Quakers, the Red Cross, the doctors, plastic surgeons, and reconstructive surgeons- -to provide help for these women. But they had another problem, which was that the German government had not provided any help or any reparations. When I looked into it, I discovered the reason was that at that time the Bonn government [Federal Republic of Germany] didn't recognize Poland. So when I went to the German embassy in Washington, I learned they had no way of dealing with these people, since there was no recognition. I went to Senator [Edmund S.] Muskie, who got a great deal of Senate support and made representations to the government of Bonn, which agreed to accept me as a representative of these women. I started to negotiate for reparations, and I was successful. Varying sums were paid, not just to these women, but to some fifteen hundred other Polish survivors of the medical experimentation. You see, the other survivors of the concentration camps had received some compensation, but these particular Poles did not. So we were able to get compensation for about fifteen hundred. It made a big difference in their lives. Because you're talking here about sums that varied, but they ranged let's say from $15,000 to $20,000, to $35,000, $40,000. At that time, that was a lot of money, especially in those countries, and they were able to straighten out their lives. But we also wanted to provide the medical attention. These cases were somewhat different medically and surgically from the Hiroshima Maidens. Because here you were dealing with deliberate physical injury, and induced disease, calculated mutilation. These women were crippled, many of them, and so you didn't have problems in plastic surgery so much as you had problems in reconstructive surgery. But the psychological problems were not all that different from the Hiroshima ones. The need was to put them in a loving experience, a caring experience. And they relished the trip to the United States. It was the highlight of their lives. They made new friends. When they returned, they received their compensation from the German government. So their lives, in effect, were really transformed. We had a third project which involved the Biafran children during the Nigerian civil war. There would be stories appearing in the press about the inability of food to get through to the Biafrans and about the large scale kwashiorkor cases of children. I asked Omar Fareed of Los Angeles, whom I'd met at the Schweitzer Hospital, to be the medical head of that project. Omar had been traveling all over the world as a sort of a flying doctor. He'd been in Vietnam, Africa, and he'd worked with the Carr Foundation. We brought in some doctors from the Schweitzer Hospital and got medical supplies. This was quite different from either the Ravensbruck Lapins project or the Hiroshima Maidens project. It called for on-site medical attention under wartime conditions. Dr. Fareed and Dr. Davida Taylor, at UCLA, stood up under those conditions. I went there myself and flew into Biafra in a plane that was being peppered by flak. At nighttime even before you heard them you would see these bursts in the air, quite pretty as a matter of fact, like flowers opening up, [laughter] if you could look at it objectively, without reference to your own situation, but just in terms of the appearance. The plane was rocked by it, but we got through. It was an old DC-4, as I remember it, prop plane. Then you had to land in Biafra, which was under attack. The landing at night was rather interesting, because what would happen was that the field would flash its lights for two seconds, and turn them off for maybe twenty. That was the only guidance that the planes had coming in. But these pilots, volunteer pilots, were very adept at finding their way onto these little landing strips. We landed with a great deal of commotion, with planes being unloaded with food and medicines and a lot of scurrying around. Every once in a while the warning alarm would go off, and you'd take cover. Then there would be the ride in the Jeep, with stopping at checkpoints, but also driving for the most part at night, again with lights that would go off and on. Your headlights would go on for a few seconds, then go out for the next ten or fifteen seconds. Nothing to me was more poignant than getting out of Biafra. The war was coming to an end, and the entire area was a dense mass of people trying to get out in some way. A woman clung to me, begging me to take her with [me] , which of course I didn't have the power to do. Someone else begged me to take a letter, and the Biafran officer who was with me practically ordered me not to do it, because he said if I did that, then there ' d be others. But I managed somehow to take the letter. Then the airport was under fire, and the plane was-- I'm sure it was overweight, much beyond limits, densely packed. People were even sitting on the floor. We took off, and it was not without interest. But several days earlier, I was in one of our medical Jeeps, bringing medicines into the remote villages. It was the day that Americans landed on the moon. We'd heard it over the radio, we were listening to it on the Jeep, on the Jeep radio, the Voice of America. Then suddenly someone in the Jeep shouted that there was a bombing plane coming down on a strafing run. So the driver ran the Jeep into the ditch, and we all were face down in mud. The plane made its run, didn't come back, just made one run. But it was very interesting that here we had Americans setting foot on the moon, and I had my face in the mud on the earth. Which made for an interesting juxtaposition of ideas about the human situation and about what humans were making of their lives.

BASIAGO

Another activity that contributed to the development of your understanding in the medical humanities was your participation in the evaluations group of the University of Missouri's medical school at Kansas City. This, you later commented, opened the door about the way medical education is structured. How so? What reforms in medical education do you now advocate as a result of that experience?

COUSINS

I got into the Missouri experience through Dr. [E.] Grey Diamond, a very eminent physician, who was the son-in-law of Grenville Clark, whom I had known very well. Diamond felt that basic reforms were necessary in medical education. He felt that most of what doctors learned that was of value to them had come through their experiences with patients. The formal education was always being mediated by actual experience. So he wanted to combine the two. He did a design for medical education that would begin at the undergraduate level--that would take students directly out of high school. Instead of putting them through four years of college education, and then go on to medical school, he wanted to combine college education with medical education but to make it a six-year course and thus shorten the time. Also, when he would take these kids out of high school--right out of high school--the medical education itself would be not only theoretical but functional. The very first day you came into medical school, you would be in a hospital, watching doctors, getting the feel of patients, learning the importance of the relationship between the doctor and the patient, and learning something about the psychology of patients, and knowing about the need to individualize your knowledge, rather than attempting to apply it just out of a textbook in a uniform way. Then back in the classroom, they would augment what they had learned by relating those particular experiences to certain medical principles, learning why certain things had to happen. Why, for example, there are certain procedures that they observe in the hospitals. It was a very striking approach to education. John Dewey would have called it "learning by doing." The criticism that was made was that these students were being shortchanged in terms of physics, chemistry, biochemistry, and lacked the foundation necessary to practice medicine. It was also predicted that these students wouldn't pass the national examinations at the end of their six years. But the scoffers were wrong. When these kids took their national examinations, they scored very high in the very subjects that they were supposed to be deficient in. Grey Diamond, it seemed to me, was justified and was fully confirmed in his underlying propositions. There was a group that Diamond brought together, six or seven of us. We would visit the school regularly. We would listen to the problems that had developed, meet with the students, meet with the faculty, and be part of that total experiment. After maybe eight years or so, the group was dissolved because the program had been fully validated, accepted by the AMA [American Medical Association] , and now the students were out teaching themselves, or in practice, a lot of them in primary care practice. Grey Diamond's notion was that one of the problems of medicine was that you trained medical students, but then they go into the most profitable lines of practice. But meanwhile, the rural areas of the country are left unattended. So this education was to try to steer these young people in that direction. In fact, it succeeded in that sense because most of them did go into family practice in rural medicine. So socially as well as scientifically, the program was a success, and I learned a great deal from it.

1.38. TAPE NUMBER: XX, SIDE TWO (AUGUST 8, 1988)

COUSINS

At University of Missouri in Kansas City, I would make the rounds with the students in the hospitals. I would go to their classes. As a matter of fact, the members of this advisory committee gave lectures to the students. It gave me an opportunity to think a great deal about medical education in a fairly systematic way.

BASIAGO

Another activity, prior to UCLA involvement, was your membership on the special Medical Advisory Group of the Veterans Administration [VA] . This, you said, provided you a "lookout tower."

COUSINS

It didn't precede but was coincident with.

BASIAGO

I imagine this was in the early eighties?

COUSINS

Yes.

BASIAGO

Now, when you say "lookout tower, " is that into the field of medicine?

COUSINS

This was after the piece ["Anatomy of an Illness (as Perceived by the Patient)"] appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine [Vol. 295 (1976)], and after I had given some talks in various places. Then I was appointed to serve on this group, which was the medical steering group for the Veterans Administration. We would consider not just the administrative problems of running the largest hospital service in the world, and not just a chance to observe medical problems in the large, but an opportunity to see at very close range how medical research was being applied to problems. For example, one of the problems that came before the group had to do with Agent Orange. This was the defoliant that was used in Vietnam. It poisoned the crops but also produced illness on a wide scale in Vietnam. When the United States was accused of using these poisonous chemicals in the war, it was denied. So Americans were not prepared for the fact that this had actually been used. But meanwhile, you see, soldiers had to handle these chemical poisons. They had to transport it, they had to move it. They also had to use it in poisoning these fields. So a great many American veterans had been affected by it in varying degrees.

BASIAGO

I remember the skin trouble, the acne, the liver cancer, cancers of various organ systems.

COUSINS

That's right. Thousands upon thousands. So it was a question, not just of supplying transient medical care, but also taking care of their social needs that would come up. And that problem still exists.

BASIAGO

I know at this time the various veterans' coalitions were pressuring the VA to reform their treatment program for Agent Orange. What were you successful in persuading the VA to provide for veterans? I know they had sort of a four-point agenda there, such as a delayed reentry program for Agent Orange veterans. Really, wasn't it a matter of getting the VA to acknowledge that dioxin was a carcinogen?

COUSINS

Yes. This medical board was more than just advisory. It really set medical policy. It was very responsive to the problem and set up procedures. In fact, it advertised so that veterans who had symptoms without knowing what those symptoms were would understand how important it was to have them checked out. But for me that experience with Agent Orange had a much larger significance. Which is to say, if we did this in Vietnam, what was to be expected in the next war? We were working on not just chemical weapons but bacteriological weapons-- new diseases that the world had never heard of before, the production of new viruses, the ability to produce heart attacks with a droplet on the skin. It fit into this larger sense of madness that was coming over the world, where the governments themselves were the agents of the madness .

BASIAGO

So when you described that this experience at the VA allowed you a lookout tower, was it into some of these really Strangelovian forms of defense research?

COUSINS

Yes, that's right, that's right.

BASIAGO

Was there any tie-in to that experience in your ultimate effort throughout the eighties to gather the information that we find in The Pathology of Power, where you're very critical of the runaway defense giant?

COUSINS

It all fit together. It didn't start, to be sure, with my work with the VA, but ever since the bomb was dropped at Hiroshima. We spoke about that.

BASIAGO

I imagine the UCLA Center for Health Sciences is a prodigious recipient of a lot of defense funding, perhaps to work on such mad inventions as you describe. Have you ever had any confrontations here regarding chemical weapons research or bacteriological research?

COUSINS

I've written about it, as you know. I just hope I haven't produced any problems for UCLA. [laughter] But if I have, they were not brought to my attention.

BASIAGO

I recall that you appeared in the early eighties to introduce the Stanford [University] biochemist Paul Berg, and you had brought up the issue of this kind of medical research and the ethics involved. You had no real problem with Paul Berg, who essentially agreed with you. But you did get some heckling and hectoring from members of the audience, who I imagine- -

COUSINS

How did you know about this?

BASIAGO

I was there. [laughter]

COUSINS

Were you really?

BASIAGO

Yeah.

COUSINS

Tell me about it.

BASIAGO

This was, I believe, in 1981. You were to introduce Berg, who was discussing his findings in rDNA. By way of introduction, you discussed the ethics of genetics research, and some of the defense implications of altering microorganisms, and this sort of thing. The audience, which I assumed, or was informed, represented the UCLA scientific community in great depth, wasn't very pleased with your introduction of Berg, [laughter] and began to heckle, essentially defending their turf. I'm just curious how that's worked itself out over the past decade or so, given the tremendous amount of money here that the Pentagon provides for research.

COUSINS

It may be fortunate that I didn't know about this to that extent. [laughter] I don't know whether I would have been slowed up if I had known. As I say, I just hope I didn't bring any embarrassment to the university.

BASIAGO

[laughter] Well, I'm sure you had your partisans in the audience as well.

COUSINS

What were you doing there?

BASIAGO

I was covering it for the Daily Bruin, here at UCLA, and I just recall the reaction that was engendered by some of those who were defending such activities. [laughter] I find that one of your chief responsibilities here has been to play the part of a medical ombudsman. What has been the scope of your responsibilities, and what are some memorable activities you've engaged in as a medical ombudsman? What chief conflicts have you encountered or tried to ameliorate?

COUSINS

Shortly after I came, the public perception of my presence here was that I was to be a representative of the lay community, especially patients. In those early years, I was something of a department store return counter for unwanted merchandise. They looked to me to handle complaints. Well, I found those complaints — most of them were very moving, some very valid--but most of them had to do with the way physicians communicate. One patient, a woman, said that she had been in for a comprehensive workup, and the doctor said that the tests didn't show anything, but he was pretty sure she had cancer. The fact that he was acting unscientifically, and also producing terror without very specific justification, troubled her, and I think she was justified in that. Very few complaints about the quality of medicine, but a great many complaints about the way patients were treated psychologically. Insensitivity in the way the physician communicated the diagnosis. Insensitivity in talking to women about breast cancer, the feeling being that men were being altogether too casual in telling a woman that she ought to have her breast removed. I had very few patients who came to see me because of AIDS [acquired immunodeficiency syndrome]. I did go up to San Francisco, at the suggestion of Dr. George Solomon, to meet with a number of AIDS patients with whom he had been working. These were patients who had lived past the predicted time, and he thought it might be interesting for me to talk to them, which I did. It seemed apparent to me that the one thing that this group had in common was that they didn't deny the diagnosis, but they defied the verdict that went with it. They provided mutual support for each other, and also a great deal of support for others who had just been diagnosed. They had something to do in the world; they had a very clear idea of what their mission was to be, and they've gone on, year after year. It's now six or seven years beyond the diagnosis. They're still HIV [human immunodeficiency virus] positive, but they're functioning beautifully. It seems to me that there's a psychological component that has to be recognized. One of the unfortunate things about AIDS is that it has produced an atmosphere of terror, rather than knowledge, and people who are diagnosed immediately have an intensification as a result of the panic that the diagnosis causes, and thus an environment is created for the rapid advance of the disease. With this group, once having conquered the terror and the panic, once having a purpose, they were able somehow to continue functioning. I had a dentist come to see me about three months ago. He came with his lawyer, because he wanted to leave his money to our program at UCLA. He brought his lawyer so that I could give the lawyer the correct language for the will. He said, "I have very substantial means. I'm a dentist, as you see." I told him that I wouldn't talk to him about his will, and I wouldn't give his lawyer any information. But if he wanted to talk to me about fighting back, I'd be glad to work with him on that. We put him through some exercises, I showed him how to move his blood around. He had a sense of connection with his own body and also a realization that he was not barred from some measure of control over his autonomic nervous system. A few weeks ago, he came back with a report that even now causes my skin to prickle with excitement. He said that he was no longer HIV positive! Of course, the question that occurs to you is, was he misdiagnosed? No, he wasn't misdiagnosed, because they've got the laboratory analysis. Most people who get AIDS, two-thirds of them, I believe, never develop the active form of the disease. Therefore, there must be some compensating mechanism. Even though the T-4 cells are knocked out, other parts of the system take over to some degree. The cytotoxic T-cells, perhaps, other NK [natural killer] cells, I don't know. But it is true, as I say, that even though you've got a time bomb ticking away in these people, a lot of them stay free of the active form of the illness. They are able to transmit this, and it can become virulent in others, to be sure. But it does fit in with the larger picture that I've been interested in. Namely, to what extent does the human spirit become relevant? To what extent does determination, faith, hope have biological significance? What is the most that you can make out of a situation? How do you fight back? You may not be able to cure yourself, but you might get the most and the best out of whatever's possible.

1.39. TAPE NUMBER: XXI, SIDE ONE (AUGUST 15, 1988)

BASIAGO

It seems that now after twenty-one sessions that we've spent regrettably little time discussing the Saturday Review of Literature, which you've been almost synonymously linked with since you assumed its editorship in 1940. Under your editorship, Saturday Review campaigned against the indiscriminate use of miracle drugs, that is, insufficiently tested drugs; publicized the harmful effects of fluoridation; urged the federal government to make a substantial commitment to space exploration; argued for a possible ban of cigarette advertising; warned against the growing casualness toward violence in entertainment; rallied support for pollution control; and condemned American intervention both in the Dominican Republic and Indochina. Now that the Saturday Review has been sold to Omni International, what issues and problems do you advocate that, in your own words, it should "tilt a lance at," in the coming years?

COUSINS

Well, you were good enough to describe some of the causes that the magazine espoused. Perhaps we might emphasize a few of those. First, the fact that the Saturday Review was one of the first to recognize the implications of nuclear energy for military purposes and also one of the most emphatic in its campaigning for a foreign policy based on the need to create a world order, with the effective instruments of governance among nations. These were, perhaps, the major themes. We did, as you say, talk about the need to protect the environment. I think we were the first to use the term environment, of any publication, in the sense that we felt the problem was greater than just pollution, which had been the term in current use up to that time. We felt that there were comprehensive threats to the environment. All this, of course, in a literary magazine. There were some things that disappointed me about the magazine--my fault. I don't think we had ever really developed a style in criticism that one would say was indigenously Saturday Review. I was troubled, perhaps never more so than now, about the quality of criticism in America. I'm especially concerned about the effects of that criticism on drama. The New York theater I think, has fallen off sharply, precisely because you don't have critics who believe deeply in the theater and who nourish it. Criticism in theatre has become almost stylishly cynical and almost hostile. I think back on the criticism of men like John Mason Brown and Brooks Atkinson. Here were critics who loved the theater, who, even when they were harsh, were not hostile; critics who perceived possibilities of development by young playwrights, even though the early works called for serious criticism. But it was a certain enthusiasm and love of the theater that emerged in the writings of men like John Mason Brown and Brooks Atkinson. In the field of music, we were lucky to have as knowledgeable a writer as Irving Kolodin, especially in the opera. He, too, was someone who committed his life to music. Therefore, even when he was critical, he was not harsh and not self-serving. Katharine Kuh in art had those same qualities. Hollis Alpert in the theater. But as these critics passed from the scene, replacements were not easy. In the case of John Brown, we were lucky that he had introduced us to a young critic by the name of Henry Hewes, whose dominant characteristic was his total immersion in the theater. Henry may not have had the lively writing style of John Brown, but he had good taste. Well, today even the second generation of critics has thinned out. What is needed in America today it seems to me is a revival of the tradition of the responsible critic-- someone who stands between the public and bad books, or bad music, or bad plays, but at the same time is not a barrier to the development of those art forms. Someone who first of all has a sense of responsibility. The critic's standards have to be recognized so the people know what yardsticks he is using. When these yardsticks vary from play to play it points up a flaw in the critic. But the critic's credentials are not represented by his ability to turn phrases or to be smart at the author's or composer's or playwright's expense. Someone who, first of all, tries to penetrate through to the intentions of the artist and then judge the artist in those terms, as well as his own. My hope, therefore, for the Saturday Review today is that it would, first of all, be a source of responsible criticism in literature, music, art, theater, film and the dance. But also [provide] a responsible and intelligent commentary on world affairs, not waiting for things to happen before you write about it, but trying to anticipate the big issues before those issues become front and center.

BASIAGO

Three of your books did that, and in fact each of them became a vade mecum of a particular political movement or group. I'm speaking of "Modern Man Is Obsolete" which in 1945 was so central to [United] World Federalists thought. In Place of Folly, your 1961 book, became a central text of SANE [Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy] and the nuclear disarmament movement. Also, in another way, Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient: Reflections on Healing and Regeneration, which in 1979 became an important philosophical contribution to holistic health. Why did this happen? In other words, from an author's perspective, what did these three works possess that gave them so much centrality to these movements. Do you feel that something was happening creatively when you wrote these that might explain--?

COUSINS

There was nothing portentous or premeditated about any of those books or any of the books that I've written. It was just that you keep filling up with ideas, and then they spill over into print or into the typewriter. This is the way writers write, I guess. If you have something to say, you become restless until you say it. And it's a matter of growth as well. No, I had no elaborate or presumptuous notions of what these books should do. Obviously an author hopes that his books will be taken seriously. Some of my books were written out of blazing concern and even indignation. The Pathology of Power [1987] was written out of the fierce anger at the way the American people were being manipulated by power brokers in this society. I was surprised at the effects of some of the books. In writing The Anatomy of an Illness, I did hope that it might be helpful to other people who were ill. But I certainly didn't expect that it would be taken up by the medical profession itself, and by medical schools, and that it would have the public impact that it did. All this, of course, is very gratifying to an author.

BASIAGO

Your 1974 work, The Celebration of Life: [A Dialogue on Immortality and Infinity], takes the form of a Socratic dialogue on immortality and infinity. In the book, you introduce a philosophy that you've come to call "consequentialism." What is consequentialism?

COUSINS

It's an attempt to define the responsibility of individuals to anticipate the effects of causes and to recognize that nothing that is done is without its effect, seen or unseen. Therefore, one of the major purposes of education is to enable us to recognize such connections. And the purpose of philosophy is not just to recognize effects, but to ask ourselves why certain things should be. In philosophy you never get precise answers, to be sure. That's one definition of philosophy, which is that you deal with things that can't be proved. But so long as we have the ability to think, we have the obligation, it seems to me, to think about what is necessary and what will happen when we do things. So all that consequentialism is, I suppose, is a philosophical attempt, not just to speculate on where we stand in the total scheme of things, but where we would like to be and how best to get there.

BASIAGO

In "Modern Man Is Obsolete," you argued that "either war is obsolete--or man is"--that we must learn to live as "world citizens" or die as "world warriors." Indeed, your career history is a remarkable odyssey of a world citizen. Forty years after "Modern Man Is Obsolete," how do you assess the state of world citizenship? What makes you despair regarding this theme, and what gives you hope for greater world citizenship?

COUSINS

First, what gives me hope about world citizenship or about the world in general: My ignorance is the source of a great deal of hope. It's hard to make downside predictions about the future unless you know everything involved in it. And the things that are beyond knowing now are things that keep you from being too pessimistic. I know that if in 1945 someone told me that we could stagger along for forty years or more without the instruments of world order and still not have a major nuclear war, I would have argued the proposition. So I take a certain degree of comfort, not just in my ignorance, but in the fact of inadequate predictions in the past. There's a certain tension, of course, between the things that are knowable and those things that are not. You can analyze problems--these things come within range of the knowable. You can anticipate the effects of certain causes. We spoke about consequentialism a moment ago. So one's intellectual faculties must lead inevitably to concern. But the imponderables rescue you from total despair, and it's these imponderables which we were unable to see in 1945. Obviously, we can look back now on the last forty years and see that the concern has been well directed. We see now the consequences of the nuclear arms race. The peril is there. We may have been wrong with respect to chronology, but the essentials of our apprehension have been verified. Yet we have had a little more time than we recognized. If in 1945 I had realized that we did have perhaps more time than seemed to be the case, our strategy might have been different. I still believe in the essential need for governance on a world scale, and I still am apprehensive about the consequences of anarchy. We may have had a little more time than we thought was possible, but the disease is clearly diagnosable. The prognosis is still terrifying, and the treatment, unfortunately, has been deferred.

BASIAGO

Have you developed any first principles regarding the obligations we have to one another as human beings that transcend our obligations to the sovereign societies in which we live?

COUSINS

In The Pathology of Power, I try to set them down, and with your permission, I might review them with you. If there is a conflict between the security of the sovereign state and the security of the human commonwealth, the human commonwealth comes first. If there is a conflict between the well-being of the nation and the well-being of mankind or humankind, the well-being of humankind comes first. If there is a conflict between the needs of this generation and the needs of later generations, the needs of later generations come first. If there is a conflict between the rights of the state and the rights of human beings, the rights of human beings come first. The state justifies its existence only as it serves and safeguards the rights of human beings. Still continuing with first principles, if there is a conflict between public edict and private conscience, private conscience comes first. If there is a conflict between the easy drift of prosperity and the ordeal of peace, the ordeal of peace comes first. These principles, it seems to me, have to do with our place in the world at this particular time. And when I say our, I'm talking not just about Americans, but all people, whether they go by the name of Americans or Soviets or Chinese or British or Indians or Africans or Japanese. These are obligations that we have to one another that transcend our obligations to the sovereign state.