Capable of Honor (25 page)

Chapter 7

Now it had happened, the event so monstrous that nobody could ever conceive that it would: the United States had actually defended itself with the veto. The fabric of society was ripped indeed, the globe was all awry: horrid things were seen in the streets, graves yawned and geese did fly in the Forum. From all the nations a fearful yawp went up.

The whole world went “
Waaah!
”

Loudest of all, of course, was the
“Waaah!”
from the United States itself.

U.S. DEFIES UN, CASTS FIRST VETOES; FLAUNTS WORLD OPINION IN GOROTOLAND, the New York
Times
roared with stern disapproval; NATIONS CONDEMN U.S. “IRRESPONSIBILITY”; NUCLEAR WAR NEAR.

“On this day,” the moderator of the hastily organized CBS special, “Doomsday in the UN,” said somberly at 9 P.M., “the United States Government took the step which may end forever mankind’s hopes of lasting peace.” One political scientist, two historians, Herbert Jason, and a former chief American delegate to the UN nodded agreement with a prim and solemn air, and were off on an hour of quivering attack upon the President and the Secretary of State.

From LeGage Shelby of DEFY, Senator Fred Van Ackerman of COMFORT, and Knight Kommander Rufus Kleinfert of KEEP came violent denunciations strikingly parallel in word and emphasis. In New York the organizers of the HANDS OFF GOROTOLAND and hastily rewrote their copy to carry the heading STOP MURDERING THE UN, MR. PRESIDENT! An anguished cry came from the president and executive board of the American Association for the United Nations, an equally wounded wail from the National Council of Churches. One vast bleat arose from a thousand frantic newspapers, a thousand radio and television programs. At the Cape, Clete O’Donnell’s “One Big Union,” in company with several others in major defense installations, prepared for a protest strike. Ministers big and little readied their sermons. Across the nation teachers quivered, students shook: at a hundred campuses tomorrow, school would not be kept. Poets, prelates, and professors returned White House invitations right and left, their primly pompous announcements of discourtesy carried to the reaches of the globe with an eager encouragement by Walter and his friends.

On the continents and over the seas, the world kept pace. In Moscow they bellowed, in Peking they shrieked, in London they managed to be both dignified and aghast, in Paris they spat out disdainful words. Here a U. S. Embassy made a perfect target, there a U. S. Information library gave off a lovely light. In India they rioted. In Rome they ran in the streets. In Africa and Asia, U.S. nationals were hounded to their homes and several were killed. In Latin America nine capitals trembled with anti-American demonstrations. “It is a truly fearful thing,” said Britain’s oldest, most doddering, most pathetic peer, who had never been moved to comment by more than two hundred Soviet vetoes in the past, “when America decides to destroy the one chance humanity has to escape instant death and eternal damnation.”

And everywhere, on every continent, in every land—

Everyone who had access to a microphone spoke.

Everyone who had access to newsprint wrote.

The United States, the world and all, went “
Waaah!
” indeed.

At the storm center, all, apparently, was calm despite the diligent and desperate efforts of the press to stir it up. To a clamoring White House press corps shouting angry questions in an office jammed to overflowing, the President’s press secretary kept patiently reiterating one sentence: “The President has retired and will have no comment tonight.”

“Will he have one tomorrow?” someone shouted.

“I don’t know,” the press secretary said.

“Or ever, the old jackass?” somebody else murmured loudly, and there was a burst of approving laughter.

“I repeat,” the press secretary said, flushed and harassed but standing his ground, “the President has retired and will have no comment tonight. Now why don’t you all be reasonable and go on home.”

“We don’t know our homes are still there,” someone responded bitterly, and with many noisy murmurings and mutterings they withdrew, though not, at first, to go home. For quite a long time, most of them remained milling about in the lobby of the west wing of the White House, condemning in cleverly bitter frustration the man they could not reach.

Nor could they reach the other principals, as it developed. Both the State and Defense Departments refused to put through calls to their respective Secretaries, and all their press officers remained as unresponsive as the President’s. Not even Lafe Smith and Cullee Hamilton could be found when the New York press sought to close in upon them for comment. Lafe had called “Oak Lawn,” the sanitarium up the Hudson where Hal Fry’s son lived, and arranged to get a visitor’s room for the night, telling them he wanted to see the boy in the morning, knowing he would never be found there. Cullee had slipped away in the wild confusion as the Council session ended, run quickly downstairs, and disappeared in the night crowds of Manhattan. Now he and Sarah Johnson, unknown and unnoticed, were eating a late dinner in the Village; he thought he would probably stay at her place for the night. Tashikov, Raoul Barre, and any one of a hundred other delegates were eagerly commenting whenever the press gave them a chance (Lord Maudulayne was politely tightlipped, but this was considered characteristic and no one complained), but it was the Americans the press wanted. The Americans were not to be found.

In his quiet room on the seventeenth floor of the Waldorf-Astoria, Walter wrote. He had only an hour and a half before the meeting he was certain would decide the fate of the Administration, the presidential election, Gorotoland, and many other things. The phrases flew, on the wings of a righteous conviction and a terrible indignation.

“Insanity compounds insanity. Stupidity piles upon stupidity. History’s greatest irresponsibility sends the United Nations hurtling into the discard and the world hurtling ever faster into war.

“Yesterday, one could say, ‘God help the United States.’

“Today, one doubts that He would dare.

“Never has an action less honorable and more destructive of everything mankind holds dear been undertaken by America—and this under the leadership of an Administration that says it values honor.

“It knows the word.

“It does not know the meaning.

“There is no honor here. There is only the awful, stark face of terror and universal destruction, implacable, inexorable, deaf to all reason, locked away from all appeal.

“And to think it is the United States which has done this thing!

“For shame, for shame.

“Now the United Nations, the shield and protector to which civilized mankind has turned for decades as the hope and guarantee of peace, is made an empty shell. Now the stout defender of a stable world society, the brave and kindly Godfather of Nations under whose helping hand half a hundred newborn states have come to being, is no more. Now the bright torch that was lighted in San Francisco flickers out, plunged into darkness by the one power above all that should keep it alight.

“Vetoes, it is true, there have been in the past. But what, essentially, have they been? Procedural matters, minor items, understandable and perhaps even justifiable acts by the Soviet Government, which has rightly concluded on far too many occasions that the West was combining against it. In self-defense it has exercised the right granted in the Charter. But never, it seems safe to say, has it done so in quite the cold-blooded fashion, or with quite the dreadful consequences, as the United States has done in this fateful and fearful hour for mankind.

“For this is no minor or procedural matter here. This is nothing that can be justified or understood by the decent tenets of decent men, who everywhere today stand aghast before this dreadful deed. This is the wanton act of a wanton Administration, deliberately throwing onto history’s slag-heap all the patient work of decades that has slowly but steadily strengthened the United Nations until it has become—until Tuesday afternoon—the bright beacon and brave hope of all the world.

“What is humanity to say of the nation which has thus ruthlessly extinguished the world’s dream of peace? What is it to say of the little men wielding great power who have used it in so black-hearted a way to defy the hopes and aspirations of Earth?

“Of the nation it may say: misguided, mismanaged, misled.

“But of the men it should say: blind, bigoted, beyond excuse and beyond redemption.

“And to them it should say:

“Go, Harley Hudson.

“Go, Orrin Knox.

“Go, all ye of little faith and little courage who applaud their deed.

“Leave the stage of history, wet with the blood of the hope you have destroyed!

“Begone and let us rest, in the pain and agony into which you have thrown us!

“You have done enough.

“Not all the cabals of hell could manage more.”

And that, he told himself grimly, as he ripped the sheet from his typewriter and prepared to call the syndicate and dictate it for release Thursday morning, was no more than God’s own truth.

For the first time in his life he was ashamed to be an American.

“Look, lover-boy,” Helen-Anne Carrew was saying sharply at the same moment to the White House press secretary, who congratulated himself that she was arguing with him from the Kennedy-Warren and not from the other side of his desk, “you tell him this is little Helen-Anne calling, and you tell him that I’m
not
interested in anything about the vetoes. You tell him I think the vetoes are great, I’m all for them, and I’m going to say so in my column tomorrow. So I’m not calling to bother him about that. But you tell him I’ve got to talk to him, because it’s very important. Now, damn it, stop stalling and put me through.”

“Helen-Anne,” the press secretary said patiently, “don’t you realize he isn’t talking to anybody? There are three hundred press people outside here, all as mad as you are. What makes you think you’re different?”

“He’ll talk to me if you tell him it’s urgent. And I haven’t got all night to argue with you, dear. Really I haven’t.”

“I’m a little busy myself,” the press secretary said with a pardonable asperity. “They’re calling in here from as far away as New Zealand, you know. You’re lucky to get through even to me, sweetie pie. Now why don’t you go to bed and be a good girl?”

“Who wants to be a good girl in bed?” Helen-Anne demanded, and gave her ribald hoot. “I grant you I usually am, but it isn’t for lack of trying. Now look, lover. Let’s stop the chitchat and put me through, O.K.? You tell him it’s something about Panama I picked up at the Italian Embassy tonight. I thought he ought to know it, that’s all. Damn it, is that too much to ask?”

“Well—” the press secretary said. He sighed. “Christ, why did they ever let women into this profession?”

“Thank your stars they did,” Helen-Anne told him. “You men would be an even lazier bunch of slobs than you are already if we weren’t around to keep you on your toes. Ask the man to talk to me now, O.K.?”

“Hang on,” the press secretary said in a tired tone. “I’ll try.”

“Good evening, dear,” the President said a moment later in an amused tone. “I hear you’ve been giving Jack a hard time. Are you sure it’s all that important? Have you really heard something about Panama?”

“Probably no more than you have,” she said, “but I thought you ought to know.”

“Tell me,” he said; and after she had, “Yes, that’s interesting and a somewhat different angle from what we’ve already received here. Now what did you really call me about?”

“Walter,” she said promptly. “I’m worried as hell about this tack he’s taking. I think he’s going through the male climacteric and it’s driven him crazy. I’ve never known him to be quite this unrestrained before. I have a feeling it’s going to get worse.”

“Yes,” the President said soberly, “I suppose it is. I didn’t think, after I read his column this morning and his statement at the UN, that he had any invective left, but I imagine after the vetoes he’ll be inspired to new heights. Of course he’s not alone. He’s leading a righteous army.” His tone lightened but not too much. “I may be shot down at the East Gate of the White House tomorrow morning, you know, if I venture out.”

“I’ll be there to defend you,” Helen-Anne promised. “I like the vetoes. I think you’ve done exactly the right thing. And don’t you fall for the theory that Walter runs the country. He doesn’t. Plenty of people disagree.”

“I know,” the President said with a rueful little laugh. “But they aren’t the ones who have the newspapers and the networks and the magazines. Those are the ones who agree with Walter, and I’m afraid they’re making so much noise we can’t hear anyone else. In fact, I hate to say it about a noble profession, but on the basis of past performance I rather suspect they aren’t going to
let
us hear anyone else. What do you think?”

“Oh, they will,” Helen-Anne said dryly. “On page 37, with the worst photographs they can find. Except for you and Orrin. You can always get page 1 and all the networks. And that, if I may advise, is what you’d better do, Mr. President. And fast.”

“I expect to have a few things to say as the days go by,” the President assured her. “I’m only lying low tonight. Incidentally, I trust you’re not writing any of this down and that it’s all going to be forgotten the minute you hang up, right?”

“Yes, Mr. President. It won’t be forgotten but it won’t be written. I am going to come out strong for what you’ve done. I may not be the female counterpart of America’s leading philosopher-statesman, but I have a few million circulation, myself.”

“Have you talked to the Knoxes?” the President inquired. His tone became humorous again. “I haven’t dared call. I’m sure Walter and his friends have all the wires tapped.”

“Oh, yes. I got through there, too. It took a little doing, but—”

“Helen-Anne,” he said, “you’re the miracle woman of the Washington press. The President and the Secretary of State put an absolute lid on calls, and Our Girl comes through. Sensational!”

“I just figured that along about now you’d both be getting curious about the outside world and so you’d be ready to talk to someone. And who better than Helen-Anne?”