"TAKE MY HOME AND MY MONEY."

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 225, 21 September 1940, Page 12

"TAKE MY HOME AND MY MONEY."

Dorothy Thompson Asks What Humanity Needs. " 'What are the things for which I really care, the things which are essential to my happiness? What do I believe?' There are questions each one of us is asking himself to-day," says Dorothy Thompson, famous American writer. "It has become a necessity of our lives, as real and necessary as bread." She continues: "In this process of self-criticism, it is amazing how much one throws away in order to lighten the pack one carries. Immediately one rids oneself of a great load of material things. Pleasant things, even lovely things, but not things which are important to one's life. "Do I care about this large apartment, that sweet 'house in the country? No. I need a room of my own, where I can be quiet, and think and work. I need a room for my child. Ido not need any other shelter whatsoever.

"I need a certain amount of caloric content of food each day, but no more.

"I need sufficient clothes and changes of them to keep clean, and I would like them to make me look as nice as possible. because that helps one's courage, but I need no other clothes, whatsoever.

"That house in the country. Yes, I love it, because I planned it—took the old structure, ripped out this wall, planned that chimney there and that window there—dug in the garden, planted the irises—it is part of myself, and I lovo it.

"But for what was I making It? For my family and my friends. But who are my family and my friends? Everyone to-day who suffers what I suffer, and wants what I want, and needs what I need.

"I think of the hundreds of thousands of orphaned children in France and Belgium. Democracy's eJiildren. I have rooms for them, and food for them, and I want to reach them. "No, I do not want the State to take over my house. That is what the Communists would do. They would make it into an institution. It is a home. The State cannot make it into a home. They do not understand my house. But if they will let me make it into a larger home, I will do it, and do it better than they could. " Society Is Our Home." Do T care about money ? What is money ? In the bank lies a trust fund for my child, that if I die he shall be sure of a home. But what is home? Has a Polish child with a trust fund a home? This society is my child's home, and if it collapses he may be hunted in the streets for all the money 'in the bank.

Does the Government need that money to save and rebuild this society? Take it. But take it and save this society with it. Do not hand it out to grafters! Do not hand it to the enemies of my child! It is a trust fund. What is it that I need and seek? I need to live in a society and a world that makes sense. I cannot exist in an insane asylum. I need to live in a world that I trust.

*1 am willing to share the results of my work with all who work. But I am not willing to give it to the parasitically lazy. For I do not ask that I myself shall live without working.

What do I know about human societies, from all the experience of history and reality? I know that they cannot be based upon hate. That is why I know that the Nazi system will fail, even if Hitler conquers the whole earth. Building Democracy. But Democracy, noblest dream of man, what crimes have we committed in your name, that you suffer now such bloody agonies 1 When did society become a perpetual war instead of a family in which each member performs his function under an authority that lives by the respect it commands and not by naked force or votes manipulated or seduced? Or have you never really been born, except as an idea —an idea not yet made flesh and reality? Are you not the revolution, of which these others will be ill-cast form?, broken to bits in universal destruction? Are you not the revolution to end revolutions for centuries, and bring us peace? If so, let us set about building you, with the love of our hearts, the intelligence of our brains, and the work of our hands.