From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [161]
You did not ever really believe they would do it to you, did you? No, you didnt. Because you know damn well you could never have done it to one of them, having suffered as you have from an overdeveloped sense of justice all your life, not to mention being a hotly fervent espouser of the cause of all underdogs all your life (probably because you have always been one, I imagine).
But he had always believed in fighting for the underdog, against the top dog. He had been raised up on that. He had not learned it, not from The Home, or The School, or The Church, but from that fourth and other great moulder of social conscience, The Movies. He had learned it from the movies, all right. He had learned it from the movies, from all those movies that had begun to come out when Roosevelt went in, those movies that had been inspired by the Depression when America was buckling into harness for its social revolution that was the hope of all the intellectuals then. That was before the Communists made their pact with Hitler and lots of them were Communists then because they believed there was hope then, in Communism, and they made these movies that were great movies in the fullness of their belief that there was hope, and that would remain great because of the belief that was in them, no because of Communism, even when later the hope had died, as the hope of the generation before them that was in Socialism had also died.
He wondered what was the hope of the younger generation now. He suspected that it was hope in Frank Sinatra and in Stan Kenton, but he was not sure since he had not talked to any of them. They were too young for the army yet.
But he had been a kid back then, a kid who had not been on the bum yet, but he was raised up on all those movies that they made then, the ones that were between ’32 and ’37 that were truly great and had not yet degenerated into commercial imitations of themselves like the Dead End Kid perpetual series that we have now. He had breathed them and eaten them and slept them and grown up with them, those movies like the very first Dead End, like Winterset, like Grapes of Wrath, like Dust Be My Destiny, and those other movies starring John Garfield and the Lane girls, and the on-the-bum and prison pictures starring James Cagney and George Raft and Henry Fonda.
He had only been a green kid but he had learned from all those pictures to believe in fighting for the underdog, against the top dog. He had even made himself a philosophy of life out of it; they had taught it to him well; it was ingrained. It was too ingrained to be dropped later after thirty-seven when everything began to change, leaving him an anachronism.
So that he had gone right on, unable to stop believing that if the Communists were the underdog in Spain then he believed in fighting for the Communists in Spain; but that if the Communists were the top dog back home in Russia and the (what would you call them in Russia? the traitors, I guess) traitors were the bottom dog, then he believed in fighting for the traitors and against the Communists. He believed in fighting for the Jews in Germany, and against the Jews in Wall Street and Hollywood. And if the Capitalists were top dog in America and the proletariat the underdog, then he believed in fighting for the proletariat against the Capitalists. This too-ingrained-to-be-forgotten philosophy of life of his had led him, a Southerner, to believe in fighting for the Negroes against the Whites everywhere, because the Negroes were nowhere the top dog, at least as yet.
He had learned it well and he could not change and now the waters of hope had receded, the flood was over, and he was left high and dry with his outmoded philosophy of life.
Still he felt it was a very creditable philosophy, as naturally he would having it