From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [203]
“I believe so,” Sam Slater said. “Historically, the corporations are already through. They’ve served their historical purpose. Besides, they have one grievous fault that, unless stopped, can be deadly.”
“Whats that?” Holmes asked.
“The fact that they themselves are afraid of authority, even though theres no authority over them,” Sam Slater said. “They have put out their paternalism propaganda so long that they believe it themselves, they believe their own Cinderella story, their own Horatio Alger myth of honest poor boy rises to riches. And of course that hamstrings them with a certain amount of sentimental moral obligation; they must play the role of father that they imagined.”
“Wait,” Holmes said. “I dont quite get that?”
Sam Slater set his empty glass down and smiled at him sadly. “Its the same thing that I was talking about that is wrong with a great many (far too many) of our senior officers. They are all anachronisms of a former generation that grew up in the Victorian era.
“The men who control the corporations and our senior officers are really very much alike, you know: They both utilize this new social fear they have helped develop; and they both are reluctant morally to use it full strength. Its a kind of holdover of Victorian moralism and the dying British school of Paternal Imperialism, the school that would never work the Colonial natives to death unless there was a missionary there to give them their last rites.”
Holmes laughed convulsively. “But thats stupid.”
Jake Delbert cleared his throat, and set his own glass down.
“Of course its stupid,” Sam Slater smiled thinly. “Its a logical absurdity. But all our great industrialists, and most of our present senior officers, still play that role. That same fatherly Britisher role. You can see what it has done to their efficiency of control.
“Social fear is the most tremendous single source of power in existence. The only source, in fact, now that the machine has destroyed the corollary positive code. Yet they waste this power by directing it against such asinine trivialities as the advisability of virginity at marriage, which nobody believes in anyway, and which is like training a firehose on a burning sheet of paper.”
Holmes laughed again, so powerfully this time it was almost a seizure. Then he thought of his wife, again, and the laughter dropped out from under him leaving him feeling absolutely nothing, except a startled amazement in the absolute truth in Sam Slater’s argument.
“It isnt funny,” Sam Slater smiled. “Their absurd false morality causes even greater inefficiency and harm in other ways. When they direct their power on really important problems, problems that need immediate solution, like whether to go to war or not, it is made so diffuse by conflicting sentimentalities of public opinion (such as patriotism versus the love of ‘peace’) that it does absolutely nothing, it neutralizes itself completely, so that, in the end, we, with all our industrial power will sit back and vacillate (when everybody knows war is inevitable) until somebody or other attacks us and makes us fight—and incidentally gets a great big drop on us.”
“Thats worse than a logical absurdity,” Holmes said angrily. “Thats . . .” he could not say it.
Sam Slater shrugged.
“It makes my blood boil,” Holmes said.
Jake Delbert cleared his throat again. “Gentlemen,” he said.
“It cant continue to go like that, though,” Sam Slater said. “Dont think that in Russia and in Germany the consolidation of power and its control are not being utilized to their fullest. We either have to get rid of our moralists ourselves and replace them with realists, or the Russians and the Germans (not to mention the Japanese) will do it for us, see?” he said, vehement for the first time since he started talking.
“Gentlemen!” Jake Delbert said again. He charged up to his feet. “Ah—” he said. “Your glasses are empty, gentlemen. Dont you think its about time for another drink. Jeff isnt