Visit 14

I continued looking through the Good Fight folders and began to browse the names of those with interview transcripts. I was tempted to read Vaughn Love's folder but I instead picked out Milt Wolff's because I figured I might as well go for continuity. And also because I found him a very compelling personality in The Good Fight. And then that Hemingway piece was so beautiful--it actually made me respect him even more and wonder about him more. So I looked at his transcripts.

The interview revealed that, in the beginning, Milt Wolff was a pacifist and an aspiring artist. The part of the interview I was able to read traced his journey from this initial identity to his crossing the Pyrenees in order to fight fascism in Spain. The interviewers were trying to ask Wolff if he could pin down how exactly he came to make such an ideological change. It seems he couldn't exactly explain it until a point in the transcript which reads, "(break) From passism, from out right pacificism, to, uh, anti-fascism, which meant struggle. And that took place about the time of, uh, the Rape of Etheopia. When, uh, Mussolini's son was describing the dropping of bombs on the beer-carrying little Blacks, you know, and a bomb burst opening like flowers, like rosing, unfurling in full bloom. Uh. Which is pretty horrible stuff. And uh, my pacifism became anti-fascism at that time, as did these people who were my friends." I just thought this bit of memory was really interesting. When Wolff was describing the particular memory, about Mussolini's son's description, I thought the "flowery" bombing imagery he repeated, which he obviously found at odds with the reality of the bombs' devastation, kind of paralleled his own contradictory ideology of pacifism with his conviction that struggle was now necessary if there was to be peace.

The interviewers asked Milt Wolff if the stereotype of intellectuals plotting revolution in basements was true of the communist meetings he went to. He responded, "Not--the YCL, that I was exposed to, we didn't plot any revolution. We talked about the Popular Front. And the struggle against fascism. This was the primary goal. To preserve what democracy there was and to defeat fascism." I thought this statement was so important to understanding the motivations of the the Lincoln Brigade--that this testimony must correctly summarize what everyone was thinking and feeling at the time. But then I thought maybe Wolff was only framing it that way. I guess it's impossible to say now since these are only recollections. Still, going to the letters in the archive, you find most of the sentiments expressed are these same as these.

And I thought this was lovely: "Uh, it's the fashion now for some of us who were in that period to describe ourselves as uh, naive... uh, I remember one guy said at my house, he said, he shrugged his should, he said, 'Milt, we were only kids, then little shmucks, you know!' But that's not true at all! That's not true at all. We were, uh, we came into this thing with our eyes open from bitter experience. Uh. It, it, In full... possession of our senses, ready to commit ourselves, you know. To this prospect that was open to us for a better world. It was, it was, I mean, to look back at it now, and call it something about being dupes or something, and trying to, uh, wash your hands of it in that, doesn't make sense to me at all--because I am still committed to that idea. Through whatever avenue. I still think that, that's the wave of the future. For humanity." Milt doesn't identity what "that idea" is but I think that it's not too bad because I don't think he could have actually explained what "that idea" was. I don't think any of us can explain what our ideal vision of the future would look like. It's just a feeling, as it seems to come down to here for Wolff.

Visit 13

So I actually didn't have enough time last time I visited the archive to, I think, satisfactorily go through the Good Fight folder. I looked at some other people's blogs and it seems like they were really excited about the folder, especially the interview transcripts, so when I went back, I reordered the box.

One folder I found had at the head: Department of State Office of Arms and Munitions Control. This folder contained letters concerning resources going to Spain--but not on the Republican's side. In 1937, apparently it was found that the Atlantic Refining Company of Philadelphia sent to "the Spanish Monopoly ... two and a half million gallons of gasoline." The reporter also talks of "the great number of automobiles which continue to pass through Portugal destined for Spain." I think there was only one response included in the folder which basically said, "We know. It's okay." So, great. It was funny because it seemed like the reporter thought the information he was about to disclose would be very surprising and illicit quick action. Nope.

Another thing I found that was very interesting was a folder called "Veterans Lists." It was interesting because it was I guess basically a log of the filmmakers' impressions of all the veterans they interviewed. A heading read, "Vets betwixt the Coast" and listed names under different cities and states. It was kind of funny to read because next to many names were comments like these: "nice but dull;" "not there long, opportunist;" "political, stubborn;" "incomprehensible, unpleasant." It gave a little insight into the process of narrowing down which veterans would be featured in the film and it even suggested that it was actually easier picking out the personalities than one might think.

Reading the Peter Carroll book, I came across the fact that the government demanded that the VALB list with the Attorney General as a foreign organization. Also in Carroll's book was the mention of a piece Hemingway wrote to accompany a bust of Milt Wolff. These two facts came together in this folder that contained a letter from the Subversive Activities Control Board to Milt Wolff listing 20 (labeled a-s) accusations of communist activity for each of which he must write a rebuttal 30 days after receiving it. The letter's purpose was obviously to intimidate and overwhelm. Still, in the same folder I found a copy of the piece Ernest Hemingway wrote about Wolff. I get really happy whenever I come across his words because I've read so much of his stuff and so much criticism of his work. Whenever I read something he wrote for the real world, it resonates with the values I see in his literature. So, I found what he wrote about Milt very compelling and beautiful: "He is a retired major now at twenty-three and still alive and pretty soon he will be coming home as other men his age and rank came home after the peace at Appomattox courthouse long ago. Except the peace was made at Munich now and no good men will be at home for long." These lines round out a comparison Hemingway of Milt Wolff to Lincoln, playing off his leadership of the Lincoln Brigade. The last line is so forcefully sad because of Hemingway's pessimism and the invocation of a loaded proper noun contrasted with that of a lost generalization. I wondered why this tribute was included in the folder. I wondered if maybe someone sent this piece on to the Board as an additional piece of testimony in defense of Milt Wolff.