Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2661

Letter from Felix Wittmer, 395 Grove Street, Upper Montclair, N.J.

July 28, 1957

 

 

 

Dear Spencer Heath:

 

Thank you for your friendly, hand-written letter of July 22. If I answer it in typed form it is entirely to save you the annoyance of deciphering my handwriting.

 I was pleased to read your speech before the Christian Freedom conference, and also to go carefully through the STATEMENT OF PURPOSE of your Foundation. It must be a great satisfaction to you to work for the great principles of Christian and economic (and of course also political) freedom, through printed works and a Foundation, after a most successful life as an engineer.

 With your permission, I am going to make this an unusually long letter, first discussing some of the things we have in common (although every genuine, honest man must tackle his work from an angle corresponding with his background and personality), and second to refer to a project in which the Science of Society Foundation might be interested. I believe it is necessary to hint at and mention a number of personal experiences, to put it all in the proper, intelligible framework.

 Re your speech: I was delighted to see that you, even at the age of more than four-score years, have such a fresh and youth­ful approach to our problem, indulging in the esthetic pleasure of poetry, without neglecting the spiritual, moral, social, economic and political problems we must solve. If I tell you that a generation ago I was known in Germany as a poet (Hitler took my name out of WHO’S WHO, i.e., Kirschner’s), and that my poetic writings appeared in dozens of papers and magazines (a volume of short stories was published there in the twenties), you realize how much this bent of yours delights me.

 

 I have been connected with Howard Kershner’s organization for quite some time, doing articles for them, and considerable research for Howard. Through a grant, though limited to half a year, they have enabled me to complete my 120,000-word book, CONCERNING THE KINGDOM OF GOD, an inquiry into the relationship of Christianity with free enterprise and limited government, which will be done by September 1st (though it will still have to be typed).

 

 I have the greatest respect for Howard’s straightforwardness and vision. He has accomplished something quite original through his indefatigable enterprise. His paper, though, can only inspire the very radical conservatives (who hardly need it) and those of our ministers who are not aware of our historical American tradition. I mean that the collectivists among our preachers merely made the understandable mistake of falling for an Utopian theory. They shared this mistake with very brilliant men, who had to learn the lesson of economic and political realism the hard way. But I believe that they can be reached, because they have never lost the Love of God and the love of their fellow men. But they cannot be reached the preachy way, nor, I think, in the surly, offensive fashion now often evident in the AMERICAN MERCURY.

 Like you, I am also a staunch believer in the correctness of the theories Dr. von Mises has most neatly expressed. I have been his guest for two weeks at the economic seminary in the Poconos, and know him well. Unlike the Irvington group, I do not regard this extraordinary man as a deity. On the contrary, like many a (dear to me) near-genius, he has strong limitations. He is sometimes too inflexible, and when he talks history it is usually plain non-sense.

 But my strongest differentiation from the Irvington group (with which I am on very friendly terms) is my insistence that God comes first. Various Irvington men hold the view that if you follow the theories of von Mises you do act as a good Christian. That is putting the horse behind the cart. If we follow the ideas and teachings of Jesus Christ, we shall not permit theft-by-taxa­tion, nor any bureaucratic schemes which deprive us of our free­doms. But I have heard Irvington men in public speeches (even before ministers!) defend the crassest (and so very small ideological-theoretical) selfishness. There are of course quite a few agnostics among them, believe me!

 From your quite intriguing CITADEL, MARKET AHD ALTAR I gather

that we are extremely close in what we want to accomplish:

not just a free society, but one which first serves God. Freedom to advance the devil’s work (Rousseauist egalitarian sensa­tionalism, John Dewey’s experimental running-around-in-circles) etc. is a violation of trust.

 Where, I believe, I differ from you, is in my approach. I am a non-dogmatic Pietist. The mystics whom Aldous Huxley has cited in his fine anthology PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY (Harper, 1945) are closest to my way. God, to my mind, cannot be either conceived or described by human means (empirical observation, logic, etc); He can (as I see it) only be reached through spiritual attunement, for which prayer is a good preparation. Once we are near him through that now so neglected attitude, we ought to use every possible scientific means to study nature, His creation, our surroundings we are called upon to put into order, through His grace, because we are made in His image, and therefore superior to animals. The Majority of our professors, today, are God-forsaken because they have betrayed His trust, and are not even seeking His grace.

 Now as to myself and my project. Be assured that I would not bring my own personality into this (because it is not important) if there were not the closest relationship of personality and project. In the ups and downs of my still rather young life (I am now 54) I have had three downs. The first time was the German inflation, in the early twenties, which wiped out my inheritance. (My father, a corporation lawyer, had died in 1913.) I was a mason and factory worker to enable myself to complete my doctor’s dissertation, in the winter of 1923-24.

 The second down occurred when I had gone to Germany for the express purpose of fighting Hitler, in 1932, giving up a full professorship at Washington & Jefferson College for the purpose. After escaping from Germany, on March 10, 1933, I had odd jobs in France and Spain, returning to the U.S.A. in July, 1934, with about twenty-seven and a half dollars to my credit. Then I started from the bottom again, at Montclair Teachers College, this time teaching history, political science and political thought.

 I taught there for seventeen years. My fight against Communism made me finally a victim of a Communist conspiracy. Merrill Root, in COLLECTIVISM ON THE CAMPUS, has emphasized the work of the liberals. For libel reasons he did not bring out the plain fact that they were the dupes of Communists and that I am a marked man as far as the Party goes. I was on tenure and could have stayed. But the effectiveness and joy of my teaching had been undermined.

 

 William Randolph Hearst was ready to publish my “Story”, in 1951, shortly after my resignation, when he died. Certain elements inside the JOURNAL-AMERICAN prevented its appearance. I then hoped that though cooperation of like-minded men (libertarians, conservatives, patriots etc.) I might be enabled to earn a decent living. In this I was rudely disappointed. I found that most of my co-fighters think of themselves and do not consider it necessary to help an ally to a job. If I say that I have tried about 200 different places, during these six years of joblessness, I am not exaggerating.

 I have wasted much good time, ghostwriting for some well known men, doing research which they used in editorials, columns and on TV, and always most miserably paid. Being blacklisted in every teachers college of the nation (anyone who points out the collectivist lobbying of the NEA is a dead duck) and having only a foreign degree (though a good one) being rather unable to inter­est any worthwhile university or college, I have been drifting along. When recently I had to go through two major operations, I had to wait with the second one (despite great pains) because I did not have the money to go through with it.

 Well, there are two patriotic profs at Queens College (Dr. Joseph Mullally, Chairman of the Philosophy Department, and Dr. Charles W. Hallberg, Chairman of the History Department) who hope to get me a full-time job by  September, 1958. It’s all a matter of poli­tics there. The knowledge is not important. Fortunately, Joe and Charles, besides being good scholars and very fine fellows, have the talent to play politics. Thus all I have to do is keep my mouth shut and let them do the tricks and whatever is needed, and then, at last, I’ll have a little job again.

 In the meantime, for this year, they got me three courses in the evening school, the so-called School of General Studies, which means teaching there on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights, and getting $2,200 for thirty weeks. (15 weeks each semester.) Naturally, this is not enough to exist. I have approached quite a few foundations (Richardson, Hazen, Earhart etc.) with a project of a textbook which would not forget the Christian point of view. Not Knowing me personally, or only thinking of me as the bad boy who in the 1952 political campaign wrote FREEDOM’S CASE AGAINST DEAN ACHESON, they all turned me down. Yet, Dr. Joe Cavallaro, Chairman of the New York City Board of Higher Education, being a real friend of mine (Queens is one of the City colleges) I’d have a real chance to get the book adopted in the city colleges, especially at Queens, of course.

 We conservatives and libertarians are great ones in pointing out the faults of the existing school texts. But when it comes to the more important task of writing the ones that ought to be used, the sponsors vanish. If I may express a criticism meant to be entirely constructive: I have found that the few financial “angels” on our side are almost exclusively interested in economics. Occasionally there is some interest in government (the Constitution). The importance of history and the cultural side is so greatly neglected that we just won’t make a dent in the one front we should break through, that of the ones who mold the minds of the next generation.

 In my course on FOUNDATIONS OF DEMOCRACY, (a ridiculously vague title), next semester, I shall not use any textbook, because I don’t like the ones in existence. In my course on the HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION, I am compelled to use R.R. Palmer’s HISTORY OF THE MODERN WORLD. Published by A. A. Knopf, a notorious promoter of Communists and fellow travelers, this Princeton professor’s book is very bad.

 I thought that, having taught the course for fifteen straight years at Montclair, I might be able to write the text I think we need within one single year, devoting my entire time to this. What I would want to do is to point out just how, since the Renaissance, we have drifted away from God, and that for that reason we have gotten in a mess. Such a book can be written quite subtly. I would adopt about the opposite style of what Percy Greaves does, who, I think, talks “down” to those whom he regards as ignoramuses.

 There should be no campaigning, no crusading in such a book. It must be absolutely objective history.

 I thought that possibly the Science of Society Foundation might be able to sponsor this project, even though it is now mighty late to find a sponsor for something to be accomplished in the academic year of September 1957-September 1958.

 If there is a chance to make some arrangement for this project,

I would be delighted to drive over to Elkridge. (I bought

a 1947 Olds in 1951, and she still runs, though somewhat

battered in appearance, which did not used to be my style.)

I could visit with you any day after Wednesday, at your convenience.

 I trust that this lengthy letter may not inconvenience you.

With kindest regards,

        Cordially,

 

(signed) Felix Wittmer