Conversations with Clare Booth Luce; 4; The World of Henry R. Luce

The following program is distributed by NET, the public television network. Welcome to another conversation with Clare Booth Lewis. My name is G. Homer Durham from Arizona State University and again we have the pleasure of speaking with Mrs. Clare Booth Lewis, the author, playwright, congresswoman, ambassador and so many other things. But including those other things, the wife of Henry R. Lewis, the great American publisher of time, life,

fortune, sports illustrated, architectural form and other interesting enterprises. Mrs. Lewis, Henry R. Lewis in mid-career spoke of the American century. What did he mean by that? What he meant at that time and that was I believe as the war was joined to close. What he said was that this would either be the American century or the Russian Communist century and that it is better for the world that it should be the American century. That in essence was what he said. Well, it raised the most awful row because at that particular moment in history there was a honeymoon going on with the Russians and our government. Your memory was even referred to Stalin as good old Joe and my husband was bitterly reproached

by many of the so-called intellectuals and the liberals for advocating American imperialism in effect he didn't and this incidentally is a charge against the United States which they have never ceased making from Moscow. But no, my husband's clear thought was that this should be a nearer century in which American ideals and values and if possible American know how living standards et cetera should spread upon the world. Of course he did not mean with the force of arms but by the sheer force of the image that America created.

Henry Robinson Lewis was born in China of Presbyterian missionary parents. His father was also a teacher as I recall. Do you feel that he gained some of his feeling for the fact that the world must be made safe for differences, for tolerance, for the best aspects of American constitutionalism out of that Chinese inheritance and experience? He was a little boy in China and he lived there until he was 14 when to boarding school there. He attended I believe to romanticize a bit about his far off native land. He saw it as almost without blemish. Now you add to that that his father as you say was a missionary,

a Presbyterian missionary and that it was the desire of both his father and his mother that he also should be a minister. You may begin to understand that he inescapably thought that his mission in life was to tell the world about America and to tell America about the world. He was in a sense a missionary journalist and never for a moment doubted that communicating with his fellow Americans was a noble and high task. Presbyterian born in those circumstances would be doubly conscious it seems to me of the

ideal of the kingdom of God. I've heard Presbyterian ministers of my acquaintance and scholars speak of this as an overreaching and overriding idea in this segment of the Christian faith together with the idea of the sovereignty of God and the obligation of man to try to achieve the kingdom of God on earth. Do you think this made for a sense of responsibility in your husband? He wielded potentially great power as a publisher. Yet as I reflect on people like William Randolph Hearst and other publishers, Pulitzer, Henry Loose in history will stand as one of the most influential, but one who did not use a trigger finger to destroy personalities and people. You just power very, very responsibly and lightly. Would you agree with this? Oh, very. I mean, he was the most remarkable in that respect. That's very kind of you

to have reflected on that. He was, first of all, he never used his power in behalf of himself or his family or his friends. He felt that that power was, you might say, almost a sacred trust. And sometimes, you know, wives are like that. I would ask him to do some special friend favor for some friend or speak kindly of a friend in a book review or something like that. When we were first married at the end of about two years, he said, dear, we must understand that I will never use my magazines to shield my friends or myself and I cannot even do it for you. You know, I'm the only, well, I will say the only person, but I would

think most people would agree that I rated being on the cover of time, at some point or other, in a very long career. I never was on the cover of time. You haven't made it yet? Haven't made it yet. Probably never will. Never was on the cover of life. Never was featured in his magazines because he felt that he naturally didn't want to say anything unkind about his own wife. But on the other hand, he's scorned to have people say that his magazines were being used as puffs for me or for any member of his family. No, he was most responsible in the use of power. At the same time, of course, there were many people and I think many readers of time that were outraged by time, from time to time, and felt that perhaps this enormous power was

being used very subtly to dam certain causes and to build up certain other causes. But let me ask you the question. In your judgment, what was he trying to do? Did he have any deep purposes as publisher and editor-in-chief? Or was he trying to meet a press deadline and get out something that would be acceptable and chuckled over in there? No, I think that his purpose was to inform people in the shortest number of words that he could use. I mean that the magazines could use. That was the beginning of time magazine, which he always referred to somewhat affectionately as the little magazine. I think he did believe that if the people were informed, they would make the right choices in their political

lives and their business lives and so on. And I know that he felt very deeply that we live in an age where the community itself is faced with absolutely horrendous choices and that the only way that they could be expected to make the right choices was if they were given information. For example, we used to talk very often about the fact that there is something new in the world that never before, perhaps in the history of mankind, did the destruction of the world itself and perhaps the destruction of the species depends so entirely

on the choice that men themselves make. For example, we talked about this often. The world is faced with what can be the greatest catastrophe that could overtake it, which is the population explosion. This may lead to nuclear war if uncontrolled. If uncontrolled, it certainly will lead to starvation through perhaps two-thirds of the earth. And because as you know so well, while we're not likely to run out of minerals, and we're not likely to run out of great many materials, our agricultural capacity is limited and is not going

to support a population of 10-20 billion, which this could easily be in the not too distant future. And he always used to say, my husband always used to say, if they don't know, they cannot make responsible choices. And he believed passionately in man's free will. He felt that this free will now had extended beyond the individual and that it was the community that using its free will had to take great decisions like what they do about the population explosion, about what we're going to do about nuclear control, about what we're going to do about bringing into being institutions and political and international mechanisms that

will bring our world into more harmonious way of life. And he always said, if they don't know, if they're not informed, how can we expect them to choose? This obsession for facts, I will recall from one Christmas night at Mrs. Frank Lloyd when I had a brief engagement with your husband in a argument as the death age of Alexander the Great. I think he said it was 29 or 31 and I had the other side and the important thing was the facts. He wanted to go on a cyclopedia right now. Let's check it out and get the facts. Now this concern for information and knowledge, though, raises an interesting question in the light of the history of ideas. Those who rely on knowledge and information as a means

of salvation, this is called the Nostec fallacy by some, is knowledge enough to make the world safe and decent for the free, enterprising spirit and individual rights and civil liberties and so forth. Are must we add something to knowledge and information? And was he concerned about this? Are you concerned about it? Well, knowledge in and of itself isn't enough to save the world or even keep one person on the right to act throughout his life. I myself feel that without a face, without a religion, without a belief in a higher power of greater intelligence that the world soon, that men soon come to calamity. Because how can a person have a informed conscience unless he

knows what's right and wrong and unless he knows that over and beyond being caught by someone on the outside, he has his God to reckon with. No, I think religion is of great importance, but one must have knowledge too. Then Harry Loose's publisher was concerned with values as well as information. I think you're saying this. Some people felt that at times he was favoring the Republican Party, say as opposed to the Democratic Party, Wilkie against Roosevelt or Eisenhower against Stevenson and so forth. Would you say that he was partisan in this sense? Oh, certainly. I mean, who is in partisan? It may be that some scientists sitting on the mountaintop

who never reads either Newsweek or Time and Newsweek was always partisan in behalf of the Democrats, generally speaking. Now, there are scientists steps there who doesn't read the newspaper. He may feel very objective about politics, but I found going through my life that it's impossible for people to remain strictly objective. We all tend to favor those things, principles, ideas, people of whom we have fond or that we believe in. It's inescapable. Man is a partisan animal. The gap between American ways, Western ways, and Chinese ways, is a much wider gulf than most of us realize. I think your husband felt

this. Did he think this gulf could be bridged? And do you think the gulf between the millions of China and the Western world can be bridged? They're not in the United Nations. There's no communications. They're a hermit society, virtually withdrawn, believe in their cultural supremacy. They're not part of the world. They feel sufficient to themselves, it seems, in their history and the present outlook. What are the chances for bridging this gulf? My husband, of course, who lived in China came to have great respect and affection for the Chinese people. And as you know so well, it's an absolutely stunning civilization. It's art, it's culture, far older than that of the West and most inspiring and most imposing. I myself think that Ho Chi Minh, by drawing this bamboo curtain around China, has set

the Chinese people back several centuries because without contact with the Western world and with Western technology, they cannot hope to make any very great advances. But I do not, for a moment, despair of understanding between the Chinese and the West or between Africa and the Chinese, I think more and more, the question of communication between the races, the cultures, the nations, the continents, that this will become more and more easy as time goes on. Could there become a Chinese century? Oh yes, they could very easily become a Chinese century if for no other reason that they

are the single largest national or population ethnic group in the world, the Chinese, I think, is it one out of every five? Yes, I guess Chao Sui is more universal in Coca-Cola. One out of every five children is one out of every five born is Chinese and just in sheer numbers, they have a great advantage on the other end. They have a distinct disadvantage in their language, which is a pictograph language and very hard to put in computers. It's also an inflected language. It's a very difficult language. My father-in-law, who was old doctor Luce and lived most of his adult life in China, said that very rarely could any Westerner

ever master Mandarin Chinese, no less the other four or five Chinese dialects. That's a great handicap. Their language and their writing makes it extremely difficult for translations of Western books, you know, into their languages. Well, they learn English or will we learn Chinese? Oh, well, they will undoubtedly learn English. English is now, as you know, the lingua franca of the whole world. When I was a child, it was supposedly French. But in the modern world, you can go anywhere in the world as long as you don't leave the beaten track of the great cities, and although you can't speak a word of their language, someone will always be able to speak English.

What about the prospects for the free individual, this component of the American dream, the American century? It's been said that this has three elements, the notion of the free individual, the notion of the fundamental moral law, and then the notion of the destiny of America to make the free individual and the fundamental moral law, at least universally accepted principles. At least this was the 19th century dream of such as center beverage, for example, said the Constitution must follow the flight. There isn't any question that freedom is the dream of all men in all centuries. They have always struggled towards their own individual freedom. But now we are more or less closing the circle because this is where we first began our conversation, the difference between

freedom and order and the long, long struggle of mankind to have freedom as an individual, freedom as a citizen, and at the same time maintain an orderly society around him. The Americans think we Americans believe that we have found a political system which permits this great, this wonderful balance between order and freedom. It's forever getting a little out of balance, you know, and it remains to be seen whether the rest of the world cares much about freedom and order as we do. Do you think that material well-being or some degree of material comfort is prerequisite

to the achievement of individual liberty in the world? We speak of this, you know, this underlies our foreign aid programs the last 20 years. We must fight the communist aggression idea by 0.4 programs and sending sanitary engineers, agricultural scientists and teachers abroad to help improve the material standard of living. Oh no, I don't think the material standard of living has the thing to do with freedom. I mean our forefathers standard of living was much lower than that in London when they fought for their freedom and the armies that fought were well a very ill-provided, tattered armies that won the battle of our independence. I don't think that a high material standard has anything whatsoever to do with freedom except as it includes education.

Would you redirect and reorient our foreign policy then in the future? And what shall we export from America if we do not export technicians, agricultural scientists, seeds, plows, machinery, bending machines and our material culture? What do we have that could be exported to contribute to a better, safer, decent world? For my heavens without even trying, the United States has been exporting ideas and things all around the world for the better part of the last 50 years. I was in Hong Kong last October, I think it was. And here are the little Chinese girls running around in miniskirts and they're wearing their hair, the way American girls are wearing their hair and they're going to American moving pictures. They've got a rid of their rickshaws and they're riding

in non-American automobiles, very often Japanese automobiles. The American idea has already in many ways swept the world all the way from what we sometimes disparagingly call Coca-Cola colonization to ideas about freedom and education. This is the American century already. Does it have a content of spiritual conviction in your judgment or has it been pragmatic exporting of miniskirts, Coca-colonization and so forth? Or has there something more subtle and more durable been exported? Well it's very hard to export abroad what we feel about freedom ourselves. I know when I was ambassador in Italy, it was one of the most difficult things to try to assess the

importance of our propaganda. To whether we should advertise that we made more automobiles than anyone in the world or that more Americans go to church than they do in other countries. It's very hard to say. Mrs. Luce, you have left us with a good issue and a good question in response to my query and certainly this is something which we all want to ponder and think about in days ahead. These have been conversations with Claire Booth-Luce, the author, playwright, congressman, ambassador, public servant, and gifted American woman of the 20th century. Thank you, Mrs. Luce, for sharing these conversations with me and thank you for being with us.

Thank you. This is NET, the public television network. Nationwide distribution of the preceding program is a service of the corporation for public broadcasting.

Thank you. Thank you.