Hitler's peace

While we drank, I took note of the small things about Roosevelt’s appearance that only this kind of proximity could have revealed: the pince-nez that I had always mistaken for spectacles; the man’s smallish ears-or maybe his head was just too big; the missing tooth on the lower jaw; the way the metal braces on his legs had been painted black to blend in with his trousers; the black shoes that looked poignantly unworn on their leather soles; the bow tie and the worn smoking jacket with leather patches on the elbows; and the gas mask that hung off the side of the wheelchair. I noticed a little black Scotch terrier lying in front of the fire and looking more like a small rug. The president watched me slowly sip the liquid hydrogen, and I saw a faint smile pull at the corners of his mouth.

“So you’re a philosopher,” he said. “I can’t say I know very much about philosophy.”

“The traditional disputes of philosophers are, for the most part, as unwarranted as they are unfruitful.” It sounded pompous, but then, that goes with the territory.

“Philosophers sound a lot like politicians.”

“Except that philosophers are accountable to no one. Just logic. If philosophers were obliged to appeal to an electorate, we’d all be out of a job, sir. We’re more interesting to ourselves than we are to other people.”

“But not on this particular occasion,” observed the president. “Else you wouldn’t be here now.”

“There’s not much to tell, sir.”

“But you’re a famous American philosopher, aren’t you?”

“Being an American philosopher is a little like saying you play baseball for Canada.”

“What about your family? Isn’t your mother one of the Cleveland von Dorffs?”

“Yes, sir. My father, Hans Mayer, is a German Jew who was brought up and educated in the United States and joined the diplomatic corps after college. He met and married my mother in 1905. A year or two later she inherited a family fortune based on rubber tires, which explains why I’ve always had such a smooth ride in life. I went to Groton. Then to Harvard where I studied philosophy, which was a great disappointment to my father, who’s inclined to believe that all philosophers are mad German syphilitics who think that God is dead. As a matter of fact, my whole family is inclined to the view that I’ve wasted my life.

“After college I stayed on at Harvard. Got myself a Ph. D. and won the Sheldon Traveling Fellowship. So I went to Vienna, by way of Cambridge, and published a very dull book. I stayed on in Vienna and after a while took up a lectureship at the University of Berlin. After Munich I returned to Harvard and published another very dull book.”

“I read your book, Professor. One of them, anyway. On Being Empirical. I don’t pretend to understand all of it, but it seems to me that you put an awful lot of faith in science.”

“I don’t know that I’d call it faith, but I believe that if a philosopher wants to make a contribution toward the growth of human knowledge, he must be more scientific in how that knowledge is grasped. My book argues that we should take less for granted on the basis of guesswork and supposition.”

Roosevelt turned toward his desk and collected a book that was lying next to a bronze ship’s steering clock. It was one of my own. “It’s when you use that method to suggest that morality is pretty much a dead cat that I begin to have a problem.” He opened the book, found the sentences he had underlined, and read aloud:

“ ‘Aesthetics and morality are coterminous in that neither can be said to possess an objective validity, and it makes no more sense to assert that telling the truth is verifiably a good thing than it does to say that a painting by Rembrandt is verifiably a good painting. Neither statement has any factual meaning.’ ”

Roosevelt shook his head. “Quite apart from the dangers that are inherent in arguing such a position at a time when the Nazis are hell-bent on the destruction of all previously held notions of morality, it seems to me that you’re missing a trick. An ethical judgment is very often merely the factual classification of an action that verifiably tends to arouse people in a certain kind of way. In other words, the common objects of moral disapproval are actions or classes of actions that can be tested empirically as a matter of fact.”

I smiled back at the president, liking him for taking the trouble to read some of my book and for taking me on. I was about to answer him when he tossed my book aside and said:

“But I didn’t ask you here to have a discussion about philosophy.”

“No, sir.”

“Tell me, how did you get involved with Donovan’s outfit?”