The Little Man

When the U.N. Assembly opened its sessions in Paris last September, young Garry Davis, onetime Broadway gadabout, wartime bomber pilot and son of Society Bandleader Meyer Davis, was an eccentric freak who camped on the U.N.'s doorstep, heckled its deliberations. A self-declared citizen of the world who had surrendered his U.S. passport, he was a pathetic lone voice. By last week he was the leader of a surging popular movement. It had surprised him as much as anyone, and it was carrying him along on its crest. TIME'S Paris Bureau Chief Andre Laguerre cabled:

At the reception desk of the sleazy, Left Bank Hotel des Etats-Unis, a young German was explaining that he had come from Munich to see Herr Davis. A bearded Italian brandished a sheaf of papers. They were, he said, the applications of 25

Libyans for world citizenship. A fair man with a toothbrush mustache and an American accent was saying: "I think I was born in Holland--I think so, mind you." Another young man, very dark and ill-shaven, introduced himself to me crisply: "I am the French press attache of this movement. I was appointed only yesterday, so there is little I can tell you about Garry Davis. However, I can tell you a lot about the Trotskyists, with whom I used to have numerous affiliations."

Hardheaded observers are tempted to pigeonhole Davis and his disciples as a bunch of displaced sophomores, longhaired faddists and tea-party internationalists. And so, to a considerable extent, they are. But they are more. They are stage managers of a well-meaning but dangerous and irresponsible force.

A.I.R.W.C.P.A. Davis has a small and untidy room--No. 5--on the second floor of the Hotel des Etats-Unis, down a corridor that is redolent with the smell of stale fried potatoes. He works there at a plain wooden table littered with typescript. He is the head of the "Association for the International Registry of World Citizens and People's Assembly." His admirers--in France they are legion--call him le petit homme. In the 26-year-old, carrot-topped, pleasant, shrewd and slightly corny Air Forces veteran they profess to see an authentic symbol of a scared and muddled generation. His intellectual baggage may be designed for air travel, but Garry Davis is no dope. He has a clear, canny mind which constantly surprises his intellectual French colleagues. He used to be a playboy, but now he abstains from smoking, drinks nothing stronger than beer. Although born in Bar Harbor, Maine, he considers Philadelphia his home town. As a bomber pilot he executed seven missions, was shot down on the last one (over Peenemuende) and was interned in Sweden, whither he escaped. After the war he returned to show business, understudied Danny Kaye. He got interested in the United World Federalists, but gave them up as a "cocktail-time plaything" and came to Europe for action.

Show business has given him a theatrical sense. Pie maintains the "little man" legend by wearing army pants and brown leather flyer's jacket, on the back of which is a faded pin-up girl portrait.

Transformation. By last week the Davis movement was receiving letters at the rate of 400 a day. From Savoy, in the southeast, a hysterical woman wrote: "I think you must be Christ returned." A Courbevoie worker wrote: "This is our last hope." Recently Garry Davis filled the Salle Pleyel and the Velodrome d'Hiver, two big auditoriums in Paris, with cheering thousands--crowds such as only Charles de Gaulle, and possibly Communist Boss Maurice Thorez, could attract. His committee of support includes Albert Einstein, who cabled that "only the unbendable will of the people can free the forces which are necessary for such a radical break with the old and outlived tradition in politics"; the U.S. ex-Communist writer Richard Wright (Native Son) is another Davisite. Says Wright: "Can the peoples believe in the efforts of the U.S. for democracy and freedom when it is well known that the U.S. does not support her own democratic institutions?" Albert Camus (The Plague) is one of Davis' most active and effective workers. Andre Gide has lent the movement his considerable prestige, and so have the British food expert Sir John Boyd Orr (elevated this week to the peerage), Existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre and Orchestra Conductor Sir Adrian Boult.

Davis has been received by France's President, Vincent Auriol, who cordially invited him to stay in France, without a passport. In short, he has been transformed from a freak into a world figure.

Last week Garry Davis issued his first policy statement: "I ask everyone everywhere to write me to make known their desire to be registered as world citizens. Within two months the registry will be opened, and to each applicant will be issued a card stating that he possesses world citizenship . . . Not thousands, but millions ... of applications will be made . . . and in 1950 an assembly of the peoples of the world will be elected."

Matter of Expediency. The official position of the Davisites is that Russian aggression and U.S. counter-aggression (both of which are called "imperialism") are equally blameworthy and dangerous to Europe. In private, however, Davis does not share this view. When I asked if he really thought that the worst the U.S. could do to Europe was comparable to the worst Russia could do, he answered: "Of course not." When I asked why this was not said publicly, one of his advisers quickly said it was "a matter of expediency." That is, if Davis publicly criticized Russia more than the U.S. he would lose the support of those French leftists who, however genuine their intellectual eminence, are all abysmally ignorant of the U.S.

At first, the Red press in Paris attacked Davis as "a charlatan, a tool of AngloSaxon imperialism." Then came a thoughtful silence. Finally last week the Communist weekly France Nouvelle came out with an article carrying discreet support. Said France Nouvelle: "As Zhdanov showed, the first duty is to work for the unity of the anti-imperialist camp. We should not be doing this by first doubting the sincerity of Garry Davis." This Communist gobbledygook could be translated as: "The Davis movement is useful to us, can be more useful. The order is--infiltrate."

Stony Road. If the Communists should get control of the Davis movement, that would be its finish as a popular crusade, for it now gets most of its strength from the fact that its ideas are tied to no national policy. If the people who support it have any one common denominator, it is that their longing for peace is so strong as to upset reason and good sense. Their thirst for peace blinds them to the fact that the only way to peace is a stony road which involves constant risk of war. If a popular peace movement should really sweep the world, then peace might be at hand. But no popular movement can penetrate the Soviet fortress.

So long as active opposition to Soviet aggression is presented as "aggression" by some western socialist leaders, Garry Davis and his ilk will grow and strengthen the forces whose defeat is the very condition of Western survival.

If the President of the U.S. tells his people that he is going to spend the next four years trying to reach an understanding, and that there are Soviet leaders who are anxious for that understanding (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS), confusion and division will result, and these in turn will breed phenomena such as Garry Davis.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.