Moon is Down

by John Steinbeck

believed that a soldier is the highest development of animal life. If he considered God at all, he thought of Him as an old and honored general, retired and gray, living among remembered battles and putting wreaths on the graves of his lieutenants several times a year. Captain Loft believed that all women fall in love with a uniform and he did not see how it could be otherwise.

the men of the staff, each one playing war as children play “Run, Sheep, Run.” Major Hunter thought of war as an arithmetical job to be done so he could get back to his fireplace; Captain Loft as the proper career of a properly brought-up young man; and Lieutenants Prackle and Tonder as a dreamlike thing in which nothing was very real. And their war so far had been play—fine weapons and fine planning against unarmed, planless enemies.

he knew—that war is treachery and hatred, the muddling of incompetent generals, the torture and killing and sickness and tiredness, until at last it is over and nothing has changed except for new weariness and new hatreds.

“I would guess it is for the show. There’s an idea about it: if you go through the form of a thing, you have it, and sometimes people are satisfied with the form of a thing. We had an army—soldiers with guns—but it wasn’t an army, you see. The invaders will have a trial and hope to convince the people that there is justice involved. Alex did kill the captain, you know.”

“If it comes from your house, where the people expect justice——”

“How could the people know what I don’t know?”

“That is a mystery that has disturbed rulers all over the world—how the people know. It disturbs the invaders now, I am told, how news runs through censorships, how the truth of things fights free of control. It is a great mystery.”

“No, sir, but I think the people feel that they are beaten if they are docile. They want to show these soldiers they’re unbeaten.”

“Mayor Orden, you know our orders are inexorable. We must get the coal. If your people are not orderly, we will have to restore that order by force.” His voice grew stern. “We must shoot people if it is necessary. If you wish to save your people from hurt, you must help us to keep order.

yours is the only government and people with a record of defeat after defeat for centuries and every time because you did not understand people.”

“You killed six men when you came in. Under our law you are guilty of murder, all of you. Why do you go into this nonsense of law, Colonel? There is no law between you and us. This is war. Don’t you know you will have to kill all of us or we in time will kill all of you? You destroyed the law when you came in, and a new law took its place. Don’t you know that?”

Lanser looked at him and smiled a little sadly. “We have taken on a job, haven’t we?” “Yes,” said the Mayor, “the one impossible job in the world, the one thing that can’t be done.” “And that is?” “To break man’s spirit permanently.”

“When they came, the people were confused and I was confused. We did not know what to do or think. Yours was the first clear act. Your private anger was the beginning of a public anger. I know it is said in town that I am acting with these men. I can show the town, but you—you are going to die. I want you to know.”

“Alex, go, knowing that these men will have no rest, no rest at all until they are gone, or dead. You will make the people one. It’s a sad knowledge and little enough gift to you, but it is so. No rest at all.”

In the harbor the coal barges came empty and went away loaded, but the coal did not come out of the ground easily. The good miners made mistakes. They were clumsy and slow. Machinery broke and took a long time to fix. The people of the conquered country settled in a slow, silent, waiting revenge. The men who had been traitors, who had helped the invaders—and many of them believed it was for a better state and an ideal way of life—found that the control they took was insecure, that the people they had known looked at them coldly and never spoke.

gradually a little fear began to grow in the conquerors, a fear that it would never be over, that they could never relax or go home, a fear that one day they would crack and be hunted through the mountains like rabbits, for the conquered never relaxed their hatred.

Loft came very close to Tonder and he said, “Lieutenant, I don’t like the tone of your questions. I don’t like the tone of doubt.”

Look, Lieutenant, we’ve conquered half the world. We must police it for a while. You know that.” “But the other half?” Tonder asked. “They will fight on hopelessly for a while,” said Loft. “Then we must be spread out all over.”

“Conquered and we’re afraid; conquered and we’re surrounded.”

Well, we can only see. If such people still govern England and America, the world is lost, anyway. Tell them what we say, if they will listen. We must have help, but if we get it”—his face grew very hard—“if we get it, we will help ourselves.”

Support Ukraine! Defeat DeSantis.

In the dark, clear night a white, half-withered moon brought little light. The wind was dry and singing over the snow, a quiet wind that blew steadily, evenly from the cold point of the Pole. Over the land the snow lay very deep and dry as sand. The houses snuggled down in the hollows of banked snow, and their windows were dark and shuttered against the cold, and only a little smoke rose from the banked fires.

And Lanser looked coldly up at him for a long moment and did not speak, and finally Loft’s eyes wavered, and he said, “Sir.” “Thank you,” said Lanser. “You don’t demand it of the others, sir.” “They don’t think about it, so it isn’t an insult. When you leave it out, it’s insulting.” “Yes, sir,” said Loft.

Lieutenant. They should have trained you for this, and not for flower-strewn streets. They should have built your soul with truth, not led it along with lies.” His voice grew hard. “But you took the job, Lieutenant. Will you stay with it or quit it? We can’t take care of your soul.”

“And the girl,” Lanser continued, “the girl, Lieutenant, you may rape her, or protect her, or marry her—that is of no importance so long as you shoot her when it is ordered.”

soldiers carefully searched every miner who went into the shaft, searched and researched, and the soldiers were nervous and rough and they spoke harshly to the miners. The miners looked coldly at them, and behind their eyes was a little fierce jubilance.

“A time-minded people,” he said, “and the time is nearly up. They think that just because they have only one leader and one head, we are all like that. They know that ten heads lopped off will destroy them, but we are a free people; we have as many heads as we have people, and in a time of need leaders pop up among us like mushrooms.”

I am a little man and this is a little town, but there must be a spark in little men that can burst into flame.

now I feel a kind of exultation, as though I were bigger and better than I am,

in the Apology? Do you remember Socrates says, ‘Someone will say,

“And are you not ashamed, Socrates, of a course of life which is likely to bring you to an untimely end?” To him I may fairly answer, “There you are mistaken: a man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether he is doing right or wrong.” ’”

‘Acting the part of a good man or of a bad.’

“ ‘And now, O men who have condemned me,’ ” he said, “ ‘I would fain prophesy to you—for I am about to die—and—in the hour of death—men are gifted with prophetic power. And I—prophesy to you who are my murderers—that immediately after my—my death——’ ”

“The word is ‘departure,’ not ‘death.’

And he went on, “ ‘I prophesy to you who are my murderers that immediately after my—departure punishment far heavier than you have inflicted on me will surely await you.’ ”

“ ‘Me you have killed because you wanted to escape the accuser, and not to give an account of your lives—!’ ”

“ ‘For I say that there will be more accusers of you than there are now’ ”—he

‘accusers whom hitherto I have restrained; and as they are younger they will be more inconsiderate with you, and you will be more offended at them.’ ”

“ ‘If you think that by killing men you can prevent someone from censuring your evil lives, you are mistaken.’ ”

“Yes, they will light it. I have no choice of living or dying, you see, sir, but—I do have a choice of how I do it. If I tell them not to fight, they will be sorry, but they will fight. If I tell them to fight, they will be glad, and I who am not a very brave man will have made them a little braver.”

see, it is an easy thing to do, since the end for me is the same.”

“The people don’t like to be conquered, sir, and so they will not be. Free men cannot start a war, but once it is started, they can fight on in defeat. Herd men, followers of a leader, cannot do that, and so it is always the herd men who win battles and the free men who win wars. You will find that is so, sir.”

“How did it go about the flies?” he asked. “The flies have conquered the flypaper,”

he turned back to Doctor Winter. “Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius,” he said tenderly. “Will you remember to pay the debt?”

“The debt shall be paid.”

“I remembered that one. I didn’t forget that one.”

“Yes, you remembered. The debt shall be paid.”

Remember this Putin, debt will be paid. Leaders never learn….Great and timely allegory.