05/26/2026
Taken from Ventura Star-Free Press
of April 20, 1948.
Editor, The Star-Free Press:
This article was
written aboard a transport bound for Africa by Mr. Rubel in answer to an argument several of the
men in the unit
evere trying to solve. Thought you might like to print
same.
Sincerely,
MARY J. RUBEL.
WHY ARE WE HERE?
We want to
own our own souls. In that simple fact are encompass- ed the reasons why home ties, business, family
and loved ones must be loft for a space or forever by men stall free to make such choice. There will be changes while we are gone and more changes after the nightmare
is over, but clearly within all change in our great coun-
try will ring out this sample fact: We will own
our own souls.
Business changes and regulation will come.
We will fret over them, but we will conform to them.
They are only the window
dressing. Political forms and fancies
may change our earlior accepted preferences, but that still does not pe*****te to the essential of the right to be oneself.
That right is being denied to other millions of peoples, some by force, others by their own acquiescense and desiro to hew us to their form.
These latter are our enemios.
The struggle is the clash of the ways of life.
It is they or we; there can be no compromise. Our great melting pot, the cruciblo, which, charged with a divers- ity of freedom-seeking peoples, continues to pour forth individuals cast as a homogenous nation, has two outstanding chsracteristics; humor and a certain petulant impationce with authority.
A people who can laugh collectively at their own shortcomings in a free electorate composed of individuals who rosent encroachment by unwarranted authority possesses a safety valve assuring continuence of essential freedoms.
Men and women who retain tho right to praise, criticize,
or change government, to wor- ship as each sees fit, to think each one's own thoughts, to exist in human dignity and to load each one's own home. life, trace.the pattern, even the
goal, of many silont millions the world over.
But it is not directly for these silent millions that we have now
uprooted ourselves.
Our aim is selfishly present;
the immediate concern of lives now in being.
The fight for our way of life presses close, there 18 no pageantry, no false chivalry, no catch phrases about saving the . world. We are out to save ourselves, and those of us who do their necessary work at home pursue the some relentless purpose.
That the wey will be hard and long, we already know, but fail we cannot, if life is to be worth the living.
In victory we shall have defended
our rights to our own being, and in so doing will have cast a raiobow presaging a better world.
There is work to be done.
AUGUST A. RUBEL
