I Think One Thing Writers Can Do

The Late Nadine Gordimer In South Africa, For Example, Had A Wonderful Ability To Get Her Country's Injustices And Contradictions Down On Paper. Ditto For Her Countryman The Great Playwright Athol Fugard.

In His Fierce, Bold Determination To See The Lives Of Modern-day Slaves Up Close, Benjamin Skinner Reminds Me Of The British Abolitionist Of Two Hundred Years Ago, Zachary Macaulay, Who Once Traveled On A Slave Ship Across The Atlantic, Taking Notes. Skinner Goes Everywhere, From Border Crossings To Brothels To Bargaining Sessions With Dealers In Human Beings, To Bring Us This Vivid, Searing Account Of The Wide Network Of Human Trafficking And Servitude Which Spans Today's Globe.

Even [ernst] Hemingway, Perhaps The Most Intentionally Non-political Of American Writers, Became Passionately Partisan During The Spanish Civil War.

Someday, I Have No Doubt, The Dead From Today's Wars Will Be Seen With A Similar Sense Of Sorrow At Needless Loss And Folly As Those Millions Of Men Who Lie In The Cemeteries Of France And Belgium - And Tens Of Millions Of Americans Will Feel A Similar Revulsion For The Politicians And Generals Who Were So Spendthrift With Others' Lives.

Some 2,800 Americans Went To Spain [during The Spanish Civil War], And It Was, By Far, The Largest Number Of Americans Before Or Since Who've Ever Joined Somebody Else's Civil War. I Think They Were Primarily People Who Were Deeply Alarmed By The Menace Of Fascism. They Saw This On The Horizon. I Quote One Volunteer, Maury Colow Of New York, Who Said, "for Us It Was Never Franco, It Was Always Hitler."