Letter from Mary Ashworth to President Harry S. Truman

P.P.F. 200 Cong Eaton, Ohio R.R.2 October 26, 1945 To the President of the United States Mr. Harry Truman con Washington, D.C. A Sir: I am compelled to object to your attitude and position on military training. Are you aware that you are not responsible for your decision? I recall when you came to my home in Norton, Virginia in 1904, and when we had another contact in the midwest in a men's clothing store about 1923 or 1924. I know you were not responsible for allowing the atomic bomb to be used. I am aware now of your visit to the Buffalo State Hospital this past spring too. Daily all kinds of tragedies occur which I have foretold which were predestined. There's scarcely a day that I do not read of some event which was foretold by me or another prophet. Your appointments also were predes- tined. You have no right to assume that you are bid to do"thus and so" and therefore it is all right. The criminal could also make the same assump- tion. It grieves me SO much to know that certain individuals are so humil- iated and disgraced and degraded and deprived of life itself when I know they are no more responsible for their actions than you are for the sune shine or rainfall. I wish to state my objections to universal military training. As a former teacher and one who has studied a great deal the philosophy of educ- ation, I object because of the undesirable concomitant learning, the egotism and feeling of power, the laxity or freedom of morals which being in a heterogeneous mob away from home generates, and the notion of distrust which is the basis for the recommendation. If we compel our men to take military training, won't other nations do the same? We ought to offer a different kind of model or leadership. or ideal for others to ape. If ever there is to be trust, why not now? Unless you expect war very soon I don't sse the need for it, because it is a law of learning that people lose skills they once had unless they are using them all the time. Therefore there would be nothing gained by such a measure except to help relieve the unemployment situation. Is that one of the real motives back of it? No one can deny that the Spanish Civil War, Mussolini's campaigns, and the rise and fall of Hitler were predestined and foretold. Whatever Power caused them I don't know. Do you? Are you aware that they were predestined and foretold? Why are you so alarmed about another war when a greater menace is right at your door. Surely you have knowledge that different individuals h ave copulated with negroes in trances. and there have been instances of babies being born in a trance and those involved entirely forgetting it. This means there is a power that can bring about miscegenation without knowledge that it is happening. This is certainly as alarming a power as the atomic bomb. And we face theesituation of intermixture of the races in this country or separation. Do you wish that? Areethe authorities in this country going to ignore this any longer? If we have forces there will be more apt to be "a need" to use them. If only to protect Okinawa, just to prove that there really was need for them. Thru athletic training in the schools and technological courses required as much training could be acquired as would carry over anyway. That would save money, to use existing organizations, and avoid the undes- irable of militaristic life.