Starring Orson Welles in Admiral of the Ocean Sea on the Cavalcade of America, sponsored by DuPont, maker of better things for better living through chemistry. Good evening. This is Orson Welles. In an old book in a library in the city of Seville, this is written. An age shall come after many years when the ocean will loose the chain of things and a huge land lie revealed. The quotation is from an ancient Roman play by Seneca. An age shall come after many years when the ocean will loose the chain of things and a huge land lie revealed. The old book in Seville, these lines are followed by this one. My father fulfilled his prophecy on October 12th in the year of our Lord 1492. Today is October 12th, 1942. Hello Americans. This is our birthday. This broadcast is part of the celebration. It comes to you in the principal American languages and you're hearing it in every country of our hemisphere. Happy birthday everybody. Happy birthday. Maybe you've forgotten. In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. That's right. Four and a half centuries ago this morning, Columbus found a new world. Mr. Welles, that's a rather dangerous statement. Oh, why's that? It isn't clearly established who first discovered America. I'm a full professor of Probiology, Antibology and Critics. I'm glad to know you, but what about Columbus? It is not precisely accurate to say that Columbus discovered America. You see there's every historical evidence to show that the land masses of the western hemisphere were discovered many years, I might even say many centuries before Columbus. To be exact, in the north and east by the Vikings and the leaf the lucky and perhaps Eric the Red. Oh yes. The south and west by natives from the south seas, traveling in canoes with cocoa nuts for sextants. In the west and north by certain atheotic people. Yes. Bridging the Aleutian Islands who perhaps... Professor, I agree with you. A lot of men besides Columbus discovered America, probably some before him and many after him. Great names like Magellan, Vasco da Gama, Balboa, the Cabot, Hudson... May I go, Miss Pucci? That's right, professor. ...for whom this hemisphere is named. That's right, professor. Now here's my point about America's other discoverers. The great and the anonymous. The conquistadors, the priests, the prospectors, the traders, the trappers, the banderantes, the leather stockings. Every man of them who moved forward valiantly into any part of the uncharted darkness of our new world is a discoverer of America. Every man of these is Columbus. And Columbus is all of them. He's the first man who's going to get to the moon. He's the fellow with the courage of his dreams. I can fly like a bird. I can sail without a sail. I can ride my carriage without a hawk. I can get to the east by sailing west. The sound you've been hearing was laughter. We bring you now the sound of an aeroplane. A steamboat. An automobile. And by the way, it turns out you can get to the east by going west because the world is round. Of course it's round. Then why did you laugh at Columbus? Oh, me? Yes, you. Remember the egg story? The scene is a castle in Spain. Columbus who has just discovered America is the guest of honor at a banquet. With nobody and his eyes. Why all this fuss about Columbus? Yes, why? After all... You were discussing me, gentlemen? Yes, I see you were. Oh, well, we were merely saying... And in no doubt you were saying that too much is made of my achievement. We were only remarking, me Lord Admiral. Yes. As the world goes sooner or later, somebody else would have done it. Sooner or later. There's not much that I can say to that. But here you see I have a hard-boiled egg. An egg. An egg. Hard-boiled. And hard-boiled eggs. Hard-boiled eggs in the 1490s. Yes, the poached egg hadn't been introduced yet. It was to be discovered several years later in Mexico by Sister Horace. She has an egg. Yes, and I should like to ask you to make this egg stand on end. Stand on end? What a curious request. Here, give it to me. It rolls over. Of course it rolls over. Let me try. What's going on? Wait now, V. This is obviously quite impossible. Is it impossible? Impossible. Watch. I crack the shell gently on the bottom and the egg stands on the top. The whole egg stand. Of course. If you do it that way. Yes, but nobody else thought of doing it that way. I like that yarn, because it tells us something about the man himself. He had wit as well as courage, it would seem. Too bad we don't know more about Columbus. Columbus is not necessarily the correct name. He is given separately as Columbo, Colon, Colum, Columbe and Colonus. Thank you, professor. Anyway, he came from Genoa, which makes him Italian. Evidence has been brought forward that he was Cossican or possibly Meorican. Another theory would make him a Greek. There are also claims that he was English, Portuguese, German, French, Jewish, Spanish and Armenian. Probably Italian, though. Indubitably. Thank you, professor. Also, everybody seems to agree that his red hair was premature. Also, everybody seems to agree that his red hair was prematurely gray and that he was freckled. Related to the freckles. Never mind about the freckles. What we care about is that four and one half centuries ago today, he arrived on our shores. Christopher Columbus, the Admiral of the Ocean Sea, with three ships in his command. Everybody knows their names. The Santa Maria, the Pinto. Excuse me, Mr. Wells. Yes, little girl? The name of the ship was the Pinta, not Pinto. That's the Pinta. That's right. That's right, little girl. You know the name of the other boat? The other ship was Benilla. That's what I said. Columbus set sail from the coast of Spain on August 3, 1492. It took him 34 days to cross the Atlantic. He's bound from his last port of call, the Gran Canaries. The Gran Canaries. There's the glamour of voyaging in that name. His last port of call, you said it was. That's the word, all right. Call. Call. Baghdad. There's a call to that name. Pango Pango. Timbuktu. The Gran Canaries. Not that the Gran Canaries can have sounded very special to Columbus. Other words quickened his blood. The meant adventure. The Indies. Tipangu. The islands of spice. Cafe. The empire of the great Khan. Oriental places. The fabled east. That he sailed west to find. And there were others. Names he'd never heard. Singing names for Europeans after him to learn. Cusco. Chichen Itza. Orinoco. Saskatchewan. Mississippi. Some say that Columbus was only and merely practical. They say all he was after was a short cut to India. Just that, a short cut. Maybe. Maybe the unknown can only be explored by men of no imagination. But I think you need imagination to make the try. Can't have been pleasant that first crossing. Somebody once said that adventure is an attitude taken toward discomfort. Imagine the first day of that first Atlantic adventure. September 8th, 1492. Here's Columbus ready to up anchor in the way. His three caravans dancing in a sharp northeasterly. Off the Grand Canary. My lads, we head away now to the west. There it's still dark. But not quite dark. But look you, hanging low and so bright. See that western star. I know that star. I know it well. Our course is set by the star of the north, lads. But we sail toward that one. The star in the west. Walt Whitman wrote about that voyage. Passage to India, he called his poem. Passage to India. The medieval navigators rise before me. The world of 1492 with its awakened enterprise. Something swelling in humanity now. Like the sap of the earth in spring. Passage to India. Struggles of many a captain. Tales of many a sailor dead. The plans, the voyages again. The expeditions dominating the rest I see. The admiral himself. History's type of courage. Action. Faith. The knowledge gained, the men on his compass. Lands found and nations born. Thou born America for purpose vast. Man's long probation filled. Thou ranger of the world at last accomplished. Passage. Immediate passage. The blood burns in my veins. Away, oh soul. Hoist instantly the anchor. Cut the hoardsers. Haul out. Shake out every sail. Have we not stood here like trees in the ground long enough? Have we not groveled here long enough? Eating and drinking like mere brutes. Have we not darkened and dazed ourselves with books? Long enough. Sail forth. Steer for the deep waters only. For we are bound where mariners not yet dare to go. And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all. Oh my brave soul. Oh father, father sail. Oh father, father, father sail. Behind him lay the gray azores. Behind the gates of Hercules. Before him not the ghost of shores. Before him only shoreless seas. Before him no shoreless seas. Before him no shoreless seas. Before him only shoreless seas. The good mate said, now must we pray. For though the very stars are gone. Brave Admiral Spook, what shall I say? Why say? Sail on, sail on and on. No child grows up in America without hearing again and again the story of that brave first voyage. My men grow mutinous day by day. Mutiny, mutiny. None of us got through the fourth grade at school without learning that mutiny was the gravest peril Columbus faced. His men feared to go on, we were told, because they thought their ships would fall off the edge of the world. Perhaps we remember this so vividly because we learned it such a short time after we learned the world had no edge. The sailors believed in great monsters, sea dragons, fish that could swallow whole fleets. And their dread was real to us then because we'd just been told that dragons don't exist. And we stood with Columbus on these grave questions on the side of light and logic by the grace of a mere semester or two. Now frankly it isn't easy to reconstruct, to reenact a 15th century mutiny. I don't know how far the mutineers dared to go or got with that clear-eyed gentleman from Genoa. I don't know what they said exactly, but I can guess what it sounded like. Something like this maybe. The Nazi war machine is invincible. Let's face it, he can't be beaten. We can't hold out against the Nazis. Now of course Columbus's men weren't talking about the Nazis back then, but it was the same kind of talk. He'll be in Moscow in two weeks. He'll take Russia by telephone. Hitler is invincible. You've heard that kind of mutiny. Remember? Well, there were dragons in 1492 and you could slip off the rim of the earth. But we know now that we can beat Hitler just as sure as the world is round. Thirty-two days out and two days to go, and they nearly turned back. Then on the 33rd day, Columbus made this entry in his log. Today we saw a bird. How can we understand a moment in time we never experienced? How can we anticipate something that has already happened? Well, let's try. No music, please. And I'm not going to say anything. We'll all just think about it. Try to imagine what it was like on that ship on that night. I must go at noon. Do you see the light there straight ahead? I think I do. Yes. There it is, like a little wax candle. It rises and falls. It's right on land. Or a little boat. It's gone. Wait a moment. May I return? There it is. I see it too. There it is. I see it too. But no. Alas, it's a false alarm. A western star just ready to step. With a whistle, a cloud of some low sea mist gives it that strange warm glow like a lamp. That makes it glimmer and then go out. Better luck next time, Master Christopher. It's 450 years ago. This morning. Two o'clock. The three ships speed straight on. Their sails shining white in the moon, but now has risen past full in the sky behind. Pinta leaves. A brave trade wind now blows. But the caravans roll and plunge and throw the spray as their bows cut down the last invisible barrier that lies between the old world and this new one of ours. A moment now. A moment. And a mirror that rose in remotest antiquity will continue. And ho! If this be the Indies, then I've done what I set out to do. But if this should not be, who is there now who is able to say this is not a land far greater still? To that land and the men of that land I say, and to them who follow them through ages to come, to the sons of this land we see here stretching forth I say, lock this night in your heart. For on it a man's dream came true. Passage to more than India. O secret of the earth and sky, of you o' waters of the sea, o' winding creeks and rivers, of you o' woods and fields, of you strong mountains, of you o' pamphlets, of you gray rocks, o' morning reds, o' clouds, o' rain and snows, o' day and night, passage to you, o' sun and moon, and all you stars, passage to you. Columbus died without ever knowing what he'd found or how much there was of it. Took a long time to find that out. As a matter of fact, we don't know it all yet. There are big sections in our part of the atlas still marked unexplored. But these things we do know. Our island stretches the length of the world. We have great rivers, the Amazon, the Mississippi, the Orinoco, the Columbia, the Yukon, the Paraguay. We have great mountains, the Andes, the Rockies, the Sierra Madres, the Appalachians. We have lakes, Titicaca, the Great Lake, the Great Salt Lake. We have the brush of the Matagroso, the jungles of the Amazon, the swamps of the Everglades, the deserts of Chile and Arizona, the falls of Niagara and Iguazú. We have timber and quarries and iron. We can build a world. We have coal and oil and water. We can run a world. We have wheat and corn and cattle. We can feed a world. And ours is a tolerant land. Summer and winter live in it side by side. And we're so rich that we can change the tide of history with only a small part of our natural will. In the crew of Christopher Columbus was a man who is alive today. I will repeat that. A member of Columbus's crew is alive today. Happy to have him with us here in the studio, ladies and gentlemen. I want you to meet Jose... I'm terribly sorry. I've forgotten your name. I've forgotten the last one myself. Just call me Jose or Jose or Joe, whatever you like. Yes, sir, man and boy. I've been around for quite some time. Well, why don't you happen to sign up with Columbus, Joe? Well, I just happened to be around. Didn't spend much time here at first. None of us did. Made several crossings. Shipped with a lot of captains on all sorts of crafts. Mayflower or Half Moon. I've forgotten most of the names. Went all over. Found me youth. Never found that. El Dorado. That never turned up. And those Amazon women. I never saw them. But that Pecan Darien. I suppose you saw them I think for the first time, Joe. A lot to see. Mountains, lakes and rivers. They were always claiming them in the name of the king. I carried the flags. Different flags, of course. Different kings. I don't remember their names either. Billy the Bald, Charlie the Flat, Peter the Evil or whoever they were. It doesn't matter now. When did you finally settle down? I don't know. Got used to it. Didn't see many cents going back after a while. Nice people around here. Nice country. What did you do? Oh, a little bit of everything. Farmed, prospected. Cut down a lot of trees. Sometimes didn't do any work at all. Just sat around and let somebody else do it for me. Anything else? Hunting, fishing, bell ringing. What? Bell ringing. There was a time we were always ringing bells. What for? Celebrating. You see, we claimed all these countries in the name of the king. But the kings were all too far away to mean much and after a while they didn't mean anything at all. So we started doing things in the name of the people. That was a new idea. That's why we rang the bells. The people. Well, that's something to ring a bell about. No, that was another new idea. Speaking of the people, I'd like you to meet a friend of mine. Oh, how do you do, sir? Your name? You can call me Joe. Indian Joe. He's been around a lot longer than I have. Have built some beautiful cities back in the old days, didn't you, Joe? Sure. He's got something to say. Here it is. A lot of good things came over here from Europe, Africa and Asia. But a lot of good things were here to begin with. Put them all together, you've got something new. Sure. Brand new. Well, that's part of what I was starting to say. I know. I heard Bolivar make a speech about it once and Henry Clay... But right now it's really beginning to come true. Americans all over the Americas are honestly anxious now to get to know each other better. To play together and fight together. Let's put it this way. America is being discovered again. This time by Americans. Joe, I think you can start ringing those bells again. Any concluding observations? No. That's it. Well, everybody in the American hemisphere knows that this new idea we've been talking about... has no stauncher friends than Henry A. Wallace, the Vice President of the United States. I went to Washington last week to get his advice on this program... and I also asked him for a few words on its occasion. Our American birthday. And he didn't promise me he'd prepare something in a day or two and send it along. He simply picked up a pencil and rolled it out for us. There and then. Here it is. The new world in 450 years has transformed the Latin and Anglo-Saxon cultures... into what might be called the new democracy. The new democracy looks to the future, not to the past. It looks to the rich soil and bright sunshine of America for strength. It does not exclude the old world, but it will develop its own strength to help the old world. May October 12th be the symbol of new world strength, of the new democracy... of abundance for all the peoples of the earth. Ladies and gentlemen, that about sums it up. Happy birthday again, and many happy returns of the day. Thank you, Orson Welles. Explorers, those gallant men among our number who must always search out the unknown... who must always cross the misty line of the far horizon, explorers make many kinds of voyages. There are many kinds of explorers, but the discoverers of 1492 and those of 1942... were and are dedicated to one and the same aspiration, to widen the boundaries of man's knowledge. Today, America has a war to win, and all of our efforts are pointed toward its winning. The very urgency we feel that this war must be won... springs from our faith that this, our free civilization, free to explore and learn... to improve and progress, is worth fighting for, is humanity's best hope for the future. Our enemies would drag us back into the night of ignorance and fear and poverty. We fight for the freedom to go forward, our freedom of conscience... the freedom of philosophers and artists to bring us added wisdom and beauty... the freedom of scientists to continue the epic voyages of discovery they make... through the four walls of their laboratories, enriching the lives of everyone. Not riches of gold and ivory, not the perfume and spice of the fabled Indies... but new standards of health for the youngsters born today. Fuels and metals and plastics to streamline our whole idea of transport. New and better automobiles and airplanes, maybe transcontinental trains of airborne gliders. New and better houses, prefabricated, clean and glistening... of unprecedented beauty and convenience, costing less to build and far less to maintain. Not the rubber Columbus knew as a strange black vegetable gum that seemed to be alive... but instead hundreds of types of rubber. These are only a few of the promises we glimpse just over the horizon of tomorrow's world... thanks to scientific discovery. Not tomorrow's dreams, tomorrow's facts. They are on the way. We fight this bitter war in order to win the peace. We fight, as the president of the DuPont Company recently said... so that the war and the peace will both be victories. Today it is this thought that guides and inspires the men and women of DuPont... who in time of peace work to bring you better things for better living through chemistry. Next week, ladies and gentlemen, Cavalcade will present Madeline Carroll in a new radio play... That They Might Live. It is the story of a young immigrant who a century ago pioneered to emancipate women in the field of medicine... the results of which are being proven today by the gallant efforts of women doctors and nurses... devoting their lives to the winning of the war. Next week, Madeline Carroll in That They Might Live. For tonight's program, Cavalcade is indebted to Little Brown and Company... publishers of Samuel Elliot Morrison's Admiral of the Ocean Sea... which was utilized in preparing tonight's play by Mr. Wells... in collaboration with Robert Meltzer and Norris Houghton. The orchestra and musical score were under the direction of Don Bure. This is Clayton Collier sending best wishes from DuPont. This program came to you from New York. This is an Actional Broadcasting Company.
