Hammer: Witness to History [antikvár]

Prologue I have never been much occupied with my past; it has never held my deepest interest. I have always cared most for the present and the future, for the work that I can do today and the opportunities that it will bring tomorrow. I have no time to spare for yesterday: let it rest in peace. Raking over the past and sifting its dust is an occupation for the idle or the elderly retired. I may be elderly - at the time of this writing I am eighty-eight - but I have not retired and I hope never to be idle. This is a strange start to an autobiography, in which I hope to tell the full story of my life so far. But I want to explain that I care more for the whole meaning of the story than for the particular events and scenes which make it up. What I have done does not interest me so much as why I did it. Mine has been a life of hectic action and endeavor, rather than of quiet contemplation. I have always felt that the highest human expression comes in our creative endeavors, those which draw upon all of our powers of imagination, intelligence and understanding; and throughout my life I have tried to bring all my energy and all my wit to every working day. Jimmy Stewart expressed the same attitude, but less piously, in the film Shenandoah: "If we don't try, we don't do. And if we don't do . . . what are we on this earth for?" As a child, I composed a personal creed, which I would repeat to myself at bedtime. Though I was not raised in a religious home, my creed was a kind of prayer to God, the unknown spirit of life which can inspire us and xiii