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THIS book is not anti-American. Had there been no America, my own mother would have had no place to turn when her family was forced to flee the genocidal policies of Adolph Hitler. Nevertheless, I find it impossible to swallow "My Country Right or Wrong". Ancient Rome persecuted Christians and two thousand years later Christian America persecutes the very people whose land she stole. The same army responsible for the My Lai massacre, one hundred years earlier slaughtered and raped innocent Indians at Sand Creek and Wounded Knee. While we land junk on the moon, our citizens starve in our ghettos. The Pentagon purchases planes so huge that they must fly with only one-half their capacity, or else be unable to get off the ground. The comment, a few years ago, that television is a vast wasteland is probably more applicable to the Federal Government itself.All of this had been bearing in and down on me until April 1971, near the time of the completion of my senior year medical boards. I decided that I would organize a collection of my anti-war drawings, including those I had contributed to the New York Moratorium Committee to be used as posters. I had hoped that eventually these would appear in book form, but the anti-war movement was on the verge of collapse in America. There seemed to be no end in sight to the Vietnam conflict. The hundreds of thousands who braved the autumn cold were noticeably absent from the spring protests.Then four students lay dead on the campus of Kent State: the President had moved the war into Cambodia.It was at that time that I decided, rather than organize my old drawings into book form, I would begin a totally new project. After watching the television broadcasts of the Kent State tragedy, I sat down and turned out, in a period of about three days, fifteen of the drawings which appear in this book. That weekend, I took part in the Washington, D.C. protest as a volunteer on the Medical Committee for Human Rights. The remaining thirty-five works represent approximately one hundred drawings executed between that time and September. Fortunately, I began my medical internship with an elective period in which I had some free time, allowing me to continue work onthe book. My internship responsibilities at the present moment would have made it almost impossible to complete such a work.From the beginning, I knew that this volume had to include a drawing concerned with the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. But I had the greatest difficulty whenever I attempted capturing the mood which I associated with that November afternoon. Finally, when I re-read the words, "Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot", I knew exactly what I wanted to depict.Several of the drawings were inspired by personal experiences. Members of my class had served as medic volunteers at the various demonstrations held throughout New York City immediately after the Kent State incident. The brutal account of the construction workers who beat in the head of a twelve-year-old student on Wall Street until he began having seizures in the gutter, serves as the background to HOME OF THE BRAVE.When news of the My Lai massacre first leaked out, I was asked, by the New York Moratorium Committee, to design a poster symbolizing the tragedy. For me, the whole incident was summed up in a newspaper headline which glared "Colonel: Maybe It Did Happen". First, America's vigorous denial of such a massacre, and then its indictment of a few scapegoats singled out to accept the guilt of an entire nation."Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it": Santayana's immortal words are perhaps the underlying theme of this entire series of drawings.As the drawings were almost all completed, I realized that there was no representation of President Johnson, although the events linked to his administration were more than well represented. One evening I came across a reproduction of Michelangelo's design for the Campidoglio surrounding the statue of Marcus Aurelius. The comparison of the mounted Texan President with the Roman Emperor is obvious. But what also comes to my mind is the picture of the colonists on the eve of the American Revolution, tearing down the statue of King George the Third. Two hundred years later, Americans would unseat Johnson,