James Cameron discusses his experiences as a Brittish journalist and his book "Point of Departure" ; part 3

Studs Terkel Well, thank you Norm. This morning is part three of a four-part program with the British journalist, one of the most distinguished of our time, James Cameron. His reflections, thoughts of the past 30 years, experiences, and his conclusions, if any, and as though one does have conclusions. In a moment after we hear from Norm Pellegrini a very slight intro and then part three of James Cameron. The world's greatest living journalist. His autobiography, "Point of Departure", is out of print, perhaps could be reissued, is a beautiful book. And during the past--today we have a third day, when I met him again at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, we talked. His experiences in early Scotland as a journalist during the Korean War, the first man to expose Syngman Rhee, his experiences in Africa and the Middle East, in China, the first Western journalist in North Vietnam. Firsts are one of those things that don't matter too much, but there he was in the very early moments when it was unfashionable to re-investigate those matters and he did. And later on turned that he really was--he really had it. So we pick up part 3, his own reflections way back to childhood now, with James Cameron. Continuing the conversation with James Cameron and for the past two hours been talk about his life as a journalist, people he's seen, thoughts he's had, the police, refugees, makers and shakers of one sort or another, and I'm thinking about your life. During the last time you mentioned childhood. I know in your marvelous autobiography, "Point of Departure", that McGraw Hill published a number of years ago, you spoke of Dundee, the industrial area of Scotland where you first became acquainted with journalism and your father, a lawyer who wrote in a certain style. [Resh?] to him. You also mentioned France, I didn't know this, France played a role in your life, in your boyhood?

James Cameron Well, my father, you see, with whom I lived until he died, was a barrister, an advocate, an attorney I suppose you'd call him here, but a very, very unsuccessful one. He discovered a talent for writing novellas, books, not very great ones, but good enough. And in those days, the economic situation in Europe was completely different from what it is now. That is to say, the pound sterling was worth far, far more in Europe than it was at home. Whereas now it's worth about half as much. But, so, my father said, "Let's go over and live in France because if I earn a pound, we'll be able to live on it for probably a whole week," you see. So we went to France and every month my father would discover a new heaven on earth. "This is the great place, this is where we'll stay, what a marvelous little café here, we'll live above it, have great fun." And six weeks later he'd say, "You know, it's not all that good. I've found another better place, it's about 150 miles away, let's go there." Well, the result was that my education, if you can call it an education, was sketchy beyond imagination because I was always being bumped off from one school to another. I went to about 30 different elementary schools, and such is the strange quality of the French educational system in those days that the minister in Paris was supposed to be able to look at his watch anytime and say, "It is two o'clock in the afternoon. I have 2,300,000 children reading Racine at this particular moment," he knew everything that was happening, it was so systematized. So if you were shoved around as I was, you were always going back to square one, you see. So I emerged from this process having learned to multiply the five times table but no more, and having learned to read so, I was very, very undereducated indeed. And, therefore, when it became necessary for me to suddenly earn my living, I obviously sought my living in which other trade would accept somebody who is illiterate in two languages at once and couldn't count beyond five, obviously journalism is the trade who would accept me and that is how the dreadful stories began.

Studs Terkel Roughly, what year is

James Cameron This is in the late 1920s, 1929 or '30s, and then I went to Dundee, which--

Studs Terkel Then you went to Dundee.

James Cameron Well, I went to Dundee straight away because my father had gone to live there after the death of my mother. It was--he had reverted to his ancestral ground when he realized that he was alone and defeated. He retreated back to the womb, which was Scotland and was Dundee. At that time, this was deep in the middle of the Depression, and of all the depressed areas in the United Kingdom at the time, Dundee was quite the worst. There was a period in my life when I first became aware of the world around me when we had 48% unemployment in the town itself.

Studs Terkel Forty-eight percent.

James Cameron Forty-eight percent. Let's say one man in two had a job of a sort. And I didn't know what this was all about, but all I realized was that I was growing up, and I was a child of 18, 19, something like that, in the midst of really unforgivable poverty, because we didn't have the welfare state as well-organized as we now do, and people were living on a "dole," as we call it, what a contemptuous name to give Social Security, dole it was called, 14 shillings a week, you

Studs Terkel I remember a play, "Love on the Dole", Wendy Hiller. "Love on the Dole".

James Cameron Well, anyhow, I didn't know what it was all about. I just knew there was something wrong with the system or society that permitted this to go on when down, down the River Tay, about 10 miles or so, there were jute millionaires living in enormous houses and doing [selling?] considerable state.

Studs Terkel What jute mills the

James Cameron Jute was the only industry in the city except there were three J's, jute, jam, and journalism. They were the only things they

Studs Terkel Jute, jam and journalism.

James Cameron Yes. Keeler's Marmalades. Dundee marmalade, you see, was made there. But none of these were prospering, and I didn't--you see, I had no political education. I didn't really know, I didn't understand how you would go about solving a situation like this, I just knew that it was wrong and something had to be done about it. That then started me reading. My father, who's in my mind's eye then a very old and wise gentleman, although he was five years younger than I am now. He presented certain people for me to read and so on. And I realized that the only answer to this particular sort of anomaly in society as we see it now is socialism in some form or another. And then I learned how to apply it, or I tried to learn. I never really learned much about it because politics as an end in itself never in the least interested me, I was totally uninterested in the ends of politics, but it seemed to me that the new means were important if people were to be given half a chance of living in some conditions of decency. But you can return to the city of Dundee today which is now prosperous, full of IBM machine, manufacturers, typewriters, calculating machines, all light industries now, no longer all this heavy industry stuff, and you still see the old people, 60 and 70, going around with bent legs because of rickets. Curved spines because of malnutrition. They still hoard the social scene. Even now we have a welfare state. The survivors of the great injustices of the '20s and '30s still live to challenge societies today, or so it seems to me.

Studs Terkel That when you returned, and how you became a journalist in the late '20s, early '30s now, the Depression. The American Depression coincided, or, perhaps the British [depression coincided with the?] American Depression, the worldwide depression there, too, then it would happen in Austria, too, and we know also how Hitler came, too, in Germany, but so we come to you and Dundee, now you became a working journalist and you had a style and a point of view.

James Cameron It was very many years before I was allowed to do any writing in journalism. Journalism to me in my early days consisted of filling paste pots for my betters, sharpening the pencils, and putting the old back numbers on the files. I had two or three years of that, and I didn't regret it for a single moment. And then after that I became a [weekholder subeditor new color copy holder?] And I went through all the processes, every single process in the whole business of newspaper production which was possible in this firm because wrong though it is, it was absolutely non-union firm. It forbade the print unions and to this day still does. Well, I deeply deplore that situation, but by hindsight, it was very useful to me because it allowed me to do almost every--

Studs Terkel Variety.

James Cameron Variety--

Studs Terkel Then you went to London--how did--and then you worked--

James Cameron Then I went to London and, then almost simultaneously the war began. I arrived in London and the war arrived in Europe at the same time. People were--

Studs Terkel We're now talking about '39, aren't we?

James Cameron We're talking about '39, '40, I actually arrived in the end of '38, beginning of '39, '40 began and we were ver--the whole newspaper industry was extremely hard up for people because everybody was drafted into the army, you see. I had been drafted in and drafted out again because I'd been invalided out because they reckoned that I hadn't got good enough health for it. As it turned out, they were dead wrong because I lasted out at least five wars, more than most of them did at the time, but therefore--

Studs Terkel Now the byline of Cameron as we know appeared, that's the point, isn't it?

James Cameron Yes, that towards the end the war, really after the invasion of the continent of Europe.

Studs Terkel You cover that?

James Cameron Yes, that was the beginning of it, really.

Studs Terkel And was--you were working for now Lord Beaverbrook.

James Cameron I was then working for Lord Beaverbrook's "Daily Express", yes.

Studs Terkel Now, Beaverbrook be would be at that time, perhaps, equivalent to, say, to William Randolph Hearst, one of the--he had two papers at the time, did he not, at the time? Beaverbrook.

James Cameron Yes, he did.

Studs Terkel He was the big publisher, wasn't he? He was

James Cameron He was the very big publisher. He was Canadian. He was not only a big publisher, but he was also a very important member of the government, minister of aviation production.

Studs Terkel Under Churchill.

James Cameron And he was a great confidant of Churchill, they were great buddies together. A couple of brigands, if you ask me, but nonetheless--

Studs Terkel A couple of brigands, you say.

James Cameron Yeah, but Beaverbrook had a, there was a kind of majesty about his wickedness in the sense that he wasn't in the business to make money like all the other newspaper writers I've ever encountered who only want to make money. Beaverbrook had made all the money he wanted, he was a triple millionaire by the age of 28, so all he was in was to make propaganda overtly and without any shame at all. He told the Press Commission that we had at the end of the war, "I am in newspaper production in order to propagate and promote my political point of view and for no other reason at all." Well, the political point of view that he was trying to promote was outrageous to me, but I rather more admired that than I would admire the people who are only in the thing to make a swift buck, you see.

Studs Terkel But the fact is, you challenged him. Now, we

James Cameron

Studs Terkel Well, thank you Norm. This morning is part three of a four-part program with the British journalist, one of the most distinguished of our time, James Cameron. His reflections, thoughts of the past 30 years, experiences, and his conclusions, if any, and as though one does have conclusions. In a moment after we hear from Norm Pellegrini a very slight intro and then part three of James Cameron. The world's greatest living journalist. His autobiography, "Point of Departure", is out of print, perhaps could be reissued, is a beautiful book. And during the past--today we have a third day, when I met him again at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, we talked. His experiences in early Scotland as a journalist during the Korean War, the first man to expose Syngman Rhee, his experiences in Africa and the Middle East, in China, the first Western journalist in North Vietnam. Firsts are one of those things that don't matter too much, but there he was in the very early moments when it was unfashionable to re-investigate those matters and he did. And later on turned that he really was--he really had it. So we pick up part 3, his own reflections way back to childhood now, with James Cameron. Continuing the conversation with James Cameron and for the past two hours been talk about his life as a journalist, people he's seen, thoughts he's had, the police, refugees, makers and shakers of one sort or another, and I'm thinking about your life. During the last time you mentioned childhood. I know in your marvelous autobiography, "Point of Departure", that McGraw Hill published a number of years ago, you spoke of Dundee, the industrial area of Scotland where you first became acquainted with journalism and your father, a lawyer who wrote in a certain style. [Resh?] to him. You also mentioned France, I didn't know this, France played a role in your life, in your boyhood? Well, my father, you see, with whom I lived until he died, was a barrister, an advocate, an attorney I suppose you'd call him here, but a very, very unsuccessful one. He discovered a talent for writing novellas, books, not very great ones, but good enough. And in those days, the economic situation in Europe was completely different from what it is now. That is to say, the pound sterling was worth far, far more in Europe than it was at home. Whereas now it's worth about half as much. But, so, my father said, "Let's go over and live in France because if I earn a pound, we'll be able to live on it for probably a whole week," you see. So we went to France and every month my father would discover a new heaven on earth. "This is the great place, this is where we'll stay, what a marvelous little café here, we'll live above it, have great fun." And six weeks later he'd say, "You know, it's not all that good. I've found another better place, it's about 150 miles away, let's go there." Well, the result was that my education, if you can call it an education, was sketchy beyond imagination because I was always being bumped off from one school to another. I went to about 30 different elementary schools, and such is the strange quality of the French educational system in those days that the minister in Paris was supposed to be able to look at his watch anytime and say, "It is two o'clock in the afternoon. I have 2,300,000 children reading Racine at this particular moment," he knew everything that was happening, it was so systematized. So if you were shoved around as I was, you were always going back to square one, you see. So I emerged from this process having learned to multiply the five times table but no more, and having learned to read so, I was very, very undereducated indeed. And, therefore, when it became necessary for me to suddenly earn my living, I obviously sought my living in which other trade would accept somebody who is illiterate in two languages at once and couldn't count beyond five, obviously journalism is the trade who would accept me and that is how the dreadful stories began. Roughly, what year is it This is in the late 1920s, 1929 or '30s, and then I went to Dundee, which-- Then you went to Dundee. Well, I went to Dundee straight away because my father had gone to live there after the death of my mother. It was--he had reverted to his ancestral ground when he realized that he was alone and defeated. He retreated back to the womb, which was Scotland and was Dundee. At that time, this was deep in the middle of the Depression, and of all the depressed areas in the United Kingdom at the time, Dundee was quite the worst. There was a period in my life when I first became aware of the world around me when we had 48% unemployment in the town itself. Forty-eight percent. Forty-eight percent. Let's say one man in two had a job of a sort. And I didn't know what this was all about, but all I realized was that I was growing up, and I was a child of 18, 19, something like that, in the midst of really unforgivable poverty, because we didn't have the welfare state as well-organized as we now do, and people were living on a "dole," as we call it, what a contemptuous name to give Social Security, dole it was called, 14 shillings a week, you know. I remember a play, "Love on the Dole", Wendy Hiller. "Love on the Dole". Well, anyhow, I didn't know what it was all about. I just knew there was something wrong with the system or society that permitted this to go on when down, down the River Tay, about 10 miles or so, there were jute millionaires living in enormous houses and doing [selling?] considerable state. What jute mills the private Jute was the only industry in the city except there were three J's, jute, jam, and journalism. They were the only things they produced. Jute, jam and journalism. Yes. Keeler's Marmalades. Dundee marmalade, you see, was made there. But none of these were prospering, and I didn't--you see, I had no political education. I didn't really know, I didn't understand how you would go about solving a situation like this, I just knew that it was wrong and something had to be done about it. That then started me reading. My father, who's in my mind's eye then a very old and wise gentleman, although he was five years younger than I am now. He presented certain people for me to read and so on. And I realized that the only answer to this particular sort of anomaly in society as we see it now is socialism in some form or another. And then I learned how to apply it, or I tried to learn. I never really learned much about it because politics as an end in itself never in the least interested me, I was totally uninterested in the ends of politics, but it seemed to me that the new means were important if people were to be given half a chance of living in some conditions of decency. But you can return to the city of Dundee today which is now prosperous, full of IBM machine, manufacturers, typewriters, calculating machines, all light industries now, no longer all this heavy industry stuff, and you still see the old people, 60 and 70, going around with bent legs because of rickets. Curved spines because of malnutrition. They still hoard the social scene. Even now we have a welfare state. The survivors of the great injustices of the '20s and '30s still live to challenge societies today, or so it seems to me. That when you returned, and how you became a journalist in the late '20s, early '30s now, the Depression. The American Depression coincided, or, perhaps the British [depression coincided with the?] American Depression, the worldwide depression there, too, then it would happen in Austria, too, and we know also how Hitler came, too, in Germany, but so we come to you and Dundee, now you became a working journalist and you had a style and a point of view. It was very many years before I was allowed to do any writing in journalism. Journalism to me in my early days consisted of filling paste pots for my betters, sharpening the pencils, and putting the old back numbers on the files. I had two or three years of that, and I didn't regret it for a single moment. And then after that I became a [weekholder subeditor new color copy holder?] And I went through all the processes, every single process in the whole business of newspaper production which was possible in this firm because wrong though it is, it was absolutely non-union firm. It forbade the print unions and to this day still does. Well, I deeply deplore that situation, but by hindsight, it was very useful to me because it allowed me to do almost every-- Variety. Variety-- Then you went to London--how did--and then you worked-- Then I went to London and, then almost simultaneously the war began. I arrived in London and the war arrived in Europe at the same time. People were-- We're now talking about '39, aren't we? We're talking about '39, '40, I actually arrived in the end of '38, beginning of '39, '40 began and we were ver--the whole newspaper industry was extremely hard up for people because everybody was drafted into the army, you see. I had been drafted in and drafted out again because I'd been invalided out because they reckoned that I hadn't got good enough health for it. As it turned out, they were dead wrong because I lasted out at least five wars, more than most of them did at the time, but therefore-- Now the byline of Cameron as we know appeared, that's the point, isn't it? Yes, that towards the end the war, really after the invasion of the continent of Europe. You cover that? Yes, that was the beginning of it, really. And was--you were working for now Lord Beaverbrook. I was then working for Lord Beaverbrook's "Daily Express", yes. Now, Beaverbrook be would be at that time, perhaps, equivalent to, say, to William Randolph Hearst, one of the--he had two papers at the time, did he not, at the time? Beaverbrook. Yes, he did. He was the big publisher, wasn't he? He was the very big publisher. He was Canadian. He was not only a big publisher, but he was also a very important member of the government, minister of aviation production. Under Churchill. And he was a great confidant of Churchill, they were great buddies together. A couple of brigands, if you ask me, but nonetheless-- A couple of brigands, you say. Yeah, but Beaverbrook had a, there was a kind of majesty about his wickedness in the sense that he wasn't in the business to make money like all the other newspaper writers I've ever encountered who only want to make money. Beaverbrook had made all the money he wanted, he was a triple millionaire by the age of 28, so all he was in was to make propaganda overtly and without any shame at all. He told the Press Commission that we had at the end of the war, "I am in newspaper production in order to propagate and promote my political point of view and for no other reason at all." Well, the political point of view that he was trying to promote was outrageous to me, but I rather more admired that than I would admire the people who are only in the thing to make a swift buck, you see. But the fact is, you challenged him. Now, we come-- In Perhaps

James Cameron Well, I'll tell you what happened. I had been working, this was in '45 and '46, I had went out with Sir Stafford Cripps to India with the mission that was to try and find some accommodation with the congress government and with Mahatma Gandhi, and well, so that independence could be given to India because by this time we had a Labor government which was committed to the end of the Empire.

Studs Terkel We're talking now about when Churchill was beaten by Attlee.

James Cameron That's right. After '45--

Studs Terkel Inspector Cripps was the minister of--was he--

James Cameron He was brought back from being ambassador to Moscow and he became Chancellor of the Exchequer. And then finally he was given charge of the entire negotiations for the, what was in fact the wind-up of the British Empire.

Studs Terkel So you and Cripps were in India.

James Cameron Yes. And [reverting? referring?] to Beaverbrook, however, you see, I worked there for about a solid year and a half without ever seeing the paper I was working for and I was really quite unaware of what an awful organization it was, because Beaverbrook, being a confidant of Churchill, was vigorously and violently opposed to any suggestions India should receive independence or in fact that any colony should be given any measure of independence at all. As Winston Churchill said, "I have not been made his Majesty's first minister in order to preside over the disintegration of the British Empire." However, that was exactly what Clement Attlee, the then prime minister, reckoned that destiny had called him for, but I didn't realize that I was writing for a paper that was terribly hostile to Indian independence, so I continued to write the sort of stuff that I'd been writing for years and years past, and I never saw the paper at all. And they--we return to the thing we were talking about self-censorship before, they published every line of it, they always published an editorial beside it saying, "This is a lot of nonsense," but still. But when I, after this was over, I was brought back to London for, I suppose, a bit of brainwashing or something, or rest and rehabilitation or whatever it might be called. And then I suddenly became aware of what a very unpleasant outfit it was. And there came an occasion which was politically important to us but of no importance here in which a cabinet minister was violently attacked because he had once been a Communist.

Studs Terkel John Strachey.

James Cameron John Strachey. And I couldn't swallow

Studs Terkel it. John Strachey was minister of de--

James Cameron Of

Studs Terkel Of war under Attlee, quite a remarkable figure, and Beaverbrook, if I recall your marvelous autobiography, Jim, "Point of Departure", you were in some other country, whether in India or you were in Hong Kong, headline of a paper--there were two papers, the one you were not working for, [Beechly? Beachley?], same employer [of?] Beaverbrook, had a headline: "Strachey wins, so does Klaus Fuchs."

James Cameron That's right. Because Klaus Fuchs was a very celebrated traitor, a German communist who'd been working on the nuclear proposition with us and had possibly quite legally, correctly, been convicted and sent to prison, and he betrayed the country, okay, but completely unjustly, it seemed to me, they identified our minister of defense with this man because he had happened to have an acquaintance with him. And I thought, you know, this is so stinking, because here comes Senator McCarthy galloping over the horizon into our political scene. I didn't want it, and so I left them, but it seemed to me a silly thing to just leave them because of some negative thing. Who the hell cared whether I was working for him or whether I

Studs Terkel The city, you were at the time the highly, perhaps the most highly-paid journalist in British history, you

James Cameron I wasn't so highly paid, but I was--

Studs Terkel Highly respected.

James Cameron Pretty highly regarded.

Studs Terkel Yeah, and you decided to--well, what happened when--you saw that headline--

James Cameron Well, I--

Studs Terkel Thing with your publisher.

James Cameron Couldn't be done. I--

Studs Terkel With your story at all, you see.

James Cameron No.

Studs Terkel But you did something.

James Cameron Well, I merely said, "I think that if this is the attitude of the administration of the film for which I'm working, it'd be impossible to continue working for it. Is that so, yes or no?" And the editor summoned me forth and said, you know, "How much did the opposition offer you to do this?" And I was so outraged, you know, I said, "Isn't it possible for you to conceive that somebody can hate you for yourself alone?" And so I couldn't, I said I want nothing, I leave as from today. No golden handshakes and no money, no nothing at all. And I went home and my heart in my boots. Yes. And I summoned a meeting in my family, I had three children then, and we had a family conference. My wife and my three children, we, the youngest one was only four. So we allowed him to be present at the meeting, but we didn't allow him voting rights, and the rest we voted should I stay or should I go? And they said, "Well, we didn't know anything about this situation, but if you want to go, you've got to go." So I went. And it was a very, very traumatic thing, made an enormous sensation in Fleet Street because nobody had in fact spat in this old man's eye before, and--

Studs Terkel Beaverbrook.

James Cameron Yes, and he--then you see, I said to myself, "Well, nobody will really care, and I want to get him. I just don't want to leave him on, I want to get him." And so I wrote a long letter to "The Times" knowing that doesn't eat dog and they'd never print it, but it was nice to get it out of my system. "I have left the employment of Lord Beaverbrook because I consider he is a copper-bottomed shit for the following reasons: a, b, c, d, and I posted it and I said, "Well, that's fine, it's out of my system. I'll put my note to Santa Claus up the chimney." And of course, to my horror the next day, they let the letters [with it?], they printed it, okay--

Studs Terkel This was

James Cameron Then, of course, all hell broke loose, because Beaverbrook was a very, very important member of the newspaper proprietors association, as it was then called, and he put it around, not unreasonably from his point of view, that either I must be a card-carrying member of the Communist Party in Great Britain or I must be nuts, and possibly both, well, either of those two challenges was quite enough to keep me out of gainful employment for several years to come, and it was a very tough time.

Studs Terkel Were you blacklisted then?

James Cameron Well, there was nothing so formal as a black list, it was just very difficult to get work.

Studs Terkel But then here you were. Everybody knew you in England, you were a celebrated journalist. Then others, you were hired, then others asked for your services.

James Cameron Well, yes, that's quite true. And by dint of working, really, very, fairly hard and also by trying to learn my trade rather carefully. I mean, I do not honestly believe this [dramatic? romantic?] idea of [kitchen?] journalist. Anyway, you've got to know your, listen, you've got to know the business of communications inside out, you've got to know the business of telecommunications, got to know the business of radios, you've got to know everything you were, you simply--my long stint with the Dundee organization where I even learned how to set type and how to carry type around, they couldn't, you know, faze me with science now, I knew it all. And this also was rather useful, but you don't go going around saying, "Look, here am I, a Simon-pure fellow, I'll give you the holy word on something," I've got to know to get my copy in on time, I've got to know how, if they ask for 800 words, I've got to give them 800 words, not 820 words. This is--

Studs Terkel This is the point. Also I notice that when you and your--Cameron, buy the way, has been on BBC a good deal, and here again your ease, with time, you know, but also it's more than just knowing the clock, it's knowing the use of words, doesn't it? The economical use of words as all but your own style that's bare, at the same eloquent comes into play.

James Cameron Well, you're using bricks, you see, if you're building a wall you've got to know where to put the mortar and where not to put, every trade has got its tricks, you see. I consider that I'm a tradesman, Studs, see, I've always bitterly opposed this business of calling journalism a profession. I have--where they talk about the profession of journalism I've always denied it, I've said, "I'm not a professional man. A professional man is one who has passed an examination in order to enter a certain field of activity and that field of activity can apply sanctions to him and expel him if he fails to live up to their levels." Well, journalism has none of these things at all, so I have to tradesman, but I was trained to be a bloody good tradesman.

Studs Terkel Yeah, you call yourself a tradesman, perhaps craftsman might be the word. At the same time, you have certain standards that are so high that U Thant, former head of the UN, has called you the most important journalist of this century, and other journalists in reading your autobiography have spoken of how you have lifted the levels of journalism, not just in England, but in other parts without other journalists being aware of it, you see, so call yourself a tradesman if you will, but I call you an artist or a craftsman, well, go ahead. So by this time, you had challenged Beaverbrook and this was shocking. And now you worked for other papers, "Picture Post", you spoke

James Cameron Well, then we had the similar debacle, the Syngman Rhee thing, so by that time with one thing falling hot on the heels of another thing, I really was considered to be the nutcase of Fleet Street.

Studs Terkel Fleet Street, by the way, for people listening, Fleet Street is a street of the newspapers, right?

James Cameron Yeah. Streets of the Fleet. Anyhow, after a lapse of some years which were not very easy, I finally fell in with the newspaper that I loved best of all, which I'd always in my heart wished to work for, a thing called the "News Chronicle", which was a silly, in a sense bumbling, rather unprofessional newspaper which called itself a liberal paper and it was exactly the sort of paper I wanted because it's--anyhow, its attitude was exactly what, without going into details, it was a very beautiful organization to work for, and for 13 years thereafter I worked for it as its foreign editor and as foreign correspondent and then--

Studs Terkel For the "News Chronicle"?

James Cameron Yes. And then in the fullness of time you see that the proprietors found that it was being uneconomic. They happened to be, make most of this chocolate over the world, and they found chocolate was more profitable than newspapers, and so they killed it.

Studs Terkel You say your publishers made chocolate.

James Cameron Yes. Cadbury's.

Studs Terkel Well, did that chocolate have anything to do with their interests?

James Cameron Well, in the sense that it started to turn them into a lot of soft centers. No, it was just that there was another example of a big business organization treating the production of the newspaper as another extension of a boot-blacking factory or anything else, whereas I've always argued that a newspaper had certain obligations that transcended the necessity simply to make money. Of course, it's got to make money or it won't survive. But this has got to think of something else, too, and the old "News Chronicle" had done that, and that was why I had 13 delightfully happy years with

Studs Terkel Was it during the time that you were at the "News Chronicle" that you had visited Lambaréné? At the time we heard a great deal about the saintly doctor in Lambaréné, Albert Schweitzer, the Bach organist, the doctor, and this is, again, you caused something of a stir. I think something very unfashionable.

James Cameron Yes, but--well, I went to see him to begin with that was unfashionable, because he didn't let people go there and also in those days 20 years ago, it was extremely physically difficult--

Studs Terkel We'll return in a moment to the story of James Cameron's visit to Lambaréné and his revelations concerning Albert Schweitzer. After we hear from--we're talking to Jim Cameron, distinguished British jour-- correspond (sic), who's more or less in these four hours, this being the third, reflecting about his life and his craft. Resuming the conversation with James Cameron. When last we left, as they say in soap operas, he was in Lambaréné, Africa visiting Doctor Schweitzer.

James Cameron Extremely physically difficult to get there. This was long before the days of airlines dropping you all over the place, it was very, very difficult indeed. But I finally got there because I had been like most people, a tremendous admirer of the mystique of Schweitzer who had surrendered all these academic gifts and all, all the things he could have had in order to work with the Blacks in the Gabon. Eisenhower went there, and I stayed there with him for some weeks and I must confess what I saw distressed me very much because he was not what I thought he was. He--the great hospital of Schweitzer at Lambaréné was not created for Africans but it was created for Dr. Schweitzer. He was a immensely self-centered egocentric man who despised Blacks but made use of them, a man who told me the very first day I ever met him that he considered that the greatest potential savior of the whole African continent would be Daniel Malan, who was then the prime minister of South Africa.

Studs Terkel Let's stay with this a minute, Jim, because you've caused quite a few upheavals journalistically in the lives of a number of people and disturbed their psyches. The saintly Albert Schweitzer admired Malan. Malan was the father of apartheid in South Africa.

James Cameron Malan was the father of apartheid, and Dr. Schweitzer practiced apartheid to an even stronger degree than Dr. Malan did. In all my experience, Dr. Schweitzer never would allow a Black to sit down in his presence, for example, simple as that. But there are a multitude of things that I could say against him, but this it must be said: when I came back I wondered what I was going to write about this because I reckoned that Schweitzer had feet of clay, but at the same time there were millions and millions of people all over the world who'd never seen him, had never been there, who nonetheless were, perhaps, living lives based on better values, thinking in more decent racial terms because of the example, the public example of Dr. Schweitzer, what business had I got to go and suddenly destroy all this thing when it was really of very little importance, the disadvantages he was bringing to a few thousand Africans in the Gabon was of less importance than the enormous advantages he was bringing to millions of whites and Europeans and Christians and Jews and everybody all over the world. So the consequence is I wrote about nothing, until he was dead and it has to be remembered, you know, when you say that I was an iconoclast, with Albert Schweitzer, when my book came out and there was this chapter about Lambaréné, Schweitzer had been dead three years. There was no danger of then destroying him, and furthermore I would have laid myself open to the most intense criticism of being a nosy journalist who merely capitalizing and sensationalizing on the destruction of an image that had meant a great deal to many, many millions of people.

Studs Terkel I think--James, could we stick with this for a minute. Here are you, a remarkable journalist, and you go there and you expose what is a lie, you find was a lie, you hold off on it until the man, the saintly figure who was far from that--

James Cameron Twelve years!

Studs Terkel But in your mind is maybe the myth, phony though it is, can make the others behave better than they may because of the myth. You know Eugene O'Neill's "The Iceman Cometh"?

James Cameron Oh, yes.

Studs Terkel When the Iceman cometh, the guys' lives are drab and dull and they live in fantasy and they sleep, and along comes Hickey and Hickey means well, and Hickey says, "Face the truth," and slowly destroyed them. You were afraid you might be Hickey at that moment.

James Cameron That's right. I didn't want to be Hickey. And also, of course, "Iceman Cometh", one of the miserable characters in the mise-en-scene of that particular play was also called Jimmy Cameron.

Studs Terkel I didn't realize that, just occurred to me, Jimmy Cameron, James Cameron is my guest, I'm his guest at this moment here in Portland at Lewis & Clark College, Jimmy Cameron. I hadn't thought about that.

James Cameron Well, it isn't the function of a journalist to go around this trying things just because it is amusing to

Studs Terkel But wait a minute, it wasn't, see--I've got to ask you about this, or challenge you. I don't know. You didn't do it, you waited until later, but the fact is, you have done it in other matters. The myth of a little patriot Syngman Rhee, a phony little brutish dictator and mass murderer, just as Thieu, a pretty good guess is that, and we were [building?] you did that then, you know, against all the odds. You visited North Vietnam and you spoke of the American bombings, the first Western journalist to be there, the uncommitted one to see it, you've done these, you upset the apple cart so many times, but in Schweitzer's case you felt there was a myth that should not be disturbed for a while.

James Cameron I thought I couldn't see the case are in parallel at all. The Syngman Rhee isn't the big politicians and the big political leaders are in a different condition all together. They themselves exercised power, you see. Schweitzer did not exercise power except very, very indirectly. And insofar as he did exercise power, it was a beneficent power, it was a good power at the remove of many thousands of miles. It was a beautiful power and it was a splendid concept. And I liked the concept, because that's why I went there at a great cost of energy and time, because I thought it was a magnificent concept and I still think it was

Studs Terkel At the same time in your autobiography, you point out that he basically is a patron of the great white father and at deep, deep bone, deeply a racist, you see.

James Cameron Oh, very much so, but I don't think it matters now, when the Schweitzer cult is over anyhow, and in justice to myself I have to point out that I wasn't conned by Schweitzer, but I didn't want to do it at the time, and I waited for many years.

Studs Terkel So now we come to your other adventures and your discoveries. You also now became a close friend of Nehru in India.

James Cameron I did indeed. I met him in the days of the original negotiations for independence in 1946 in India and he became, I am obliged to say without conceit, that he did become a friend of mine. And I considered him, and as I consider him to this day, as being the most significant and important political figure I've ever met in my life. And a lot of that may, of course, well be subjective judgment because he was very personally kind to me. He would give me time when other people wouldn't give me time, he would instruct me in all manner of Asian methods of thinking that I was not aware of. He took trouble, and therefore I just loved him very much indeed, he was a sort of father figure to me, very much so, indeed. The relationship is very hard to describe I'm probably a bit romantic about Nehru, too, because he died too late, you see. He should have died four or five years before he did. He clung to power too long and he made some tremendous errors. But after independence in 1947, '48, '49 and '50, he had this dream that the third world could in fact be created to stand between two great big powerful worlds of the Communists and the Americans. And the third world, which after all greatly outnumbered in people, all of them, could be done with the innocence of newly independent countries and with the political background and knowledge and historical perception of the British. And this was my great dream, too, you see. We talked over it, Nehru and I, many, many times, the third world could become stronger than the Communist world, stronger than the American world simply because a) there are more people involved, and b) you have a quality that is more infinitely more important than nuclear weapons, which was the quality of truth.

Studs Terkel So this was that, that moment in your life. Perhaps, would you call that one of the exhilarating moments in your life?

James Cameron Oh, yes, I really would, yes. You see, whenever I think of the of the disenchantment that everybody now has with politicians and politics in general, which I'm beginning to share, it's very different not to, of the whole system, the whole machinery of politics is becoming contemptible, that it wasn't always that, because there was at least one man to whom it had a real and genuine meaning, and that was Nehru.

Studs Terkel Nehru. Well, this is the parenthetical question, yet it has to be asked. India; China; differences; Nehru; and now, women. Two women, or three women. His daughter, Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, and Madame Bandaranaike of Ceylon.