A DEED OF SHAME
>Hmmm, so Larry would have preferred that Germany
won World War I. Interesting.> -- Taylor Kingston
Trust Taylor Kingston to offer the argument of a
jackanapes. I wrote that if Germany had won WW1
in 1917, the world would have been saved many of the
the central horrors of the 20th century.
So Kingston then infers that I preferred a German victory.
My preference was for an allied victory in 1915 or 1916 -- and
then the victory of either side in 1917. Anything, in short,
to avoid the fatal year of 1918.
If you want to understand Kingston's approach
to historical thought, his response is exemplary.
Perhaps the two of us can agree on that much.
Kingston's next attempt at an argument is to
reduce the observation that WWI resulted in
the decivilization of world politics to a silly reference
to Queen Victoria and haemophilia.
One figures that Taylor Kingston has never heard
the name of Henry Charles Keith Petty-Fitzmaurice, 5th
Marquess of Lansdowne or, simply, Lord Lansdowne. He
is today remembered not for being Viceroy of India,
Minister of War, Minister of Foreign Affairs, or leader
of the House of Lord's resistance to Asquith's
"People's Budget" of 1909, which was the final burial
of laissez faire as a liberal tenet.
Instead, Lansdowne is remembered and, yes, now
honored as the author of a letter to the editor. That's all.
But it was quite a letter, which was rejected by
The London Times, though later published in the Tory
newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, and reprinted in toto
as a major news article in the NY Times.
Lansdowne, you see, was at the very center of
the national establishment and possibly the most
eminent conservative voice in England following Arthur
Balfour's resignation as Tory leader in the House of Commons.
Reaction to the letter -- more anon on what the
letter said -- was outrage, more or less. H. G. Wells
said it was "the letter of a Peer who fears revolution
more than national dishonour," by which he meant, the
dishonour of negotiating a peace with Germany in WW1
Arthur Bonar Law, the chessplaying Tory leader of
Commons, called the letter "a deed of shame."
Lansdowne was shunned at his private clubs and
condemned in public. Today, though, he is viewed as a
seer, who unfortunately foretold what was to come.
Landowne's letter appeared in November 1917 in
the British press, though he had been circulating his
views among those in Cabinet and elsewhere at the top
for about a year. After meeting with rejection, he went
public at a moment when millions of soldiers were
crawling over frozen corpses in the mud of the Western
Front. The Bolsheviks had seized power in Russia; the
prospect of another year of war could mean consolidation
of this evil power to the East and lead to revolutions elswewhere.
Lord Lansdowne argued that the Great War's
"prolongation will spell ruin for the civilised world
and an infinite addition to the load of human
suffering which already weighs upon it."
This pillar of the Tory establishment had broken
with the War, prophesying disaster if it continued and
arguing for the status quo ante bellum.
What our Kingston creature would have the
readers of this forum imagine is that the idea of WWI
as a disaster leading to the horrors of totalitarianism
is a farfetched historical construct. It is not.
It was understood during the Great War that civilization
was becoming unglued. What I wrote here yesterday and
today represents no great revelation. It is an instance in
which the conventional wisdom gets something right.
And what did Kingston's hero Woodrow Wilson think
about the Lansdowne Letter? To his credit, the American
president was impressed by the arguments and regarded
it more highly than did the members of a British political
establishment committed to fighting the Great War to its
sanguinary conclusion.
Yours, Larry Parr
ttk5...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
> Hmmm, so Larry would have preferred that Germany won World War I.
> Interesting.
>
> On Apr 21, 12:52?am, "parrthe...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
" <parrthe...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> > WARREN HARDING
> >
> > ? ? ? ?Arthur Link, an apologist for Woodrow Wilson's
> > decision to enter WWI and the author of the definitive
> > biography of the man, wrote a slender volume about
> > Wilson's foreign policy.
> >
> > ? ? ? ?The legal issue of the British blockade (yes,
> > the Brits would have sank our merchant vessels had we
> > tried to run their blockade) and the German U-boat
> > sinking of our UNARMED merchant vessels concerned
> > whether the blockade was effective. ?Effective
> > blockades were legal, ineffective ones were illegal.
> >
> > ? ? ? ?Wilson militarized our economy (which Harding
> > proceeded very largely to dismantle, much to his
> > enduring credit) and dispatched an expeditionary force
> > based on the idea that the flag followed commerce.
> > There was also the issue of something called "national
> > honor," which no European politician since WWI has
> > dared to invoke as a reason for going to war. ?(Our
> > presidents occasionally talk about "national honor"
> > when we are facing mismatched opponents, but to be
> > sure, keep their oral cavities resolutely zipped, as
> > does even Bush, when an issue of possible force
> > involves Russia or China.)
> >
> > ? ? ?So, then, after the French in the name of honor
> > marched men against German machine-guns at the
> > Battle of the Frontiers during the first days of WWI
> > (possible casualties, still not fully revealed even
> > today, are about 250,000 dead in a single week) the
> > first taste of fighting for "national honor" began to
> > sour. ?In the case of England, the casualties coming
> > back after the first two days of the Somme (60,000
> > dead or wounded on the first day) resulted in ... the
> > first military draft in England's history. ?That was
> > the true moment when WWI lost the sup****t of
> > English society.
> >
> > ? ? ? Harding would never have involved us in WWI. ?My
> > evocation of "millions" of corpses was obviously not
> > exhausted by the American dead of about 120,000.
> > Wilson's policy for two years before our entry in
> > April 1917 had propped up the British and the French.
> > One ought to mention that Wilson's pro-British policy
> > also encouraged sup****t within the royal family for
> > Douglas Haig, the murderous general who could famously
> > "take losses." ?Wilson was complicit to some degree in
> > those losses, when even British PM Lloyd George was
> > trying to keep British tommies out of Haig's hands.
> >
> > ? ? ? If the Great War had ended in German victory in
> > 1917, there would never have been the ac***ulated mass
> > horrors of Stalinism, Maoism and Hitlerism. ?Stalin
> > would have ended up as a zookeeper in the Central
> > Caucasus, Trotsky a radical editor in NYC and Lenin a
> > fairly well-off, if frustrated, French tutor for advantaged
> > children in Zurich. ?Hitler might have become a decent
> > architect, since his movement would have been unimaginable
> > ?under the Hohenzollerns.
> >
> > Madame Chiang's radiant New Life movement in China
> > would have had a chance to succeed, and China would
> > today be free and considerably wealthier than it isnder
> > a Communist Party that has largely abandoned communism.
> >
> > ? ? ? ?All of the above is separate from the issue of
> > war guilt. ?The Kaiser blundered (his infamous "Blank
> > check" to the Austrians at Potsdam) into a war that no
> > one wanted except for some fanatical Serbs, though the
> > guilt of the sinister Sazonov, the Russian foreign
> > minister, in bullying the Tsar into declaring war
> > mobilization, was the decisive event that led to the
> > German invasion of France and Belgium.
> >
> > ? ? ? ?(Years back I read Sazonov's memoirs, which he
> > wrote during his final years as an exile in France.
> > The man defended virtually every disastrous policy
> > initiative that he undertook. ?Sigh. ?It is a relatively
> > rare volume that Sam Sloan might consider exhuming
> > and publi****ng, if there is not a new edition out as yet.)
> >
> > ? ? ? ?For those interested in the subject of WWI, the
> > best memoir is probably Robert Graves' "Goodbye to All
> > That" the best history on the origins of the war, a
> > balanced work that rightly criticizes the Kaiser, is
> > undoubtedly Luigi Albertini's three volumes ?"Origins
> > of the War of 1914" (I spent four days reading those
> > books, non-stop, I was transfixed, great history); and
> > the best case to be made by one of Taylor Kingston's
> > court historians would be Barbara Tuchman's very
> > readable, anti-German, "The Guns of August."
> >
> > ? ? ? ? Did readers notice Taylor Kingston's evocation
> > of the German Zimmerman Telegram inciting mighty,
> > ?feudal Mexico to war with the United States?
> >
> > ? ? ? ?You have to decide for yourselves whether a
> > silly attempt by the Germans to stir up hopeless
> > people meets the bar for entering a major, sanguinary,
> > freedom-destroying European war?
> >
> > ? ? ? ?Would any of you favor entering a war in what
> > Halford Mackinder called the Heartland if Russia sent
> > a Zimmerman or Zimmertov Telegram to Mexico? ? (Alas,
> > some dunderheads would -- the ones who still
> > sup****t pouring trillions into Iraq and destroying the
> > U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency. ?But I am
> > talking to sane readers here.)
> >
> > ? ? ? ?I figure that few of you would have the stomach
> > for trying to send an American army -- in the name of
> > national honor and a Zimmertov Telegram -- to the
> > Eurasian Heartland, and there to do battle on Russian
> > soil. ?Most of you figure that you would be wearing
> > burlap for ****rts and wrapped rags for shoes in a
> > couple of years. ?A lot of you would lose your
> > enthusiasm after losing, say, 15 million dead men
> > between the ages, mainly, of 18 and 29. ?Perhaps
> > some among you, though chances are increasingly dim
> > in aliterate America, will pen the equivalent of Vera
> > Brittain's "Testament of Youth" which if one must sum
> > up its rich contents in a single phrase, was about,
> > "Where have all the young men gone?"
> >
> > ? ? ? ?Harding and his type of men -- the ones who
> > knew a poker deck and believed in America as a
> > commercial republic -- scoffed at the concept of
> > national honor as a reason to fight a war on the
> > mainland of Europe. ?(Even during WWI itself, which
> > was a time of virulent anti-Germanism in the United
> > States and raids on radicals, Harding kept a low
> > profile in sup****t of the War. ?To oppose WWI at the
> > BEGINNING ?of the war, was politically suicidal.)
> >
> > ? ? ? ?One should further mention that after taking
> > office, Harding, though conservative and capitalist to
> > the core, released radicals, amnestied deserters and
> > freed socialist leader Eugene Debs in his General
> > Amnesty on Christmas Day 1921. This amnesty was
> > possibly Harding's finest moment.
> >
> > ? ? ? ?If you oppose the warfare-welfare regime of
> > mass government, seeking to kill people abroad and
> > destroy initiative at home with welfarism, then
> > Harding was one of our better presidents.
> >
> > Yours, Larry Parr
> >
> >
> >
> > Sam Sloan wrote:
> > > I sent the book to the printers last night. It should be out in a
week
> > > to ten days.
> >
> > > This book will be available at the following address:
> > >http://www.amazon.com/dp/0923891234
> >
> > > You cannot imagine how difficult this was. Pages of the original
book
> > > were off center. Printing was irregular. Some pages bold. Other
pages
> > > light.
> >
> > > I have discovered some interesting new things.
> >
> > > Although Nan Britton mentions numerous relatives, she never gives
the
> > > names of her mother and father. I have learned from the book
"Florence
> > > Harding" by Carl Sferrazza Anthony that her father was Dr. Sam
Britton
> > > and he died in June 1913. This was about the time that Nan Britton
> > > started fooling around with the future president. I believe that Dr.
> > > Sam Britton was probably the same person as Samuel Herbert Britton
> > > (1859-1913) who is buried in nearby Knox County Ohio and was the son
> > > of Mary Critchfield.
> >
> > > Nan's mother was Mary Williams Britton. She was a school teacher but
I
> > > have found nothing much on her.
> >
> > > Nan's middle name was Popham, so her full name Nana Popham Britton.
My
> > > great-great-grandmother was Jane Popham (1809-1893) so it seems
likely
> > > that Nan Britton was my very distant cousin. The grandfather of Jane
> > > Popham was Job Popham (1709-1781). He and his son Humphrey Popham
(b.
> > > 1763) had many children and were possibly polygamists. This is the
> > > likely source of the Popham name in Nana Popham Britton, but so far
I
> > > have not been able to find anything more on this.
> >
> > > The daughter of Nan Britton and President Warren G. Harding was
> > > Elizabeth Ann who died on 17 November 2005 at age 96 in Oregon,
> > > outliving her mother who only lived to age 94.
> >
> > > In her book, Nan Britton says that after the death of President
> > > Harding she married a man named "Captain Neilsen" because she
believed
> > > that he had a lot of money and could sup****t her daughter, Elizabeth
> > > Ann. However, when Captain Neilsen turned out not to have any money
at
> > > all, she either got a divorce or an annulment.
> >
> > > An Internet website in Oregon gives the name of that man as Magnus
> > > Cricken.
> >
> > > Does this mean that he was a complete fraud, that his name was not
> > > Captain Neilsen at all, or did she just give him a fake name in the
> > > book?
> >
> > > She gives the name of the man who often brought her money from
> > > President Harding as Tim Slade, but says that this is a fake name. I
> > > am trying to find out what his real name was. He must have been a
> > > close associate of Harding.
> >
> > > I have found a newspaper article published in Toledo, Ohio on
November
> > > 3, 1931 that shows a picture of Elizabeth Ann at age 12. Elizabeth
Ann
> > > looks exactly like Warren G. Harding. This picture erases any
possible
> > > doubt that Elizabeth Ann really was the daughter of President
Harding.
> >
> > > Sam Sloan- Hide quoted text -
> >
> > - Show quoted text -
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