The Honor of the United States of America is NOT concerned with becoming an arsenal.
The men who wintered at Valley Forge did not suffer those months of intense cold and hunger with the design, or in the hope that Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Virginia, the union of the colonies would one day be able to stir up wars between other countries in order to sell them munitions.
I don’t want, the last thing I want, is that any harm should come to Uncle Sam’s Army and Navy. The Navy is, some, of it, gone where I can’t much help it. The Army can get on all right if it stays where it ought to be, namely on the North American continent.
I certainly do NOT want American’s young blood shed in an assinine attempt to wreck all European civilization. I don’t want it Dunkirked, and I would like for Mr. C. Gessler to go on getting his bath at Waikiki, if it ain’t too late to mention the subject. I have heard said that Aguinaldo had and has as good a right to the Island of Luzon as George Washington had to Virginia. I am not a Philippine specialist. I have read on fair authority, namely on that of at least one participant, that the British troops after the last war were about fed up with some features of English government.
Dunkirk is one way to keep troops from showing their feelings. Whether American air destroys the memory, I am not prepared to state. John Devey kept his till ripe old age; and I am reminded of his quotation from Burke on the penal laws, “an elaborate contrivance as well fitted for the expression, impoverishment and degradation of a people, and the debasement in them of human nature itself as ever preceded from the perverted ingenuity of man.”
Well, as Prattling Nelson is telling you, you haven’t seen anything YET. And it has been forgotten that the 18 years of Irish Parliament, 1782–1800, followed close on our American revolution, preceding the French [of] 89. That is, if it isn’t rank pretense that any non-Irish American knows it, save by odd chance.
For indeed is there much analogy in it for North America ? There is for South American countries. Our South American policy hasn’t yet got as far as the Times. A Celt will soon be as rare in Ireland as a Red Indian on the shores of Manhattan.
Perhaps it would be unwise to see too deep for analogies. Palmerston, Lord John Russell and the Times, intending their utterance to apply only to the Pope and the King of Naples, had been advocating the right of every people to choose their own rulers. By that allusion, I mean short, that they had a word for it before the Atlantic Conference.
What am I getting at with all this which what, what which ? Well, the moral behind any reference to John Devey is that Oireland kept hold of something. Call it the soul of the Irish nation. Kept hold of it thru 700 years of oppression, bloody oppression, not tea party conversation.
And the Americans, the U.S’ers, have started a fine government in 1776. Couldn’t keep it a century and have now plum forgotten it ever existed.
It is to be supposed that you are all running round hot and bothered, like headless chickens, no man understanding another. And the pathological brainstorm in the White House after years of robbing the country dipping into the Treasury, years of frothing at the mouth about Mussolini and Hitler, in mid January comes out with a discourse and EVERY single item in it that has a trace of sanity is IMITATED from Mussolini or Hitler.
After 20 years [of] judaic propaganda Lenin Trotsky stuff crowding American history out of the schools, wild inferiority hate against Europe, here old Delano comes out with a mixed bag, in which two thirds of the program is fascist. With, of course, the essential parts missing.
Well now what causes this ? Twenty years late, just 20 years late as Amerikanishly usual. The same old American time lag, leading the world from the back seat as usual.
Amid all which flurry there is much that I am sure of.
This war is part of a process that has been going on for some time. And Roosevelt never lied with mere typically Rooseveltian fluency than when he bleated out his sick blah about wanting to keep YOU (that is you, the American people, and your children and your grandchildren) out of war.
A clean man would have been content to keep peace in his own time and trust his children to follow example. By continued bosh about Europe, which his mental and ethical level is much too low to reach he tipped you into war with the Jew Asia and you are most of you his accomplices
Nevertheless I am convinced of at least one thing. The present war should NOT be allowed to degenerate into a 30 years or even ten years beano for Knudson and the other sustainers of speed-ups and sweating, chain table.
Work ’em up in six years, was the old Jamaica slave owners system. Do the young men, and only young men can stand it, last SIX years at the Knudson band assembly systems ? Jews paid by Schiff in New York got hold of Russia and turned the whole land into a sweat shop. Watch your step, brother, it CAN happen to you.
Nothing here about winning the war or not winning it. Wars are not won by sweat shops alone. They are not won by profiteers ONLY. I mean the profiteers win PROFITS, but they do NOT win wars. They start war, but they do not start them in order that any particular nation shall win them.
You can swipe all South America and end up ruined. You can end up with your farms ALL ruined by South American competition INSIDE a customs ring. Dumping of cheaper products is not stopped by mere LACK of customs wall.
If there are any New Englanders, if there are any Americans who have BEEN American for three centuries, or two centuries, or one century, any whose forebears constructed the nation, it is time for ’em to get together and think. It is time for them to break the spell of the Knudson and Stimson slop.
Army [regulations] make it unethical to assert that a plane can not be in two places at once. That is the Knox, Stimson, Roosevelt coherence. Possibly new arms manuals will be issued. It seems unlikely that Stimson will bring luck to an army. Military honor has existed. Stimson is unaware of ANY such component in the life of an army. I don’t think Henry is a very good bet.
I refer to his absolute and TOTAL lack of any sense of honor whatsoever, let alone the fine honor that has in the past inhered in the concept of the solider and officer. Three generations of c[h]anting parsons are back of that fishface. As to Knox, well your worst enemies hope you will keep him. A child of four [?]. I am making these rather gross allusions with a purpose. That is the faint wavering hope that something will wake you. That some phrase will penetrate the hypnotic or dope trance. These two men were distinctly NOT chosen by the people. No member of the Democratic Party would do particular dirts. Some [of] these decrepit hacks are chosen as instrument.
That is O.K. from one point of view, point of view of tyranny. The over lord or autocrat must be served. If his own party will NOT follow him into certain messes, he must go outside his own party.
Why not lay a wreath on the grave of the elective system ?
“Here lies John Jones, he is not dead but sleepeth.” Or here lies democracy.
By God if I was dead, I think I’d admit it.
The question is, if two or three sane men, in the bog of Rooseveltian fuddlement can ANYwhere meet and cohere, and clarify their mental perceptions, they should or could, could or should, begin to wonder WHERE the country is coming OUT, “coming out AT” is, I believe, the phrase current.
Are you headed for a CHEAP, ten cent kike, Blumstein, Blumenstein, Zukor, tawdry imitation of nazism, or say for the moment, of fascism ? VOID of all vital content. And if you mean to imitate it, are you going to emulate, or to vie ? Are you going to try to have as GOOD a brand of the corporate State as is now provided in Europe ? If not, why not ?
You have the least desirable member of the teempin [?] North American population now at the head of it.
The people have been lied to, betrayed, hog swoggled, and you can’t just rub all that out. The question is WHAT of tomorrow morning ? Where do you go from HERE ?
Thirty years intensive production of synthetic products in order to attack the Japanese colony of Australia in 1947 ? or 1971 ? AND IN THE INTERIM, what of your INTERNAL government ?
Any syndical organization ? Or just Russian mess and chaos, just Soviets run by the Warburgs ?
IS there ANY American consciousness, as distinct from Fortune, and New Yorker hysteria, with fatty what’s-his-name Woollcott weeping into the megaphones ? Or the lowest common denominator Mr. Swing whining into the atmosphere that the Americans are humiliated. There must, damn it, there must be traces of the American RACE left somewhere on the American continent. The race that set up the United States government.
Have they lost all sense of coherence ? Is American lucidity dead ?
EZRA POUND SPEAKING 