-Caveat Lector-
February 14 1999 BOOKS: HISTORY
Uncle Sam's venom
Interesting book review.
flw
Twisting the Lion's Tail:
Anglophobia in the United States, 1921-48
by John E Moser
Macmillan Press �45 pp263
--------------------------------------------------
------------------------------
Robert Sam Anson
As John E Moser's book opens in 1921, America is
preparing for Armageddon against the British. In
Congress, where Britain is termed "a red pox
spreading across the Pacific", there are calls for
the United States to "seize maritime control of
the world". "We are nearer war today than ever
before," an admiral warns. As war fever mounts, a
bestselling tome declares, "We were Britain's
colony once. She will be our colony before she is
done."
It sounds like an especially fanciful Tom Clancy
novel. But every word is true. All this happened
in the US during the 1920s, and there would be
years more of fear, loathing and near-catastrophe
before the cold war finally locked "the cousins"
in potentially permanent embrace. How dangerously
lunatic those times were is a subject
English-speakers on both sides of the Atlantic
have done their understandable best to forget.
It is precisely that which makes this book so
startling, and (for anyone who cares about the
continued health of the "special relationship") so
necessary. Written by an American professor in a
style blessedly unacademic, this slender,
fast-paced volume is a rarity among histories. Not
only does it add to understanding, it supplies
knowledge where there was almost none.
Dislike of things British sprang from several
sources. One was Irish and German Americans, whose
long memories seekers of American public office
were not unwilling to exploit. Another was a
distaste for imperialism, which most Americans
associated solely with their former masters.
Perhaps the most important cause, though, was a
suspicion that America had been snookered into the
first world war via the cunning of British
diplomats, and the imbecility of their American
counterparts. Add to these factors historic
xenophobia and not a little military ambition, and
the post-first-world-war result was a frenzy of
battleship construction matched in size only by
dreamed-up worries of imminent red-coat invasion.
In the end, cooler heads prevailed, and America
entered into a 1921 treaty with Britain, Italy,
France and Japan limiting the size of respective
fleets. But that stayed Anglophobia only briefly.
Certain America had been outwitted once again, the
Tennessee senator John K Shields began inveighing
against the Rhodes scholarships as a plot to
brainwash America's best, so they might work for
US-British union. Not to be outdone, the normally
sensible Robert La Follette of Wisconsin proposed
checking up on all Englishmen living in America
for more than five years without applying for
citizenship. His theory: anyone who had not traded
in their passport must be subversive.
>From there, it was off to the nativist races.
Claiming that "certain Tory elements in our
country have never become reconciled to our
Republican institutions and have ever clung to the
tradition of King and Empire", the Illinois
legislature decreed in 1923 that the state's
official language, "shall hereafter be known as
the American language, and not as the English".
Irish-Catholic organisations in New York were
demanding that the city's schools be rid of
pro-British, "anti-patriotic" books. Former
Chicago mayor and Al Capone chum "Big Bill"
Thompson mounted a book-burning campaign of his
own and warned George V to "keep his snoot" out of
American affairs. In some quarters, even
mild-mannered Herbert Hoover was thought to be a
British stooge: he had, after all, worked in
London once.
The looming prospect of another world war deepened
the hostility, and not merely because of Charles
Lindbergh and the "America First" movement. Just
as important, and making for some of Moser's most
eye-popping paragraphs, was the role played by an
ideological grab-bag of late-1930s opinion-makers,
set on convincing the public that Britain was not
appeasing Hitler, but joining in common cause with
him. Chicago Tribune publisher and long-time
Anglophobe Colonel Robert McCormick found proof
for this in the abdication of Edward VIII, an
event instigated by "fascists", who had placed
Britain "under Nazi yoke". Lest the same befall
the United States, politicians urged vigilance,
particularly about Hollywood, where Congress was
mulling an investigation into the likes of Leslie
Howard, Laurence Olivier and Alfred Hitchcock.
Despite the furore, measures such as Lend-Lease
and the swap of American destroyers for access to
British bases passed. Not everyone was happy.
"Like the dog gone back to its vomit," lamented
the famed California progressive Hiram Johnson,
"the country has become English again,"; one
law-maker went so far as to claim that Germany's
treatment of the Jews was no different from
Britain's of the Irish. In the end, however, the
ties to the Mother Country still bound. England,
explained Margaret Halsey, a popular author, was
like "a stupid but exquisitely beautiful wife.
Whenever you have made up your mind to send her to
a home for morons, she turns her heart-stopping
profile and you are unstrung and victimised
again".
Pearl Harbor, of course, cemented the romance.
But, as in any marriage of necessity, the
bickering went on. Early British defeats in
Singapore and Tobruk contributed to it. There were
gnawing feelings (harboured by, among others,
Franklin Roosevelt) that Britain would not mind
ignoring the Pacific theatre altogether, if only
the Japanese could be induced to forget about such
real estate as India, Malaya and Hong Kong.
Anglo-American amity was not helped by the mutual
sniping of Allied commanders. A case in point was
Burma. There, the US general "Vinegar Joe"
Stillwell groused about his "childish glamor boy"
superior, Louis Mountbatten, and junior American
officers gibed that SEAC - the initials for Lord
Louis's South East Asia Command - stood for "Save
England's Asian Colonies".
'This distrust, this dislike, even hatred of
Britain," FDR confided shortly after America
joined the war, "it's in the American tradition.
The Revolution, you know, and 1812; and India and
the Boer war and all that." Despite Tojo and
Hitler, the tradition continued, sometimes in the
form of ridicule ("a collection of duds, blimps
and fossils," a Catholic publication branded
British generals in Asia); other times in the
clothes of diplomatic disputes (who should rule
Italy was but one of numerous bitter quarrels).
How deep the animosity ran was attested to by the
polls (a survey in June, 1942 found that 60% of
Americans regarded the British as "oppressors"),
by the rhetoric on the floor of Congress and, not
least, by the speed with which the alliance
unravelled.
Within weeks of the Japanese surrender, Lend-Lease
was terminated (no longer needed, Harry Truman
judged, ignoring the devastation of his principal
ally's economy), and soon thereafter British loan
requests were being accorded the same welcome as
Nuremburg clemency appeals. "So long as they have
the crown jewels, as long as they wear ermine and
emeralds in London," a Republican congressman from
Missouri rumbled, "I am not going to vote one
dollar to take food out of the mouths of my own
people."
Such was the immediate post-war temper that even
half-American Winston Churchill was getting
pilloried. His "Iron Curtain" speech of March,
1946 in Fulton, Missouri, one newspaper
editorialised, was yet another fiendish attempt to
chain America to an "old and evil empire" that had
imposed "slavery" on three-fifths of the world.
Liberals, including Eleanor Roosevelt, joined in
the assault, as did Republican senator William
Langer, who charged that the United Nations was "a
British scheme to subjugate half the world", and
that during the 1898 Spanish-American war in Cuba,
Churchill had been among those shooting at Teddy
Roosevelt as he charged up San Juan Hill.
The lunacy, Moser argues, might have continued,
but for Joe Stalin, whose predations proved a
godsend. With the cold war on, and the empire
being de-accessioned in dizzying lots, Americans
not only put aside their Anglophobia, but wiped
from the national consciousness any trace of its
existence.
So it has remained, despite the collapse of the
real Evil Empire. What has remained as well is the
ambivalence reflected in George Washington's
Farewell Address, which warned no less against
"foreign entanglements" than it did "excessive
dislike for foreign nations". Ever since, Moser
writes, America's dealings with the outside world
have been a chronic contradiction: moral, selfless
and naive one moment; immoral, selfish, and
calculating the next. The one constant has been a
need for a foe personifying utter wickedness.
Britain has filled the requirement, as have
Mexico, Spain, Germany, Japan, China, Vietnam, the
Soviet Union, Libya, Iran and now Iraq. Putting
down this marvellous, disturbing book, one wonders
why, with all the tragedy and mayhem that have
been the consequence, lessons are never learnt.
One wonders, too, whether the list of America's
enemies will ever end. Probably not.
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic
screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! These are sordid matters
and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright
frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects
spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL
gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers;
be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and
nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
