A REVOLT IS PUT DOWN
Meyer, Ernest L.
A Revolt Is Put Down By ERNEST L. MEYER IT WAS Summer of the Year of Our Lord 1775. In London, His Gracious Majesty King George III, with the full consent of Parliament, had convoked an...
...Moreover, were this revolt led by an irresponsible, radical, fanatic minority to succeed, the precedent might well be disastrous to those other great powers here assembled who rejoice in colonial possessions now so ably and justly administered...
...This past June, at a place called Bunker Hill, 1,054 British soldiers were slain by Colonial rabble...
...After brief debate, with France and Spain offering objection, the petition was granted...
...And when the delegates from the major powers of Europe were seated, a spokesman for England read a petition from the Throne which was couched somewhat in this wise: "It will come as a grievous shock to the peace-loving nations here assembled that events going forward in the British colonial possessions in America threaten to upset world concord and precipitate a long, costly, bloody, and totally needless war...
...As far back as 1765, with the passage of the Stamp Act, mobs in New York, Massachusetts, Virginia, and other provinces menaced the lives of the ro'al governors, destroyed stamps and other Crown pr perty, and forced the stamp collectors to flee for theu lives...
...We are not here to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire...
...It is with a feeling for the welfare and peace of the world at heart, therefore, that the Crown petitions this League of Nations to sanction the employment of the International Police Force to stamp out the infamous rebellion in America...
...Word has just reached the Crown that the events described have now resulted in open revolt and massacre...
...The answer lies in the degree in which popular will can make itself manifest in any plans for mobilization of the international police force...
...Especially if the issue of an international police force is not vitally tied up with the issue of democratic control of such a force...
...the revolt put down, and a new nation which as yet had neither flag nor constitution was slain before birth...
...2 soldiers were beaten and clubbed, and in defending themselves their comrades killed 3 citizens, yet the radicals called this clash of their own making 'the Boston Massacre' and so further inflamed the populace...
...Two years later, in 1772, His Majesty's warship Gaspee, enforcing the laws against smuggling which was widespread in the Colonies, ran aground near Providence, Rhode Island, was attacked by a gang of Colonials and burned...
...Of course...
...Splendid...
...Yet in the light of events in Greece where unilateral action crushed a minority revolt, such fantasy may be translated into political reality in years not too far distant...
...Now, however, solely in the interest of maintaining law and order, England passed a number of Acts in Parliament imposing mild restrictions on the rebels which were followed by a defiant statement issued by a seditious assembly calling itself a Continental Congress...
...If the forthcoming conference in San Francisco, and if all future parleys laying the groundwork for a new League of Nations fail to give this problem prominent place in the agenda, then the peoples of the earth may well shudder...
...That this uprising has no wide popular support in the Colonies is attested by the statement of one of their own leaders, John Adams, who laments that only one-third of the Colonials approve of severance from the British Crown...
...Washington...
...Until then, as the delegates to this assembly of the League of Nations are well aware, the Crown had endured humiliation with patience and restraint...
...Some of the mobs were led by a subversive organization called Sons of Liberty...
...But shall the Federal Army be an instrument of equity or shall it be used to shoot down strikers or bully hunger-marchers...
...For an international force under the thumb of reaction and power politics could with ease annihilate, anywhere in the wide world, a rebellion and a dream that once breathed life into a new nation called America...
...And in the following year, at Boston, a gang of hoodlums led by Sam Adams and disguised as Indians boarded an English ship transporting tea and flung 343 chests of tea into the harbor...
...A League of Nations army and navy to maintain world order, we are told by proponents of the plan, is exactly like the American Federal Army which in times of crisis maintains order among the States...
...Leaders of the rebels were tried and executed...
...In petitioning the First League of Nations to sanction the use of the International Police Force to suppress this threat to amity, the Grown places before you these undisputed facts regarding the revolt against British authority across the sea: "The uprising in the American colonies is being fomented by a very small faction of radicals and crackpots, among them Samuel and J< tn Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Patrick Henry, The las Jefferson, Isaac Sears, Thomas Paine, Thomas S.Jnter, John Lamb, and Alexander McDougall, along with a fringe of religious dissidents flagrantly defying the tenets and taxes established by the Anglican Church...
...Four years later, in Boston, there was an unprovoked attack upon British troops by a mob of townfolk...
...The Crown's Patience Tried "Yet this minority has contrived to stir up so much mischief that within the past 10 years events have occurred which have sorely tried our patience...
...England's patience is at an end...
...In due course the great League Navy manned by 250,000 excellently trained seamen and troops, crossed the Atlantic and easily defeated the disorganized, ill-equipped army of Gen...
...In London, His Gracious Majesty King George III, with the full consent of Parliament, had convoked an extraordinary assembly of the First League of Nations...
...Danger Of World Policing Historical moonshine...
Vol. 9 • March 1945 • No. 13
