HAVE WE EVER REALLY WON A WAR
Meyer, Ernest L.
Have We Ever Really Won A War? By ERNEST L. MEYER IN all its history, the United States has never lost'a war. This is a fact because historians say so, and historians never lie. Well, hardly ever....
...He just wonders, that's all...
...He says that he has witnessed some very curious things both in the South and in the North which make him wonder if the Negro has really ever been freed...
...and that we certainly did win the Revolutionary War and its objective—independence from England...
...He wonders how much the aims of an industrial, sometimes forward-looking North have been delayed, harassed or even hamstrung by a mostly agrarian and sometimes feudal South in the national and state legislatures...
...AFTER the applause has died away, the kibitzer, still on his feet, coughs mildly and says he has been thinking a great deal about that...
...That is, have we ever attained the objectives for which our wars were fought...
...The kibitzer, polishing his satanic eye-glasses, murmurs that he has been thinking a lot about those wars, too...
...These are the facts writ down on the scrolls of time...
...But he wonders whether in outlook, programs and prejudices the Union isn't split just as far apart as ever...
...Yet it is possible for a kibitzer to ask meek questions from the back of the hall...
...He says that the idea of a superior race is so dreadfully obnoxious that it has been taken over by the Anglo-American-Russian alliance which now talks about the Germans and Japs the way Hitler talked about the Jews...
...And it was so successful that we got the Second World War, which was fought to end fascism and the notion that the Germans and Japs were a superior race...
...Today, he points out sadly, the United States has no representation in the British Parliament...
...The audience kills the kibitzer...
...He says—but at that point the arguments of the kibitzer are proved silly, seditious, and historically inaccurate...
...The bearded historian on the platform is about to say something important about the mission of the Anglo-American democracy to save the world from totalitarianism, left or right, when a very aged man in the audience arises and quavers: "I am the sole surviving member of the G.A.R...
...And he wonders if the Negroes have been emancipated...
...He admits that the Union has been preserved, geographically...
...But before he can thunder an adequate reply, an elderly lady arises in the audience and announces shrilly that she is a member of the D.A.R...
...He says that the primary purpose of the Civil War was preservation of the Union...
...He's just wondering, the kibitzer winds up apologetically, and you can't hang a man for just wondering...
...The beard of the historian on the platform bristles...
...in this county...
...The kibitzer begins by admitting readily that in a military sense the United States has won every war in which it has engaged...
...Yet a huge slice of taxes paid by American citizens goes into the coffers of His Majesty, and the still uncounted and perhaps forever unpaid billions in loans and Lend-Lease to the Mother Country will mean that for generations we will be in mortgage to the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street...
...He says that we responded with as much and perhaps more zeal to the summons of His Majesty than did the various dominions and colonies of the Empire who never had fought a bloody revolution against the Crown to prove that, on paper at least, they were independent of Britain...
...And he has begun to wonder, he says, whether we ever really did win our independence from England...
...He adds that the secondary purpose of the Civil War was emancipation of the Negroes...
...The kibitzer adds, blushing a little, that our umbilical cord to the Mother Country has never been cut and that we jump to filial attention whenever she puts her head over the back fence and yells: "Sammy...
...You can picture this kibitzer, a lean, gangling fellow with thinning hair and bifocal eyeglasses, arising to put questions to the bearded historian in a timid voice while the audience is shocked by the impudence...
...He points out, timidly, that twice in the first half of this present century we have, at tremendous cost in American lives and money, come to the aid of England when the Empire's power and prestige were threatened by other European powers...
...And that, he concludes morosely, means that we never really won the war for independence...
...and "Anglophobe...
...The kibitzer rubs his heretical nose and says he has been thinking a lot about that war, too...
...He says the First World War was fought to end war...
...Will the gentleman dare maintain that the North didn't win the Civil War...
...Then the kibitzer adds that one of the slogans of our Revolutionary War was "no taxation without representation...
...and "Nazi...
...But, he adds a bit falteringly, have we ever been victorious in a deeper, more meaningful sense...
...He wonders, the kibitzer says, if a filibuster can't do as much damage as a flame-thrower...
...In this instance, recorded annals are on the side of the historians, for the annals disclose military victories and the signing of peace pacts and treaties and articles of surrender which demonstrate that our nation has emerged triumphant in every contest with a foreign or domestic foe...
...AT this the hall quakes with cries of "Shame...
...BUT the hall breaks again into uproar, and a lot of people jump up and yell that nobody can deny that America won or helped win the First and Second World Wars...
Vol. 9 • October 1945 • No. 37
