"The Fate of the Generals," Jonathan Horn

 For the benefit of new readers and as a reminder to older ones, these short essays on books are not critical reviews. They are simply brief write-ups on books I have enjoyed.

 

Yesterday was the first full day of summer, and what a beaut it turned out to be, with temperatures in the 80s, a slight breeze, and a family lunch at the beach. 

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

The Fate of the Generals, Jonathan Horn

June 22, 2025

 

“In those desperate days, the United States had needed two very

different generals: one for the headlines and one for the front lines.”

                                                                                                                                Jonathan Horn

                                                                                                                                The Fate of the Generals

 

“War is hell,” is a truism popularized by General William Tecumseh Sherman during the American Civil War. In The Gathering Storm, Winston Churchill wrote: “In war as in life, it is often necessary when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might.” In war there are choices, but none that are perfect. 

 

………………………………………………………………

 

Jonathan Horn tells the stories of Generals Douglas MacArthur and Jonathan Wainwright who found themselves in the Philippines at the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Both men were born into military families. MacArthur’s father won the Medal of Honor for heroism during the Battle of Missionary Ridge in 1863. After the Spanish-American War, he served as Military Governor of the Philippines. Wainwright’s grandfather was a naval officer who was killed during the Battle of Galveston in 1863, and his father died in the Philippines while serving as an U.S. Army Officer during the pacification period. Both MacArthur and Wainwright were first captains of their respective West Point classes. 

 

The Philippines lie strategically, south of Japan, China and Taiwan. To the west is the South China Sea and the India Ocean, and to the east is the Philippine Sea and the Pacific Ocean. At the time, the Philippines were transitioning from a Protectorate of the United States to full independence. General MacArthur was the Commander of U.S. Armed Forces in the Far East, which gave him command of all U.S. and Philippine military forces. General Wainwright was commander of the North Luzon Force and the senior field commander of Filipino and U.S. forces, under General MacArthur. 

 

The first six months of the War went Japan’s way, at least until the Battle of Midway in early June when the U.S. Navy decisively defeated the Japanese Imperial Navy. On December 8, 1941, the Japanese invaded the Philippines; on Christmas day Hong Kong surrendered to the Japanese; Singapore fell to the Japanese in February 1942, and the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) in March. Under orders from President Roosevelt, General MacArthur left the Philippines on March 11, promising to return. General Wainwright stayed behind, knowing his position was hopeless. On May 6, 1942, he raised the white flag. While MacArthur realized his promise in October 1944, Wainwright and close to 70,000 American and Filipino Soldiers endured the Bataan death march and imprisonment over the next three-plus years, until the Japanese surrender was announced on August 15, 1945. Fewer than half survived.

 

Using primary sources, Jonathan Horn contrasts the fates that were in store for MacArthur and Wainwright, two very different men. While MacArthur’s words and actions have long been controversial, the author neither reveres nor demonizes the man. Facts are presented. Judgement is left to the reader.

"Political Parties are Dynamic"

 

 I wish for you a Holiday to remember and a New Year that is healthy and joyous. 

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Political Parties are Dynamic”

December 20, 2024

 

“Some men change their party for the sake of their principles;

others change their principles for the sake of their party.”

                                                                                                                Attributed to Winston Churchill

 

Democrats are puzzled that their majorities among the working-class, blacks and minorities are shrinking. Why, they wonder, is the Party that long showed concern for working Americans being abandoned by those same people? They have forgotten that political parties are not static entities. Democrats’ current bar-bell approach, with coastal elitists offset by those dependent on government, ignores the vast middle-class. Smugness and complacency have enshrouded their leaders, as they did Republicans half a century earlier. 

 

Political parties change, adapting to demands from their wealthiest backers and noisiest constituents. Prior to the Civil War, abolitionists joined the new Republican Party, while slave-holders were mostly Democrats. But over time, the Party of Lincoln morphed into northeast coastal elitists, while Democrat segregationists of the mid-Twentieth Century south joined with civil rights activists. Now, another change, which has been underway for the past few decades, is reaching a climax. New England, dominated by Republicans in the 1950s and ‘60s, has become – with the exception of New Hampshire – a bastion for Democrats. In the past thirty years, there has been only one New England State that voted for a Republican president, and that was New Hampshire in 2000. In contrast, in the 36 years ending in 1988, Republican presidential candidates won more than twice as many New England states as Democrats.

 

There is a scene in the Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye 1954 movie White Christmas that captures the image: Entertainers Crosby and Kaye follow two girls (Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen) they had met in Florida to the Columbia Inn in Pine Tree, Vermont, an inn now run by their former World War II commander, General Waverly (Dean Jagger). Because of a lack of snow, Waverly is having a tough time. Crosby and Kaye decide they must do something, something unusual: “What do you think would be a novelty up here in Vermont?” asks Bing Crosby. “Who knows?” replies Danny Kaye. “Perhaps we can dig up a Democrat.” Today Democrats outnumber Republicans in Vermont by more than two and a half to one. However, empirical evidence suggests Republicans are, once again, beginning to narrow the gap.

 

Recognizing this dynamic, Ronald Reagan, in his 1966 bid for the California governorship, noted a change in the Democratic Party: “…may I suggest you take the 1932 platform on which Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected. Look again at its promises which were so overwhelmingly approved by Americans of both parties. The promise to reduce the cost of government by twenty-five percent; to restore those rights and powers which even then it was claimed had been unjustly seized from the states and the individual by the federal government; and its promise of restoration of constitutional limits on the power of that government. Ask yourself: ‘Which party would be most at home with those promises today?’”

 

Now, at a time when the U.S. faces existential challenges – massive inflows of illegal immigrants, crime-ridden inner cities, inflation, substandard education results, war in Eastern Europe, a Mideast in flames, and an untethered China pushing its Belt & Road initiatives – Democrats focused their energies on social extremists – politically correct, supercilious virtue signalers: climate extremists who claim man alone is responsible for a warming planet; teachers and administrators who permit schools to offer sex changes without parents knowledge or approval; sports teams that allow transgender women into women’s bathrooms; those who claim science is settled, when scientific discoveries are but a stop on a continuing search for truth; social justice warriors who divide people by race and sex into oppressors and oppressed; those who push DEI, where diversity ignores opinions, equity equates to equal outcomes, and inclusion leads to exclusion of the politically undesirable; university, government and businesses that promote ESG (environment, social and governance) trends, without regard to the financial or human costs; and those who lead divisive organizations like #MeToo and BLM. In satisfying these self-important social extremists, Democrats ignored the working middle class, people who are concerned with mundane matters, like making a living, raising a family, crime in the streets, and providing their children a good education. 

 

The United States has become an economic success beyond the dreams of those who lived only a few generations ago. It has been fortunate in its geographical location, with oceans separating it from Asia and Europe. Unlike the island nation of Britain, it did not have to depend on an empire for raw materials. These factors, along with advantages of democracy and capitalism have given the nation’s people more leisure: more time to read, to study, to travel and to seek entertainment. But it has also given time for a few to pursue selfish interests, without regard to the community’s interest.

 

Nations and empires have risen and fallen over the centuries. Greece, Rome, Turkey and Britain once ruled large portions of the known world. The United States, despite threats from China, remains the world’s hegemon. With its promise of individual freedom and property rights, it is different from past nations and empires. But nothing is certain. There are nations that, in the pursuit of power, will try to unseat us. Almost three thousand years ago, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus wrote of his belief that everything is in flux, that “change is the only constant in life.”

 

Politicians have often switched parties. Hannibal Hamlin, Lincoln’s first Vice President, a Democrat had become a Republican in 1856. Theodore Roosevelt left the Republican Party in 1912 to form a third party. Wendell Wilkie left the Democratic Party in 1939 to run as a Republican in 1940. Ronald Reagan left the Democratic Party in 1952 and became the 40^th President, a Republican. Unlike Europe, the United States has, with few exceptions, maintained a two-party system. Third, fourth and fifth parties can be appealing, but they are more likely to lead to chaos than unity, as we now see in France and Germany. Political parties must not lose sight of the principles that guided their success. No individual will find all that he seeks in one party; when we head to the polls our job is to select the individual, regardless of party, that best reflects our interests. Political parties change; and people do note that change, even when a party’s leaders do not. 

 

"The Ascent of Power," by David L. Roll

There are two lessons that stem from these few years in the immediate post-War period: One, never before, in the almost continuous history of man and warfare, had the vanquished been treated so well by the victor. And two, the division of Europe by the Iron Curtain, imposed by the Soviet Union in 1946, clearly demonstrated the economic, personal and political advantages of capitalism versus communism.

 

For anyone interested in the foundation for the remarkable economic growth in Europe and Japan – as well as the transition in the United States from a war economy to a peace economy – in the decades following the world’s most destructive war, this book, recommended by a friend, should be required reading. 

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

Ascent of Power, David L. Roll

July 7, 2024

 

“I always felt that [Truman] understood me, not as a servant to be tolerated…President Roosevelt was

genial and warm but he left one feeling, as most aristocrats do, that they really do not understand one.”

                                                                                                        Alonzo Fields (1900-1994)

White House head butler

                                                                                                        My 21 Years in the White House, 1960         

                                                                                                        As quoted by David R. Roll

 

The devastation caused by World War II is virtually incalculable. During the almost six years between Germany’s invasion of Poland on January 1, 1939 and the Japanese surrender on August 15, 1945 approximately 75 million people died, two thirds of them civilians. Poland lost 19% of its population, the Soviet Union 14% and some islands in the South Pacific lost over 40% of their pre-war populations. Twenty percent of homes in Great Britain were destroyed and 40% of those in Germany. France estimated that the cost of the war was three times their national income. In Europe alone, there were an estimated 21 million refugees or “displaced persons.” With war’s end came the job of aiding survivors, replacing infrastructure, restoring economies and preventing the spread of Communism. It was left to Truman to lead the way.

 

Franklin Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, less than a month before Germany’s surrender; so Vice President Harry Truman inherited the Presidency. David Roll writes in the Prologue: “Framed by the presidential elections of 1944 and 1948, this study captures the illusions of a dying president and the mistakes and triumphs of his successor, an arc of world history that separated those who found freedom from those consigned to live under tyranny for decades to come.” Truman, who had not been advised or prepared by Roosevelt, made the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But his legacy – and the thrust of Roll’s story – is the role he played in Europe’s and Japan’s recovery: The Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, the creation of NATO and the United Nations, the recovery of Japan, the birth of Israel, the Berlin airlift, and Civil Rights – prosecution of lynchings in federal courts, voting rights, equal employment opportunities, protection of the nation’s civil service, and the integration of the armed forces.

 

In a report to the nation on April 28, 1947, Secretary of State George Marshall is quoted by Mr. Roll: “A fundamental objective of our foreign policy was the achievement of a coordinated European economy…It was not just a matter of humanitarian relief…it is necessary for our national security.” Truman’s election in 1948 freed him from the yoke of Roosevelt – allowing him to be his own man, to work with Republicans like Senator Vandenberg. At his swearing in on January 20, 1949, Truman invoked his Point Four Program: unfaltering support of the United Nations, the Marshall Plan, NATO, “and the inexhaustible benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress…to help people realize their aspirations for a better life.”

 

In terms of Europe’s and Japan’s recovery, Truman’s success could be seen in that by 1960, just fifteen years after the end of the War, West Germany had the world’s third largest economy and Japan its seventh.

 

Roll’s story is of a (seemingly) ordinary man who emerged from the shadow of an iconic President to accomplish remarkable things. In doing so, he changed for the better lives of millions. Roll quotes Winston Churchill speaking to Truman in 1952: “You more than any other man saved Western civilization.”

 

This is history well told.     

"Lola"

  

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“Lola: May 3, 2010-June 29, 2024”

July 2, 2024

 

“What we once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never

lose, for all that we love deeply becomes part of us.”

                                                                                                                                Attributed to Helen Keller, 1880-1968

 

Toward the end of E.B. White’s novel Charlotte’s Web, Charlotte is dying and she speaks to her good friend Wilbur: “All these sights and sounds and smells will be yours to enjoy, Wilbur – this lovely world, these precious days…You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing…After all, what’s a life anyway? We’re born, we live a little while, we die.” Whether human or animal, in the larger scheme of things, we do only live brief lives; but life is about the love we bring to others during the time we are allotted. Lola, a gentle, but fiercely proud Cockapoo, was liberal in the love she bestowed, and in death she gifted us the sights, sounds and smells she had known.

 

Death is never easy. In his last book before he died, Oh, The Places You’ll Go, Dr, Seuss wrote: “Don’t cry because it’s over; smile because it happened.” Growing up on a small farm in New Hampshire, death was, if not common, not rare. I remember my father burying a horse in our rocky barnyard, and I recall one wintery day digging a shallow grave for a goat that had succumbed. But Lola was the sole pet of our daughter, her husband and their three children. She was integral to their lives. For their children, now 19, 21 and 23, Lola was part of their growing up. In the memories of all who knew her, she lives on. 

 

Every death provides a moment to consider the miracle of life. The “miracle” does not refer to the mechanics of the process nor to the intricate biological composition of a living species, but rather to its uniqueness – the right sperm interacting with the right egg. The odds of that happening are measured in the billions or trillions to one. No living creature could ever live at a time other than when it did. Just as it is a miracle that each of us is alive, Lola’s birth was a miracle. Her good fortune at being born was enhanced by the luck she had in abiding with our daughter and her family. 

 

Dogs, Winston Churchill is alleged to have said, look up at us. Cats he claimed look down on us. He favored pigs who he said look us in the eye. Lola was not subservient, and she did not have the arrogance of a cat. She treated people as equals, loving to cuddle, but then protecting us when an animal appeared on the television screen.

 

On June 7, 1945, General George S. Patton, speaking at Boston’s Copley Hotel, said: “It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather, we should thank God that such men lived.” Lola’s immediate family especially, but all of us who knew her, including her dog cousins in Darien and Lyme, will miss her. Tears have been, and will be, shed. But we are thankful she lived and was part of our lives for fourteen years.

 

Rest in peace, Lola.

"Sixty Years of Marriage"

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“Sixty Years of Marriage”

April 13, 2024

 

“Marriage, N. The state or condition of a community consisting

of a master, a mistress, two slaves, making in all, two”

                                                                                                                                Ambrose Bierce (1842-c.1914)

                                                                                                                                The Devil’s Dictionary, 1911

 

“There is no more lovely, friendly, and charming 

relationship, communion or company than a good marriage.”

                                                                                                                                Martin Luther (1483-1546)[1]

                                                                                                                                Table Talk

Published posthumously in 1566

 

Two days ago Caroline and I celebrated sixty years of marriage.

 

…………………………………………………………………………………….

 

Winston Churchill once allegedly said: “My most brilliant achievement was my ability to persuade my wife to marry me.” Whether Churchill said that or not, the statement is true of me. I still marvel that Caroline accepted my marriage proposal. I was, at the time, a college drop out with no prospects. Military service was in my future, as was finishing college. Yet, she said yes.

 

Sixty years is a long time. Sixty years before we were married was 1904 – the year construction began on the Panama Canal, the year fingerprints were first used as an investigative tool, and the year Cy Young pitched the first perfect game in modern baseball, as the Boston Americans beat the Philadelphia Athletics 3-0. It was three years before my grandparents were married and six years before my father was born.

 

The last sixty years – because we lived through them – do not carry the same weight as earlier ones, though they might for our grandchildren. When we married Lyndon Johnson had been in the White House less than five months, the first major battle between U.S. Forces and the Army of North Vietnam was seventeen months in the future, the moon was unblemished by human footprints, a postage stamp cost $0.05, college tuition was $1,700, the average cost of a house in the U.S. was $18,900, and a gallon of gas cost $0.30. My starting salary at Eastman Kodak in June 1965, however, was $6,000.00.

 

But marriage cannot be measured by historical events or the effects of inflation on goods, services, and income. It is, when one thinks of it, amazing that so many marriages endure. Courting, even for two years as we did, does not offer the time to really know the other person. In fact, we never stop learning about the person we wed. Sociologists and marriage counselors have long pondered which maxim best applies to marriage: that opposites attract, or whether it is birds of a feather. More likely, it is love, luck, temperament, and tolerance that play key roles. Peering back into the mists of sixty years, I am thankful we never thought deeply about such matters. The future arrived one step at a time.

 

We had grown up differently, Caroline in New York City and I in the small New Hampshire town of Peterborough. But we fell in love, that indescribable (and delightful) condition that defies definition. There is no question that we are different in many respects, but we also share common interests, the most important being devotion to one another, our three children, their spouses, and our ten grandchildren.

 

Our first home was a 500 square foot, $85.00 a month, apartment in Durham, New Hampshire where I was finishing my degree at the University of New Hampshire. Because of my initial conduct in college (completing one year of credits in two years), I had to pay for my room, board and tuition when I returned following military service. So, in the next two years I completed three years of credits – while working three jobs – finishing in February 1965 (proof that the proffered hand is not necessarily as productive as the calloused one). With a job at Kodak[2] starting in June, and as we had had no honeymoon, we took $2,000.00 we had saved, bought round-trip tickets to Paris, and spent eleven weeks traveling around southern Europe in a rented Volkswagen without an itinerary. It was a memorable start for our marriage.  

 

Our voyage since has taken us through five Connecticut towns: Glastonbury (one year), Durham (four years), Greenwich (twenty-four years), Old Lyme (twenty-three years, along with a small one-bedroom apartment in New York for seventeen of those years), and now Essex where we have lived for the past eight years. 

 

We met on New Year’s Eve of 1961 at a ski weekend near my hometown. My sister who had known Caroline at Garland Junior College in Boston introduced us that afternoon. That evening I monopolized her. We saw each other regularly for the next several weekends, until on March 11 in North Conway, New Hampshire I asked for her hand. She said yes. The next day, on our first run down Wildcat Mountain, she broke her leg. At the time I was working in a laboratory outside of Boston. I spoke to my father, who was with my younger sister Betsy who was racing at Cranmore Mountain. I told him what had happened, including my proposal of the night before. He told me my duty was to stay with Caroline even if it cost me my job, which it did; for, as he said, you can always get another, which I did.

 

In his 1922 novel The Adventures of Sally, P.G. Wodehouse wrote: “And she’s got brains enough for two, which is the exact quantity the girl who marries you will need.” While neither of our fathers repeated those exact words to me, I could tell they were thinking them. We got married on April 11, 1964 in New York’s Church of the Heavenly Rest, in a service conducted by the Reverend Floyd Thomas – to join hands “…till death do us part.”

 

In Adam Bede, George Eliot wrote: “What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life – to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories of the last parting.” Amen.

 

Together we move on, happy and still in love.

 

 

---

[1] Martin Luther, once a Catholic monk, married Katherine von Bora, a former num, in April 1523, two years after he had been excommunicated by Pope Leo X.

[2] In the summer of 1967, I became a stockbroker – my career for the next 48 years.

"A Few Short, Random Thoughts"

 

Sydney M. Williams

swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

March 17, 2024

“A Few Short, Random Thoughts”

 

“Listen to your hunches, pay attention to your intuition, do not dismiss your random

thoughts, inspirations or ideas…They could be giving you the best advice you ever had.”

                                                                                                                Neale Donald Walsch (1943-)

                                                                                                                Conversations with God, Book 3, 1998

 

American values, which have been denigrated, evolved over two hundred years. It has become common to debase history and belittle capitalism, Certainly, one can find faults in both. One thing that is often forgotten is how rare have been revolutions that produced positive change. The French Revolution of 1789 eliminated a king and produced an Emperor. The Haiti slave rebellion of 1791 got rid of the French and eliminated slavery, but the nation has never had an honest and fair government. The Russian Revolution of 1917 exchanged autocratic Tsars for totalitarian Communists. Other examples: China in 1949, Cuba in 1959, and Iran in 1979. But the American revolution produced a government that evolved into the world’s fairest representative democracy. Capitalism, which creates winners and losers, is antithetical to today’s devotees of DEI, with its focus on equal outcomes. Yet, it is capitalism that encourages competition and offers choices to consumers. Free market capitalism has done more to lift people out of poverty than any other economic system. It provides people opportunities, to strive to do their best in whatever field they choose. 

 

A few other thoughts: 

 

• Democracy – a form of government close to the center of a spectrum that stretches from anarchy to autocracy. It is not perfect, as Churchill said in a speech before the House of Commons on November 11, 1947: “…the worse form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” Our democracy is, as Abraham Lincoln said at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863, a “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” It is rare. Despite its visible success, according to ourworldindata.org, twice as many people live in “closed autocracies” as live in “liberal democracies.” Yet, we cannot forget that while our government is beneficent, dependency on government, unless it is absolutely necessary, leads to a loss of freedom. 

 

• Capitalism/Climate/Environment – It was free-market capitalism that produced the Industrial Revolution, a revolution that defoliated forests, polluted rivers, and eroded the landscape. But it also raised living standards, gave people access to healthier diets, better housing and medicines, and cheaper goods. It did increase wealth for merchants and bankers, but while we complain today about income and wealth disparities, those differences are less than they were at the end of the 19^th Century and substantially below what they were when the world was composed of a few kings and aristocrats and millions of serfs and slaves – and those wealth disparities are far less in capitalist societies than in totalitarian regimes like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. And it was capitalism that gave us the means to clean up the environment – our forests, rivers, and landscapes.

 

As for climate, there is little doubt that man affects its change. But the planet’s climate has been changing long before man arrived on the scene. During the Mesozoic Era, when dinosaurs roamed the earth 100 million years ago, the planet’s average temperature is estimated to have been forty-five degrees warmer than it is today. A few million years later, during the Pleistocene Era with its Ice Age, the earth’s temperature averaged fifty-three degrees colder than today. About ten thousand years ago, the climate became warm enough to begin to melt the Ice Age’s glaciers. 

 

When one cleanses the environment, one positively affects climate. Confronting climate change and improving the environment began to be addressed long before the advent of the EPA and John Kerry. As Bjorn Lomborg wrote recently in The Wall Street Journal: “The data show that climate-related deaths from droughts, storms, floods, and fires have declined by more than 97% over the past century.” We need to calculate costs – both societal and economic of climate-change measures – against expected benefits. While there is more we can do, we have come a long way. But governments should not use climate as an excuse to pick winners and losers. Adam Smith’s “invisible hand is fairer and better suited. In the meantime, governments, agencies, and the media should drop the hysteria.

 

• Immigration – Common sense tells us that when a country’s birth rates fall below replacement and economic growth is still the goal it must raise birth rates or increase migration. When people are admitted legally, authorities know who has entered. When migrants enter illegally, they arrive unknown. In my opinion, we should increase the number of legal immigrants, simplify immigration laws, allow for more seasonal workers, and, at the same time, tighten the border against illegal and unwanted migration. The country needs new workers and consumers. 

 

• Education – Thomas Jefferson believed that only educated citizens would allow the American experiment in self-government to succeed. We all know that women and blacks, despite education, were denied the right to vote in 1789. Nevertheless, his ideas were radical for the time. His founding of the University of Virginia in 1819 partially achieved his goal. Youth today should have an understanding and appreciation of what the founders accomplished: limited government of the people, consisting of three separate but equal branches – legislative, executive, and judicial, based on the rule of law. They should read the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. They should be taught how rights have evolved, and they should know history, to understand how the nation’s values have also evolved over time. Youth needs a clear understanding of geography, math/economics, philosophy, science, and religion; they should develop a sense of decorum and personal responsibility, and they need to be able to articulately express themselves.

 

These short takes are not definitive or all-inclusive. I have neither the time nor the ability to make them so, and you do not have the time (or desire) to read what may be obvious and repetitive. But I worry that we have lost a sense of what it means to be an American, that our differences rather than our commonalities define who we are. To live in this country, with all its faults, is to live among the world’s most fortunate people. We must not be arrogant about our luck. We need to recognize that there may come a time, as it did for past generations, when it will be necessary to defend what we have. We should never forget the blessings of individual freedom, and the benefits of living in a free and democratic republic, amid free-market capitalism – all of which we inherited and which it is our duty to pass on to those who follow.

Review - "The Book at War," Andrew Pettegree

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

The Book at War. Andrew Pettegree

February 19, 2024

 

“Books…played an essential role in maintaining civilian and troop morale.”

                                                                                                                                Andrew Pettegree (1957-)

                                                                                                                                The Book at War, 2023

 

This book will appeal to those with an interest in books and war, especially the Twentieth Century’s two world wars. Professor Pettegree, a professor of modern history at St. Andrews, mentions Carl von Clausewitz’ On War and Sun Tzu’s The Art of War; he touches on Herodotus and Caesar; and he spends some time on the American Civil War. He notes that it was ten years after Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom’s Cabinin 1852 that Lincoln allegedly asked: “Is this the little woman who made this great war?” He concludes with a mention that the war in Ukraine caused one resident “to use his personal library to block the window as blast protection.” 

 

Since the advent of the printing press, books in war time have been used in many ways: To instruct; to provide comfort to combatants and civilians (132 million copies of 1,322 titles were produced in Armed Services paperback editions during World War 2); as propaganda: Churchill, “We must add to…the power of ideas;” they have been censored and destroyed. “…in Smolensk the Germans burned down all the libraries and twenty-two schools before they abandoned the city with the loss of 646,000 books.” Less well known – at least to me – was that T.S. Eliot black-balled the publication of Animal Farm in 1944. In all, the author estimates that a total of 500 million books were destroyed during the World War 2. 

 

We read of a September 2, 1914 meeting at Wellington House in London attended by James Barrie, Arnold Bennett, Arthur Conan Doyle, Thomas Hardy, H.G. Wells and twenty other prominent authors who committed “unambiguously” to assist the war effort. And we learn that three to four million books, many “read almost to destruction” were left behind in German POW camps in 1945. The Nazis, committed to genocide of Europe’s Jews, were intent on dismantling their culture, which included the destruction of entire libraries. After the war Allied forces were ordered to eradicate ideologies that had contributed to Nazi resilience: “This was an uneasy time for occupying forces that had gone into the war celebrating books as beacons of freedom, but ended as their destroyers.” In a humorous aside, Pettegree writes: “In 1952, comics were removed from on-board bookshops of the Pacific fleet, on the grounds they were too graphic for marines and sailors.”

 

Of personal interest were books mentioned by Professor Pettegree that my father had mentioned in letters to my mother when he was serving with the 10^th Mountain Division during World War 2: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith; Lillian Smith’s Strange Fruit; Anne and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon, The Education of Henry Adams, by Henry Adams, and the poems of A.E. Housman. 

 

The Book at War is divided into six main headings: “…building a fighting nation; libraries as munitions of war; books on the home front; providing books for troops; book plunder and destruction in wartime; reconstruction of book stocks, and the war for ideological supremacy in the Cold War.” Readers will not be disappointed with this unique perspective on war and literature.

Review - "November 1942," Peter Englund

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

November 1942, Peter Englund

January 10, 2024

 

“I see those men with maps and talk

Who tell how to go and where and why;

I hear with my ears the words of their mouths,

As they finger with ease the marks on the maps.”

                                                                                                                Experience, 1904

                                                                                                                Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)

 

As Carl Sandburg wrote, battles are fought far from those who direct them. As Mr. Englund explains in his “Note to the Reader,” this book does not describe what war was during the four weeks in November 1942, but tries “to say something about how it was.” 

 

It was the month of November 1942 that saw Germany stymied at Stalingrad, the American invasion of North Africa and the German-Italian defeat at El Alamein; it witnessed the Guadalcanal campaign that ended Japanese expansion in the South Atlantic and the Japanese retreat in New Guinea. At the start of November, it appeared that the Axis might be victorious. By the end of the month, it seemed certain that the Allies, ultimately, would be victors. It was on November 10, following Montgomery’s victory over Rommel at El Alamein that Churchill spoke at the Lord Mayor’s Luncheon in London: “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” While he was right, of the estimated 60 to 80 million people who died in World War II most were yet to meet their fate.

 

It is through letters, diaries and memoirs of thirty-nine individuals, and from newspaper accounts, that the Swedish historian and journalist Peter Englund reconstructs the month. With the exception of authors Vera Brittain, Albert Camus, and Ernst Junger, these are ordinary people, innocently caught up in the most devastating war mankind has ever known. We read the letters of a Russian soldier in Stalingrad and the thoughts of an Italian soldier in the North African desert, and those of a Japanese lieutenant on Guadalcanal; we read of an Australian infantry sergeant in New Guinea, the letters and diaries of a Long Island housewife with a son overseas, and the memoirs of an American woman who worked with Enrico Fermi in Chicago on spontaneous nuclear chain reaction. We read the diaries of a young Jewish woman in Paris (who was later imprisoned and beaten to death in Bergen-Belson five days before the camp was liberated in 1945,) the memoirs of an Australian doctor held prisoner on Java, the writings of a German woman journalist in Berlin, the memories of an American sailor in the North Atlantic, the diaries of a teen-age girl, a German-Jewish refuge in Shanghai, the diary of a Korean “comfort woman” in Japanese-occupied Burma, and the letters of a young German woman who will be guillotined in three months for sabotaging the Third Reich.

 

We also read of Casablanca, which premiered that month and whose ending was changed to reflect the American landings in North Africa.  In a brief epilogue, Mr. Englund tells us what happened to the thirty-nine people whose lives during that month comprise his story. 

 

Toward the end of his book, Mr. Englund writes: “How we experience a war is influenced by pictures and mental images acquired in peace, and that often leads to battles playing up to their own myth…” But war is never pins on a map. It is ugly, fought by the brave and the scared, as Peter Englund so vividly describes.

"Evil"

 Today’s TOTD is relatively short, as is another I have been working on at the same time. That second, God willing, will be sent tomorrow morning. On Thursday, Caroline and I leave on a nine-day road trip to visit four grandchildren, in four different colleges in North Carolina and Pennsylvania. We will be meandering more than driving and, while I will have my laptop, I will not be sending any essays. You have all earned a well-deserved break from my scribblings.

 

My thanks and my best to you all, Sydney

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Thought of the Day

“Evil”

October 14, 2023

 

“In each of us, two natures are at war – the good and the evil. All our lives the fight goes on between them,

and one of them must conquer. But in our hands lies the power to choose – what we want most to be we are.”

                                                                                                                                Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

                                                                                                                                Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 1886

 

Three days after the dastardly and cowardly attack by Hamas on Israel, President Biden responded. For the most part his words resonated well. In fact, given the chance of escalation by Iran or their surrogate Hezbollah, he said simply, “Don’t.” But he added, unnecessarily in my opinion:

 

“I just got off the phone with – the third call with Prime Minister Netanyahu. And I told him if the United States experienced what Israel is experiencing, our response would be swift, decisive, and overwhelming. We also discussed how democracies like Israel and the United States are stronger and more secure when we act according to the rule of law. Terrorists purpo – purposefully target civilians, kill them. We uphold the laws of war – the law of war. It matters. There’s a difference.”

 

Sadly, in war, there are no Marquess of Queensbury rules. The only law is victory. To eliminate the enemy. To eradicate the scourge of Nazism and Fascism during World War II, were “laws of war” a consideration? No. The Allies called for unconditional surrender. Approximately, half a million German civilians were killed in Allied bombing raids, including the fire-bombing of Dresden. Over 200,000 Japanese civilians died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Could those deaths have been prevented? Perhaps, but at what cost to Allied and Axis lives. With Hamas terrorists having paraglided into the Tribe of Nova music festival and killed 260 attendees, beheaded children, raped and burned women, and concealed hostages within Hamas headquarters and military installations, Israelis are not combatting an enemy who complies with the 1949 Geneva Conventions, or international humanitarian laws. They were brutally attacked in an act of pure evil. The Israelis job is to rid the enemy, to demand unconditional surrender, just as the U.S. and its Allies did in World War II. And Iran, Hamas’ supporter and financier, must be confronted. In a speech to the students at Harrow School on October 29, 1941, Winston Churchill spoke words that have pertinence to Israelis today: 

 

“This is the lesson: never give in, never, never, never, never – in nothing great or

small, large or petty – never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.

Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”

 

Between Iran, Russia and China, an axis of evil exists today, just as it did in 1938.

 

Like its opposite good, evil is natural. It is found in all races, religions, and genders. It exists in all nations. We cannot wish it away. Victory in World War II, or the winning of the Cold War, did not eliminate evil. Perhaps what Hamas perpetrated in Israel will awaken the West to its presence? We hope so. The horrifying attack on 9/11 momentarily awakened the American people to the existence of evil, but it did not last. The Chinese subjugation of Uyghurs has not awakened the West to the presence of evil, nor have the atrocities committed by Russians in Ukraine. Evil must be confronted by a force stronger than itself. The democratic nations of the world, of which Israel is a part, are not perfect, but their people live better and freer lives than those in undemocratic nations. If we want to be that “shining light on the hill,” to offer hope to those less fortunate, we must increase defense spending. If we are unable to keep ourselves safe, we will be unable to rally to those when need for security arises, whether it’s us, Ukrainians, Israelis, Taiwanese, or others. And that military help must include humanitarian aid. Evil is insidious in the way it infiltrates society, one example being the recent rise of antisemitism, especially in Europe but also in the U.S. 

 

In the aftermath of the Hamas attack, some academic leaders, especially in “elite” universities, ignored the evil committed by Hamas and spoke in anodyne terms, of how we should not condemn those of different cultures – hypocritical expressions when one considers that many of the same institutions had cancelled conservative speakers in the past year. What the free world needs are honest words of wisdom, of how good and evil inhabit the world, that they always have and always will. And that we, as Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, must choose which path to follow.