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writing for godot

Decisive Day

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Written by Mark Albertson   
Sunday, 21 May 2017 07:28

Decisive Day

 

The day came and went with little regard or scant reference, considering its immense historical significance.  The day in question being April 6, which marked the centennial of America's entry into what is generally referred to as the First World War.  In essence one of the most decisive days in the history of this Nation.  A day of greater significance than either December 7, 1941 or September 11, 2001.  For April 6, 1917 is the day Congress codified the fact that America was a Global power.

By 1917, the economic-political-strategic posture of the globe was in the throes of change of the most irrevocable type.  The British and French Empires were mired in irreversible decline; while at the same time, America, a young and virile power, was emerging ascendant.  For instance, in 1865 America boasted 144,000 factories and centers of production.  By 1900, 335,000.  In 1860, this Nation produced some $2 billion in manufactured goods; by 1900, $11.5 billion.  Already by the mid-1890s, the Grand Republic had replaced Britain as the world's ranking economic power.  In 1898, the United States, having linked Chesapeake Bay with the Golden Gate, stood on the precipice of redefining Manifest Destiny; that from a program of Continental expansion to one of an agenda for Global Power.  For in 1898, the United States defeated a declining colonial power, Spain.  The result was the aggrandizement of the Philippines, Guam, Puerto Rico and the economic and political bondage of Cuba.  The long slow decline of America as a Republic was now assured as the Nation took its place within that inglorious clique of imperialist powers.

In 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt dispatched sixteen battleships on a fourteen month six day cruise; a trek which saw 14,500 sailors and marines traverse a dozen oceans and seas, crisscross the Equator six times, call on more than 30 ports and log over 46,000 miles.  The Great White Fleet was a superlative effort in American seamanship, and, was President Roosevelt's announcement to the world that America had arrived as a global power.

In 1914, the European colonial powers descended into a conflict most internecine, the European Civil War; a struggle from which, in the end, none of the European colonial powers would emerge victorious; but which would draw into its swirling vortex nations from around the globe.  One of these, the United States.  And on April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson petitioned Congress for a Declaration of War (an element of Rule of Law which chief executives no longer observe).  It took Congress four days to deliberate before finally granting the power for war which Wilson had requested.  Of course , the question is why?  Why did America feel it needed to take part in a European civil war?

German unrestricted submarine warfare was certainly a cause, since Wilson had warned Berlin that persistent use of the undersea boat would force his hand.  Another major reason was economic; which in the end, underscores the political.

The day of Big Government in America had arrived.  For the short duration this Nation was a combatant, central government would grow some 500 percent.  In less than two years, Washington would spend some $22 billion, which, according to some economists, amounted to this Nation spending $2 million per hour.(1)  Washington's spending on the War to End All Wars was more than the Federal Government had spent from 1791 to 1914.  Then there were the banks.  Wall Street had loaned the Allies--mostly the British and French--some $10 to $12 billion . . . and they wanted it back.  However the Russian Revolution saw the demise of the Romanovs.  If the Germans were able to shift massive numbers of troops from the Eastern Front to France, they could possibly defeat the tired British and French armies before the Americans showed up in sufficient numbers to turn the tide.  And with a German victory, what guarantee was there that the $10 to $12 billion would be recouped.  So Washington assembled the collection squad, doughboys and marines.

But America was reaping a profit at the expense of the British and French.  The former, in 1914, enjoyed $3.7 billion in assets and investments in America.  By 1918, $1.1 billion.  France, too, liquidated holdings to pay its benefactor, some 75 percent of its assets and investments stateside.  A number of American companies reaped huge gains.  DuPont comes to mind here, a producer which would eventually supply the Allies with 40 percent of its munitions.  The stock went from $20 per share in 1914 to $1,000 per in 1918.  America would ingest some $908 million of the world's gold.  Power was flowing from one side of the Atlantic to the other.

Yet, Congress, led by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, refused to ratify the Versailles Treaty, which meant that America would not take part in the League of Nations.  The United States, now a Global Power, failed to live up to its obligations as a Global Power.  The fledgling Bolshevik State, too, found itself ostracized from the new European balance of Power.  And since the Versailles Treaty was the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on modern Man, the continuation of the European Civil War was more or less assured.  Joseph Stalin understood this concept very well. For in 1927, he began his program of collectivization of the peasantry followed by the forced industrialization of the Motherland; to the extent, that by 1941, the Soviet Union became one of the globe's ranking industrial powers.  And so the two nations which could have helped to prevent a continuation of the conflict had been ostracized from Continental politics; the United States because many Americans wanted to be, and the Russians because they had fallen sway to godless Communism.

Yet in the end, it is the two powers that had been excluded from European politics in 1919 that would eventually win the war in 1945, the United States and the Soviet Union.  For what began as a European civil war had evolved into a global conflict.  A conflict spurred on to its global proportions by the Industrial Revolution, then greased by America's and Russia's indigenous supplies of oil and powered by America's financial muscle.  And by 1945, the European colonial powers no longer determined the globe's political, economic and strategic agenda, a mantle now reserved for the victors, the United States and the Soviet Union.

The noted British general and historian, J.F.C. Fuller, observed, that April 6, 1917 not only changed American history, but that of Europe and in turn, the world.  But it also changed America.  The Republic was well on its way to its tragic demise, as warned by George Washington and accurately forecast by Benjamin Franklin.  The monolithic Military-Industrial Complex was now ascendant.  And with it, Pax Americana.  For the United States was the only power able to see to the colonial interests of the West after 1945.  And armed with the world's Reserve Currency, the ubiquitous Dollar, the United States would claim its place under the sun.

 

End Notes


(1)  During the Vietnam War, for 1968 and 1969, the cost to the taxpayer was $14 million per hour; and, for a losing effort.


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