Results 1 to 9 of 9

Thread: The Odds Against Antiwar Warriors

  1. #1

    The Odds Against Antiwar Warriors

    War Against War: The American Fight for Peace, 1914–1918, Michael Kazin, Simon and Schuster, 400 pages.
    By ANDREW J. BACEVICH • March 30, 2017


    American advance northwest of Verdun. The ruined church on the crest of the captured height of Montfaucon. This was the condition of the site after the Americans finally drove the Germans out from it. France, 1918. National Archives

    A slog, but not without rewards: that’s what best describes this account of Americans who opposed U.S. participation in the European War of 1914–1918. While Michael Kazin, a historian of progressive bent who teaches at Georgetown University, tells an important story, his book suffers from a want of zip. The narrative meanders. The prose lacks sparkle. Still, for the patient reader, War Against War offers much to reflect upon.

    Kazin’s subject is what he calls “the largest, most diverse, and most sophisticated peace coalition” to that point in all U.S. history. Not until the Vietnam War a half-century later would there be an antiwar movement “as large, as influential, and as tactically adroit.”

    Perhaps so, but the American peace coalition that flourished a century ago failed abysmally. It succeeded neither in keeping the country out of the war nor in insulating the home front from war’s corrosive effects once the U.S. eventually intervened.

    In what was not even remotely a contest of equals, the forces favoring war proved overwhelming. An approach to “neutrality” that mortgaged American prosperity to Anglo-French victory fostered decidedly unneutral attitudes on Wall Street and in Washington. Ultimately, however, arguments for staying out of war fell prey to vast ideological pretensions. As the stalemate on the Western Front dragged on, more and more Americans succumbed to the conviction that Providence was summoning the United States to save Civilization itself. Foremost among those Americans was President Woodrow Wilson.

    “I wish the United States had stayed out of the Great War,” Kazin writes. I share the sentiment. From the outset, that conflict was a mindless exercise in mutual self-immolation. The belated U.S. entry into the war did nothing to redeem it. Even if justified by the supposed imperative of destroying German militarism, the eventual Allied victory to which the United States contributed at the cost of 116,000 American dead had the opposite effect. In short order, German militarism came storming back stronger than ever. Meanwhile, other deadly viruses unleashed by the bloodletting of 1914–1918 were wreaking havoc. Even today, the consequences haunt us.

    The coalition forged to prevent the United States from being drawn into the European slaughterhouse was nothing if not heterodox. Kazin describes an informal partnership consisting of four distinct elements: progressive Republicans, mostly from the upper Midwest, with Wisconsin Sen. Robert La Follette their standard-bearer; Southern populists, the racist North Carolina Democrat and House Majority Leader Claude Kitchin prominent among them; members of the Socialist Party, largely (but not exclusively) concentrated in New York City, with dapper labor lawyer and perennial office-seeker Morris Hillquit their spokesman; and a mix of political activists ranging from social reformers such as Jane Addams and Emily Balch to uncompromising radicals such as Crystal Eastman and her brother Max.

    Breadth did not translate into unity or cohesion. The entities forming the peace movement entertained varied priorities, the avoidance of war not necessarily numbering first among them. Depending on the particular group, preserving white supremacy, resisting Wall Street, pressing for women’s suffrage, helping the downtrodden, promoting temperance, organizing workers, or calling for the overthrow of capitalism ranked right alongside a determination to keep the United States from intervening in Europe.

    Unity was imperfect and therefore contingent. The glue holding things together was weak. As the closest thing to an umbrella organization, the American Union Against Militarism (AUAM) was the loosest form of confederation, rather than an actual union.

    So while the anti-warriors who rallied against U.S. entry into the Great War achieved a degree of prominence, they wielded little clout. They made noise without actually making a difference, in large part because they proved unable to win over President Wilson.

    From 1914 through 1916, Wilson gave peace proponents a respectful hearing and conveyed a sense of sympathy with their cause. They reciprocated and considered the president an ally. Indeed, when Wilson in 1916 won reelection to a second term, having campaigned on the slogan “He kept us out of war,” the AUAM persuaded itself that the president’s hairbreadth victory was “due primarily to the fighting pacifist sentiment in the United States.”

    Whether or not Wilson himself shared that assessment, he soon thereafter threw in with those who had come to see Germany as the embodiment of evil. Destroying evil at its source, he now insisted, had become imperative. Although the peace lobby gamely refused to give up the fight, last-ditch efforts to forestall U.S. entry into the war by demanding a nationwide referendum on the issue—let the people decide—went nowhere. In April 1917, by a tally of 82 to 6 in the Senate and 373 to 50 in the House, Congress handed Wilson his war mandate.

    To their credit, peace-movement leaders still refused to throw in the towel. They opposed Wilson’s demand to enact conscription, albeit to no avail. With equally little success, they mounted protests against administration efforts, endorsed by Congress and enforced by pro-war vigilantes, to criminalize criticism of U.S. war policies. Although U.S. participation in the conflict lasted a mere 19 months, never in American history have basic rights to speak and assemble been more widely and more egregiously violated. Using the crusade “to end all wars” as a pretext, federal authorities ran roughshod over the Constitution until war-induced hysteria finally ran its course following the infamous race riots and Red Scare of 1919–1920.

    Once the fever broke, Americans wasted little time in deciding that entry into the World War had been a huge mistake, a view that persisted throughout the 1920s and well into the 1930s. Kazin sees the shift in opinion as vindicating the peace movement ex post facto. Mark me down as unconvinced. Factors other than the arguments advanced by peace activists—for starters, the thoroughly perverse results of the Paris Peace Conference—reshaped American opinion.

    Peace advocates had waged a gallant fight. In the face of great adversity—ridicule, harassment, even the prospect of imprisonment—they exhibited admirable courage and tenacity. And they correctly anticipated many of the ill effects that would befall the United States should it abandon its tradition of steering clear of European squabbles.

    continued..http://www.theamericanconservative.c...eid=da81faf5d7
    "The Patriarch"



  2. Remove this section of ads by registering.
  3. #2
    Excellent article

    Some related materials on WWI and American politics:
    --Lecture by Bob Higgs
    --Article by Murray Rothbard

  4. #3
    keep digging.

    what happened to the czar's great wealth?

    what did they write on the wall in his basement?
    Last edited by merkelstan; 04-05-2017 at 03:14 AM.

  5. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by merkelstan View Post
    keep digging.

    what happened to the czar's great wealth?

    what did they write on the wall in his basement?
    Did a quick googling on that, found no reference to it other than on Stormfront and something called the "racial nationalist library."

    ...neither of which I'm inclined to give traffic.

    So, can you tell us what was allegedly written on the wall (something related to Jews, I assume), and provide a credible source?

  6. #5
    https://www.libertarianinstitute.org.../blame-wilson/

    some good background on wilson's entry into WWI - and the results

  7. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by merkelstan View Post
    https://www.libertarianinstitute.org.../blame-wilson/

    some good background on wilson's entry into WWI - and the results
    I didn't see any mention of the writing on the wall there.

  8. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by r3volution 3.0 View Post
    I didn't see any mention of the writing on the wall there.
    I don't have a link handy sorry - it was in a book i read long ago.

    [edit] but you're way ahead of the herd if you've read this much so far

  9. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by r3volution 3.0 View Post
    I didn't see any mention of the writing on the wall there.
    MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN (?)



  10. Remove this section of ads by registering.
  11. #9
    I was just listening to this episod eof the Tom Woods Show about Christianity and warfare.

    http://tomwoods.com/ep-452-early-chr...t-have-fit-in/

    It always strikes me as disturbing that people like Wilson, who was deeply religious, ached so powerfully for war and jump at it with the least provocation.



Similar Threads

  1. Antiwar Radio: The F.B.I. vs. Antiwar.com
    By Agorism in forum U.S. Political News
    Replies: 2
    Last Post: 08-23-2011, 12:34 AM
  2. Antiwar Radio: Antiwar Republican John Dennis challenges Pelosi
    By Agorism in forum U.S. Political News
    Replies: 1
    Last Post: 06-20-2010, 09:00 PM
  3. Warriors.
    By Oyate in forum Grassroots Central
    Replies: 10
    Last Post: 06-03-2008, 01:39 AM
  4. Okay all you RP web warriors!
    By FrankRep in forum Grassroots Central
    Replies: 4
    Last Post: 10-19-2007, 02:06 PM
  5. Granny Warriors
    By John of Des Moines in forum Grassroots Central
    Replies: 40
    Last Post: 08-02-2007, 07:56 AM

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •