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osprey_archerThere is something, though Heaven knows not much, to be said for war as war. And the little to be said is said when one declares that it refreshes life by taking us out of our ruts.
William Allen White's The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me is a fictionalized memoir and propaganda piece based on a trip that White and his traveling companion, Henry J. Allen, "two short, fat, bald, middle-aged, inland Americans," progressive Republicans of the Bull Moose persuasion who went to the Western Front in 1917 to inspect the facilities provided by the American Expeditionary Forces. The book is an argument in favor of all-out American commitment to the war and increased American socialism thereafter.
To call this a propaganda piece is both accurate and rather misleading, because it suggests a hack job, and all the evidence suggests that White wrote from genuine conviction: this is the war to end all wars, a war not "for boundaries and geography; but for a restatement of human creeds," the final death throes of the old aristocratic world (exemplified by Prussian junkerism) that will give way to a kinder, gentler, democratic and socialist future.
I don't know if countries that had already spent a few years getting pounded to death shared this messianic vision, but in American sources written between, say, 1917 and 1919 this is not uncommon. I find it almost unbearably moving because, of course, that's not how it happened. It's one of the value of reading old books that you can drink these things neat: it would be impossible (or at least very hard) to create the same atmosphere in a modern book, because the author, knowing what is coming, would be writing from a place of irony rather than hope.
The book is also very funny, with some splendid comic set pieces, like their first dinner after returning from the front. They've had nothing but coffee and wine to drink for days, and White is dying for some water: "The water in that bottle, a quart bottle, evaporated. They brought another. It disappeared. They brought a third. The waiters in the hotel were attracted by the sight. No Frenchman ever drinks water with his meals, and the spectacle of this American sousing himself with water while he ate was a rare sight... And when at the end of the meal the American rose, and walked through the crowd, they made way for him. A desperate man at least commands respect, whatever his delusion may be."
After I finished the book I looked Allen and White up on Wikipedia, and discovered that after the war Allen was elected governor of Kansas, where he pushed through an industrial court law, to which White objected in an editorial which won him the Pulitzer Prize... and also landed him in jail. An awkward sequel to the camaraderie of their trip!
Youth always has a happy ending - even in death. It is when youth ends in life that we may question its happiness.
William Allen White's The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me is a fictionalized memoir and propaganda piece based on a trip that White and his traveling companion, Henry J. Allen, "two short, fat, bald, middle-aged, inland Americans," progressive Republicans of the Bull Moose persuasion who went to the Western Front in 1917 to inspect the facilities provided by the American Expeditionary Forces. The book is an argument in favor of all-out American commitment to the war and increased American socialism thereafter.
To call this a propaganda piece is both accurate and rather misleading, because it suggests a hack job, and all the evidence suggests that White wrote from genuine conviction: this is the war to end all wars, a war not "for boundaries and geography; but for a restatement of human creeds," the final death throes of the old aristocratic world (exemplified by Prussian junkerism) that will give way to a kinder, gentler, democratic and socialist future.
I don't know if countries that had already spent a few years getting pounded to death shared this messianic vision, but in American sources written between, say, 1917 and 1919 this is not uncommon. I find it almost unbearably moving because, of course, that's not how it happened. It's one of the value of reading old books that you can drink these things neat: it would be impossible (or at least very hard) to create the same atmosphere in a modern book, because the author, knowing what is coming, would be writing from a place of irony rather than hope.
The book is also very funny, with some splendid comic set pieces, like their first dinner after returning from the front. They've had nothing but coffee and wine to drink for days, and White is dying for some water: "The water in that bottle, a quart bottle, evaporated. They brought another. It disappeared. They brought a third. The waiters in the hotel were attracted by the sight. No Frenchman ever drinks water with his meals, and the spectacle of this American sousing himself with water while he ate was a rare sight... And when at the end of the meal the American rose, and walked through the crowd, they made way for him. A desperate man at least commands respect, whatever his delusion may be."
After I finished the book I looked Allen and White up on Wikipedia, and discovered that after the war Allen was elected governor of Kansas, where he pushed through an industrial court law, to which White objected in an editorial which won him the Pulitzer Prize... and also landed him in jail. An awkward sequel to the camaraderie of their trip!
Youth always has a happy ending - even in death. It is when youth ends in life that we may question its happiness.
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Date: 2021-06-14 10:54 pm (UTC)