Finally exposing the center of 20th-Century War Profiteering

[Guest guest]

-

Dick Eastman

Part I: Mr. Death Merchant: DE's e-Book on Baruch (Churchill etc.) --

58 pages of quoted references that together finally exposing the center of

20th-Century War Profiteering

 

 

Bernard Baruch: Debt Merchant master of

wars, depressions, prime ministers, and

presidents.

 

Richard P. Eastman, M.S., M.A. , editor

(Dick Eastman, Yakima)

 

Bernard Baruch controlled Presidents Wilson, Hoover,

Roosevelt and Truman as puppets; he owned and

controlled Winston Churchill throughout that leader's

duplicitous and hitherto well-covered-up career, from his

role as Minister of Munitions (1917-18) until his famous

Cold War speech (1947) and beyond. Baruch is the

human architect of the major woes of the 20th -century.

Baruch embodied the power of High Finance over

government and economy in the half-century between

his predecessor J.P. Morgan and his successor David

Rockefeller.

 

I have edited a series of readings from a great number of

the most authoritative histories -- taking facts from each

to show a very big and very ugly picture that has never

been shown before.

 

I feel that this compilation is the most important work

of history in the last hundred years -- because it alone

tells the most important story that has never before been

told -- the story of the Great Merchant of Death and Debt,

Bernard Mannasis Baruch.

 

Baruch was a guiding power behind

 

the Federal Reserve Act

World War One profiteering, centralization, monopolization

death of Mrs. Woodrow Wilson

the Stock Market Crash

New Deal economic profiteering, centralization, monopolization

the death of Huey Long

World War Two profiteering, centralization, monopolization

the near death of Harry Hopkins

the death of Roosevelt

death of James Forrestal

Stalin getting the bomb

Cold War profiteering, centralization, monopolization

Korean War profiteering, centralization, monopolization

 

 

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Preface

 

To the people of the world. Here is a compilation

of the true history of American foreign policy and

economic policy in the 20th century. No one can

understand the current " scam " of the 9-11 mass-

murder frameup and the fradulent " war on terror "

without knowing this history.

 

I have not copyrighted this editing of the many

sources I have drawn together -- nor have I

taken the time to get it into print.

 

I want you, the common people of the world

to have this that you may educate yourselves

about the merchants of death and debt, that

you may one day set yourselves free.

 

Dick Eastman

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1907 - 1911

 

 

 

 

 

Larry Abraham, Call It Conspiracy (Seattle: Double A Publications, 1985)

 

[Note: I choose quotations from this source to summarize these early events

 

because it condenses the material so well. The same facts can be found in

 

William Greider's Secrets of the Temple (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987)

 

and G. Edward Griffin, The Creature from Jekyll Island; A Second Look at the

 

Federal Reserve 3rd ed. (Westlake Village: American Media, 1998)

 

By the turn of the century J.P. Morgan was already an old hand at creating

artificial panics. Such affairs were well coordinated. Senator Robert Owen, a

co-author of the Federal Reserve Act (who later deeply regretted his role),

testified before a Congressional Committee that the bank he owned received from

the National Banker's Association what came to be known as the " Panic Circular

of 1893. " It stated: " You will at once retire one -third of your circulation and

call in one-half of your loans .... "

 

[ House Banking and Currency Committee Hearings on H.R. 7230, 75th Congress,

March 2 and 19, 1938, p. 214)

 

Historian Frederick Lewis Allen tells in Life magazine of April 25, 1949, of

Morgan's role in spreading rumors about the insolvency of the Knickerbocker Bank

and the Trust Company of America, which rumors trigered the 1907 Panic. In

answer to the question: " Did Morgan precipitate the panic? " Allen reports:

 

" Oakleigh Thorne, the president of a particular trust

 

company, testified later before a congressional committee

 

that his banks had been subjected to only moderate withdrawals...

 

that he had not applied for help, and that it was the [Morgans']

 

'sore point' statement alone that had caused the run on his

 

bank. From this testimony, plus the disciplinary measures

 

taken by the Clearing House against the Heinze, Morse and Thomas

 

banks, plus other fragments of supposedly pertinent evidence,

 

certain chroniclers have arrived at the ingenious conclusion

 

that the Morgan interests took advantage of the unsettled

 

conditions during the autumn of 1907 to precipitate the panic,

 

guiding it shrewdly as it progressed so that it would kill off

 

rival banks and consolidate the preeminence of the banks

 

within the Morgan orbit.

 

The " panic " which Morgan had reated, he proceeded to end

 

almost single-handedly. He had made his point. Frederick Allen explains:

 

" The lesson of the Panic of 1907 was clear, though not

 

for some six years was it destined to be embodied in

 

legislation: the United States gravely needed a central

 

banking system. ... "

 

The man who was to play the most significant part in providing America with that

central bank was Paul Warburg, who along with his brother Felix had immigrated

to the United States form Germany in 1902. They left brother Max (later a major

financier of the Russian Revolution) at home in Frankfurt to run the family bank

(M.N. Warburg & Company).

 

Paul Warburg married Nina Loeb, daughter of Solomon Loeb of Kuhn, Loeb and

Company, America's most powerful international banking firm. Brother Felix

married Frieda Schiff, daughter of Jacob Schiff, the ruling power behind Kuhn,

Loeb. Stephen Birmingham writes in his authoritative Our Crowd: " In the

eighteenth century the Schiffs and Rothschilds shared a double house: in

Frankfurt. Schiff reportedly bought his partnership in Kuhn, Loeb with

Rothschild money.

 

Both Paul and Felix Warburg became partners in Kuhn, Loeb and Company.

 

In 1907, the year of the Morgan-precipitated panic, Paul Warburg began spending

almost all his time writing and lecturing on the need for " bank reform. " Kuhn,

Loeb and Company was sufficiently public spirited about the matter to keep him

on salary at $500,000 per year while for the next six years he donated his time

to " the public good. "

 

Working with Warburg in promoting this " banking reform " was Nelson Aldrich,

known as " Morgan's floor broker in the Senate. " Aldrich's daughter Abby married

John D. Rockefeller Jr. (The current Governor of New York [ at the time of this

writing, Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller] is named for his maternal grandfather.)

 

After the Panic of 1907, Aldrich was appointed by the Senate to head the

National Monetary Commission. Although he had no technical knowledge of banking,

Aldrich and his entourage spent nearly two years and $300,000 of taxpayers'

money being wined and dined by owners of Europe's central banks as they toured

the Continent " studying " central banking. When the Commission returned from its

luxurious junket it held no meetings and made no report for nearly two years.

But Senator Aldrich was busy " arranging " things. Together with Paul Warburg and

other international bankers, he staged one of the most important secret meetings

in the history of the United States. Rockefeller agent Frank Vanderlip admitted

many years later in this memoirs:

 

" Despite my views about the value to society of great

 

publicity for the affairs of corporations, there was an occasion,

 

near the close of 1910, when I was as secretive - indeed as

 

furtive - as any conspirator. ... I do not feel it is any exaggeration

 

to speak of our secret expedition to Jekyll Island as the occasion

 

of the actual conception of what eventually became the Federal

 

Reserve System. [Vanderlip, Frank, " Farm Boy to Financier, "

 

Saturday Evening Post, February 9, 1935, p. 25]

 

The secrecy was well warrented. At stake was control over the entire economy.

Senator Aldrich had issued confidential invitations to Henry P. Davidson of J.P.

Morgan & Company; Frank A. Vanderlip, President of the Rockefeller-owned

National City Bank; A. Piatt Andrew, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury;

Benjamin Strong of Morgan's Bankers Trust Company; and Paul Warburg. They were

all to accompany him to Jekyll Island, Georgia, to write the final

recommendations of the National Monetary Commission report.

 

At Jekyll Island, writes B.C. Forbes in his Men Who Are Making America:

 

" After a general discussion it was decided to draw up

 

certain broad principles on which all could agree. Every member

 

of the group voted for a central bank as being the ideal cornerstone

 

for any banking system. "

 

Warburg stressed that the name " central bank " must be avoided at all costs. It

was decided to promote the scheme as a " regional reserve " system with four

(later twelve) branches in different sections of the country. Those present knew

that the New York bank would dominate the rest, which would be marble " white

elephants " to deceive the public.

 

Out of the Jekyll Island meeting came the completion of the Monetary Commission

Report and the Aldrich Bill. Warburg had proposed the bill be designated the

" Federal Reserve System, " but Aldrich insisted his own name was already

associated in the public's mind with banking reform and that it would arouse

suspicion if a bill were introduced which did not bear his name. However,

Aldrich's name attacked to the bill proved to be the kiss of death, since any

law bearing his name was so obviously a project of the international bankers.

 

When the Aldrich Bill could not be pushed through Congress, a new strategy had

to be devised. The Republican Party was too closely connected with Wall Street.

The only hope for a central bank was to disguise it and have it put through by

the Democrats as a measure to strip Wall Street of its power. The opportunity to

do this came with the approach of the 1912 Presidential election. Republican

President William Howard Taft, who had turned against the Aldrich Bill, seemed a

sure-fire bet for re-election, until Taft's predecessor, fellow Republican Teddy

Roosevelt, agreed to run on the ticket of the Progressive Party.

 

 

 

 

 

August Hecksher, Woodrow Wilson; A Biography (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,

1991)

 

P. 238-239 On July 20, 1911, the New York press announced the opening of Wilson

headquarters at 42 Broadway. McCombs in an interview indicated that a nationwide

drive would be organized, based on the support of Princeton alumni. Wilson was

unhappy with the publicity and told a reporter that there was in effect " no

campaign. " The office would merely take care of answering mail and disseminating

information. But that summer and fall two figures entered the Wilson circle, far

more serious in what they implied for his political fortunes than the

establishment of any campaign headquarters.

 

The first was a tall, hatchet-faced Tennesseean who had come to New York to make

his way as a businessman. William Gibbs McAdoo was no ordinary businessman,

however. ...

 

[ The 1954 edition of the Encyclopedia Americana, vol. 18, p. 4: McAdoo, William

Gibbs, American cabinet officer: b. near Mariett, Ga., 31 Oct. 1863 ... Decended

from a distinguished Southern family, ... Was educated at the University of

Tennessee, admitted to the bar in 1885 ... practiced law in Chattanooga till

1992, when he came to New York and opened a law office. In 1898 he formed a law

partnership with Mr. William McAdoo (...no relation) who in 1910-1930 was chief

city magistrate, and had been assistant secretary of the Treasury under

President Cleveland. The partnership was disolved in 1903. ......... In 1902 he

organized the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad Companuy and raised 4 million

dollars to connect New York City with New Jersey by tunneling under the Hudson

River. ... McAdoo's company completed the project; the first tunnel being

completed on March 8, 1904, and three more being finished in the next five years

.... McAdoo also began participating in activities of the Democratic Party, and

supported Woodrow Wilson in the 1910 gubernatorial campaign in New Jersey. He

became vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee in 1912 and following

Wilson's election to the presidency became secretary of the Treasury, March 6,

1913. ]

 

Heckscher, cont., p. 238-239: He [McAdoo] met Wilson at Princeton in 1909, and

the two got on well from the start. Wilson counted on him for practical advice,

and by the summer of 1911 he was rivaling McCOmbs for first place in the

direction of the embryonic, undeclared campaign. McAdoo was cool while McCombs

was subject to wild swings of mood; unshakable where McCombs was easily

discouraged; discreet where McCombs was talkative. Above all McAdoo was

ambitious for both Wilson and himself. This strangely compounded man would play

a leading role in the Wilson administration, dreaming of being his successor.

More astonishing, given McAdoo's age (he was only seven years younger than

Wilson), he became Wilson's son-in-law.

 

The second recruit was very different from McAdoo and even more important in the

long run. In that autumn of 1911 a wealthy Texan was staying at the Gotham Hotel

in New York, a pause in the trek that took him annually from his home in Austin

to the watering places of Europe. Edward Mandell House had always been

interested in politics, as a behind-the-scenes participant but not as a

candidate. ...as he noted in an unpublished autobiography, " my ambition has been

so great that it has never seemed to me worth while to try to satisfy it. " A

successful businessman, he kept an office which he rarely visited, preferring

tohave the important men of his day in Texas - the politicians, lawyers,

editors, educators - come to talk with him on the shaded verandah of his

spacious home. .....

 

Colonel House had stood aloof from the [William Jennings] Bryan [populist

Democrat] movement, awaiting the day when he could play a prominent part in

nominating a Democratic candidate more to his liking. In 1910 .... he began to

consider the rising star of Woodrow Wilson. A meeting of the two was arranged at

his hotel in mid-November 1911. They talked for an hour. The Colonel decided

Wilson was the man to serve.

 

" Never before have I found both the man and the opportunity, " he noted shortly

afterwards, and added, with what could only be described with a condescending

air, " I think he is going to be a man we can advise with some degree of

satisfaction. "

 

 

 

 

 

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1912

 

Bernard M. Baruch, The Public Years (New York: Pocket Books, 1962)

 

Original edition: (New York: Holt, Rinehart, 1960)

 

p. 5 This was my first convention and I enjoyed the show hugely. Like all

conventions, it was an exhausting carnival of sense and nonsense, and like all

conventions it had its special touch of drama. In this case the drama lay in the

drive to nominate Woodrow Wilson, led by the amateurs Billy McCombs and the

tall, explosive, voluble William Gibbs McAdoo. They were the fighting

professionals, including the well-organized forces of Congressman Oscar

Underwood of Alabama and Congressman Champ Clark of Missouri, the leading

contenders for the nomination.

 

In spite of the maneuvering, however, it soon became clear that one man was the

key figure in the convention. Thrice defeated for the Presidency, William

Jennings Bryan, in a black alpaca coat, sat with his Nebraska delegation,

cooling himself with a palm-leaf fan, aware of everything and waiting for his

moment. The Nebraska delegation was pleged to Champ Clark, but everyone knew

that the Great Commoner was against the coalition of party bosses and Wall

Street financiers who supported Clark and who, according to Bryan, had been

having their way in the party and expected to go on having it.

 

The high point of the convention drama for me, as it was for everyone in the hot

and smoky hall, came when Bryan rose to denounce, as of old, the high priests of

finance. Charles Hyde, New York City's Chamberlain and one of Gaynor's aides,

had gotten me a seat behind the rostrum. From that vantage point I heard again

the mighty voice pouring out the oratory that was more in the style of my

father's day than in the manner of the new century. Bryan was absolutely

uncompromising. The Democratic Party must not nominate any candidate " of the

privilege-hunting and favor-seeking class, " by whom he meant such as J.B.

Morgan, August Belmont, and Thomas Fortune Ryan.

 

I could not see Ryan where he sat in the Virginai delegation, and I wondered how

he was taking it. But then I saw him stand up, stretch his long, thin neck, and

raise his head in a proud, defiant gesture. Here was a man who had been my good

friend and business associate in Wall Street; but now in this political world,

so different from the business world I knew well, I heard him being

characterized as someone with whom no decent person would be allied.

 

There is no doubt how the delegates took it. They hooted, howled, moaned,

threatened to lynch Bryan, fought in the aisles, and waved fists in his face.

Through it all Bryan thundred on, unperturbed, until at last he came back to the

platform, retrieved his palm-leaf fan, mopped his brow, and by chance sat down

beside me. " There, that'll fix 'em, " I overheard him say.

 

It did indeed, " fix 'em. " Bryan's forces refused to give their vote to Clark. As

the ballotting went on, Clark's strength steadily melted away and Wilson's

grew......

 

At last, on the forty-sixth ballot, Wilson went over the top. The amateurs had

triumphed; Wilson was the nominee. Utterly weary and impatient to be off, the

delegates perfuctiorily nominated Thomas Marshall of Indiana for the

Vice-President as a reward to Tom Taggart, the first of the state bosses to

switch from Clark to Wilson. Then the convention adjourned.

 

......For the first time I had gotten a good close look at a unique political

institution - the nominating convention. .... I have attended many since then,

and for me the truly amazing thing about them is that despite the circus side

show and carnival aspects, despite the second-rate men who at times are

selected, so many first-rate, even great men are chose.

 

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Larry Abraham, Call It Conspiracy (Seattle: Double A Publications, 1985)

 

p. 54-55 The Democratic candidate, Woodrow Wilson, was equally the property of

Morgan. Dr. Gabriel Kolko in his The Triumph of Conservatism, reports: " In late

1907 he [Wilson] supported the Aldrich Bill on banking, and was full of praise

for Morgan's role in American society. " According to Lundbert: For nearly twenty

years before his nomination Woodrow Wilson had moved in the shadow of Wall

Street. "

 

Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt proceeded to whistle-stop the country trying

to out-do each other in florid (and hypocritical) denunciations of the Wall

Street " money trust " - the same group of Insiders which was financing the

campaigns of both.

 

Dr. Kolko goes on to tell us that ,at the begining of 1912, banking reform

" seemed a dead issue. ... The banking reform movement had neatly isolated

itslef. " Wilson resurrected the issue and promised the country a money system

free from domination by the international bankers of Wall Street. Moreover, the

Democrat platform expressly stated: " We are opposed to the Aldrich plan for a

central bank. " But the " Big Boys " knew who they had bought. Among the

international financiers who contributed heavily to the Wilson campaign, in

addition to those already named, were Jacob Schiff, Bernard Baruch, Henry

Morgenthau, Thomas Fortune Ryan, and New York Times pulbisher Adolph Ochs.

 

The Insider's sheepdog who controlled Wilson and guided the [central bank]

program through Congress was the mysteious " Colonel " Edward Mandel House, the

British-educated son of a representative of England's financial interests in the

American South. The title was honorary; House never served in the military. He

was strictly a behind-the-scenes wire-puller and is regarded by many historians

as the real President of the United States during the Wilson years. House

authored a book, Philip Drew: Administrator, in which he wrote of establishing

" Socialism as dreamed by Karl Marx. " As steps toward his goal, House, both in

his book and in real life, called for passage of an income tax and a central

bank providing " a flexible currency. " ....

 

In his The Intimate Papers of Colonol House, Professor Charles Seymour refers to

the " Colonel " as the " unseen guardian angel " of the Federal Reserve Act.

Seymour's work contains numerous documents and records showing constant contact

between House and Paul Warburg while the Federal Reserve Act was being prepared

and steered through Congress. Biographer George Viereck [ Viereck, George S.,

The Strangest Friendship in History (New York: Liveright, 1932)]

 

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Alexander L George & Juliette L. George, Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House: A

Personal Study, 2nd ed. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1964)

 

p. 75 Edward Mandell House was born in Houston, Texas, on July 26, 1858. He was

the seventh son of one of the wealthiest men in Texas.

 

Thomas Willima House's fortune derived from vast sugar and cotton plantations

and banking. Too, during the Civil War, he owned ships which, running the Union

blockade both ways, plied between Galveston and nearby West Indian and Central

American ports. The cargo from Galveston was usually cotton. The cargo on the

return voyage was munitions, clothing and medicine, which Thomas House sold to

the Confederate army. Blockade-running was a risky enterprise, but a highly

profitable one.

 

P. 85 [in his political life, before meeting Wilson, Colonel House] assiduously

abvoided the official recognition which could have been his at any time during

his [political] service in Texas.

 

With each successful campaign, his stature both in Texas and in the national

Democratic Party grew, and so did his desire to move on to the larger stage of

national affairs. The difficulty was that during these years and for a decade

afterwards, as well (with the interruption in 1904), the Democratic Party in the

United States was dominated by William Jennings Bryan.

 

Bryan's ideas about currency seemed to House unsound. He did not think that

Bryan could be elected President, that his election would be a desirable think

for the country, or - and this was a crucial consideration - that Bryan would be

amenable to his advice. Writing of Bryan, House declared: " I do not believe that

any one ever succeeded in changing his mind upon any subject that he had

dtermined upon ... I believe he feels that his ideas are God-given and ar not

susceptible to the mutability of those of the ordinary human being. "

 

By 1896, House was eager to participate in a national election, and the national

leaders of the Democratic Party were eager to have him do so. However, he

remained aloof from the campaign because Bryan was the Democratic presidential

nominee. Bryan lost the election to McKinley.

 

In 1900, Bryan was nominated once again. By this time, House and the " Peerless

Leader " were on cordial personal terms, having been next-door neighbors in

Austin during the winter of 1898-99. Close personal association with Bryan only

confirmed House's assessment of the man and his potentialities. He found him " as

wildly impracticable as ever. " Once more he declined invitations to participate

in the presidential campaign. Bryan lost again to McKinley.

 

 

 

 

 

p. 93 At four o'clock on the afternoon of Novermber 24, 1911, Governor Wilson

called on Colonel House at the Hotel Gotham in New York City.

 

The two men liked each other immediately. " We talked and talked. We knew each

other for congenial souls at the very beginning, " House later recalled. The

conversation was wide-ranging and " we agreed about everything. That was a

wonderful talk. The hour flew away ... Each of us started to ask the other when

he would be free for another meeting, and laughing over our mutual enthusiasm,

we arranged an evening several days later when Governor Wilson should and have

dinner with me. "

 

The second meeting according to House was even more delightful. There was time

for a more detailed exchange of views. " It was remarkable. We found ourselves in

agreement upon practically every one of the issues of the day. I never met a man

whose thought ran so identically with mine ... I cannot tell you how pleased I

was with him. He seemed too good to be true. "

 

The Governor called on House several times that winter, and the initial rapport

between them was strengthened. House later wrote:

 

" We found ourselves in such complete sympathy, in so many ways, that we soon

learned to know what each was thinking without either having expressed himself.

 

" A few weeks after we met and after we had exchanged confidences with men

usually do not exchange except after years of friendship, I asked him if he

realized that we had only known one another for so short a time. He replied, " My

dear friend, we have known one another always. And I think this is true. "

 

The day after his first meeting with Wilson , House wrote his brother-in-law,

Sidney Mezes:

 

" We had a perfectly bully time. ... He is not the biggest man I have ever met,

but he is one of the pleasantest and I would rather play with him than any

prospective candidate I have seen ...

 

It is just such a chance as I have always wanted, for never before have I found

both the man and the opportunity.

 

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1913

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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1914

 

 

August Hecksher, Woodrow Wilson; A Biography (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,

1991)

 

p. 336-339 For Woodrow Wilson, sitting at the bedside of his daying wife, the

war came not entirely as a bolt from the blue. From his London post, Ambassador

Walter Hines Page had perceptively analyzed the European scene. The Anglo-German

rivalry made war seem inevitable, he wrote the President, except in those

moments when he " shared the feelings of most men that perhaps the terrible

modern engines of destruction would not, at the last moment, cause every nation

to desist. " Colonel House had been abroad that spring of 1914 on his first

fact-finding mission for the President. .. There was bound to be and " awful

cataclysm, " he wrote: " whenever England consents, France and Russia will close

in on Germany. " ...

 

The war's outbreak brought many problems that Wilson, under the burden of

bereavement, could leave to the initiative of his aides. The Secretary of State

[bryan] dealt with the situation of American citizens stranded in Europe; the

Secretary of the Treasury, with the mood of panic in the financial markets. But

on the great issue, defining and establishing of America's political and moral

position, he acted alone. That strict neutrality was essential he never doubted.

 

......

 

So now in the concept of neutrality, a course essentially negative and

expedient, he perceived ideal implications for his own country and for a world

at war.

 

......

 

To the President and his colleagues it became quickly apparent that neutrality

was not merely a posture or a state of mind, but a policy to be defined, a

series of measures to be worked out. Was it, for example, within the law and

spirit of neutrality to permit private bankers to make loans to belligerent

powers? Bryan, convinced that it was not, argued his case so forcibly that for a

brief while Wilson went along with him. Under pressure from McAdoo and Houston

he then reversed himself. To sell submarines to Britain was plainly unneutral;

but did that apply to submarine parts, or to submarines manufactured in

sections? After consideration, the President's decision was that it did not.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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1915

 

 

 

Hansen W. Baldwin, World War I; An Outline History (New York: Harper & Row,

1962)

 

p. 57 Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, had asked on Christmas

Eve, 1914: " Are there not other alternatives than sending our armies to chew

barbed wire in Flanders? " Lord Fisher, the firery First Sea Lord, who had been

recalled at seventy-four to replace Prince Louis of Battenberg, also favored

" eccentric strategy, " though his eyes were chiefly on the Baltic.

 

The concept of forcing the Dardanelles grew in many minds, but Churchill was its

most persistent and prominent advocate. The promised rewards were immense: the

out-flanking of the Central Powers' interior postion; the establishment of a

secure supply line via the Black Sea to Russia; virtual elimination of Turkey

from the war; the establihsment of a Balkin front; help to Serbia; perhaps

collapse of Austria-Hungary.

 

" The possession of the Dardanelles would have been

 

the richest prise in the world for the Allies. . . Admiral

 

von Tirpitz (German naval minister) stated in 1915, that

 

should the Dardanelles fall, then the World War has been

 

decided against us. "

 

Such immense possibilities deserved careful planning and tremendous coordinated

effort. ...

 

A combined amphibious operation was discussed - and though the concept was never

wholly abandoned - it was shelved temporarily to permit the navy to try to force

a passage.

 

P. 60 On March 18, a grand assault was made and almost - but not quite - the

thing was done. Before 2 P.M. the Turkish fire slackened and nearly died; the

gunners were demoralized, some of the guns had been wrecked, communications

destroyed, fire control impaired, ammunition nearly expended, less than thirty

armor-piercing shells remained. But with startling reversal fate deserted the

English; in quick succession the old French battleship Bouvet was sunk by a

mine; Inflexible struck another mine, and Irresistible still another. Later,

Ocean was fatally damaged by mine and shell fire. Irristible and Ocean were

abandoned in sinking condition in the face of the enemuy, as the British

withdrew. March 18, from grand beginning, drew on to puling end, and it was now

the army's turn.

 

A British expeditionary force, hastily assembled, numbered initially about

78,000 men; its backbone, the Anzac (Austrailian-New Zealand) Corps. They were

opposed by the newly constituted Turkish Fifth Army (astride the straits) of

about 84,000 men, under von Sanders. General Sir Ian Hamilton, an elusive

" British poet-general, " commanded the Allied expeditionary force.

 

P. 61-62 It was to drag on for months, but the first few days determined the

campaign's end. The beachheads, commanded by dominating enemy heights, were

fire-swept; the outflanking operation intended to bypass the stalemate of the

Western Front bogged down in trench warfare. Both sides attacked again and

again, with minor gains but major losses. As the hot Mediterranean summer came

on, the invaders began to go down with sickness: malaria and dysentery more than

decimated the ranks. A Turkish destroyer torpedoed and sank the British

battleship Goliath on the night of May 12-13, and a German U-boat torpedoed the

Triumph and sank the Majestic. The Daredanelles were becoming an open, seeping

wound.

 

But the British had the bull by the tail; they reinforced defeat and sent three

more divisions to Hamilton. The Turks, too, built up; the Turkish Fifth Army

numbered thirteen divisions by August when the British Army tried again. The

August attacks, with a new landing at Suvla Bay, took place from August 6-10,

but the objective - the dominating massif of Sari Bair, which the Anzacs had

tried to reach in April - was still denied to the Allies. The rest was aftermath

and predicament: how to face defeat and let go of the bull.

 

In September, one French and two British divisions were shifted to Salonika; in

October Hamilton was recalled and relieved by General Charles Monro. But it was

not until November 23, with casualties from enemy fire and inexorable nature

steadily mounting, that evacuation was decided upon after Lord Kitchener had

visited Gallipoli. The evacuation began, in phases, in December, and despite

tremendous anticipated losses it was successfully completed by January 8-9,

1916. The evacuation, ironically, was more brilliantly conducted by the British

than any other phase of the campaign.

 

But no matter how the cake was sliced, it was a great defeat, " the worst British

defeat between Saratoga and Singapore. " Some 489,000 Allied soldiers were

engaged; 252,000 were casualties. Of half a million Turks, 251,000 were killed,

wounded or missing, died of disease, or were evacuated sick. Gallipoli was a

maker and breaker of men and reputations: Kitchener's impeccable fame was

tarnished, Lord Fisher resigned in May, Churchill was out soon afterward,

Hamilton was done soldiering forever, except for memoirs and memories. But

Mustafa Kamal's star was on the rise; he was hailed as the " Savior of

Gallipoli. " .....

 

P. 72. Nineteen-fifteen was a year of flowing blood and small comfort for the

Allies. In Britain, the star of Lloyd George was rising; Herbert Asquith formed

a coalition cabinet; Churchill went off to fight in the trenches. Russia

suffered her greatest casualties of the war - perhaps two million killed and

wounded; another 1,300,000 in German prison pens. Serbia was overrun; the

Salonika expedition locked up in what Berlin scornfully called " their largest

internment camp. "

 

The Central Powers had established a secure fortress, a central position with

continuous communications and lines of supply from one partner to another.

Gallipoli had been a disaster. The Western Front, after more than two million

casualties, was still in stalemate . Townshend was beseiged in the blowzy Arab

town named Kut that few Englishmen had ever heard of. And the submarine was

ravaging the shippoing lanes. It had been a year of missed opportunities and

increasing hatred; slowly the comprehension of the meaning of Total War was

dawning on the world.

 

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

 

1916

 

John S. D. Eisenhower, Yanks; The Epic Story of the American Army in World War I

(New York: The Free Press, 2001) p. 299

 

Planning for mobilization of American industry began gradually starting early in

1916, after the sinking of the Lusitania. At that time the Naval Consulting

Board was set up for the Navy and the Kernan Board for the Army. These boards

made extensive survey of American industry; the Naval Consulting Board alone

surveyed eighteen thousand industrial plants. American industrial leaders, while

cooperative, were determined that the needs of war should not be allowed to shut

out civilian consumption. The answer therefore, was a partnership between

government and industry.

 

Still a sense of urgency was lacking. The Army Appropriation Act of 1916, which

set up the Council of National Defense, did so in the form of a rider to another

act, not a main provision. Nevertheless the council did come into existence. It

consisted of six cabinet officers who were directed to advise with the

Commission of Industrialists. The needs of industry were respected, of course,

but the nation's needs came first; even the industrialists appointed to the

committee were named by the President.

 

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

 

August Hecksher, Woodrow Wilson; A Biography (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,

1991)

 

p. 397 A more mundane matter of business [than Senate Judiciary Committee

backing and full Senate approval of Brandeis as Supreme Court justice] had to be

settled before [the 1916 Presidential election] campaign got under way, the

question of party chairmanship. McCombs [the pre-McAdoo, pre-House Wilsonian

progressive true-believer] had remained in the post, ineffectual, ill in body

and mind; and it was the nightmare of Wilson's supporters that he should resist

efforts to replace him. Wilson was convinced of his lack of fitness, but still

hesitated to break with a man who had been one of his first political sponsors.

A young Wilson supporter and admirer, a debonair financier who had recently come

to Washington and was beginning to make his mark as a Democratic loyalist and a

man of princely entertainments, Bernard M. Baruch, was assigned the task of

managing McComb's withdrawal. Baruch passed his first test well. In late April

McCombs assured the President that he would quietly give way to a successor. He

had been got rid of, House remarked jubilantly, " for all time. "

 

 

 

Hansen W. Baldwin, World War I; An Outline History (New York: Harper & Row,

1962)

 

p. 94-96 The year 1916 started with severe Allied reverses in the outer theaters

of the war. The Gallipoli evacuation was completed in January; on April 29,

Townshend, besieged since early December, 1915 in Kut al Imara in Mesopotamia by

Turkish and Arab forces, surrendered. Some 10,000 men - mostly of the Indian

Army, but including more than 2,000 Englishmen - were taken prisoner; 1,700

others had died, 2,500 had been wounded during the five-month siege. It had been

an epic of defeat; the men, decimated by disease, had been on short rations for

weeks, but as always in defeats, there had been mismanagement, poor leadership,

little strategic vision. And the epic was tarnished by a last-minute attempt by

the British government to raise the siege by attempts to relieve Kut, which

started in January under General Fenton Aylmer and continued through April under

General George Gorringe, cost the British almost 22,000 casualties - double the

strength of the Kut garrison.

 

For most of the rest of 1916, Mesopotamia was quiescent, as the British built up

their strength and their supplies. In August a general named Sir Stanley Maude

assumed comand, and at last man and opportunity had met. In December just before

the rains came, he started once again - with a superiority over the Turks of

more than two to one - a drive to the north toward the magic city of Baghdad.

 

............

 

Meanwhile inthe Suez Canal-Palestine area, raid and counterraid, buildup and

construction featured most of 1916. General Archibald Murry assumed command in

Egypt in March, 1916; the maximum force there of fourteen divisions was rapidly

reduced, however, to four. The British, toiling with intensity, had built

another fortified area near the canal, a strategic answer and a needlessly

expensive one to the Turkish attack on the canal in 1915. Then, painstakingly,

the British forces started to clear the Sinai peninsula of the enemy, a task

which had to be preceded and accompanied by immense logistic efforts, including

the laying of water pipelines, and the construction of a railway and a road.

 

But the Germans and Turks were not dismayed. In the caldron of the desert

summer, Kress von Kressenstein led 15,000 Turks and Germans across Sinai to

Romani near the seacoast. Murray fought a skillful battle (August 3-4) and

repulsed the enemy handily, but the Turks made good their retreat.

 

An Arab revolt against the Turks began in June in Saudi Arabia; on June 9 the

Arabs captured Mecca and in September, Taif.

 

By years end, the British had crossed the shifting sands of Sinai, complete with

their pipeline, railroad, and the road , and had taken El Arish, evacuated by

the Turks, and on December 23, Magdhaba, with most of its 1,300-man garrison.

The British defense of the Suez Canal now stood on its " natural " frontiers - at

the eastern boearders of the Sinai peninsula.

 

 

 

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1917

 

John S. D. Eisenhower, Yanks; The Epic Story of the American Army in World War I

(New York: The Free Press, 2001) pp.299-

 

The Council of National Defense wielded almost no power, however, and it was

soon succeeded by other, subordinate boards, the most notable of which was the

General Munitions Board, set up just before the United States declaration of

war. The success of the General Munitions Board, was largely due to the efforts

of its chairman, Frank A. Scott, president of a company manufacturing high-grade

machine tools for both the Army and the Navy. .....

 

These preliminary preparations, though a great step forward, proved inadequate

to prevent confusion among both the government and industry when war actually

came. Much of the problem lay in the old bugaboo, the independent bureaus, which

conducted purchasing independently despite progress made in bringing them under

the authority of all the chief of staff. No fewer than five (later 9) separate

authorities were all bidding against one another. In addition to the Navy, other

customers for war-related products included the Shipping Board, the Rialroad

Administration, and the Red Cross, among many others.

 

The solution to the probelm would have to come from a cooperative effort, and to

administer the sharing, President Wilson looked to a forty-seven-year-old native

of South Carolina, Bernard M. Baruch, much as he looked to George Creel to

mobilize public opinion. Baruch and Wilson had been friends for some time. Both

were progressives, ambitious men, and Southerners. To Wilson, Baruch combined

two ideal qualities: he was a Democrat who was also a Wall Street financier.

Since early summer of 1916, Baruch had already been participating in an advisory

capacity and by the spring of 1917 he enlisted a group of former business

contacts to administer raw material purchases for the military. Soon he was

appointed as Commissioner for Raw Materials in the newly formed War Industries

Board.

 

The coordination of war purchasing may have evolved slowly, but it was handled

with remarkable success. All boards and authorities operated with the power of

the President behind them, which included the power of commandeering. They

established a Priorities System, a Price-Fixing System, and a Conservation

System. So effective was the effort that twelve years later, General Hugh

Johnson [ future New Deal NRA leader, and attacker of Long and Coughlin -DE],

the officer so closely associated with it , could rhapsodize in a memo to

General Pershing:

 

" Whole strata of industry were integrated for the first time in our history.

Competition was adjourned. Industries learned to operate in vast units. Patents

and trade secrets were pooled. Hostility was erased and cooperation was

institutied. ...... Cooperation with Government - so suspiciously regarded in

the pre-war era - became commonplace. "

 

Hugh Johnson was an advocate, but he was also an expert. He took great pride in

declaring that the American war effort more nearly reached president Wilson's

ideal of an " entire nation armed " than did that of any other belligerent nation,

Germany included. In the accomplishments he described, however, there was one

serious caveat. The full power of America's industrial mobilization was not

geared to take effect until the year 1919.

 

<><><><><><><><><><><><>

 

 

 

Robert Lewis Taylor, Winston Churchill; An Informal Study of Greatness (Gerden

City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1952)

 

p. 54 A heartening aspect of his ministry [Minister of Munitions] was that upon

the first inkling of American intervention in the war, Churchill displayed that

practical view of his overseas cousins for which he has always been noted. Ina

ringing speech, he cried, " Bring on the American millions! And meanwhile,

maintain and active defensive on the Western Front, so as to economize French

and British lives and to train, increase, and perfect our armies and our methods

for a decisive effort later. " When the United States entered the war, Churchill

was given the job of equipping the American millions he had spoken of, and he

did it so well that afterwards General Pershing presented him with the

Distinguished Service Medal. He was the only Englishman to wear the decoration.

His assignemnt to prepare American soldiers for combat brought him into contact

with Bernard Baruch, who was then chairman of the War Industries Board at

Washington. They developed a close friendship that has continued without

interruption to the present.

 

In the last year of the war Churchill committed himself to an " anti-liberal "

action that gave him his envied start toward becoming the premier target of the

left-wingers, or plotters against society. ... His first such unpopularity was

gained in the strikes of 1918, which were similar to the Communist-planned

stoppages that swept Asmerica in the recent war. Like President Truman in the

later crisis, Churchill threatened to end the strikers' immunity from military

service unless they returned to work. ....

 

When the peace came, it returned Churchill much of his lost favor. ... In the

Government he soon consolidated his gains with such speed that, as the Tories

blinked, he found himself in the unprecedented position of holding two offices -

Secretary for War and Secretary for Air. The protests that arose over this

artistic coup shook the Cabinet. The old epithet of " medal snatcher " was changed

to " portfolio collector. " A Captain Wedgwood Benn, a Liberal M.P., arose in

Parliament and complained so testily that General Seely, the Under-Secretary for

Air, was suddenly convinced of Churchill's villainy and resigned. ...

 

....In the last days of the war he had enjoyed the distinction of crashing twice

in the same day, a record still admired in aeronautics circles.

 

<><><><><><><><><><><><>

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

August Hecksher, Woodrow Wilson; A Biography (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,

1991)

 

As the structure of inter-Allied cooperation was being successfully established

[by House], Wilson moved to reorganize the war effort at home. ... A moribund

Council of National Defense became the crisis oriented War Industries Board,

first headed by Frank A. Scott and then, in a dramatic maneuver, put under the

direction of Bernard M. Baruch. Overruling doubts, about the administrative

capacities of the flamboyant and wealthy speculator, Wilson was rewarded by the

serivces of a man intensely loyal and energetic, capable of swift decision and

not afraid of responsibility. Baruch's War Industries Board was in overall

charge of purchases by the government and the Allies; its business was to see

that manufacturers focused on goods essential to the war effort, and,

indirectly, to see that goods destined for civilian use were made in ways least

wasteful of labor and of scarce raw materials.

 

McAdoo, in charge of war financing, was most visible in his management of

successive war bond drives.

 

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

 

William Dudley, ed., World War I; Opposing Viewpoints (San Diego: Greenhaven

Press, 1998)

 

p. 171 War Bonds Can Be Raised Throught Bonds, William Gibbs McAdoo (1863-1941)

 

An important question the United States faced after it entered World War I was

how to raise the enormous sums of money necessay for its prosecution (the total

direct cost of the war would eventually amount to $35.5 billion, a greater sum

than the entire expenditures of the U.S. government in the first century of its

existence). Americans were divided on how best to raise this money. The approach

eventually favored by William Gibbs McAdoo, secretary of the treasury from 1913

to 1918, was to obtain the bulk of the funds through a series of goverment bond

drives. McAdoo named the bonds " Liberty Loans " and orchestrated a massive public

relations campaign that included posters, speeches by motion picture stars, and

other features designed to raise general public support for the war effort as

well as financial backing.

 

McAdoo announced the first of the Liberty Loans on May 14, 1917; a $2 billion

offering of bonds with an interest rate of 3 ½ percent, exempt from federal

taxes, and convertible to a higher rate if the government raised interest rates

for future Liberty Loans. The following viewpoint is taken from a speech that

McAdoo made one week later before bankers and business executives in Des Moines,

Iowa. ... He maintains that such bond measures are the best way to finance both

the war effort and the credits and loans America has extended to the Allies.

[Reprinted from William Gibbs McAdoo, address entered into S. Doc. 40, 65th

Cong., 1st sess., May 21, 1917.

 

 

 

--

 

 

 

Wars can not be fought without money. The very first step in this war, the most

effective step that we could take, was to provide money for its conduct. The

Congress quickly passed an act authorizing a credit of $5,000,000,000, and

empowered the Secretary of the Treasury, with the approval of the President, to

extend to the allied Governments making war with us against the enemies of our

country, credits not exceeding $3,000,000,000. Since that law was passed on the

24th of April, less than a month ago - the financial machinery of your

Government has been speeded up to top notch to give relief to the allies in

Europe, in order that they might be able to make their units in the trenches,

their machinery which is there on ground, tell to the utmost, and tell, if

possible, so effectively that it might not be necessary to send American

soldiers to the battle fields. As a result, we have already extended in credits

to these Governments - Great Britain, France, Italy, Russia, and Belgium -

something like $745,000,000, and we shall have to extend before this year is

out, if the war lasts that long, not $3,000,000,000 of credits, but probably

five billions or six billions. But it makes no difference how much credit we

extend, we are extending it for a service which is essential ... you're your own

protection, if no other grave issues were involved in this struggle.

 

Extending Credit

 

This initial financing was not an easy thing to do. The Congress authorized the

Secretary of the Treasury to issue, in addition to bonds, $3,000,000,000 of

one-year debt certificates. Their purpose is to bridge over any chasms, so to

speak, so that if the Treasury is short at any time, because of extraordinary

demands, we can sell these temporary certificates, supply the need, and then

sell bonds to take up these certificates. We have been selling temporary debt

certificates in anticipation of the sale of these Liberty bonds. The first issue

of bonds, - $2,000,000,000, - has not been determined by any arbitrary decision

or judgement; it has been determined by the actual necessities of the situation.

It is the least possible sum that we can afford to provide for the immediate

conduct of the war. We are trying to spread the payment for the bonds over as

large a period as possible, so that there shall be no interference with

business. This money is not going to be taken out of the country. All of this

financing is largely a matter of shifting credits; it is not going to involve

any loss of gold; it is not going to involve any loss of values. These moneys

are going to be put back into circulation, put back promptly into the channels

of business and circulated and recirculated to take care of the abnormal

prosperity of the country, a prosperity that will be greater in the present year

than ever before in our history.

 

As we sell these bond, we take back from the foreign governments, under the

terms of the act, their obligations, having practically the same maturity as

ours, bearing the same rate of interest as ours, so that as their obligations

mature the proceeds will be used to pay off the obligations issued by this

Government to provide them with credit. So you can see, fellow citizens, that in

extending credit to our allies, we are not giving anything to them. So far as

that is concerned, for the purposes of this war, I would be willing to give them

anything to gain success, but they don't ask that. They are glad and greatful

that the American government is willing to give them the benefit of its

matchless credit, a credit greater and stronger than any naiton on the face of

the globe. We give them credit at the same price our government has to pay you,

the people, for the use of its money, because we do not want to make any profit

on our allies. We do not want to profit by the blood that they must shed upon

the battle field in the same cause in which we are engaged.

 

What can you do to make this loan a success? You have got to work, gentlemen, to

make this loan a success. America never before was offered a $2,000,000,000

issue of bonds. This Government never has had to borrow so much money at one

time. The money is in the country and can be had if you men will simply say that

the Government can have it. The annual increase of our wealth is estimated to be

fifty billions of dollars. You are asked not to give anything to your

Government, but merely to invest 4 percent of the annual increase of wealth in

this country, to take back from your Government the strongest security on the

face of God's earth, and to receive in return for it 3 ½ percent per annum,

exempted from all taxation, with the further provision that if the Government

issues any other bonds during the period of this war at a higher rate of

interest than 3 ½ percent every man who has bought a 3 ½ percent bond may turn

it in and get a new bond at the higher rate of interest. Could anything be

fairer than that? Could anything be more secure than an obligation of your

Government, an obligation backed not alone by the honor of the American people -

which is of itself sufficient - but backed also by the resources of the richest

nation in the world, a nation whose aggregate wealth to-day is two hundred and

fifty billions of dollars; so that you take no risk, my friends, in buying these

bonds.

 

This bond offering is not going to be successful of its own momentum. Every man

and woman in this country must realize that the first duty they can perform for

their country is to take some of these bonds. Those who are not able to take

some of these bonds ought to begin saving monthly to take some of them; and if

they can not save monthly, or at all, they ought to make some man or woman who

is able to take some of these bonds . If you do that, my friends, this

first issue of $2,000,000,000 will be largely overd. It depends,

however, upon you. Your Government can not do what you can do for your

Government. A government is not worth a continental unless it has the support of

the people of the country. And one thing that makes me glad - I ought not to be

glad that there is a war - but I can not help feeling a certain amount of

reverent elation that God has called us to this great duty, not alone to

vindicate the ideals that inspire us but also because it has, for the time

being, eliminated detestable partisanship from our national life and made us one

solid people. As one people, my friends, with such an ideal, the Republic is

invincible and irrestible, and there can be no doubt whatever of the outcome. I

want you to give a thunderous reply on the 15th of June - Liberty bond

subscription day - to the enemies of your country.

 

<><><><><><><><><><><><>

 

Hansen W. Baldwin, World War I; An Outline History (New York: Harper & Row,

1962)

 

The dying Turkish empire had one brief respite and tow great defeats in 1917.

 

On the Caucasus front, the Russian pressure ended with the Russian Revolution;

from then until war's end, a few feckless Russian soldiers in isolated

detachments played inconsequential roles.

 

But in both Palestine and Mesopotamia the British reinforced success. David

Lloyd George, like Winston Churchill, believed in eccentric strategy - attack on

an enemy periphery - and in both Palestine and Mesopotamia political objectives

superceded military ones.

 

The Palestine campaign stemmed from the militarily sound concept of defending

the Suez Canal by an advance across Sinai to the strategic flanking position

near El Arish. This was attained in late 1916 and in the first days of January,

1917. British air reconnaissance, which aided the ground armies greatly in the

Palestine theater, placed the retreating Turks in early March in the

Gaza-Beersheeba area. Sir Archibald Murray, the British commander in Egypt, was

told to undertake a limited holding offensive to keep the Turks busy. He moved

to the attack on March 26 in the First Battle of Gaza, with five reinforced

divisions opposing about three Turkish divisions. It was a near victory, but bad

communications and unwarranted assumptions led to failure, British withdrawal,

and 4,000 casualties as against about 2,500 Turkish casualties.

 

Murray tried again on April 17, but this time against a strengthened Turkish

position. Another Turkish division had joined, and Kress von Kressenstein, the

wily German, had constructed mutually supporting strong points. The result of a

bloody frontal assault was a severe British repulse, 6,400 British casualties,

2,000 Turks. Murray was recalled, and there came to Palestine a redoubtable

general, nick-named " The Bull, " who had commanded the Third Army at Arras.

General Edmund Allenby knew what he was doing, what he wanted to do, and how. He

injected new life into the British forces.

 

Allenby asked and got reinforcements, and spent the summer in careful

preparations. He was given two divisions from Salonika, formed another from bits

and pieces in the theater, and by fall seven infantry and three cavalry

divisions were ready. The Turks, too were reinforced, but not strongly. Turkish

divisions freed by the Russian collapse had been formed into the so-called

Yilderim ( " Lightning " ) Force under the German General von Falkenhayn, and some

of these had reached the Gaza front. But the British had at least a two-to-one

superiority.

 

Allenby attacked the Beersheba-Gaza position on October 31; Beersheba was

captured by dusk after a mounted cavalry charge by an Austrailian brigade, and

Gaza fell on the night of November 6-7. It was victory, but incomplete; the

Turks held tenaciously to the key communications junctions which covered their

retrat. Both retreat and the pursuit were governed by an arid land's most

precious commodity - water.

 

The way to Jerusalem was now open. From a defensiveholding operation, the

Palestine campaign had grown into a major offensive; Jerusalem had become a

glittering political and psychological prize for the war-weary British people.

Allenby had brought victory to a people starved for victory; on to Jerusalem!

 

Supply and communications favored the British. The Turks depended upon a

1,300-mile railroad lifeline, with wood-burning locomotives; the British had

organized well their land routes across Sinai, and above all, they possesed the

inestimable advantage of command of the sea. The result was inevitable.

 

On December 8, Allenby launched an assault with four divisions against Turkish

positions which stretched from the Mediterranean, north of Jaffa, to angle back

southward in the Judean Hills in front of Jerusalem. The Turkish lines bent and

brok; on December 9 they retreated from Jerusalem; the Holy City was at last in

British hands. In a few days the rains came, and the campaigning season was

over.

 

The Palestinian campaign - fought by illiterate Turkish askars, Indian sepoys,

rambunctious Austrailians, Oxford dons, and Prussian junkers, and supplied by

man-back, donkeys, camels, mules, horses, railroads, pipelines, and ships - was

aided by an Arab revolt, incited, inspired, and organized by British pounds and

promises, and by the tortured genius of a young British archaeologist, T.E.

Lawrence. During 1917 Lawrence and his Arab bands - mostly camel moumnted -

harried, cut off, and immobilized Turkish forces along the so-called Hejaz

railroad in Arabia. During Allenby's advance into Palestine, Lawrence and his

irregulars covered the British right flank, made raids and reconnoitered, and

supplied invaluable information about Turkish dispositions. Lawrence was one of

that vanishing breed, an intellectual romantic, who was at the same time a man

of rugged action, with a natural eye for terrain and an aptitude for soldiering.

The Arab revolt and Lawrence, though important, were ancillary to Allenby's

success' and Lawrence will live more for a book than a battle - his immortal

Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

 

In Mesopotamia, the prize of Bagdad lured British armies ever northeward; Sir

Stanley Maude with a quarter of a million men (less than half of them combat

troops) far outnumbered the riddled Turks. The battle was as much one of supply

as of bullets. River craft in large numbers, laborers, and animals of all kinds

formed Maude's lifeline to the sea.

 

Maude, after stubborn resistence and delay caused by torrential rains, finally

cleared the enemy from Kut al Imara, the Shumran bend and Asiziyeh (March 4),

which was developed as an air base for fourteen British planes. Halil had one

11,0000-man corps in front of Baghdad -attempted to make a stand at Diyala, but

he was outmaneuvered and far outnumbered.

 

The city of the Arabian Nights fell after small-scale fighting on March 11, and

a dream of " Drang nach Osten " - the Berlin-to Baghdad railway - was ended.

.........

 

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

 

John Pearson, The Private Lives of Winston Churchill (New York: Simon &

Schuster, 1991)

 

p. 159-160 Ever since childhood, Churchill had been turning to aggression to

dispel depression. Now he found in art the ideal way of sublimating his

aggression. And he learned, too, to curb his anxieties, to cope with " Black Dog "

as best he could, and to wait. Then, in the early summer of 1917, patience and

painting were rewarded. The new Prime Minister, Lloyd George, summoned his old

colleague from misery and exile. On July 12, 1917, Churchill was readmitted to

the Cabinet, and his task suited his energies - if hot his original ambitions.

The " man of war " as Baldwin called him, was made Minister of Munitions.

 

.....

 

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

 

1918

 

 

 

John Pearson, The Private Lives of Winston Churchill (New York: Simon &

Schuster, 1991)

 

p. 160-162 On a peaceful afternoon in 1918 a group of Royal Flying Corps

mechanics waited by a staff car on the perimeter of a former meadow, now

officially a " flying station, " just outside the Surrey village of Godstone. Less

than a hundred miles away across the english Channel the last throw of the

German High Command was about to be bloodily repulsed by the Allied armies on

the western front, but none of this disturbed the rural calm of a Saturday

afternoon in southern England.

 

.......Before the propeller had stopped, a bulky figure in a sheepskin coat had

heaved himself out of the passenger cocpit and the car had started off to pick

him up. The driver knew from experience that Churchill was invariably in a

hurry.

 

Forty minutes earlier, Churchill had been driven in a very large Rolls-Royce to

the aircraft from his headquarters at the Chateau Fouquienberg, just behind the

Allied lines near Amiens. Her referred to the place as " Chateau Fuck and

Bugger, " and the Rolls had been specially lent him for his spell in France by

his great friend " Benny, " Duke of Westminster. " You might tell Winston in answer

to his wire that I only have a shut Rolls at present, if that's any use to him, "

Westminster told Churchill's secretary when he asked if he could lend him an

open Rolls on his appointment as Minister of Munitions in Lloyd George's

government in July 1917.

 

It seemed a typically casual arrangement, but the use of this personal

Rolls-Royce exemplified the optimistic and flamboyant mood with which Churchill

undertook his duties as the war was ending. After the personal disaster of

Gallipoli, the months spent recovering from deep depression, and active service

at the front, he was back where he knew he belonged - in power. His morale and

confidence seemed entirely restored now that he was once again in office. His

task, as Lloyd George knew when he appointed him, was one that matched his

ingenuity and boundless energy. Present at every major battle to ensure that the

guns had their munitions, he was a warlord once again. He loved the role,

bullying the generals and thriving on the breath of battle. Half seriously,

Clementine had called him " a Mustard Gas fiend, a Tank jugggernaut and a Flying

terror, " but at least he was no longer the gray-faced husband she remembered,

with the doom of the Dardanelles across his brow.

 

.......

 

......The chance arose to buy a farmhouse of their own in the Sussex farming

country near East Grinstead. It was called Lullenden and seemed as peaceful and

romantic as its name. ......

 

.........During the two years Churchill actually owned it, it was still very much

Lullenden Farm, and Sarah simply called it " a small farm outside East

Grinstead. " But small it was not. ...

 

..... There were seven bedrooms, a dining room to seat eighteen, and a galleried

seventeenth-century drawing room. Lloyd George, Sir Ernest Cassel, the press

rporietor Lord Ridell, and the American lawyer, diplomat, and businessman

Bernard Baruch were among the weekend visitors.

 

 

 

 

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1919

 

Lt. Colonel Richard Stockton, 6th, Inevitable War (New York: The Perth Company,

1932)

 

P. 516-517 .... Speaking of the World War, Mr. Bernard Baruch, Chairman of the

1918 War Industry Board, said, " Had the war gone on another year our whole civil

population would have gradually emerged (as wardrobes and inventories became

exhausted) in cheap but servicable uniform. Types of shoes warn were to be

reduced to two or three. The manufacture of pleasure automobiles was to cease.

Flaps from pockets and unnecessary trim in clothing would have disappeared.

Steel had already been taken out of women's corsets.

 

" The conservation program was, of course, much broader than this. It affected

practically the whole field of commodities . . . We had gasless, meatless,

sugarless, fuelless days, and in ways and methods too numerous to mention we

were greatly increasing the supply for essential uses by cutting off supply for

nonessentials. " [Army and Navy Register, June 27, 1931]

 

<><><><><><><><><><><><>

 

Eliot Asinof, 1919; America's Loss of Innocence (New York: Donald L. Fine, Inc.,

1990)

 

p. 90-91 Wilson landed in Brest on the thirteenth of the month, exactly as he

had arranged in December at his first arrival. (Numbers, it seemed, were one of

his more bizarre passions, and thirteen was his favorite. Because of the

thirteen original colonies and the stripes of the flag? Because of the thirteen

letters in his name? Because others thought it to be unlucky? ) On this

thirteenth, however, Wilson took a far greater trouncing than he was prepared

for. In his absence, his dear friend, Colonel Edward House, had permitted the

detachment of the league from the preliminary treaty as a concession to the

other conferees. The preliminary treaty dealt exclusively with economic and

military matters. The resolution of the more complicated, and controversial

league covenant was to be withheld for the final treaty that would be drafted

later.

 

Wilson was stunned. When he emerged from his cabin after a meeting with House,

his wife Edith reported that " he had aged ten years. ... I look back on that

moment as a crisis in his life .. From it date the long years of illness. " Said

Wilson: " House has betraye everything I have worked for.... "

 

........The significance of the scene lay in the fact that it could have

happened, that the fate of nations lay in the neurotic complexities of such a

relationship. What, one might ask, was House doing there in the first place? No

one had elected him. He had never held political office. The Senate had not

approved his appointment. What forces had arranged that such enormous power be

placed in his hands? Th

 

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1920

 

 

 

[Part Two Follows]