The Blackpore Mutiny of 1824 took place in which enlisted Indian sepoys mutinied at Blackpore. The troops were upset about lack of sensitivity to cultural concerns and being transported by sea. Ultimately the British attacked the camp and 180 of the Indian troops were killed.
Last edition:
Portugal recognized the independence of its former colony, Portugese Guinea, which had become the Republic of Guinea-Bissau.
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British and French troops landed on Tanna to end the attempted succession from the Anglo-French Condominium of the island in the New Hebrides.
President Nixon and Soviet General Secretary Brezhnev signed a ten year economic agreement in Moscow, and then flew on to Simferopal in Crimea for a trip to Brezhnev's beach home at Oreanada.
Mikhail Baryshnikov, Soviet ballet start, defected in Toronto.
Mexican Murualist Xavier Guerrero died at age 77.
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French forces number 14,000 men attacked the Moroccan stronghold of Mouha ou Hammou Zayani at Khenifra, Morocco.
Sparks was a very early Unitarian minister who had served as the Chaplain for the House of Representatives, and who would go on to serve as the President of Harvard. He died in 1866 at the age of 76, having therefore had a life span which would have overlapped the War of 1812, the Mexican War and the Civil War. Fairly typically for the era, he'd been married twice, his first wife having been taken by death when they'd been married only three years.
We must be clear that the modernization of the Church on the great anthropological questions comes through Europe. In the West, there is greater sensitivity towards certain issues such as gender or homosexuality than in Asia or Africa. Although in Europe and the United States the Church is in decline, paradoxically the young Churches that are growing in Asia or Africa are the most conservative. Western societies are moving towards a new idea of mankind, and that game is undoubtedly being played in Europe, which is why there are so many European cardinals in this consistory
Piero Schiavazzi, professor of Vatican Geopolitics at Link University in Rome.
Wow, talk about missing the point.
I don't know why the Pope picks the Cardinals that he does, but if this is the reason, it shows a real misappreciation of the evidence.
The church is on the rise in Asia and Africa, where the parishioners are conservative.
It's in decline in Europe, although that decline tends to be misunderstood and to some degree exaggerated, where contemplating "anthropological questions" is the rage. It really isn't in decline in the US in the way that's asserted, as overall numbers remain steady, but partially due to immigration. And not noted by Signore Schiavazzi, conservatism is on the rise in younger American Catholics.
Indeed, also in the West, a recent survey showed that amongst Australian Catholic women, younger women were noticeably more conservative than older ones.
So appoint European Cardinals who are sensitive to the issues where the Church is failing?
Eh?
The old maxim is that nothing succeeds like success, to which we must presume that nothing fails like failure.
All over the globe, and not just in religion, the older generations that advanced the liberalism of the 70s, 80s, and 90s continue to remain in power in significant ways and don't seem to grasp that the failed legacy of that is not something that younger generations, heavily impacted by it, wish to advance further.
The impact of Cardinal appointments is much like that of Supreme Court Justices. It's difficult to tell what they'll really do and even more difficult to tell what a Pope will do at first. But if Signore Schiavazzi is correct, this is a bad sign. Once again, the Papacy will not make major doctrinal changes, because it cannot, but there have been historic periods of Church failure (some involving laxity) that resulted in large departures from the Church. History, we're told, doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. A sort of small Counter Reformation of sorts is going on amongst the young, while at higher levels the necessity for that seems to be not only not appreciated, but perhaps not even grasped.
Also not grasped, seemingly, anywhere in the West is that the colonial era is over. We apparently have never understood that wind the "winds of change" swept colonial powers out of Africa and Asia, it also swept the cultural balance of the world.
Europe's impact on the world was enormous culturally. Indeed, it triumphed. But that culture was a Christian one, no matter how poorly grasped that was and no matter how poorly expressed. Much of what we take for granted, indeed liberalism itself, about "modern culture" is Christian, and pretty much exclusively Christian, in origin. It's no accident that cultural decay has set in, in the West, as the Christian roots have is culture have been strained by a long competing culture, that of consumerism, of which both advanced consumer society and socialism are expressions.
But Christianity itself, at least Apostolic Christianity in the form of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, has never been a European thing. Indeed, the fundamental event of European culture was the spread of (Apostolic/Catholic) Christianity within it, which forever changed it. But Christianity didn't come out of Europe, and indeed it took the rise of Islam to cause there to be a temporary hiatus in it having a major African expression. St. Augustine of Hippo was a Berber, not a European, and the Bishop of Hippo Regius, which is modern Annaba, Algeria.
Of course, all of the Apostles were Jews from the Middle East. The first Pope, Peter, was from modern Israel. St. Paul, who dealt with what Signore Schiavazzi calls a "new idea of mankind", as there are no new ideas really, and dismissed the conduct that we now are re contemplating as, well whatever we're re contemplating, was from Tarsus, in what is modern Turkey and which was then part of the Greco Roman world. Pope Victor I, who died in 199, was a Berber. Pope Miltiades was also a North African, as was Pope Gelasius (who was for strict Catholic orthodoxy). Pope Saint Anicetus was a Syrian as was Pope Sisinnius, Pope Constantine, and Pope Gregory III.
What ended the strong influence of North Africa, of course, was the Islamic conquest of the region, although remnant North African Catholic churches held on until the early 1400s. Even as Christianity has spread around the world, and conquered almost all of non Arab and non Berber Africa, it's been easy to forget that its not a Eurpean religion.
That mistaken impression is about to end, and it can't end soon enough. Trying to somehow assume that decaying European culture needs to be accommodated, if that's occurring, is a mistake. It needs to be reformed, and it will be, and a rising Africa and Asia will be part of that.
Southern Rhodesia became a British colony when the British government took it over from the British South Africa Company due to a 1922 referendum. Prior to that time, it had been informally been known as Zambesia, based on the Zambezi River. It would form a government on October 1 and would retain its status, sort of, as a British colony until 1964.
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Southern Rhodesia, massively British in terms of its colonial character, saw itself in that fashion, and its white residents had been highly supportive of World War One. They would be again of World War Two.
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Flag of Northern Rhodesia.
In 1953, it was confederated by the British with Northern Rhodesia, which had a larger landmass. In the 1950s, it began to fall apart with the rise of African nationalism. Northern Rhodesia became independent and changed its name to Zambia in 1964, interestingly changing its name during the course of the Olympics, and therefore entering the games with one name and exiting it with another.
When Northern Rhodesia became independent, with the cooperation of the British government, it struck fear into Southern Rhodesian whites, and the country, which was controlled by them, issued its Unilateral Declaration of Independence as Rhodesia in 1965. The winds of change already well set in, Rhodesia, while it had cooperation from various countries, was unrecognized by any. It fought an increasingly losing battle against African nationalist forces in the 60s and 70s, and returned to British colonial status brief in 1979, before becoming the current state of Zimbabwe.
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Ada Delutuk Blackjack was rescued from Wrangel Island. A Native Alaskan, she had survived alone on the island since September 15, 1921. The only native member of an expedition to the Arctic island, which sought to claim it for Canada, she had been hired as a cook and because she was good at sewing. The other members of the expedition died on the remote island or disappeared seeking to walk the 90 miles to Siberia to obtain help.
She was not completely alone. The expedition's cat, Victoria, also survived.
She took the job to raise money for her son's treatment for tuberculosis, and in fact upon her retrun moved to Seattle so that he could be treated there. Divorced from her first husband prior to the expedition, she remarried and ultimately returned to Alaska and died in Palmer at age 85 in 1983.
The object of a Canadian claim to the island was quixotic at best, as it is well off of Siberian Russia. The large island features flora and fauna, including large numbers of polar bears, but remains uninhabited by humans. It is believed the world's last surviving mammoth populations lived on the island, dying out only perhaps as recently as 2,000 years ago. Musk ox and reindeer have been introduced to the island for some weird reason, and wolves have reintroduced themselves.
I started this thread some time ago, put it aside, and then oddly a few weeks later, heard a Parish Priest make the observation during a homily.
Synchronicity at work?
I've since linked the theme in to another post, which then ends up being published, as it were, prior to what should have been the original entry, that entry being here:
So we return to finish our original thoughts.
St. Augustine of Hippo, in The City of God, describes the fact and the era of the collapse of the Roman Empire.
Rome, it is often noted, wasn't built in a day, and it didn't collapse in one either. People living through the horrible experience knew things weren't going well, but they wouldn't have necessarily thought that "well, it's 450 and Rome is over". They wouldn't have thought that in 500, or 600 for that matter.
Human beings, having fairly short lifespans, tend to see all developments in terms of their lifespans. In True Grit the protagonist Maddy Ross states, "a quarter-century is a long time", but in real terms, except for our own selves, it isn't. Things that occurred only a century ago, and I used only advisedly, didn't really happen all that long ago in terms of eras and changes, although here too we are fooled by the fact that the last century has been one of amazing technological development, which is not the human norm, with this being particularly true of the middle of the 20th Century.
I note this as the entire Western World is in turmoil right now, seemingly without any existential or metaphysical center, which explains a lot of what we're enduring in the world. How did we get here?
There's a good argument that it's due to the end of the Reformation, or rather, it's collapse.
St. Augustine lived at the beginning of Rome's death throes. That same era was the birth of the Catholic world, and I say that advisedly. Some would say the Christian world, but they'd be wrong in the way they mean it. Christianity, all of it, was Catholicism. It would be right up until the Reformation. Even the Great Schism, which was a schism, really only had its final act in 1453, quite close to Luther's famous apocryphal nailing on the Cathedral door in 1517.
The English-speaking world is a product of the Reformation, and while it now seemingly regrets it, the English-speaking world was the major, influencer of the world's history and cultures. By extension, therefore, the Reformation influenced the entire globe.
That's not praise for the Reformation. Indeed, I'd have preferred it never have had happened. That's just a fact.
The Christian Era is usually calculated to have commenced at the time of the Crucifixion of Christ, which occurred sometime in the 30s, but it might be more instructive for our purposes to look at the 200s or the 300s, but a person could go earlier. The very first council, a general gathering of Bishops of the Church, occurred in about the year 50, and is reflected in the Book of Acts. It dealt with some issues that had come up in the very early Church, but for our purposes one of the things worth noting is that it was a Council of Bishops, which means that there were Bishops. This shouldn't be a surprise, but due to the way the Reformation attacked the history of the Church, it might be to some. Peter, the first Pope (that title of course wouldn't have been in use) was there.
The Council of Jerusalem is not regarded as an ecumenical council, as Church historians would note. The first one of those was the aforementioned Council of Nicea, which occurred in 325. Some Protestants would date the founding of the Catholic Church to that date completely erroneously, a Reformation era lie, as it's been one that has been particularly attacked by Reformation Protestants at some point. The reasons are fairly obvious, really. The Council gathered to address heresy, put it down, and it did. It's noteworthy as a Council for the additional reason that it was the first to occur during the reign of a Christian Roman Emperor, Constantine the Great, who stayed out of it, as is often not appreciated either.
Indeed, going forward, that reflected much of the history of the Church. If we date the Christian era from, let's say, 100 and go forward to 1517, generally the Church was independent of the state and defined the metaphysical.
This is significant in that it was universally agreed that there was a metaphysical, or an existential, that was outside human beings, greater than it, independent of it, and which humans had to conform themselves to. In other words, it was accepted that reality defined humans, and not the other way around.
Luther didn't mean to attack that core principle, but his actions set a revolution against it in motion. Luther didn't even really mean to separate from the Church at first, but rather to criticize what he saw as abuses. Things took off, however, mostly as German princes saw this as an opportunity to say that they could define certain things locally, rather than the Church. After a time, Luther, who didn't find German bishops following him, claimed in essence that the clergy could independently interpret all matters theological, although he himself only attacked a limited number of principals.
Luther was a cleric, of course, and he didn't really start off to, and in fact did not, establish a Church that departed from the Catholic Church in all things. Indeed, Lutheran services today strongly resemble Catholic ones. But following "reformers" did. The logic was fairly inescapable. If Martin Luther, who wasn't a bishop, could tell the bishops what doctrine ought to be, anybody could, or at least any Christian could. More radical species of revolution, therefore, followed Luther.
In the English speaking world, the Reformation got started with King Henry VIII's desire to secure an annulment, not a divorce, from his wife. When the Church found the marriage to be valid, he declared that it was he, not the Church, who was the supreme religious figure in England. That was really a different position than Luther had taken, but Henry opened the door to challenging the Church, which would play out in a particularly odd form in England as various regimes teetered between radical Protestantism and Quasi Catholicism, before settling in on an uneasy truce between the two in the form of the Church of England in England. In Scotland, which England had heavy influence over, Presbyterianism set in as a form of more radical Protestantism. In the form of the United Kingdom, coming officially into existence in 1707, the Crown would spread both faiths around the globe, with the unwilling Irish taking Catholicism with them. In Europe south of the Rhine, of course, Catholicism remained, so French and Spanish colonialism took Catholicism with them as well.
English-speaking colonists were often religious dissenters early on, holding to the more radical form so Protestantism, while later English colonists tended to bring in the "established" church. In neither instance, however, was it ever the case that there was a rejection of Christianity. The Enlgisih had, through their leaders, rejected Rome, but they hadn't rejected all variants of the faith. Be that as it may, the concept of rejection based on independent belief was firmly established, first in 1517, and then in 1534. The door was open.
When the United States came into being, it did so as a Protestant country. Canada as well, in spite of a large, but marginalized Catholic population, and so too Australia and New Zealand. Indeed, anywhere the English went, and they went everywhere, Protestantism went with them.
This is so much the case that American Christians tend to think that Catholics are simply a minority all over the globe and that "Christians", which is how many define themselves, represent the Christian Faith.
Far from it.
Conservatively, 50.1% of the Christian population of the globe is Catholic. Another 11.9% of Christians are Orthodox. Given this, over 60% of Christians are Apostolic Christians who, while not united, generally recognize each other's Holy Orders as valid, and who moreover share the overwhelming majority of their tenants of their Faiths. I've seen estimates, however, that place 80% of all practicing Christians as Catholics. Indeed, while Protestant missionaries frequently work to convert Catholics in poor countries, calling into question really their status as real missionaries, the Catholic Church has large numbers of underground Christian members in its ranks all over the globe, and local Protestant conversions in some areas are in reality probably often conversions of convenience and not really all that deep in any form.
Protestants are estimated by Pew at 36.7% of the Earth's Christians, if the Pew figures are otherwise correct.
Maybe that's right, but as noted I've seen other figures that skew the Catholic figure upwards significantly, and the Protestant figure downward.
In the U.S., however, 48.9% of the population is Protestant and 23% are Catholic. That makes Catholics a large minority, but a minority. Orthodox are an even tinier minority at .4% of the population. It's most strongly represented, not surprisingly, in Alaska. It has been growing, however, due to what we're noting in this threat. As the Protestant faiths collapse in on themselves, some abandoning them go into Orthodoxy.
Indeed, one entire congregation in Gillette did just that.
Luther's biggest accomplishment, one that is acknowledged and celebrated today in some European countries that underwent the Reformation, was to bring about the modern world of individualism. Reformation Day, for example, is a public holiday in five German states and even Lego put out a Lego variant of Martin Luther in 2017 to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. What's really being celebrated isn't so much his theology, but the concept of radical individuality.
That same individuality, however, has led to the collapse of Protestantism, or at least a massive contraction from what it once was. This is constantly in the news, but rarely understood. In the English-speaking world the urban British began to lose their attachment to the Church of England long ago, which after all had a strong connection with the English establishment, not the English underclass, something that was really the opposite of the oppressed Catholic Church. Put another way, Henry VIII did not destroy the monasteries to benefit the poor, and they didn't.
Elsewhere, British imported Protestantism was strong, with this particularly being the case in North America, with this most particularly the case with the United States which had large numbers of adherents to Protestant faiths that the British Crown had oppressed. But by the turn of the 19th/20th Century, things were very slowly changing. The collapse of the Progressive movement, which was strongly tied to Protestantism, accelerated it as more radical reformers on the hard left pitched for social change. This trend was strongly in place by the 1930s.
It took the post-war economic boom to really set it in, however, even thought that, like so many other things, was not apparent at the time. Following World War Two, in fact, main line Protestant churches grew, as newly monied middle class Americans went into them. The last gasp of Catholics converting to main line Protestant churches as they'd economically arrived occurred, something that came to an end with John F. Kennedy arrived. By that time, however, the Baby Boom children were coming into their own.
Raised in a Protestant culture but coming into massive societal wealth, much of the Boomer ethos amounted to nothing other than being allowed to do what they wanted to without hindrance. The table was already set for that by the increased wealth of the post-war era and the arrival of the Playboy era starting in 1953. They took it and ran with it, rejecting anything that got in the way with license. Protestant churches, which already had the concept of being democratic, responded by getting on board in many instances. "Liberal" theology spring up and took root in some, followed by the widespread turning of a blind eye to many other things.
For example, as late as the 1930s the Anglican Communion rejected divorce to the same extent that the Catholic Church does. As the Sexual Revolution came in, it started to turn a blind eye to this, and now it'd be extraordinarily difficult to find any Protestant Church that cares anything about divorce, something clearly prohibited by the New Testament, at all, save for some very conservative Protestant denominations or semi denominations.
This, in fact, provides a good example. Christ prohibited divorce. St. Paul condemned not only sex outside of marriage, but listed specific sex acts and behaviors. The Anglican Communion now has bishops who engage in the very activities that St. Paul condemned.
It can't really be justified, but it's occurred as these institutions are, at the end of the day, democratic. Religion is not. And those sitting in the pews, in their heart of hearts, know the difference. The leaders, like leaders of democratic institutions, attempt to do the obvious, which is to modify doctrine to satisfy the cravings of the electorate.
Because religion is existential by its nature, it's not working.
This has seen the massive drop-off of membership in some Protestant denominations. I'ts also seen ruptures in others, as "conservative", by which is really meant those adherent to basic tenants of the Christian faith, split off. At the same time it's seen the growth of "non-denominational" churches, some of which chose not to challenge the behavior of the congregants and focus instead, broadly, on the theme that everyone is going to Heaven, something that the New Testament doesn't support at all.
Naturally, as part of all of that, people have been just dropping out, with WASPs dropping out most of all. The white upper middle class, which reflects more than anything else the spirit of the 60s and the Boomers, would rather sit comfortably behind imaginary gated walls and not be bothered with having to have restrictions of any kind. Not all of them, of course, but enough to have impacted and still be impacting the culture.
It shouldn't be imagined that Catholics have been immune from this, in European cultures. The spirit of the age took hold to a very large extent, but not the same universal degree, in the 1970s, impacted it as well, with the stage being set, in the U.S. in the Kennedy election of 1960. Kennedy's election heralded the end of open public prejudice, for a time, against the Catholic Church in the U.S. and Kennedy's Catholic on Sunday declaration essentially muted differences in the Faith from Protestant faiths, which were and are very real, to private ones, rather than the open and obvious public ones they had been. The spirit of the age that took hold in the late 1960s led to blisteringly poor catechesis in the 70s, and a generation, or more, of Catholics that didn't understand that there really were massive differences between Apostolic Christianity and Protestantism. The term "Cafeteria Catholic" came in, in no small part as younger Catholics weren't told they weren't in a cafeteria. Catholics were almost informed that major tenants of the faith, including the need for Confession, and the prohibition against marrying outside the Faith, were merely options in the 70s and 80s. Clawing the way back from that has been difficult and massive damage has been done. Moreover, as Western Catholicism suffers from the same Baby Boomer control that so many other things do, the process of recovery has been slow as those who came up during that age have yet to yield control.
At any rate, this is where the spirit of our age comes from. It turns out that given time, and money, people's thoughts don't go to higher things, but only to themselves. Even people immediately around them can be a bother. Ultimately the generation that had calimed to be for "Love" turns out to be for self love in every way describable, including to its own destruction.
Of course, as noted, people know that something is wrong and that's creating massive social disruption. The problem ultimately comes to be that reconstruction is very difficult. People lead down the road so far, that then realize they're being led to where they don't want to go, will often just sit down and demand that the new world be built right there. I.e., divorce was okay. . . but we'll stop here. Or, homosexual marriage was okay, and we'll stop there. The problem is that you really can't stop anywhere you want, as it suffers from the same intellectual deficit that going further on the road that you are on, if it's a false road, does.
Hence, as noted, the inaccurate contemplation of Susan Stubson in the NYT that we wrote about the other day. Not realizing it, her departure from Apostolic Christianity didn't go deeper, as she believes it did, but took her on the path to where she is right now, and where's she's now uncomfortable. Some roads get rocky.
At the end of the day, however, what this really is, is the collapse of the Reformation. It's in its final stages. Having attacked the existential nature of the Church in favor of clerical liberty, and then that in the name of individual theological liberty, it ultimately has to be for radical individual liberty. But, as we don't actually exists as planetary mammals of our own description with our own universe, to which the laws of the existential must bend, that can't work.
And it isn't.
Collapses are horrific messes.
At the time that Augustine wrote City of God, the collapse of the Roman world wasn't close to being worked out. The long slow developments that gave rise to the Great Schism still hasn't been worked out, and it started prior to the Reformation. The Reformation was a revolution, and looking back from a distant future, it will have been seen to only now being playing itself out.
Revolutions cause causalities. There have been many, and there will be many more to come. The entire Western World was impacted, to some degree, by the Reformation, some of it more than others. Its collapse is being particularly felt in the English-speaking world, and interestingly also in the Lutheran world. This will get worse before it gets better, but as the Reformation turned out to be anti-natural in the end, or took that turn at some point, it will get better as a new Counter Reformation correct the errors now being inflicted upon us. That too is already starting.
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May 13, 2023
Mexican Border Crisis
The predicted chaos did not ensue yesterday, which doesn't mean it's not arriving.
Those seeking asylum, FWIW, are required to have first applied in the countries from which they are departing, or online, or if they traveled through another country or countries, those places. The problem remains of dealing with the requests of those who are allowed in.
Most of the migrants are fleeing economic distress or violence in their homelands, the product of a wide-ranging number of things, and which varies by countries. Haiti, for example, remains impoverished as a legacy of paying its original French slaveholders upon achieving independence long ago. Almost all of the Central American and South American states contributing to the human flood also suffer from the legacy of Spanish Colonialism, which saw its original liberators largely act in the name of their own self-interest rather than that of the native populations. Stable Central American states, looked at with a long lens, have a single stable government example, which also contributes to the flood due to being in an unstable neighborhood. The existence of multiple Central American states in the first place is nonsensical and is a symptom of failed policies itself. They should really all be part of Mexico, which in fact was at least partially the plan early on. Repeated efforts to reunite into one state have failed, leaving tiny rump states that have been corruptly ruled and which have fallen into the control of criminal gangs, something the US's unending appetite for illegal drugs, a symptom of its own failed American Dream, fuels.
Central Americans have lived in fear of US intervention for decades, although that seems to have ceased, as has U.S. intervention. Unfortunately, the region is terribly governed, with Socialist ineptitude governing in some places (Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela), to simply featuring failed states in others. The US has repeatedly tried a "good neighbor" policy of non-intervention, and it retains guilt over supposed "American colonialism" for intervention. The US last put troops on the ground in Panama when it deposed the Panamanian leader during the Reagan Administration and then went right on to invade Grenada.
The problem remains that the neighbor analogy may be too appropriate. It might be neighborly to ignore your neighbor's dissolute living for a while, but when it turns violent, do you?
It's clear something has to be done to address the root problems of what's being seen. But what is that?
Since the Act of Union in 1707, there have been only thirteen British monarchs, the first being Queen Anne. The current royal family, if we discuss direct and not remote ancestry, dates back only to William of Orange, who was king from 1689 to 1702, prior to the Act of Union. Anne was his successor and reigned until 1714. She was in ill health most of the time.
Had the throne passed to Anne's nearest relatives, it would have gone to a member of the House of Stuart, who were Catholic. Anne was an Anglican, but she was the daughter of Charles II who became Catholic on his deathbed and who harbored strong Catholic sympathies, in spite of living a wild life, his entire life. Indeed, his father Charles I was a High Church Anglican who teetered on that edge himself. George I was chosen over 60 Stuart claimants simply because the Whigs had taken control of parliament, and he was a protestant.
I note this as people not familiar with the English monarchy, or perhaps more accurately the monarchy of the United Kingdom, seem to assume that the throne has always been inherited. Not so. It's been inherited since George I, when he was crowned the King over Catholic claimants who held undoubtedly better claims.
The second item of interest there is that the British monarchy is, therefore, by recent tradition, and by law, "Protestant", which his to say, Anglican.
Those watching the coronation yesterday, if they were not familiar with the process, would have been struck by how deeply religious it was. I don't think people, or perhaps more accurately Americans, expected that, as Americans have the stupid Disney view of monarchy, in which there'd be a two-minute coronation involving beautiful people, rather than an hours long service. Moreover, people with some religious knowledge, but not familiar with the process, would have been surprised that it was recognizable as a Mass, in Catholic terms.
Indeed, some commentators, including the Catholic Cardinal who participated in it, noted that it has "some" Catholic elements.
"Some"?
Baloney, it's 100% Catholic in form save for the King having to take the mandatory oath that he support the United Kingdom's Protestant faith.
That became a topic running up to this because, in spite of the impressive performance, the Church of England is in real trouble in England. It does remain strong in some places, but not in its old footholds. In the United States and Canada, its North American expression, the Episcopal Church, is in really deep trouble. In the UK, more Catholics attend services weekly than members of the Church of England, which is really something given that Catholics are a minority religion in the UK and have been at least since Elizabeth I forced the "religious settlement" on the country. Lest that seem too encouraging for Catholics, all devout religious adherence has been on the decline in the UK for a very long time, a product of the disaster of the Reformation, which is playing out presently.
Be that as it may, at least to Catholic eyes, the absurdity of the English Reformation is brought to full light by such events. The ceremony was so Catholic that the question has to be asked why the Church of England doesn't just come back into the fold, something which is becoming increasingly difficult in light of its recent accommodations to popular social trends.
Which brings me to my next observation.
I know one fallen away Episcopalian who is deeply anti-Catholic. It's interesting how that tends to be the last thing that those raised in the "main line" Protestant Churches retain. The Baby Boomer children of adherent Main Line Protestant churches may have chosen to ignore their faiths in favor of the world and its delights, but they remember the fables and hatred that the Reformation used to justify its actions, and still cite it as if they were buddies with John Calvin himself. Odd.
I know that I'm personally tired of it. But in part, that's because I'm tired of having to listen to two people I personally know debate religious topics as if it's a sport. It isn't. It's serious. But then maybe I'm tired of people who argue just for sport as well.
Profoundly Christian, and frankly about as close to Catholic in form as you can get and not be Catholic, another interesting aspect of the coronation was reinforcing the United Kingdom's Christian heritage.
And that's a good thing.
The Coronation really brought the monarchy haters out in droves, which was interesting. Lots of "Not My King" and "Not My Queen" individual protests were here and there. Well, unless Parliament abolished the monarchy, if you are English or a resident of the English Commonwealth, he is your king. You don't have to love him, but that doesn't mean he isn't the king.
This also brought out a lot of sanctimonious blathering by people who hail from former imperial possessions about the horrors of the British Empire. Well, whatever they may be, King Charles III and his mother Queen Elizabeth II weren't responsible for any of them.
Indeed, it's been eons since there was a king or queen really had extensive power. Maybe since King Charles II. The UK has been a constitutional monarch at least since Queen Anne. If monarchy had been what people imagine, one of her Stuart relatives would have been the next monarch, not King George I. So if people have a beef with the British Empire, it shouldn't really be with Queen Elizabeth, whom some proclaimed they could not mourn, or with King Charles III, whom some proclaim they cannot celebrate.
Let's make no mistake. Colonialism in general was bigoted and racist by its very nature. The underlying premise of it was that the European colonial power, and here we will limit this to European powers, was empowered by some sort of superior value which gave it a right to take the land of others and rule its people. That was the underlying thesis of colonialism everywhere. Generally the "superior" something they had was technology, which made it possible, but which didn't make it right.
But before we get too self-righteous about it, we probably need to take a look at in context, and over time, and then ask if the compulsion that gives rise to it is a universal human norm. That would not mean that it was right, but it might lessen the overall guilt.
Indeed, in spite of what people might now wish for claim, when European colonialism started the concept of one nation ruling over another was not only common, it was the norm. In the early 17th Century when British Colonialism really started, Ireland and Wales were already unwelcome members, to some extent, of the United Kingdom, and Scotland wasn't all that keen on it. Figuring out who governed in the Low Countries and the German Principalities requires an epic flow chart. Russia ruled vasts lands with no Russians. This condition would go on well into the 19th Century, and even to some extent into the 20th Century. Contrary to what people claim, national feelings existed, but people didn't regard empires and monarchies that ruled over a collection of nations to be abnormal.
And it would have been extremely difficult for Europeans, early on, to be confronted with foreign cultures beyond their seas and treat them as equals given the varied states of development. It's easy for us to say that the British should have landed at Jamestown in 1607 only after asking for permission, but frankly, it would have been impossible for them to have conceived it that way at the time.
This might not be the case for later European colonial efforts, but by that time competition between European powers nearly mandated acquiring colonies and a person would have to be naive to imagine that if the British had abstained, the French, Dutch, Germans, Spanish, and so on, would have done so also.
Indeed, frankly, if we were to land humans on Mars today, and find something waddle up and address us in some bizarre Martian tongue, I don't believe we'd abstain from colonizing the planet now.
Which gets to this point. I can't really think easily of a people anywhere that had the power to colonize, and didn't do it. Everyone did. It seems to go back to our earliest days. That doesn't make it right, once again, but it's obviously a common human trait.
Which means in turn that the only really valid criticism of empire that mean anything today has to come in terms of relatively recent historical context.
A conversation on this point the other day made me realize how different my "relatively recent" is. The actual conversation was on British primogenitor in the monarchy. I sincerely regard everything after 1066 as recent in terms of the British monarchy.
Apparently, other people don't.
In this context, however, i.e., that of empire, I'd probably go back to 1800 or so. If you are going to levy guilt on the British, therefore, you might have to start in 1858 when Parliament caused the British to officially take over India.
There's a lot to blame the English for after that, but then there's a lot to blame the French, Belgians, Dutch and Germans for after that as well.
It's really the late 19th Century and 20th Century when you get into the full-blown "shouldn't you people have known better" type of situation. The Scramble for Africa is pretty difficult to justify in any sense.
Which takes us, I suppose, to this. In its late stages, while it was still an empire, and should have known better, at least the British did a good job of trying to administer what it was administering well. Its actions weren't always admirable or successful. The Bengal Famine of 1943 provides a shocking example of that. And frankly, there's no way to reconcile the claim that the British were fighting for freedom only during World War Two, except comparatively. I.e., the Axis wasn't seeking to liberate colonial peoples, but to enslave them to somebody else less democratic yet. But, having said that, the British, more than any other colonial power, managed to depart from empire gracefully and with some rationale hope that the best things it had given to the people it had occupied would remain.
It didn't always work out, but to a surprising degree it did. British Dominions largely did evolve into full-blown parliamentary democracies and largely separated from the UK peaceably, although this was notably not the case with Ireland. Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Ireland and South Africa are all democracies today due to the British example. So, frankly, is the United States, the UK's first failed imperial endeavor.
The coronation of King Charles III probably contains within it a series of lessons that will only be evident in the coming days. But for those who want to protest it, well you probably would better spend your time on real problems of the world, of which there are many.
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President Roosevelt address the nation on the result of the recent Casablanca Conference, in which he stated:
It is nearly two years since I attended the last dinner of our White House Correspondents' Association. A great deal of water has flowed over the dam since then.
And several people have flown over the water.
Two years ago—many months before Pearl Harbor—I spoke to you of the thought that was then uppermost in our minds— of the determination of America to become the arsenal of democracy. Almost all Americans had by that time determined to play their full part in helping to save civilization from the barbarians. Even then, we were in the midst of the historic job of production- a job which the American people have been performing with zest and skill and, above all, with success.
Tonight, as I speak to you, we are in the war, and another thought is uppermost in our minds. That is our determination to fight this war through to the finish- to the day when United Nations forces march in triumph through the streets of Berlin, and Rome, and Tokyo.
Last September, as some of our publisher friends here tonight knew at the time, I made a tour of inspection through this country. I saw war plants at work. I saw Army and Navy training camps and flying fields. I saw American men and women—management and labor alike—working with the objective of beating production schedules. I saw American soldiers and sailors and fliers doing the job of training for the fighting that lay ahead.
Now I have returned from one of the fronts overseas, where the production from American factories and the training given in American camps are being applied in actual warfare against the enemy. I have seen our troops in the field. I have inspected their superb equipment. I have talked and laughed and eaten with them.
I have seen our men- the Nation's men- in Trinidad, in Belem and Natal in Brazil, in Liberia, in Gambia. We must remember that in these places there is no actual fighting, but there is hard, dangerous, essential work, and there is a tremendous strain on the endurance and the spirit of our troops. They are standing up magnificently under that strain. And I want them to know that we have not forgotten them.
I have seen our men—and some of our American women—in North Africa. Out there it is war. Those men know that before this war is over, many of them will have given their lives to their Nation. But they know also that they are fighting to destroy the power of the enemies of this country, that they are fighting for a peace that will be a real and lasting peace and a far better world for the future.
Our men in the field are worthy of the great faith, the high hopes that we have placed in them. That applies as well to the men of our Navy, without whom no American expeditionary force could land safely on foreign shores. And it applies equally to the men of our merchant marine who carry the essential munitions and supplies, without which neither the United States nor our allies could continue the battle.
No American can look at these men, soldiers or sailors, without a very great emotion and great pride—and a deep sense of our responsibility to them.
Because of the necessary secrecy of my trip, the men of our armed forces in every place I visited were completely surprised. And the expression on their faces certainly proved that.
I wish that I could pay similar surprise visits to our men in the other fields of operations. And don't let anybody assume, because I have said that, that next month I am flying to Guadalcanal. But I wish I could see our men, and our naval bases, and the islands of the Pacific, and Australia, on the mainland and the islands of Alaska, the islands of the Atlantic, the two Guianas, the Canal Zone, Iceland, Britain, Central Africa, the Middle East, India, Burma, and China. I wish I could tell them face to face that their Government and their people are very proud of the great job that they are doing, in helping to strengthen the vise that is slowly but surely squeezing the breath out of our enemies.
In every battalion, and in every ship's crew, you will find every kind of American citizen representing every occupation, every section, every origin, every religion, and every political viewpoint.
Ask them what they are fighting for, and every one of them will say, "I am fighting for my country." Ask them what they really mean by that, and you will get what on the surface may seem to be a wide variety of answers.
One will say that he is fighting for the right to say what he pleases, and to read and listen to what he likes.
Another will say he is fighting because he never wants to see the Nazi swastika flying over the old First Baptist Church on Elm Street.
Another soldier will say that he is fighting for the right to work, and to earn three square meals a day for himself and his folks.
And another one will say that he is fighting in this world war so that his children and his grandchildren will not have to go back to Europe, or Africa, or Asia, or the Solomon Islands, to do this ugly job all over again.
But all these answers really add up to the same thing; every American is fighting for freedom. And today the personal freedom of every American and his family depends, and in the future will increasingly depend, upon the freedom of his neighbors in other lands.
For today the more you travel, the more you realize that the whole world is one neighborhood. That is why this war that had its beginnings in seemingly remote areas—China—Poland—has spread to every continent, and most of the islands of the sea, involving the lives and the liberties of the entire human race. And unless the peace that follows recognizes that the whole world is one neighborhood and does justice to the whole human race, the germs of another world war will remain as a constant threat to mankind.
Yes, I talked with many people in our armed forces, along the coast and through the islands of the Western Hemisphere, and up the coast of West Africa. Many of our soldiers and sailors were concerned about the state of the home front. They receive all kinds of exaggerated reports and rumors that there is too much complaining back here at home, and too little recognition of the realities of war; that selfish labor leaders are threatening to call strikes that would greatly curtail the output of our war industries; that some farm groups are trying to profiteer on prices, and are letting us down on food production; that many people are bitter over the hardships of rationing and priorities; and especially that there is serious partisan quarrel over the petty things of life here in our Capital City of Washington, D.C.
I told them that most of these reports are just gross exaggerations; that the people as a whole in the United States are in this war to see it through with heart and body and soul; and that our population is willing and glad to give up some of their shoes, and their sugar, and coffee, and automobile riding—and privileges and profits—for the sake of the common cause.
I could not truthfully deny to our troops that a few chiselers, a few politicians, and a few—to use a polite term—publicists -fortunately a very few- have placed their personal ambition or greed above the Nation's interests.
Our troops know that the Nazis and the Fascists and the Japanese are trying hard to sell the untruths of propaganda to certain types of Americans. But our troops also know that even if you pile up a lot of molehills of deception one on top of the other, you still cannot make a mountain big enough, or high enough, or solid enough to fool many people, or to block the road to victory and to an effective peace.
I think a fundamental of an effective peace is the assurance to those men who are fighting our battles, that when they come home they will find a country with an economy firm enough and fair enough to provide jobs for all those who are willing to work.
I am certain that private enterprise will be able to provide the vast majority of those jobs, and in those cases where this cannot be accomplished that the Congress of the United States will pass the legislation that will make good the assurance of earning a living.
There are still a few men who say we cannot achieve this and other honorable, reasonable aims for the postwar period. And in speaking of those professional skeptics—those men of little faith -there comes to my mind an old word in our language- the word "petriloggers."
The formal dictionary definition and derivation of the word are neither here nor there. To most of us "pettifogger" brings to mind a man who is small, mean and tricky, and picayune. In a word—petty. It is the type of man who is always seeking to create a smoke screen and fog, for the purpose of obscuring the plain truth. And you and I know some pettifoggers.
Today, those pettifoggers are attempting to obscure the essential truths of this war. They are seeking to befog the present and the future, and the clear purposes and the high principles for which the free world now maintains the promise of undimmed victory.
To use one example, in a small sector of the world's surface in North Africa—we are now massing armies—British, French, and American- for one of the major battles of this war.
The enemy's purpose in the battle of Tunisia is to hold at all costs their last bridgehead in Africa, to prevent us from gaining access to the Straits that lead to Nazi-dominated Europe.
Our prime purpose in this battle of Tunisia is to drive our enemies into the sea.
The British First Army in this battle, commanded by General Anderson, contains many veterans of Flanders and Dunkirk. Those men have a score to settle with the Nazis, and they are going to even that score.
The British Eighth Army, commanded by General Montgomery, has to its eternal credit the smashing defeat of Marshal Rommel's Army, and the now historic fifteen-hundred-mile pursuit of those once triumphant Nazi-Fascist forces.
The enemy in Tunisia will be attacked from the south by this great Eighth Army, and by the French forces who have made a remarkable march all the way across the Sahara Desert under General Le Clerc, one of General de Gaulle's officers. From the west the enemy will be attacked by the combined forces of British and Americans, together with French troops under the command of General Giraud.
And I think that we take a certain satisfaction tonight that all of these forces are commanded by General Eisenhower. I spent many hours in Casablanca with this young general- a descendant of Kansas pioneers. I know what a fine, tough job he has done, and how carefully and skillfully he is directing the soldiers under him. I want to say to you tonight—and to him—that we have every confidence in his leadership. High tribute was paid to his qualities as a man when the British Government, through Mr. Churchill, took the lead at Casablanca in proposing him for the supreme command of all the great Allied operations which are imminent in North Africa.
The deputy to General Eisenhower is General Alexander, one of Britain's greatest fighting men. He commanded all the British forces in the Middle East, including the Eighth Army that won the decisive battle at El Alamein. He and General Montgomery planned that engagement and the stupendous advance that followed. At this moment—as I speak to you tonight—General Alexander is standing at the right hand of General Eisenhower planning new military operations.
These important facts reveal not merely cooperation but active collaboration between the United Nations. Let these facts be duly noted by our enemies.
Our soldiers in Tunisia are well trained and equipped, but they are facing for the first time actual combat with formidable opponents. We can be absolutely certain that they will conduct themselves as bravely and as effectively as did those young Americans under General Pershing who drove Germany's best troops through the Argonne forest and across the River Meuse.
I think we should be prepared for the fact that Tunisia will cost us heavily in casualties. Yes, we must face that fact now, with the same calm courage as our men are facing it on the battlefield itself.
The enemy has strong forces, and strong positions. His supply lines are maintained at great cost, but Hitler has been willing to pay that cost because he knows the consequences of Allied victory in Tunisia.
The consequences are simple. They are the actual invasions of the continent of Europe. And we do not disguise our intention to make these invasions. The pressure on Germany and Italy will be constant and unrelenting. The amazing Russian armies in eastern Europe have been delivering overpowering blows; we must do likewise in the west. The enemy must be hit and hit hard from so many directions that he will never know which is his bow and which is his stern.
And it was made clear also at Casablanca that all Frenchmen outside of France, for we know little of what is happening in France, but all Frenchmen who can, are uniting in one great paramount objective—the complete liberation of France and of the French people who now suffer the torture of the Nazi yoke. As each day passes, a spirit of unselfishness is more greatly uniting all Frenchmen who have the opportunity to strike that blow for liberation.
In the years of the American Revolution, and the French Revolution, the fundamental principle that guided our democracies was established. Indeed the whole cornerstone of our democratic edifice was the principle that from the people and the people alone flows the authority of government.
It is one of our war aims, as expressed in the Atlantic Charter, that the conquered populations of today- shall again become the masters of their destiny. There must be no doubt anywhere that it is the unalterable purpose of the United Nations to restore to conquered peoples their sacred rights.
French sovereignty rests with the people of France. Its expression has been temporarily suspended by German occupation. Once the triumphant armies of the United Nations have expelled the common foe, Frenchmen will be represented by a government of their own popular choice.
And it will be a free choice in every way. No Nation in all the world that is free to make a choice is going to set itself up under a Fascist form of government, or a Nazi form of government, or a Japanese war-lord form of government. For such forms are the offspring of seizure of power followed by the abridgment of freedom. Therefore- and this is plain logic- the United Nations can properly say of these forms of government—Nazism, Fascism, Japanism—if I might coin a new word-the United Nations can properly say to that form of government two simple words, "Never again."
For the right of self-determination included in the Atlantic Charter does not carry with it the right of any Government anywhere in the world to commit wholesale murder, or the right to make slaves of its own people, or of any other peoples in the world.
And the world can rest assured that this total war, this sacrifice of lives all over the globe, is not being carried on for the purpose, or even with the remotest idea of keeping Quislings or Lavals in power anywhere on this earth.
The decisions that were reached, and the actual plans that were made at Casablanca were not confined to any one theater of war, or to any one continent, or ocean, or sea. Before this year is out I think it will be made known to the world, in actions rather than in words, that the Casablanca Conference produced plenty of news; and it will be bad news for the Germans and Italians—and the Japanese.
We have lately concluded a long, hard battle in the Southwest Pacific, and we have made notable gains. That battle started in the Solomons and New Guinea last summer. It has demonstrated without question our superior power in planes, and most importantly in the fighting qualities of our individual soldiers and sailors.
American armed forces in the Southwest Pacific are receiving powerful aid from Australia and New Zealand, and also directly from the British themselves.
We do not expect to spend the time that it would take to bring Japan to final defeat merely by inching our way forward from island to island across the vast expanse of the Pacific. It would take too many years.
Great and decisive actions against the Japanese will be taken to drive the invader from the soil of China. Yes, important actions are going to be taken in the skies over China—and in the skies over Japan itself.
The discussions at Casablanca have been continued in Chungking with the Generalissimo by General Arnold, and have resulted in definite plans for offensive operations.
Remember that there are many roads that lead right to Tokyo. And we are not going to neglect any of them.
In an attempt to ward off the inevitable disaster that lies ahead of them, the Axis propagandists are trying all their old tricks, in order to divide the United Nations. They seek to create the idea that if we win this war, Russia, and England, and China, and the United States are going to get into a cat-and-dog fight.
This is their final effort to turn one Nation against another, in the vain hope that they may settle with one or two at a time- that any of us may be so gullible and so forgetful as to be duped into making "deals" at the expense of our allies.
To these panicky attempts- and that is the best word to use: "panicky"—to escape the consequences of their crimes, we say —all the United Nations say- that the only terms on which we shall deal with any Axis Government, or any Axis factions, are the terms proclaimed at Casablanca: "unconditional surrender." We know, and the plain people of our enemies will eventually know, that in our uncompromising policy we mean no harm to the common people of the Axis Nations. But we do mean to impose punishment and retribution in full upon their guilty, barbaric leaders.
The Nazis must be frantic—not just panicky, but frantic if they believe that they can devise any propaganda that would turn the British and the American and the Chinese Governments and peoples against Russia—or Russia against the rest of us.
The overwhelming courage and endurance of the Russian people in withstanding and hurling back the invaders- the genius with which their great armies have been directed and led by Mr. Stalin and their military commanders—all speak for themselves.
The tragedy of the war has sharpened the vision and leadership of the peoples of all the United Nations, and I can say to you from my own full knowledge that they see the utter necessity of our standing together after the war to secure a peace based on principles of permanence.
You can be quite sure that if Japan should be the first of the Axis partners to fall, the total efforts and resources of all the United Nations would be concentrated on the job of crushing Germany.
And, on the other hand, lest there be any question in Nazi or Japanese minds that we are wholly one in the prosecution of the war to a complete victory over our enemies, the Prime Minister wished, at Casablanca, to make a formal agreement that if Germany should be conquered before Japan, all British Empire resources and manpower would, of course, join with China and us in an out-and-out final attack on Japan. And I told Mr. Churchill that no formal statement of agreement along those lines was in the least bit necessary, that the American people accept the word of a great English gentleman and that it is obvious and clear that all of us are completely in accord in our determination to destroy the forces of barbarism in Asia, as well as in Europe and in Africa. In other words, our policy toward our Japanese enemies is precisely the same as our policy toward our Nazi enemies: it is a policy of fighting hard on all fronts, and ending the war as quickly as we can, on the uncompromising terms of unconditional surrender.
Today is the anniversary of the birth of a great, plain American. The living memory of Abraham Lincoln is now honored and cherished by all of our people, wherever they may be, and by men and women and children throughout the British Commonwealth, and the Soviet Union, and the Republic of China, and all of our sister American Republics, and indeed in every land on earth where people love freedom and will give their lives for freedom.
President Lincoln said in 1862, "Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us . . . in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation."
Today, eighty years after Lincoln delivered that message, the fires of war are blazing across the whole horizon of mankind from Kharkov to Kunming—from the Mediterranean to the Coral Sea—from Berlin to Tokyo.
Again—we cannot escape history. We have supreme confidence that, with the help of God, honor will prevail. We have faith that future generations will know that here, in the middle of the twentieth century, there came a time when men of good will found a way to unite, and produce, and fight to destroy the forces of ignorance, and intolerance, and slavery, and war.
The speech was notable for several reasons.
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For one thing, Roosevelt felt compelled to warn Americans that heavy casualties would be coming in Tunisia, probably steeling the audience to an inevitable increase in loss of life which, while it had certainly occurred in North Africa, had been relatively light so far. He also hinted at future actions to come.
And he also had picked up on Axis propaganda, which was in fact trying to split the Western Allies from the Soviet Union. The fact that it was addressed must have meant that there was some Administration fear about ongoing conservative hesitance about having adopted the USSR as an Ally.
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Of course, while the alliance was a fact and necessary, the concerns about the USSR were well-founded. The Soviet Union's war aims were never the same as the West's, which perhaps might be best illustrated that the war began over the question of Polish sovereignty, which it would not regain, due to one of its original invaders, the USSR, destroying it.
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Roosevelt also addressed the French, which is interesting, and in doing so tried to come up with a legal theory as to why the Free French weren't outright rebels against the distasteful legitimate French government. Sovereignty vesting in the people became the theory of the day. As large as the French resistance had become at this point, in the form of the French military everywhere outside of France itself, and the Germans having occupied Vichy, its surprising that he bothered really.
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The Soviets took Krasnodar, in Ukraine, on this day.
US troops attacked German the Afrika Korps at Faid, Tunisia, while the British repelled an Afrika Korps attack at Ousseltia.
Japanese counter-attacks at Donbaik and Rathedaung, Burma, were unsuccessful.
The University of Wyoming defeated Colorado State University in basketball, 57–34 in the basketball variant of "The Border War", which was a basketball series, not one single game.
Epilogue.
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Most of the people who saw this poster probably thought of the Allied sailors of occupied countries who were serving on board ships that had not been captured by the Germans when their nations were overrun. The Dutch, however, had a sizable naval contingent based in the Dutch East Indes which in fact did fight valiently in 1941-42 when the Japanese attacked there. Having said that, the irony is that the Dutch were hated in the Dutch East Indes and the Japanese explusion of them was successful in that the British never allowed the Dutch to return. Indonesian collaborationist were not, moreover, punished by the Indonesian population for their collaboration, and in some instances went on to successful post war political careers. While the Japanese occupation of anything was not admiralbe, The East Indes, the thing they were attempting to grap at the start of the Pacific War, makes for a lot of odd exceptions.
Of interest, the series of posters I put up above, of which there are additional posters in the series, is well known, but has never struck me as an attractive series of posters. It's interesting that it was done, as it demonstrates that there was some isolationist, nativist, resistance to the war even well into the war, and the government felt it was necessary to try to influence Americans toward believing that all the Allied soldiers were fighting for the same thing.Of course, as noted, they weren't.
By and large, the Western Allies, which would include the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom, the Free French, Poland, Norway, the Netherlands, and Belgium were, although as some latter day critics like to point out, imperfectly. France, the UK, Australia, Belgium, and the Netherlands were imperial powers who, it can be pointed out, were not in favor of the immediate liberation of their colonial subjects. Having said that, while the British were not yet in the "winds of change" era, they had moved as far back as the late 19th Century towards a Commonwealth of Nations theory of empire and were well down that path, which resulted in various nations achieving dominion status within the empire, at which point they were free governing nations. It included a couple of nations that were problematic in that regard, however, as South Africa was a racist democracy at the time, and India clearly wanted out of the Empire entirely. Nonetheless, saying that the British Commonwealth and Empire was fighting for freedom would be largely accurate.
France, for its part, was evolving in its imperial concepts, but not nearly as quickly and not in the same direction. It had moved towards a different concept, which was the "overseas department" of France, under which some colonies simply were part of France, but with a weighted voting system. This would result in anti-colonial wars against France following World War Two, with perhaps the saddest and most ironic one being the Algerian War, as Algerians really rallied to the French flag during World War Two.
The Dutch and the Belgians were fighting for the freedom of their homelands, but they had no concept of colonial liberation at all. The Dutch in particular are an oddity, as the Netherlands was widely regarded as a very peaceable nation and organically opposed to Nazism, although Dutch volunteers to the German military were notable, so much so that the liberated Dutch feared what Allied soldiers would feel about photographs of family members in German uniforms. Cornelius Ryan notes that in his book A Bridge Too Far, but dresses it up by calling them conscripts. Having said this, the Dutch resistance as large and really effective. Anyhow, the Dutch, contrary to their reputation in Europe, were absolutely despised in their East Asian colonies where they had a well deserved reputation for cruelty. This was so much the case that the British, which were seeking to retain their own colonies at the time, would not allow the Dutch to resume control in theirs after the war.
All of this contrasts enormously, of course, with the Soviet Union. The USSR was a German ally up until 1941, having participated in the invasion of Poland and having been given a free hand by the Germans to invade the Baltic States. In the 1939 to 1941 period, the Soviets not only did all that, but they attacked Finland and took a piece of Romania from that country. They were not interested in Freedom at all, and simply eliminated Poland as an entity, as had the Germans. The German invasion of the Soviet Union came when it did (it would have come sooner or later anyway) as the Soviets overplayed their hand in negotiating with the Germans for material resources, conditioning entering the war upon a transfer of pieces of the British Empire. Following the war Poland's real sovereignty would not be restored in spite of that being the casus belli of the war in the first place, due to the USSR, and the independence of Hungary and Romania would be lost for two generations, those nations having brought that down on themselves for siding with the Germans.
Anyhow, these posters have surprisingly long legs, in spite of not being visually appealing, in my view. Witness the following:
