World War One: A Study in National Insanity

History is filled with government decrees that make absolutely no sense and did much more harm than good.  This is because “government has always been a monopoly of the most vicious and ignorant of mankind,” as Thomas Paine, one of America’s Founding Fathers, wrote.  When such harmful government policies are accepted as beneficial by a large segment of the population, as they easily can be in this day and age of media-manufactured consensus reality, the end result is disaster. 

In our short history, we have had several outbursts of social insanity that compare with what is happening now with the Covid lockdowns and vaccine mandates.  Wars are always fertile ground for this sort of thing.  Wars always appeal to patriotism, to a sentiment of “we’re all in this together,” a natural feeling that the wirepullers behind the scenes exploit and pervert with great skill.  All the wars this country has fought from the Civil War onward are good examples.  World War One, in my opinion, was the best – or I should say the worst – example of all.  By this time, even before the age of radio and television, the techniques of emotional engineering through false propaganda had been perfected.

World War One began on July 28, 1914, with Austria-Hungary declaring war on neighboring Serbia.  Within months most European nations were sucked into this pointless, incredibly destructive conflict.  In 1916 Woodrow Wilson was elected to a second term on the slogan “He kept us out of war.”  No sooner was he re-elected than he started talking about “a war to make the world safe for democracy,” and “a war to end all wars.”  On April 6, 1917, five months after the election, at a late stage in the fighting, Wilson declared war on Germany for no rational reason whatsoever.  Some 2.8 million American draftees and 2 million volunteers were shipped to Europe’s killing fields to fight for nothing.  For 140 years Americans had held Germany in high esteem as a natural friend, as one of Europe’s and the world’s most cultured and dynamic nations.  Whipped to a frenzy overnight by the yellow press, Germans now became barbaric Huns.  It’s hard to believe that some of the illustrations of this era were taken seriously: a German soldier bayoneting a Belgian baby through the heart; a woman nailed to a wall next to the words “They Crucify,” and below, “American Manhood – Enlist”; a gorilla wearing a German spiked helmet, clutching a woman and wielding a club, with the legend “Destroy This Mad Brute.”  In an orgy of warped patriotism, egged on by the fledgling motion picture industry, Americans responded.  Nationwide, Americans of German descent suspected of disloyalty were beaten, arrested, tarred and feathered; rumors of secret German spies and incursions by German submarines and aircraft abounded; words of German origin were dropped from conversation so that sauerkraut became “liberty cabbage” and hamburgers “liberty steak.”

Few Americans were immune to this national psychosis.  It afflicted all classes, from the least intelligent to the most intelligent.  In his excellent book on the fraud and danger of the smallpox vaccine,  Horrors of Vaccination, published in 1920, with the running subtitle “Petition to the President,”  Charles Higgins pleaded with President Wilson to abolish the vaccine requirements that applied to men serving in the armed forces.  Mixed in with his very sincere and rational appeal were some ridiculous notions about Germany and lunatic ideals that Wilson, who would soon suffer a stroke that divorced him further from reality, had proclaimed.  Here’s a sample:

I must here express to you, as Commander-in-Chief, my full appreciation of the wonderful work done by the War and Navy Departments and by the officers of the Army and Navy….with the result of immediately turning the tide against the brutal enemy….And to this was undoubtedly due the cheerful and high spirits, the wonderful morale and fighting power which made themselves instantly felt on the battlefields of Europe and so quickly brought the barbarous enemy to his knees in the glorious climax of Victory and Peace which we are now enjoying, and which we all firmly hope and believe will soon be followed by a Permanent and International Peace coextensive with the civilized world for which great end, Mr. President, you have been working so ably, energetically and devotedly.

Well, we all know about that permanent and international peace, don’t we?  The causes of World War One, which saw the mechanized slaughter of the genetic flower of young European men on a scale that staggers the imagination, provide an excellent history lesson in hidden conspiracies, but they’re too complex to go into here.  I’ll just briefly mention two consequences of “the war to end all wars” and “to make the world safe for democracy”: the early withdrawal of a defeated and dispirited Russia, amid anarchy on the home front, which deteriorated into the Bolshevik revolution of November 1917, beginning a 35-year reign of terror under Lenin and Stalin, and many more years of a bleak communist existence; a Germany crushed under the brutal terms of the Versailles Treaty, which was signed nearly eight months after the fighting ended on November 11, 1918, and which resulted in widespread unemployment, hunger, and financial and social chaos for fourteen years until Adolf Hitler took the reins of power.

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” as the proverb goes.  But don’t believe for a moment that our participation in World War One, or any other foreign war we’ve been involved in, was inspired by good intentions, even though many of those who were caught up in it, especially those volunteers who did the fighting and dying, may have thought so.  And don’t believe that the current burst of social insanity over a fake “deadly enemy” virus, contrived by the same kind of scum who plan wars, was paved with good intentions either, though millions of fools believed that and continue to believe it, willingly lining up for injections and booster shots that maim and kill.  No, this whole thing never started out with good intentions, but it is the road to hell.