Hmmm, so Larry would have preferred that Germany won World War I.
Interesting.

On Apr 21, 12:52*am, " wrote:
WARREN HARDING

* * * *Arthur Link, an apologist for Woodrow Wilson's
decision to enter WWI and the author of the definitive
biography of the man, wrote a slender volume about
Wilson's foreign policy.

* * * *The legal issue of the British blockade (yes,
the Brits would have sank our merchant vessels had we
tried to run their blockade) and the German U-boat
sinking of our UNARMED merchant vessels concerned
whether the blockade was effective. *Effective
blockades were legal, ineffective ones were illegal.

* * * *Wilson militarized our economy (which Harding
proceeded very largely to dismantle, much to his
enduring credit) and dispatched an expeditionary force
based on the idea that the flag followed commerce.
There was also the issue of something called "national
honor," which no European politician since WWI has
dared to invoke as a reason for going to war. *(Our
presidents occasionally talk about "national honor"
when we are facing mismatched opponents, but to be
sure, keep their oral cavities resolutely zipped, as
does even Bush, when an issue of possible force
involves Russia or China.)

* * *So, then, after the French in the name of honor
marched men against German machine-guns at the
Battle of the Frontiers during the first days of WWI
(possible casualties, still not fully revealed even
today, are about 250,000 dead in a single week) the
first taste of fighting for "national honor" began to
sour. *In the case of England, the casualties coming
back after the first two days of the Somme (60,000
dead or wounded on the first day) resulted in ... the
first military draft in England's history. *That was
the true moment when WWI lost the support of
English society.

* * * Harding would never have involved us in WWI. *My
evocation of "millions" of corpses was obviously not
exhausted by the American dead of about 120,000.
Wilson's policy for two years before our entry in
April 1917 had propped up the British and the French.
One ought to mention that Wilson's pro-British policy
also encouraged support within the royal family for
Douglas Haig, the murderous general who could famously
"take losses." *Wilson was complicit to some degree in
those losses, when even British PM Lloyd George was
trying to keep British tommies out of Haig's hands.

* * * If the Great War had ended in German victory in
1917, there would never have been the accumulated mass
horrors of Stalinism, Maoism and Hitlerism. *Stalin
would have ended up as a zookeeper in the Central
Caucasus, Trotsky a radical editor in NYC and Lenin a
fairly well-off, if frustrated, French tutor for advantaged
children in Zurich. *Hitler might have become a decent
architect, since his movement would have been unimaginable
*under the Hohenzollerns.

Madame Chiang's radiant New Life movement in China
would have had a chance to succeed, and China would
today be free and considerably wealthier than it isnder
a Communist Party that has largely abandoned communism.

* * * *All of the above is separate from the issue of
war guilt. *The Kaiser blundered (his infamous "Blank
check" to the Austrians at Potsdam) into a war that no
one wanted except for some fanatical Serbs, though the
guilt of the sinister Sazonov, the Russian foreign
minister, in bullying the Tsar into declaring war
mobilization, was the decisive event that led to the
German invasion of France and Belgium.

* * * *(Years back I read Sazonov's memoirs, which he
wrote during his final years as an exile in France.
The man defended virtually every disastrous policy
initiative that he undertook. *Sigh. *It is a relatively
rare volume that Sam Sloan might consider exhuming
and publishing, if there is not a new edition out as yet.)

* * * *For those interested in the subject of WWI, the
best memoir is probably Robert Graves' "Goodbye to All
That" the best history on the origins of the war, a
balanced work that rightly criticizes the Kaiser, is
undoubtedly Luigi Albertini's three volumes *"Origins
of the War of 1914" (I spent four days reading those
books, non-stop, I was transfixed, great history); and
the best case to be made by one of Taylor Kingston's
court historians would be Barbara Tuchman's very
readable, anti-German, "The Guns of August."

* * * * Did readers notice Taylor Kingston's evocation
of the German Zimmerman Telegram inciting mighty,
*feudal Mexico to war with the United States?

* * * *You have to decide for yourselves whether a
silly attempt by the Germans to stir up hopeless
people meets the bar for entering a major, sanguinary,
freedom-destroying European war?

* * * *Would any of you favor entering a war in what
Halford Mackinder called the Heartland if Russia sent
a Zimmerman or Zimmertov Telegram to Mexico? * (Alas,
some dunderheads would -- the ones who still
support pouring trillions into Iraq and destroying the
U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency. *But I am
talking to sane readers here.)

* * * *I figure that few of you would have the stomach
for trying to send an American army -- in the name of
national honor and a Zimmertov Telegram -- to the
Eurasian Heartland, and there to do battle on Russian
soil. *Most of you figure that you would be wearing
burlap for shirts and wrapped rags for shoes in a
couple of years. *A lot of you would lose your
enthusiasm after losing, say, 15 million dead men
between the ages, mainly, of 18 and 29. *Perhaps
some among you, though chances are increasingly dim
in aliterate America, will pen the equivalent of Vera
Brittain's "Testament of Youth" which if one must sum
up its rich contents in a single phrase, was about,
"Where have all the young men gone?"

* * * *Harding and his type of men -- the ones who
knew a poker deck and believed in America as a
commercial republic -- scoffed at the concept of
national honor as a reason to fight a war on the
mainland of Europe. *(Even during WWI itself, which
was a time of virulent anti-Germanism in the United
States and raids on radicals, Harding kept a low
profile in support of the War. *To oppose WWI at the
BEGINNING *of the war, was politically suicidal.)

* * * *One should further mention that after taking
office, Harding, though conservative and capitalist to
the core, released radicals, amnestied deserters and
freed socialist leader Eugene Debs in his General
Amnesty on Christmas Day 1921. This amnesty was
possibly Harding's finest moment.

* * * *If you oppose the warfare-welfare regime of
mass government, seeking to kill people abroad and
destroy initiative at home with welfarism, then
Harding was one of our better presidents.

Yours, Larry Parr



Sam Sloan wrote:
I sent the book to the printers last night. It should be out in a week
to ten days.

This book will be available at the following address:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0923891234

You cannot imagine how difficult this was. Pages of the original book
were off center. Printing was irregular. Some pages bold. Other pages
light.

I have discovered some interesting new things.

Although Nan Britton mentions numerous relatives, she never gives the
names of her mother and father. I have learned from the book "Florence
Harding" by Carl Sferrazza Anthony that her father was Dr. Sam Britton
and he died in June 1913. This was about the time that Nan Britton
started fooling around with the future president. I believe that Dr.
Sam Britton was probably the same person as Samuel Herbert Britton
(1859-1913) who is buried in nearby Knox County Ohio and was the son
of Mary Critchfield.

Nan's mother was Mary Williams Britton. She was a school teacher but I
have found nothing much on her.

Nan's middle name was Popham, so her full name Nana Popham Britton. My
great-great-grandmother was Jane Popham (1809-1893) so it seems likely
that Nan Britton was my very distant cousin. The grandfather of Jane
Popham was Job Popham (1709-1781). He and his son Humphrey Popham (b.
1763) had many children and were possibly polygamists. This is the
likely source of the Popham name in Nana Popham Britton, but so far I
have not been able to find anything more on this.

The daughter of Nan Britton and President Warren G. Harding was
Elizabeth Ann who died on 17 November 2005 at age 96 in Oregon,
outliving her mother who only lived to age 94.

In her book, Nan Britton says that after the death of President
Harding she married a man named "Captain Neilsen" because she believed
that he had a lot of money and could support her daughter, Elizabeth
Ann. However, when Captain Neilsen turned out not to have any money at
all, she either got a divorce or an annulment.

An Internet website in Oregon gives the name of that man as Magnus
Cricken.

Does this mean that he was a complete fraud, that his name was not
Captain Neilsen at all, or did she just give him a fake name in the
book?

She gives the name of the man who often brought her money from
President Harding as Tim Slade, but says that this is a fake name. I
am trying to find out what his real name was. He must have been a
close associate of Harding.

I have found a newspaper article published in Toledo, Ohio on November
3, 1931 that shows a picture of Elizabeth Ann at age 12. Elizabeth Ann
looks exactly like Warren G. Harding. This picture erases any possible
doubt that Elizabeth Ann really was the daughter of President Harding.

Sam Sloan- Hide quoted text -

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