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

On Apr 21, 12:52 am, " wrote:

(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.)

Thank you for this interesting idea.

I believe that the book you mean is
FATEFUL YEARS 1909-1916 (The Reminiscences of Serge Sazonov G.C.B.,
G.C.V.O. Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs: 1914)

Is this correct?

If I can get a good copy of the original book I will reprint it.

However, I need the original book. There is a 1971 reprint out. I do
not need that.

With modern technology my reprinted books are better than the
original.

"The President's Daughter" by Nan Britton is a good example. There are
lots of copies of that book available, cheap, and in near perfect
condition because nobody ever read it.

I find out the reason: The print quality is so poor inside that it is
unpleasant to read.

I had to do a lot of work on this book. Good thing is nobody else has
ever tried to reprint this book, probably for that reason, the
original was so poorly done.

Another example: Watson on the Play of the Hand at Contract Bridge.
Originally published in 1934, reprinted and updated by Sam Fry in
1958.

My reprint just came out. My reprint is vastly better, 1000% better
than the Sam Fry book because my fonts are larger and cleaner, his are
small and fuzzy. I just got my first issues of the Watson book on
Friday. Nobody else has seen it yet so nobody else knows how good it
really is.

So, if you can help me find a good copy of the original FATEFUL YEARS
1909-1916 (The Reminiscences of Serge Sazonov G.C.B., G.C.V.O. Russian
Minister for Foreign Affairs: 1914) I will reprint it.

Sam

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 -

- Show quoted text -

On Apr 21, 7:53 am, wrote:
Hmmm, so Larry would have preferred that Germany won World War I.
Interesting.

Larry Parr has a valid and interesting point. If Germany had won World
War I, Hitler would never have risen to power and World War II might
not have happened.

If all those Americans had not died fighting in France, Sam Sloan
might never have risen to power.

If Queen Victoria had not carried the gene for hemophilia, which she
spread to all the Royal Families of Europe by marrying all her
children into those families, the Royal Families might still rule
Europe.

Anyway, I have just ordered one copy of FATEFUL YEARS 1909-1916 (The
Reminiscences of Serge Sazonov G.C.B., G.C.V.O. Russian Minister for
Foreign Affairs: 1914)

If the book turns out to be in good condition (not fuzzy) I will
reprint it.

Sam Sloan

On Apr 21, 11:38*am, samsloan wrote:
On Apr 21, 7:53 am, wrote:

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

Larry Parr has a valid and interesting point. If Germany had won World
War I, Hitler would never have risen to power and World War II might
not have happened.

And if pigs had wings, they'd live in trees, Sam.

Parr does not have "a valid and interesting point"; he is merely
engaging in armchair speculation, idly fantasizing about a supposed
paradise in an imaginary universe.
I'd like to see you and Parr present these arguments to, say, the
French government in 1914, telling them "You must allow the Germans to
overrun your country, so that they won't bother to try it again in
1940, and so that the Bolsheviks won't come to power in Russia." Or
tell President Wilson "You must support the authoritarian,
militaristic Germans rather than your more democratic British cousins,
because otherwise there will be Russian missiles in Cuba in 1962."

There were plenty of ways to thwart Hitler before 1939 that did not
involve surrendering to Kaiser Bill in 1914.

If all those Americans had not died fighting in France, Sam Sloan
might never have risen to power.

What power would that be, Sam?

On Apr 21, 11:10*am, wrote:
On Apr 21, 11:38*am, samsloan wrote:

On Apr 21, 7:53 am, wrote:

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

Larry Parr has a valid and interesting point. If Germany had won World
War I, Hitler would never have risen to power and World War II might
not have happened.

* And if pigs had wings, they'd live in trees, Sam.

* Parr does not have "a valid and interesting point"; he is merely
engaging in armchair speculation, idly fantasizing about a supposed
paradise in an imaginary universe.
* I'd like to see you and Parr present these arguments to, say, the
French government in 1914, telling them "You must allow the Germans to
overrun your country, so that they won't bother to try it again in
1940, and so that the Bolsheviks won't come to power in Russia." Or
tell President Wilson "You must support the authoritarian,
militaristic Germans rather than your more democratic British cousins,
because otherwise there will be Russian missiles in Cuba in 1962."

* There were plenty of ways to thwart Hitler before 1939 that did not
involve surrendering to Kaiser Bill in 1914.




If all those Americans had not died fighting in France, Sam Sloan
might never have risen to power.

* What power would that be, Sam?

LOL
Good one TK!

SAZAMOV'S MEMOIRS

Dear Sam,

First, you're right. Don't use a reprint
edition for your own effort. Find a good FIRST
EDITION, if you can. Now, then, let me recommend
www.mxbf.com, the world's largest used book site bar
about 20 miles (which has first editions on offer for
Sazonov). They have nearly everything. Speaking of
which, I have another reprinting idea for you of books
written by a former Hollywood star that might interest
you. If you manage to reprint Sazonov and the other
idea that I will give you privately, I will buy copies.


What is your preferred private email address,
or is it the same as the one employed here?

Secondly, don't forget, Sam, I live over here in
Malaysia. There is no hope that I could ever track
down a copy of a Russian foreign minister's memoirs
in this country. Such books do not exist here.

But I do have an idea. For how many days do you
need a copy of the book to complete your work? You
might try going to the New York Public Library and
simply checking out a copy.

Sam: Are you aware that the man who was one of
the world's best-selling authors in the area of
non-fiction during the 1920s and 1930s, who wrote
beautifully, is today virtually totally forgotten, in
a certain sense. One of his works went through
hundreds of printings. I will tell you about the
books privately. A reprint edition of these works
would likely HAVE A MARKET. When I think about this
particular writer, who sold so many books about 80
years ago and who wrote such engaging and energetic
prose, I wonder what is required to stay in memory.

I will toss three other titles at you for your
consideration: Herbert Yardley's "The American Black
Chamber " (nickname for U.S. cryptologic section,
published about 1931) "The Chinese Black Chambe" (he
set up Chiang Kai-shek's intelligence section in the
1930s) and "Education of a Poker Player" (about 1958).
Yardley was possibly the greatest natural cryptologist
who ever lived. He broke the Japanese diplomatic
codes which proved decisive at the Washington Naval
Conference of 1921 -- not to mention solving American
codes as a HOBBY during WWI.

The downside to my suggestion may be that there
are quite a few reprints available of Yardley's work,
if I am not mistaken.

Yardley lost his job when the Black Chamber was
dissolved in 1929 (two days after Black Tuesday) after
Hoover's Sec. of State Henry Stimson famously said,
"Gentlemen do not read each other's mail," and then
dissolved our code department.

The American Black Chamber book is famous as
one of the biggest legal releases of classified
information ever. Yardley ended informing at least
17 nations that their codes had been broken!

Yours, Larry Parr





samsloan wrote:
On Apr 21, 7:53 am, wrote:
Hmmm, so Larry would have preferred that Germany won World War I.
Interesting.

Larry Parr has a valid and interesting point. If Germany had won World
War I, Hitler would never have risen to power and World War II might
not have happened.

If all those Americans had not died fighting in France, Sam Sloan
might never have risen to power.

If Queen Victoria had not carried the gene for hemophilia, which she
spread to all the Royal Families of Europe by marrying all her
children into those families, the Royal Families might still rule
Europe.

Anyway, I have just ordered one copy of FATEFUL YEARS 1909-1916 (The
Reminiscences of Serge Sazonov G.C.B., G.C.V.O. Russian Minister for
Foreign Affairs: 1914)

If the book turns out to be in good condition (not fuzzy) I will
reprint it.

Sam Sloan

A DEED OF SHAME

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

Trust Taylor Kingston to offer the argument of a
jackanapes. I wrote that if Germany had won WW1
in 1917, the world would have been saved many of the
the central horrors of the 20th century.

So Kingston then infers that I preferred a German victory.
My preference was for an allied victory in 1915 or 1916 -- and
then the victory of either side in 1917. Anything, in short,
to avoid the fatal year of 1918.

If you want to understand Kingston's approach
to historical thought, his response is exemplary.
Perhaps the two of us can agree on that much.

Kingston's next attempt at an argument is to
reduce the observation that WWI resulted in
the decivilization of world politics to a silly reference
to Queen Victoria and haemophilia.

One figures that Taylor Kingston has never heard
the name of Henry Charles Keith Petty-Fitzmaurice, 5th
Marquess of Lansdowne or, simply, Lord Lansdowne. He
is today remembered not for being Viceroy of India,
Minister of War, Minister of Foreign Affairs, or leader
of the House of Lord's resistance to Asquith's
"People's Budget" of 1909, which was the final burial
of laissez faire as a liberal tenet.

Instead, Lansdowne is remembered and, yes, now
honored as the author of a letter to the editor. That's all.

But it was quite a letter, which was rejected by
The London Times, though later published in the Tory
newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, and reprinted in toto
as a major news article in the NY Times.

Lansdowne, you see, was at the very center of
the national establishment and possibly the most
eminent conservative voice in England following Arthur
Balfour's resignation as Tory leader in the House of Commons.

Reaction to the letter -- more anon on what the
letter said -- was outrage, more or less. H. G. Wells
said it was "the letter of a Peer who fears revolution
more than national dishonour," by which he meant, the
dishonour of negotiating a peace with Germany in WW1
Arthur Bonar Law, the chessplaying Tory leader of
Commons, called the letter "a deed of shame."

Lansdowne was shunned at his private clubs and
condemned in public. Today, though, he is viewed as a
seer, who unfortunately foretold what was to come.

Landowne's letter appeared in November 1917 in
the British press, though he had been circulating his
views among those in Cabinet and elsewhere at the top
for about a year. After meeting with rejection, he went
public at a moment when millions of soldiers were
crawling over frozen corpses in the mud of the Western
Front. The Bolsheviks had seized power in Russia; the
prospect of another year of war could mean consolidation
of this evil power to the East and lead to revolutions elswewhere.

Lord Lansdowne argued that the Great War's
"prolongation will spell ruin for the civilised world
and an infinite addition to the load of human
suffering which already weighs upon it."

This pillar of the Tory establishment had broken
with the War, prophesying disaster if it continued and
arguing for the status quo ante bellum.

What our Kingston creature would have the
readers of this forum imagine is that the idea of WWI
as a disaster leading to the horrors of totalitarianism
is a farfetched historical construct. It is not.

It was understood during the Great War that civilization
was becoming unglued. What I wrote here yesterday and
today represents no great revelation. It is an instance in
which the conventional wisdom gets something right.

And what did Kingston's hero Woodrow Wilson think
about the Lansdowne Letter? To his credit, the American
president was impressed by the arguments and regarded
it more highly than did the members of a British political
establishment committed to fighting the Great War to its
sanguinary conclusion.


Yours, Larry Parr



wrote:
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 -

- Show quoted text -

I have ordered the Serge Sazonov book and I will be reprinting it.
You can expect it out in a month.

If you want to write an introduction I will publish it in the book. I
always include an introduction in my reprints.

Forget the New York Public Library. That is a research library. You
cannot check books. Also, when I reprint a book I take it apart and
dismember it. I cut apart all the pages. It cannot be returned to the
library.

Also, forget the Herbert Yardley books. They have all been reprinted
in 2004 and 2005 and are available everywhere cheap.

I use bookfinder.com all the time. It is my main place to search.

Think about this: Bobby Fischer wrote a book in 1959. Published by
Simon and Schuster it is completely forgotten today. I cannot even
find a reference to it anywhere, not even as a used book. Do you know
where I can find it?

My only working email now is Write to me there.
Also, you can write to the Amherst County Sheriff and ask him politely
to let me have my websites back.

You write above "SAZAMOV'S MEMOIRS" Is that a spelling mistake, or is
SAZAMOV another one of those White Russians?

Sam

By the way, I am reprinting Sidney Bernstein's book, "Combat: My 50
Years at the Chessboard"

You probably did not know that Sidney Bernstein had a book.

When it comes out in a few weeks, it will appear he

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0923891307

Sam