Via Bernhard
“Lay Down Your Arms and All Will Be As Before”
“Imagine
America invaded by a foreign power, one that has quadruple the
population and industrial base. Imagine that this enemy has free access
to the world’s goods as well as an inexhaustible supply of cannon fodder
from the proletariat of other countries, while America itself is
tightly blockaded from the outside world.
New
York and Cincinnati have been taken. For months, Boston and Chicago
have been under constant siege, the civilian population driven from
their homes. Enemy forces roam over large parts of the country burning
the homes, tools and food of the non-combatants in a campaign of
deliberate terrorism.
Nearly
85 percent of the nation’s able-bodied males (up to 50 years of age)
have been called to arms. Battlefield casualties have run to 39 percent
and deaths amount to nearly half of that, far exceeding those of any
other war.
On
the other hand, the enemy, through its acts and domestic propaganda
indicate otherwise, is telling the American population that it wants
only peace and the restoration of the status quo antebellum. Lay down
your arms and all will be as before.
What
would be the state of our morale in such conditions? Americans have
never suffered such misfortune, have they? Alas, they have. This was
the experience of the Southern people from 1861-1865 in their lost War
for Independence.”
(Clyde Wilson, An Honorable Defeat, Chronicles, October 1998, excerpt, pg. 28)
]
