CORRESPONDENCE FROM THE 20TH CENTURY

In 1899 Samuel Langhorne Clemens wrote a letter from the horse-whipped 19th Century to the callow 20th. It offered wisdom, advice and apologies. Despite its attempt to promote peace, tolerance and general sanity the letter appears to have been pushed aside in favor of shiny technology, bright soldier’s uniforms and a brave new world. We can only try again.

Dear Big Brother:
I am writing you in the hopes of averting yet another saga in our eternal collision course. Although I am fully aware that you regard me with some disdain, it is necessary that one last effort be made. Here on my death bed many images roll by. Some are good, some are evil. It is my sincere hope that you can benefit from my mistakes and enter the Millennium with the sentiments of the dove, not the aptitude of the vulture.
It all started for me in 1900 with fireworks, anarchists, cake walks, Boxer Rebellions and Sigmund Freud. The world was a big bowl of cherries. Queen Victoria was on the way out, electricity was on the way in. Life was good, at least for those who could afford it. Naiveté reigned. Summer walks along the shore. The New York Giants, the Brooklyn Dodgers. Orville and Wilbur, Peter Pan, “The Great Train Robbery” and the Panama Canal. You’re too young to remember, but the first decade also gave us the Boer War, the Russo-Japanese War, the Mexican Civil War, Revolution in China, the beginnings of the Bolshevik rise to power in Russia. Human life was cheap on most of the planet….cheaper than coal…cheaper than opium.
In 1906 the population of London was 4.5 million. New York boasted 4 million while Tokyo and Vienna each had 1.5 million residents. The armies of the earth showed strengths of 13 million (Russia), 7.9 (Germany), and France at 4.8 million men-in-arms. With all those people clutching rifles it seemed like a prime time to hold a war.
An earthquake in Sicily killed 150,000 in 1908 and in 1921 the Titanic collided with an iceberg drowning 1500. Population control.
The Pale Horse unveiled his ruthless assembly line in 1914 when nations turned cannons on neighbors, embalming names like Mons, Gallipoli and Belleau Wood on the human psyche. Once again metal is victorious over flesh. Military casualties were appalling, reaching 40 million, as best as anyone could determine. Germany alone lost almost 2 million dead (give or take a few hundred thousand) while total casualties in the Russian Army neared 10 million. Think of the population explosion that might have occurred had these people lived a normal lifetime of, say, 50 years.
It’s difficult to believe that after the War to End All Wars the next generation in Europe was willing to march off to battle so soon.
Here in the U.S. we had the Roaring Twenties to distract us, then the Great Depression to bring them back to reality. There were sports heroes like Babe Ruth, Helen Wills, Gertrude Ederle and Jack Dempsey but you can access that information on the Internet during your coming tenure. Be sure to look up The League of Nations and examine the quality of life for the losers in post-war Europe.
Despite becoming the most charming and inventive inhabitants of the planet, humans remained the most vile. How would you have handled the violent labor struggles or the emergence of destructive nationalism? What about cruel colonialism? How would you have dealt with racism or the rantings of men like Hitler and Stalin? Ever hear of Lizzie Borden, Fritz Haarmann, the Ku Klux Klan, Bruno Hauptman or the St Valentine’s Day Massacre?
In 1930 Ras Tafari became Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, the French began building the Maginot Line, the Germans constructed the Siegfried Line and the population the United States reached 122 million. By 1935 Mussolini had conquered Ethiopia (Abyssinia), France launched the “S.S. Normandie”, Germany had repudiated the Versailles Treaty and the population of China stood at 422 million.
In 1937 the Japanese occupation army slaughtered millions in Shanghai and Nanking while Joe Stalin killed even more attempting to starve the Ukraine into submission. In the United States 32,000 people died in auto accidents in 1938. In 1939 45,000 persons were killed as a result of an earthquake in Turkey. That year the U.S. economy boomed due to orders from Europe for arms and war equipment. After the nightmare of World War II is over, estimates of war dead were 45 million, including 10 million men, women and children killed in Nazi concentration camps.
Despite the carnage, the world population hit 2.3 billion in 1950.
Where you intend to put all these people after 2015 is your own business. Although my track record is bleak I have tried, and failed to deal with what will surely be our demise. We held dress rehearsals in Korea and Vietnam and watched the Cultural Revolution on TV. We met Pol Pot and witnessed suicide charges across the Zagros Mountains adjacent to the Persian Gulf. Civil War did its part in Central America, in Northern Ireland and “the Holy Land”.
Are planets like Mars and stars in other galaxies potential digs or are they ancient bone yards of societies that have long ago suffocated themselves? Who really wants to live on some moon anyway. They probably don’t even have cable.
And today I heard that a bunch of self-serving loonies are again building shelters and hoarding food in fear of economic collapse. Where have these people been – the collapse happened years ago and we’ve just been cleaning up around here a bit. Some say bad air will strangle us as a species. Others are expecting the Second Coming.
Most just sit around and wonder how much rice is needed to feed Asia and the are stunned by the frightening multiplication tables of population.
OK, so I botched the 20th Century. It’s not like I was given an instruction manual. Sure there were great technological advances (most at great costs) and there have been wondrous creations and even some solutions. Is nature so cruel that death is the major variable that insures the continuity of life on earth? Every time a medicine saves a life, that life becomes a statistic in doom’s growing parade.
This morning Central Africa remains at war, ethnic cleansing marches on in Ukraine and people are starving in North Korea. More babies are born in South America and India. Rain forests are chewed up in Brazil. Abortion clinics are doing a grandstand business while the good folk load their rifles.
One could listen to limp lipped leaders talk about the salvation of technology and the bright future for our kids. “Everything is fine.” We can even watch rush hour on morning television. Look at those rats on the way to another meaningless race. Wait. One or two of them might actually get ahead. Let’s send an army to fight in Syria/Iraq and ignore East Los Angeles and downtown Baltimore.
One could open his eyes and watch favorite sons gobble up the last resources on the planet. Can we invent a substitute of water? For air? Is it such a surprise that we lose sight of what we are doing here and embrace violence and mindless distractions? Is intolerance toward our fellow humans the animal response? We generate more garbage than solutions. How to we turn it around? You tell me.
Good luck in 2015. You’ll damn well need it. If you need to get in touch with me for any reason you’ll just have to sift through the history books. I never got around to getting E-Mail.
– Little Bro