Balder Ex-Libris

Author : Reed Douglas
Title : Disgrace Abounding Part one American Scene Part two Behind the scene
Year : 1951

Link download : Reed_Douglas_-_Far_And_Wide.zip

Foreword. ALL ABOARD FOR ALABAM' I took ship one day for Alabama, and this is the tale of that far journey across wide seas and lands. It took me from Africa to, and through, America and back and was much longer than the earth's girth. The calling of political explorer, which chance bestowed on me some twenty years ago, becomes ever fussier, but I seem to he its only practitioner now and enjoy it. My heart never urgently called me Americaward because it belongs to our cradle-land, Europe, and in serener times I would have stayed there. Today Europe is cut in two and, I believe, will either be wholly crushed into a servile oblivion at one more move in the great game, or rise again. The remaining years of our century should decide that stupendous issue of our age (or, as you like it, that petty incident in time and space). Much power to sway the decision, either way, has passed from Europe to America, so that I felt an urgent need of the mind to go there. The balance of money-power and manufacture-power has greatly shifted thither; and if 'the world is governed by very different persons from what those believe who are not behind the scenes' (Disraeli's words) then America is today the land which they will chiefly seek to divide, rule and use for the completion of their plan. The plan, I think, is the old one of world dominion in a new form. It is not merely that of one more Wicked Man, like the Hitler who, in Mr. Chaplin's film The Great Dictator, dreamily played with our planet. The political explorer early finds that other men than these spotlighted, evanescent, public figures also play with the globe. It is, in my belief, the plan of a conspiratorial sect, the members of which wield much power in all countries, seldom openly appear, hold sway over the visible public figures, and are able so to direct the acts of governments, friendly or hostile, peaceable or warring, that these in the end all promote their prompters' own destructive ambition. This ambition (and today I think it is apparent) is to set up a World State to which all nations, having ruined each other, shall be enserfed. The League of Nations was to my mind a first experiment in that direction and the United Nations is a second one, much more advanced. A wandering journalist, I have gone through the thick of these events for many years and have no doubt left that this is the shape of things intended to come. Two groups, alien in all lands and powerful in all lands, chiefly promote that great design. The political explorer finds Soviet Communism and Zionist Nationalism in all countries to be forces powerful behind the scenes, and in sum their separate efforts serve a converging ambition. It is, as I judge, to crush the nations into a flat, brazen servitude between the hammer of revolution and the anvil of gold. The founder of Zionist Nationalism, Theodor Herzl, openly described the method: 'The power of our purse ... the terrible power of the revolutionary proletariat.' It reveals the secret, the great discovery, of politics in our times. Politicians can ever be brought to yield either to the glitter of material reward (perhaps in the shape of votes), or, if that fails, to the threat of agitation and overthrow. Such is the conspirator's road to power, on high and higher to the highest levels. Today the scene is set for the third act, intended to complete the process. The money-power and the revolutionary-power have been set up and given sham but symbolic shapes ('Capitalism' or 'Communism') and sharply-defined citadels ('America' or 'Russia'). Suitably to alarm the massmind, the picture offered is that of bleak and hopeless enmity and confrontation: Black Knight and White Knight. One must destroy the other. Such is the spectacle publicly staged for the masses. But what if similar men, with a common aim, secretly rule in both camps and propose to achieve their ambition through the clash between those masses? I believe any diligent student of our times will discover that this is the case. He will find that in all countries essential to the plan invisible or half-seen men, whose names are publicly little known, are powerful enough to dictate the major acts of governments at vital moments (President Roosevelt's near-deathbed admission that he signed the fatal order to bisect Germany 'at the request of an old and valued friend', who remained nameless, is a recent case in point). In the United States, particularly, these powerful men behind-the-scenes have in the last thirty years been able to give such a slant to governmental actions that these went to promote the ends of Soviet Communism and Zionist Nationalism; at least, it looked like that to me from afar and when I went closer the same picture grew only clearer. Thus I think that out of the smoke and smother of any new war, begun on the one side to 'destroy Capitalism' and on the other to 'destroy Communism', will at the end be produced (if this situation continues) what those managers really want: the Communist-Capitalist Super-State with all the Capitalist-Communist power over people and gold, and all the nations submerged. For the Second War proved beyond further doubt what the First War began to make probable: that aims and causes tossed to the masses at the start of these great conflicts have no relation to the ultimate plans in truth pursued. In that matter another incident from the Roosevelt era is convincing. At one point during the Second War the British Government found that Mr. Roosevelt entertained massive ideas about reshaping the globe, and these affected British territories, among many others. The British Foreign Minister, courteously mentioning that they included no American (he might have added, or Russian) sacrifices, gently asked about the President's constitutional powers for redistributing the world while it was still at war. President Roosevelt then inquired of his legal advisers and was reassuringly told that he could do anything he liked 'without Congressional action in the first instance' and 'the handling of the military forces of the United States could be so managed as to foster any purpose he pursued'. The last sentence supplies the key to the mysteries of these wars. They are not for the ends publicly announced when The Boys set out. The important thing, apparently, is to get The Boys started; then their military operations may be 'handled' to foster 'any purpose' their rulers may pursue. But who are their rulers, today? In the most vital matters, 'old and valued friends', who never emerge from anonymity! I think the method has become clear, and expect to see it pursued, and any further wars 'handled', until the purpose of setting up the World Servile State is accomplished, or finally fails. Long observation in Europe and Africa brought me to and confirmed these views. America was the essential last stage on my journey of political exploration. I knew all the rest, from Moscow through Berlin to London and Paris, and believed I had a good notion of what went on in America; but the personal experience lacked. So I went to see for myself, with memories of the two wars and of twenty years of politics in twenty countries in my mind's eye. All those fragments now fitted into the picture of a continuing process, guided by master hands unseen, and I set out to learn how far the American one dovetailed into it. At the end I thought that America, like my own country, was in the business unwittingly but up to the neck. Matters have gone too far for the last great coup, The World State, not now to be tried; only the result, I think, now remains in doubt. The first part of this book contains the visual picture of America as I saw it at the fateful midcentury during a very long overland journey; my experience is that you need to travel a country far and wide before you try to understand it. The second part contains, for what they are worth, the conclusions which I brought away. ...