The Atlas Gentleman's Social Club 1945

[The Mikado]

I, of course, support Senor (This confounded telegraph cannot capture the Spanish enye) Madero, but I am suspicious of his allies.  That Villa threatens my interests in borderland agriculture...I will not have any cross-border raids.  As for Zapata, the leader of the tamale-eating peasants of Chiapas, the less said the better.

As for events in the eternal Celestial Empire, several of my relatives are currently missionaries over there.  They all say that Sun Yat-Sen has America's interests at heart and would be a fine replacement for the pitifully weak Qing regime.  They also expressed a great deal of admiration for this General Yuan Shikai.  Apparently, his Beiyang army is the most impressive and modern military force in the Orient, excepting of course his Imperial Majesty Meiji's force in Japan.  But then, the Japanese are hardly Oriental anymore!  Quaint, in many ways, but they lack the backwards features (complacency and arrogance) of the rest of the Mongoloid race.

Speaking of the Orient, albeit a more Western bit, do you think His Majesty's Government's interests in India are threatened by the unrest in Persia, Afleitch?  I know your government recently came to an understanding with the Tsar, but there's no doubt that the Bear will pounce on the Peacock if it grows too weak.  Ever since that Revolution over there in 1906, it has become dreadfully complicated.  The Persians seem to be making up for a lack of progress in their history since Antiquity by shoving several centuries of history into a few years!

On that same note, I have become a grand admirer of young Enver Pasha and his reforms in Turkey.  With the speed the Ottoman Empire is modernizing, I see the sick man of Europe getting off his deathbed.  There's no reason the Ottoman Empire cannot make it to the end of the century with men like the Young Turks in charge.

[The Mikado]

I must address Messrs Republic and hawkeye's disdain for women's suffrage.  As you gentlemen know, it already exists in large swathes of the Union, and no longer the province of wives of Western silver miners.  I would recomend John Stuart Mill's On the Subjugation of Women for further reference.  Mr. Mill speaks for me as he does on many things.

I must say that the Austrian belligerence towards the Balkans makes me nervous.  Yesterday the rabble staged a parade for young men (Slovenes, Croats, Czechs, other Slavic trash) returning home to serve in the Austrian army.  While I welcome the departure of the refuse of the Balkans, I worry at the implications of a Balkan war.  I hear the Greeks and Bulgars (perhaps Messrs px75 and Gmantis would weigh in) wish to drive the Ottomans out of Europe.

[The Mikado]

Youth!  Singing outside my door, the portal to my abode, is bad enough: singing, loudly, the compositions of that Jew Berlin is intolerable.  "C'mon an' hear?"  I would rather not come on and hear Alexander's ragtime band, I don't care if this Alexander fellow can play Swanee River in ragtime.  What sort of composition tells one to listen to other music?

If the Jew Berlin has one redeeming feature, it is that he is not Mr. George M. Cohan (and heaven help you if you forget that precious M. of his!).  How many aspiring young singers end up embracing his flag-waving trashy nonsense over the chance to achieve greatness as Otello or Salome (praise is due to Herr  Strauss for redeeming the perviously meritless and blaspphemous trash of the late frivolous sodomite Wilde)?  Last time I was in New York I asked a promising looking lad why he preferred trashy vaudeville.  He said, "Cuz that's where the future is, chappie!  See the vaudeville, have a drink, meet the dancer, get sued for breach of promise..."  With that sort of attitude, I daresay that is the last I'll hear from young Mr. P. G. Wodehouse.  "Chappie," indeed.

On the stage, the state of affairs is not much better.  Everyone either wants to listen to dreadful tedium from that confounded Fabian Mr. Shaw or fall into manic depression thanks to that ghastly Norwegian with the ridiculous name...Ibsen?  What has happened to the theater I once adored?

[The Mikado]

I had been saying for years that American music was missing its heart and soul due to Mr. Cole Porter's long sojourn in Paris (the French's benefit is clearly our loss...come home, Cole!).  Then, I discovered Mr. George Gershwin and his brother Ira Gershwin.  For anyone that has not had the chance of listening to a Gershwin work, you are missing out and it's a crime to do so, particularly with the new availability of records (giving up my wax cylinder collection was a tragedy).  Al Jolson is a national treasure, especially singing Mr. Gershwin's "Swanee."  "How I loves ya, how I loves ya!"  Gershwin is singlehandedly reviving my faith in American music, which has sadly been dominated by vapid "songwriters" like Berlin or folk music.  I feel that, in a hundred years, when America needs to prove that it has had cultural accomplishments, it will put "Rhapsody in Blue" on the phonograph (just released this year, and it is the best piece of music written so far in this 20th century, in my view).

As some of you are aware, I have been taking the Volstead Act harder than most.  Rooting out alcohol struck at the heart of my very lifestyle.  I see no hope of repeal on the horizon, but I have been finding release.  If you want a way to take your mind off of the Volstead Act here in DC, there's a nice, clean pool establishment I could show you.  Nothing like good, clean, all-American fun.  The crow flies east at high noon.

The news from Russia goes from bad to worse.  I fear for my (very) extended relatives still over there.  When I think of the stories I once heard of the good old days: my grandmother having fresh fruit in winter parties in St. Petersburg, going to the estate in the south, talking about how courteous the serfs always were...I think about today.  My grandmother's estate probably has fifteen families living in it!  It is an atrocious sin against the laws of God and man.  That land was in (some branch of) my family since the late 18th century.  Though obviously this American branch had no interest in it, some distant cousin of mine lost everything he had in 1917 for the sake of an unwashed illiterate mob that has no appreciation for a Second Empire candelabra.  They will wreck the place beyond comprehension, I just know it.  Here, people like Mr. Lief have been supporting these common thieves, stealing the familial treasures of all of the best people of Russia to give to the dirt-covered residuum and the self-appointed council of failed "intellectuals" that claim to lead them.

I must go.  I'm meeting a Mr. F. Scott Fitzgerald for...tea and to discuss his literary ambitions.

[The Mikado]

What are your opinions of this second iteration of the Ku Klux Klan?  I find them distasteful, tacky, and hickish, for the most part, despite the membership of a surprising amount of society in their cabal.  What sort of man wears a bizarre outfit and goes to secret meetings, practices tasteless rituals that mock true religion, and act privately in a manner that they would never dare to do in public?

Oh, I've rambled too long.  I need to get to the Lodge.  We're raising two of our promising young Fellowcraft to Master tonight, and I'm part of the ceremony.  Beg pardon.

[The Mikado]

War stories, anyone?

I was still in training in the Fall of 1918, when I got out, the war was over before we reached France.  They sent me to the Siberian intervention instead.  I don't have too terribly much to say: we didn't see much combat, but it was the coldest and most miserable and lonely days of my life.  The taiga is endless.  Quite a few of my companions died, not from hostile fire, but from the flu (though we were hardly alone in that).  Couple that with the damn Japanese wanting us to attack, attack, attack, when that clearly wasn't in our mission.

[The Mikado]

Just don't ask what the alcohol you're drinking is made out of.  While it does improve close to the Canadian border (and, I suppose, the other border), the homemade stuff can be quite hazardous to your health.  I've heard horror stories of "bathtub gin" that turned out to be turpentine.

[The Mikado]

I saw an interesting newsreel about Mustafa Kemal, the "Ataturk," and his reforms in Turkey.  As you may be aware, I've always been something of a Turcophile, and the destruction of the Turkish Empire during the recent unpleasantness was not a condition I smiled on, so seeing Mustafa Kemal repel Greek aggression and save Izmir from the terrible fate of becoming "Smyrna" once again was a bright spot in recent history for me.  This Ataturk insists on strict laicite (apologies to my French brethren, the telegraph cannot render the diacritical marks properly) to the point of banning ladies' headscarves.  I see more headscarves on the streets of Washington than you can apparently find in the ancient alleys of Istanbul today!  What say you?  I think that, perhaps, the suppression of ancient traditions for no other sake than that they appear backwards simply pointlessly aggravates people.  Let them wear their headscarves if they like, and fix the material circumstances that have left the Turk backwards, not their outward appearances.  If the Turks want to wear picturesque headscarves and fezzes, let them!  It makes Istanbul or Ankara seem more authentic to the tourists.

[The Mikado]

President Roosevelt's margin shocked even me, I must say.  The people's distaste for Mr. Hoover clearly exceeded all expectations.  And yet I'm not sure how I feel about President Roosevelt.  Surely, I approve of his efforts to repeal the Volstead Act (after what happened to my portfolio the last few years, I could use a stiff drink), but I'm skeptical of his ability to fight this monstrous crisis.  I hear that Lord Keynes, my new hero, referred to the man as an "economic illiterate."  Lord Keynes' writings have influenced me on a number of issues, and the man's brilliance shines through in his elegant, lengthy-yet-concise prose.   If President Roosevelt merely follows through with his plans for government-funded pensions and the like, we will never exit the Depression.  We must follow Lord Keynes' brilliant strategy of massive public-sector spending.

Speaking of Lord Keynes, I do tend to agree with his assessment of the Treaty of Versailles as being a Carthaginian Peace and an injustice to the German people, and I can understand Herr Hitler's campaign to have it overturned...and yet.  And yet.  Herr Hitler is untrustworthy, I feel.  There is a gap between wanting to undo the injustices against the German people that left them with a rump state with a ruined economy and the rampant irredentism he suggests.  While I, for one, have no objection to a German unification with Austria or a retaking of Danzig and the Sudetenland, I do have a problem with National Socialist Germany obtaining these strategic and resource-rich zones.  Herr Hitler's irredentism is far more ominous than Signor Mussolini's ramblings about Trieste or Albania (honestly, who would want to conquer Albania?).  I hope to see Mr. Roosevelt work alongside the British and French to pacify Herr Hitler's more legitimate complaints while at the same time not giving in completely to a German rearmament.

Speaking of mad dogs, Mr. Trotsky is in the news again.  I hear he's alleging more atrocities by the collectivist tyrannical regime in Moscow.  To be honest, Mr. Stalin's Soviet Union is undergoing an economic miracle, thanks in no small part to his Five Year Plans.  I am no Bolshevik, but I must admit to admiring the man's ability to take a backwards nation and drag it kicking and screaming into the 20th century through sheer iron force of will.  Speaking of not being a Bolshevik, apparently nearly all of Lenin's comrades were!  With the fall of Mr. Bukharin a few years ago and the freezing out of Mr. Zinoviev (and, of course, Mr. Trotsky's exile), Stalin seems to have established an uncontested stranglehold on the Soviet Union.

While I respect the Empire of the Rising Sun, I am fearful of the humanitarian consequences of the imperial ambitions of the Japanese government.  I have several relatives doing missionary work in China at the moment.  It is a dreadful, dreadful place.  Though M. Chiang Kai-Shek is a good man who welcomes our religious brethren and their efforts to educate and uplift the people of that benighted land, he only controls a fraction of China, with warlords and gangsters running rampant (and the ever-present threat of the Chinese Communists).  I fear that the Japanese would not be anywhere near as inclined to accept an American missionary (and business) presence.

So, a friend of a friend of mine is a friend of Cole Porter's!  A few weeks ago, I had the privilege to have dinner at Cole and Linda's home.  They are a charming couple, and the light of society.  Mr. Fred Astaire was there: Cole does his best writing for that fantastic man.  Have you ever seen him dance?  Soon, everyone will!  Fred Astaire's ending of his stage career is a tragedy, but the stage's loss in the silver screen's gain.  I guarantee that Mr. Goldwyn and Mr. Meyer will not regret the day they heard the name Fred Astaire.  

Anyway, Cole (if I may so call him), played us a number he's in the process of writing.  As you all know, I am an avid follower of last century's great wordsmith, Sir. W. S. Gilbert, and I believe this song is a tribute to Sir Gilbert's "patter songs."  It repeats the phrase, "You're the top" and lists a variety of things that are the "top" (best) of their fields.  He says he needs a fair bit more of them to finish the song (he wants to write five full verses!), but I heard the line, "You're Mickey Mouse," and thought, "what a uniquely 20th century tribute!"  The Greeks had Achilles, the Germans had Siegfried, we have Mickey Mouse, who I'm sure will be a symbol of America long after Huckleberry Finn is forgotten.

I must admit, I was a bit surprised when Cole cornered me and asked me if I wanted a private tour of the house.  I had had a few glasses of champagne, and was thoroughly surprised to see Cole looking at me in a manner that made me slightly uncomfortable.  Nevertheless, I went along, and their place is absolutely lovely.  The incident...I mustn't think the worst of Cole.  I'm sure he's perfectly happy in his marriage.

I have to go, I'm going to the cinema to see some nonsense about three stooges.

[The Mikado]

Senator Long is an enigma.  On one level, I feel that Huey Long has authentic compassion and a desire to alleviate the suffering of the poor and downtrodden nationwide.  Yet one hears rumors.  One hears rumors from Louisiana that are disquieting.  I have no doubt that Senator Long wants the best for this country, but his methods, his personality, his persona...he reminds me of a deep-fried Mussolini.  I pray that I'm wrong, but I do not want Long near the Presidency.

Speaking of fascists, have you seen the ratings of Father Coughlin's radio show?  It's a shock the Vatican hasn't excommunicated the man.  His idiosyncratic politics have drawn a huge following.  I'm amazed at the power of the radio.  People across the continent tune in simultaneously to listen to a demagogue rant.  While Alcibiades was restricted to an agora and Cataline to a Forum, Coughlin's "agora" is the public air and his "forum" is America's living rooms.

[The Mikado]

That scumbag Hitler.  At every step of the way we've underestimated him.  That traitor to workers everywhere, Stalin, accepts his scraps (bits of Poland and the Baltics) and happily chews away at Finland while letting the butcher of the Polish and German workingman expand his reach into Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and now France!  Stalin is a disgrace to everything the USSR professes to believe in.  I wonder what Comrade Lief, who has had his nose so far up Stalin's ass he smelled the end of the Popular Front weeks in advance, has to say about his hero's betrayal of Europe.

Speaking of disgraces, Marshal Petain just won himself a special place in hell.  I hear a French general made it out of there alive and has pledged continued resistance, and I hope this fellow can stir up resistance in the French colonies (how long will Gibraltar last if the Germans take North Africa?  Who will keep the Japanese out of Indochina if not the French?), but I have my doubts.  The French defeat was too sudden, too total, to be anything but completely demoralizing.

Afleitch, we in the States are mostly praying for you and our Anglo-Saxon (and Celtic!) cousins.  I hope you make it out of there alive, wherever "there" is.  (Could it be CENSORED?  or CENSORED?)  I fear, for the first time since Culloden, the British Isles face foreign invasion.  I honestly don't see how Great Britain can win against the Nazi war machine, and I fear His Majesty's government might be moving a lot closer to the US...a government in exile in Canada seems depressingly likely.

Why not a government in exile in India, you ask?  The damn Japs.  If it's not one thing, it's another.  The endless list of abominable atrocities against the civilians of China is enough to sicken even the hardest of souls.  His Imperial Majesty's government would be the biggest band of sociopaths and criminals of the 20th century so far, were that title not already taken by Berlin.  What's next, Japan?  The Philippines?  Do you want America's Philippines?  We will fight to protect them. 

[The Mikado]

I just heard of the miraculous amphibian rescue operation at Dunkirk on the newsreels.  300,000 soldiers of the Expeditionary Force rescued!  Does anyone know if our Andrew was one of the ones saved?

This brief moment of sunlight might soon be eclipsed, though.  I hear the Italians are making their move in North Africa and that the Germans may be preparing for what Mr. Churchill termed a "Battle of Britain." 

By the way, I'm almost scared to hear the answer, but whatever happened to our friend Lewis Trondheim?  I thought he got out of Germany a few years back (those KPD ties are fatal), but did he go far enough?  Given all the Germans that fled to Holland or Denmark only to find themselves back in Hitler's grasp, I fear for Lewis.

[The Mikado]

As I predicted, Comrade Lief stands firm behind Stalin's message.  You can see the puppet strings connected from the Kremlin to his shoulders.  Should the peace between Germany and the USSR end, mark my words, Lief will be demanding immediate American intervention to save his workers' paradise.  You Reds are the most disgustingly predictable people in politics.  Whatever Stalin wants, you want.

[The Mikado]

Quite so, Kalwejt.  (By the way, are you safe?)  The vicious Soviet backstabbing and invasion of Poland, followed by its brutal annexations of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, followed by its gruesome invasion of Finland demonstrate clearly for the world that Stalin is just as much of a tyrannical expansionist as Hitler is, with the added threat of his brainwashed puppets establishing a major stake in every country on the planet. 

[The Mikado]

I, for one, express glee that our Polish friend is safe, for certain values of safe.  Are you planning to proceed through France into Spain, or are you going to try your luck with General Petain's new regime?

Speaking of France, I hear a French general escaped the fall and is trying to organize resistance among the French abroad.  While I doubt how effective he'll be, I have to admire this General de Gaulle. 

[The Mikado]

God, it's good to be back in the USA.  My days in New Guinea will haunt me for the rest of my life.  People live there!  At least Australia was nice, and I wouldn't mind seeing Hawaii under different circumstances, but I shudder to think of what I and my country went through the last few years.

So many lost...Jenkins, Morris, Wallace...men I grew up with, dying or twisted for life by the horrifying ambition of the Japanese.  Have any of you had the privilege to talk to a survivor of Bataan?  Horrifying.  I don't know what we're going to do with the Japanese.  They've clearly shown that they aren't capable of living in peace.  A long occupation might be necessary for everyone involved.  I wish General MacArthur the best of luck.

Your war recollections (if they're not too terrible) can be posted here.  I'm interested to know what happened to our old friend Lewis...I know he disappeared back in '37, and I hope he's just been lying low.  Not to mention Kalwejt, that valiant vet of the Warsaw Ghetto.

[The Mikado]

Memphis, that attitude is unworthy of you.  The black man fought and died for our country in this war every bit as much as the white did.  I see no reason why we shouldn't strive to ease their burden.  Why, my friend Eli only employs Negroes.  He says that he saves a fortune on wages and that they're more driven because there's so many of them looking for work.

[The Mikado]

I've heard some...disquieting...rumors about our Soviet friends.  I hope that the Soviet-Anglo-American tripartite pact can continue steering the world in harmony.  The alternative is too dreadful to contemplate.  Luckily, Messrs Truman and Stalin are both pragmatic men.