9 Which was an enormously popular strategy,
10 aAnd got him reelected to a second term,
11 With a huge mandate to keep on doing nothing at all,
12 Which he did,
13 bUntil something happened,
14 Something that wouldn't have happened if the Europeans had known anything at all about the Yanks,
15 cWhich they didn't.
CHAPTER 761 What happened was that the Krauts sank a Brit ship called the dLusitania,
2 Which was loaded with eYanks,
3 In spite of the fact that the Krauts had warned the Yanks to stay away from Brit ships if they didn't want to get hurt.
4 Of course, the Krauts thought it would be okay to give the Yanks a slightly more serious warning,
5 Because they had always thought the Yanks were kind of silly,
6 And undisciplined,
7 And didn't know anything about fighting wars anyway,
8 fBecause after all, just look at that gruesome little skirmish they had back there in the nineteenth century,
9 gWhich proved they didn't know anything about war.
10 hThe only problem was, the Krauts had sunk a ship that had Yanks on it,
11 iWhich meant that the Yanks would "Remember the Lusitania,"
12 Forever,
|
|
13 And would find a way to get even,
14 No matter how much it cost,
15 jBecause that's the American Way,
16 And so forth,
17 And so on.
18 Besides, the more Wilson thought about it,
19 The more he realized that it was up to the Yanks to save the Europeans from themselves,
20 Because it looked very much to Wilson as if the Europeans had just invented the concept of ktotal war,
21 lOnly fifty years or so after Lincoln and Grant had invented it.
22 This meant that somebody would have to teach the Europeans how to get along with one another,
23 Because they couldn't just keep going out and slaughtering twenty or thirty million of each other's troops every few years or so,
24 Indefinitely,
25 Without causing major problems for everybody else,
26 mIncluding the Yanks.
CHAPTER 771 And so, the Yanks declared war on Germany and Austria,
2 nSo that they could go over there and fight the war to end all wars,
3 And save the world for odemocracy,
4 Not to mention get even with the Krauts,
5 No matter what it cost.
6 pArmed with these great principles, the Yanks drafted a whole bunch of doughboys,
|