I remember 1941. My father was in the US Army Air Corps, stationed at what became McDill Air Force Base in Tampa.
When we went to a movie, the highlight was the news reels. We saw strutting German soldiers goose-stepping along the streets of conquered countries. We saw scenes of Japanese soldiers in China fighting the Chinese Nationalists. We saw scenes of London burning.
What I don't remember is fear.
If the adults around me had been fearful, I think I would have noticed.
War was in the air, but there was no sense that this was someone else's job. It was everyone's job.
A sense of the national attitude at the time was expressed in President Roosevelt's address to Congress on January 6, 1941. It is worth reading the
whole speech, but here is an excerpt:
"....there is nothing mysterious about the foundations of a healthy and strong democracy.
The basic things expected by our people of their political and economic systems
are simple. They are:
"Equality of opportunity for youth and for others.
Jobs for those who can work.
Security for those who need it.
The ending of special privilege for the few.
The preservation of civil liberties for all.
The enjoyment of the fruits of scientific progress in a wider and constantly rising
standard of living.
"These are the simple, basic things that must never be lost sight of in the turmoil
and unbelievable complexity of our modern world. The inner and abiding strength
of our economic and political systems is dependent upon the degree to which they
fulfill these expectations.
"Many subjects connected with our social economy call for immediate improvement.
"As examples:
We should bring more citizens under the coverage of old-age pensions and unemployment
insurance.
We should widen the opportunities for adequate medical care.
We should plan a better system by which persons deserving or needing gainful employment
may obtain it.
"I have called for personal sacrifice. I am assured of the willingness of almost
all Americans to respond to that call.
"A part of the sacrifice means the payment of more money in taxes. In my Budget Message
I shall recommend that a greater portion of this great defense program be paid for
from taxation than we are paying today. No person should try, or be allowed, to
get rich out of this program; and the principle of tax payments in accordance with
ability to pay should be constantly before our eyes to guide our legislation.
"If the Congress maintains these principles, the voters, putting patriotism ahead
of pocketbooks, will give you their applause.
"In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded
upon four essential human freedoms.
"The first is freedom of speech and expression - everywhere in the world.
"The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way - everywhere
in the world.
"The third is freedom from want - which, translated into world terms, means economic
understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its
inhabitants - everywhere in the world.
"The fourth is freedom from fear - which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide
reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation
will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor
- anywhere in the world.
"That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of
world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very
antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create
with the crash of a bomb.
"To that new order we oppose the greater conception - the moral order. A good society
is able to face schemes of world domination and foreign revolutions alike without
fear."
Today, September 17, is also the 152 anniversary of the Battle of Antietam.
"I had just got myself pretty comfortable when a bomb burst over me and completely deafened me. I felt a blow on my right shoulder and my jacket was covered with white stuff. I felt mechanically whether I still had my arm and thank God it was still whole. At the same time I felt something damp on my face; I wiped it off. It was bloody. Now I first saw that the man next to me, Kessler, lacked the upper part of his head, and almost all his brains had gone into the face of the man next to him, Merkel, so that he could scarcely see. Since any moment the same could happen to anyone, no one thought much about it."
Christoph Niederer, 20th New York Infantry, 6th Corps"
For us historically minded humans, with our lives of numerals that end in "0" and "5," we have 200th anniversaries of the War of 1812 (Star Spangled Banner), the 150th anniversary of the Civil War (Sheridan's victory at 3rd Winchester is on 19 September), 100th anniversary of the Great War (the 1st Battle of Aisne had ended and the Race to the Sea has begun as the Western Front stalemates), the 70th and 75th anniversaries for WWII (a six year war produces such terrible double anniversries for "live blogging"), and now the beginning of 50th anniversaries for Vietnam, and next summer the 25th anniversary for the Gulf War I, and we have been in war continuously since September 11, 2001
And we are now going to do it again, and again, and again.