Granny paper: historical perspectives and cultural significance

¶ … city of New York was putting up Christmas lights and what little tinsel the aftermath of war rations afforded, city-inhabitant Charles Robinson Smith wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Times. Normally relegated to the Op-Ed subsection of the paper, this letter singled itself out as different, full of the meat and nuanced opinion of which too many articles were void in the heyday of Pro-American ideologies. Smith's simple analysis of the post-war European debt repayments warranted him a front-page placement, just below the masthead, representing not only a growing understanding in how to approach international issues, but also marking a period of thought that ended with the so-called Great Generation.

To the Editor of the New York Times," the letter begins. "Probably the intimations from English Newspapers that we may not treat the French debt more leniently than the English should not be taken too seriously." At the end of the First World War, when the American force finally appeared on the Western allied front, serving the waning theatres with late-coming, reinvigorated strength, many Americans - both civil and governmental - debated the national presence overseas. For some, the issue was an American-centric nationalism that reflected the deep-seated need to rebuild after the Civil War; for others, the problem was more economic. Wars cost money, and in loaning troops to the allies overseas, Americans would be spending taxpayer money to fight a war not touching U.S. soil.

World War I, the Great War of the Nations, was hopefully called the 'War to End All Wars,' lasting throughout three years with more military mobilization and battlefield involvement than history had yet recorded. For the first time, chemical weapons were launched as the age of industrialism, the same thing pushing the American economy to its early apex, took hold. The end of the age of the dynasties descended upon Europe with a bang from the Balkans, the so-called 'Powder Keg of Europe,' as the Habsburgs, Ottomons, Romanovs, and Hohenzollerns battled the dawn of a new ear.

Provoked by an imperial parade, the assassinations of dynastic leaders by the Black Hand rebel group spawned a world war marking the final demise of absolute monarchy in Europe. The abundance of trench warfare, particularly on the Western Front, combined with food shortages, rationing of necessities, absence of young men from all involved communities, and genocide to make the price of the war particularly gruesome. The war, which left the Supreme Allied Council in nervous victory, incited a new rise in nationalism that provoked the Germans, severely restricted by the Versailles treaty that provided a unified ending to the fight, setting the stage not only for the next World War, but also for future intra-national conflict.

Among the many other affects of the War were the societal changes it heaped upon the advancing world. The maintaining vestige of the changes was an ever-present financial pressure, one felt not only at home but also abroad. As power and money becoming singly intertwined after the war, Britain, France, and the United States became undisputed powers. The United States, previously a lesser unknown across the ocean, stretched its finances and flexed its military muscle to help the other countries, all of which witnessed great governmental expansion on home turf. At the end of the war, citizens were left with heaps of new taxes and levies; in the European Countries, these were, in part, the responsibility to pay back the debts to the American government.

Ultimately, the debate over whether to go ended with conversations of how much to spend. Once involved, the United States, unflagging in its efforts to win since involved, expended vast sums of money to support the engaged states of Britain and France.

The end of the war not only highlighted their indebtedness to America for its involvement in the struggle, but also a fiscal indebtedness for the financial assistance.

While each country struggled to repay its debt, England was quicker to do so; this was logical, for not only did it have more manpower, its livelihood faced less demolition than did the physical face of France. Yet, England struggled with its success in paying off its debt; it looked, with great disdain, upon its ever-hated neighbor, still in debt to the United States. "England thought only of herself," Smith wrote, "and her prestige when she undertook to begin payment of her debt to us - a financial gesture without parallel in history."

While it was clear that Smith was grateful for England's eagerness to repay America, and the American taxpayers by turn, it was also evident that he understood this gesture to be what it was - a political declaration of strength and sovereignty by England, pointed directly at France. Smith perceived a less than subtle snubbing of France by its companion, and wondered if, indeed, the Americans should fall prey to the demands of the lobbyists in English media to expect the same from the French as the British provided.

Smith reflected, in his amateur letter to the editor, a special understanding of the modern western world. His hesitation to buy into the British media's demands was two fold: first, based on the ability of France, second, based on the actual place of America to make demands upon France. "American opinion was thus led to conclude that because England had settled for full payment, devastated France and Italy could as easily do the same, which is distinctly not true."

At the same time, England and France had different levels of indebtedness to the United States that were not based upon expenditures in war effort, but were instead historical. The Revolution still lived brightly in the national consciousness as recent history; much as, for many Americans in the South, the Civil War remains theoretically recent.

Until this last war we have never had an opportunity to requite the good turn France did us in our War of Independence. No Englishman can claim that England rendered us help at that time. And France helped us in a peculiarly generous manner which ahs never been fully realized by our people and which we have far not imitated." In that light, the American patriots felt a disarming lack of association with the British; this contrasted starkly with the popular sentiment for the French government, who had come to the aid of America in its time of need.