Editor’s note: This column by The Atlanta Constitution’s Editor Ralph McGill appeared on Thanksgiving Day, 1967.
It is traditional on this day to write romantically of Puritans and pumpkin pie, of turkey and football, and of prayers of thanksgiving rising up to Heaven like clouds. Older men write also of the smell of kitchens in the “old days” when the air was redolent with the spices of gingerbread, mincemeat pies, and the tart aroma of cranberries and pickled peaches.
But having romanticized our history, we forget that the meaning of the day is, after all, one of thanksgiving after cruel suffering and fearful doubts. That first Thanksgiving followed a winter in which so many had died of malnutrition and pneumonia. A summer crop, aided by the Indian knowledge of maize and vegetables, provided adequate food. Those who were still alive had “endured.” Their first graves were near to remind them of the winter and to bring the clutch of grief to the heart and the choked-back sob to the throat. There was the dark, mysterious, fearful forest behind them -- like nothing in Europe. But there was much for which to be thankful.
And so there is today. The painful war in Vietnam goes better. Everyone agonizes over it and none more than the President. To him comes, finally, every decision affecting some 200 million Americans. No one as yet has given him an alternative to Vietnam. Hanoi has rejected serious, equitable peace proposals, more than 20 of them. (There is, of course, one rejected alternative ... use of nuclear bombs in great number.) Meanwhile, it is necessary to win battles and to enable the Vietnamese to make a political state -- as did the Koreans 16 years ago.
Credit: AJC
Credit: AJC
But we have not seen, and for generations will not see, the last of war -- and civilian losses.
Millions of civilians were killed in the Second World War. Conventional bombs doomed more in the attack on Dresden alone than did the atomic weapon on Hiroshima. The fire bomb attack circling Tokyo took almost as many lives by removing oxygen from the central city. Civilians will die in the wars yet to come. But it is a lie that this country deliberately makes war on civilians in Vietnam. (The Viet Cong openly does. Such killing is a part of their bloody terrorist program. But apparently, the Viet Cong have been granted an uncriticized open season by those who profess to weep so much today.)
The nuclear bomb will be used -- or the world will be confronted with almost continual “wars of liberation” or “brushfires.” There will be no more great wars. General Eisenhower’s was the last of the vast mobilizations of ships and men. The future is one of guerrilla, jungle, mountain fighting, intrigue, subversion attempts, and the dangerous trauma of underdeveloped nations struggling out of a colonial past with pitifully few resources of men or wealth potentials.
The symbolic winter of death, hunger, sickness and fear which the Pilgrims endured has recurred many times in our history.
In all our wars we have had to fight the enemy in the field and the enemies of greed, fanatic dissent, apathy, and open disloyalty.
Our Revolutionary War is romantically beautiful today. It was perhaps our most unpopular war. At least half the population was loyal to Great Britain and offered opposition, sabotage, betrayal at home. Washington, at Valley Forge, issued a bitter condemnation of the nation’s neglect and the indifference of the Continental Congress that reflects the general mood of that somber winter. Churchmen led much of the opposition to the war for liberty ... mobs roamed the streets and demonstrators fought each other.
The war of 1812 was equally opposed. The Congress, ministers, editors, and businessmen spoke loudly and irrationally against it. Representatives of New England states met at Hartford to advise men not to accept the proposed conscription and volunteer bills.
By 1846 there was an immense and unreasoning, increasing clamor against the War with Mexico.
Teddy Roosevelt led the bitter attack against the nation’s First World War policy. Discontent at times reached riot proportion.
Before December 7, 1941, isolationist sentiment and protests were led by many U.S. senators and citizens. The Selective Service Act passed by one vote.
The Korean War, now seen as a historical turning point, was assailed with much bitterness.
Now history repeats itself. The winter is cold. There are new graves. There are the fearful. There are those who want to turn back. There are the disloyal and the fanatically dissenting. But there is much today for which to be thankful. The long, hard, symbolic winter will end. There will be a summer and a good sustaining harvest for those who endure.
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