Excerpt from The Culture of Make Believe

Lusitania (p. 452)

From chapter "War"

The House of Morgan, as is true for other banks, had already profited from the Crimean War, the American Civil War, the Franco-Prussian War, the Spanish-American War, the Boer War. Wars without end. But this is all too much. The numbers flit before my eyes, as incomprehensibly horrifying to me as the motivations of those who profit: The Marne: 1.9 million casualties (“Wherever I looked, right or left, there were dead and wounded, quivering in convulsions, groaning terribly, blood oozing from fresh wounds”). Ypres: 230,000 casualties (“We have seen too many horrible things all at once, and the smell of the smoking ruins, the lowing of the deserted cattle and the rattle of machine-gun fire makes a very strong impression on us, barely twenty years old as we are. .. . We certainly did not want this war!”). Galicia: perhaps a half-million (“In every direction from each shell hole is strewn the fragments of blue cloth of the Austrian uniform, torn into shreds and ribbons by the force of the explosive; and all about the field are still bits of arms, a leg in a boot, or some other ghastly token of soldiers, true to discipline, hanging on to a position that was alive with bursting shells and flying shrapnel.”). Tannenberg, Masurian Lakes, Lodz, Aisne.

During the next year, a syndicate headed by J. P. Morgan and Company floated loans worth $620 million to the British and French. The year after that, they loaned out another $600 million.

Of course, it was not only Morgan that profited from the war: A German banker told the American ambassador that “the Germans were sick of the war; that the Krupp’s and other big industries were making great sums of money, and were prolonging the war by insisting upon the annexation of Belgium.” He stated also that Prussian landowners favored continuing the war, “because of the fact that they were getting four or five times the money for their products, while their work was being done by prisoners.”

Gallipoli: 500,000. The Carpathians: 1.6 million. Verdun: 1.6 million. The Somme: 1.2 million. Artois. Champagne. Loos. Only for so long can I read these names, these numbers, these stories, and then I turn away. Because I can. As I think about the man whose leg hung by shreds, I know that although it’s a disturbing image I’ll carry with me, probably for life, the story remains abstract, as abstract in some ways as Lamont’s talk of lending and Morgan’s immense fortune. None of these are real. The pulped mass of flesh that one day earlier had been his abdomen: that is real. I can close the book in which I encountered the story. I can turn off the computer and quit my work. I can go to sleep. Tomorrow I can awaken, and I can walk to get my mail. Lamont and Morgan, too, could get up and start their days. Their lives were insulated from the very real effects of decisions they made on the abstract criteria of monetary gain and loss. The lives of others are never so insulated. For this man, it was the end of his leg, his body, and, ultimately, his life. Each name, each simple battlefield, signifies the end, the sudden cutting off of so many millions of stories, so many millions of moments, so many millions of opportunities for love. So many millions of living beings mown down for profit.

During the winter of 1915-1916, a few German soldiers put a plank above their trench on which they had written, in big letters, “The English are fools.” The plank was immediately splintered by rifle fire. Another plank went up: “The French are fools.” This, too, was immediately splintered. Up went a third plank. “We’re all fools. Let’s all go home.” But they could not go home. They would have been shot as deserters, traitors, nonpatriots.

By early 1917 the Allies owed American bankers and their clients $1.5 billion dollars, and had reached the limit of their credit. On the battlefield, their armies had nearly been brought to their knees. One soldier, who was to die the next year, wrote his sister, “Dear child, there is no more to say; we have lost almost all there was to lose and what have we gained? Truly as you say has patriotism worn very very threadbare.” The czarist government in Russia collapsed in March.

This was all very bad news for Morgan and Company. If the Allies went under, the loans would be only so much paper. Jack Morgan would be ruined—albeit still very rich—reduced to only his personal fortune. American politicians knew that bad news for Morgan meant bad news for the U.S. government. This knowledge was articulated by Walter Hines Page, American ambassador to England, who wrote President Wilson: “I think the pressure of this approaching crisis has gone beyond the ability of the Morgan Financial Agency for the British and French Governments…. If we should go to war with Germany, the greatest help we could give the Allies would be such a credit…. Unless we go to war with Germany, our Government, of course, cannot make such a direct grant of credit. . . .” Page pointed out, correctly enough, that the alternative to war was the collapse of the Allies, and with them the House of Morgan, and with it the domestic economy.

Four weeks later, President Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war. (I know we’ve all been told that the United States went to war because the Germans sank the Lusitania, but that this ship’s sinking was mere public justification for the carnage is shown by the fact that the government had for six months prior been secretly preparing for war.) Congress agreed.

Jack Morgan was jubilant.