Torpedoing the Lusitania Thesis

Some 40 years ago, as a high school student, I eagerly followed the revelations of the Nye Committee concerning “the merchants of death.” These were the predecessors of “the military-industrial complex,” the sinister fellows who went around fomenting wars and selling arms to both sides. Now the wheel has come full circle. My daughter, a high school junior, came home from school recently with a tale she had been told, of how the Lusitania was sunk as the result of a British plot to involve the United States in the war against Germany. I discovered that her teacher had relayed this information from a Reader’s Digest version of Colin Simpson’s book, The Lusitani Which I promptly read. It is all there, all the hoary chestnuts that had so earnestly been told tomebymy high school history teacher—about J. P. Morgan’s loans, the use of American passengers as a “living shield” for secret munitions cargoes, the clever misrepresentations of British propaganda, etc.

But it came as a surprise, if not a shock, to find Francis Russell, in his review of Simpson’s book (Dec. 21, 1973), endorsing uncritically these ancient clichés. Mr. Russell is a writer and scholar whose work I admire. But the shrewd, unrelenting skepticism which served him so well in his research into the Sacco-Vanzetti case deserted him here.

HV

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Harry V. Jaffa

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Some 40 years ago, as a high school student, I eagerly followed the revelations of the Nye Committee concerning “the merchants of death.” These were the predecessors of “the military-industrial complex,” the sinister fellows who went around fomenting wars and selling arms to both sides. Now the wheel has come full circle. My daughter, a high school junior, came home from school recently with a tale she had been told, of how the Lusitania was sunk as the result of a British plot to involve the United States in the war against Germany. I discovered that her teacher had relayed this information from a Reader’s Digest version of Colin Simpson’s book, The Lusitani Which I promptly read. It is all there, all the hoary chestnuts that had so earnestly been told tomebymy high school history teacher—about J. P. Morgan’s loans, the use of American passengers as a “living shield” for secret munitions cargoes, the clever misrepresentations of British propaganda, etc.

But it came as a surprise, if not a shock, to find Francis Russell, in his review of Simpson’s book (Dec. 21, 1973), endorsing uncritically these ancient clichés. Mr. Russell is a writer and scholar whose work I admire. But the shrewd, unrelenting skepticism which served him so well in his research into the Sacco-Vanzetti case deserted him here.