The Blue Wound - part VIII - the war of 1950

Check here for parts I, II, III, IV, V, VI and VII of the Blue Wound live blog.

Chapter 14 was the final major chapter in Blue Wound. (Chapter 15 is but a brief epilogue to the plot.) Chapter 14 applies all of the allegories of the first 13 chapters to the future of America. Mered, the key character, gives his traveling companion - the narrator - a glimpse into the world of 1950.

Chapter 14 is Garrett's opportunity to predict one potential future for the United States. Essentially, Garrett predicts World War II with one major difference. Garrett, knowing nothing more than the world of 1921, foresees a military alliance between 1950 Germany and other European powers and one [unnamed] "of the great Asiatic nations." (p. 165). The major difference that Garrett foresees is that the United States, by 1950, has descended into a state of dependency that we would not, in fact, experience until our own time.

The U.S. of the early 21st century is dependant on foreign goods as never before. Not only manufactured goods and consumer products, but raw materials such as oil flow into this country through vulnerable umbilical cords. Even agriculture is headed in that direction. Garrett has unknowingly projected the United States of the 21st century onto World War II. America's dependence in Chapter 14 of the Blue Wound creates predictable results.

Much of Garrett's story centers on U.S.' dependence on the foreign chemical industry.

Predictions for the future are often less "wrong" than they are ill-timed. In this case, Chapter 14 was "wrong" only insofar as Garrett's facts occurred all at once. In the real world, these facts have occurred at different times. America's dependence on foreign industry arose long after World War II.

Garrett provides numerous additional predictions for the world of 1950, most of which I will not explain in detail. Each similarity is like a buried treasure to be discovered in Garrett's pages. Garrett predicts changes in the news distribution business that are vaguely and crudely reminiscent of our own information age. (p. 147). Garrett anticipates the age of nuclear warfare (as much as one could expect from a man writing 24 years before Hiroshima) - fictionalizing a chemical process by which an entire city (and more) could be destroyed with one bomb. (pp. 174-181). Garrett could not predict exactly how the introduction of the submarine and the airplane would affect shipping. (pp. 154-155). Garrett hinted at the third world debt forgiveness movement of our time. (pp. 166-167).

Blue Wound, including Chapter 14, hints at the themes present in Bubble that Broke the World. Because the financial crisis had not exploded by 1921, the financial themes took a back seat to the industrial and military themes in Blue Wound.

The biggest focus of those who would learn from Chapter 14 should be on the modern U.S.' relationship with and dependence on China for manufactured goods. This Chapter (and the entire book) can be promoted as a blueprint for avoiding a future disaster resulting from our dependence on China.

Chapter 14 should not be used crudely as proof that the U.S. should be either pro-war or anti-war. This Chapter has few lessons for our present battle against the jihadis (except for our dependence on foreign oil). While Garrett did not foresee the environmental regulations that make it difficult to build oil refineries in our time, such policies fit perfectly into the theme of Chapter 14.

America's current dependence on foreign industry is not popular to discuss because the solutions are difficult to arrive at and implement. But a book like Blue Wound that warned us of and even fictionalized this problem long before it occurred is a good place to start.
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click here for part IX.

The Blue Wound - part VII - the Earth and its resources; isolationism and independence

Check here for parts I, II, III, IV, V and VI of the Blue Wound live blog.

Chapter 12 is entitled, "The Answer" and includes a major step in the plot. I don't want to reveal plot twists, so I will focus on a few interesting points from that chapter.

Page 127 briefly explores the proper roles of man and the Earth. The Earth is a resource for us to use - not a god to be worshipped or protected for its own sake.

Most of the chapter explores Garrett's views on international trade and self-sufficiency. I know that the previous sentence sounds boring and will undoubtedly send readers to the bookstore looking for something more lively, but Garrett does not discuss trade deficits, currency fluctuations or other such temporal minutiae. He discusses broader concepts such as the survival of civilization, the umbilical cords of civilization, the stability of civilization, the natural state of man's social organization and the relation of trade to war.

I note here also that Garrett often writes extensively about industry. The railroad industry formed the backdrop for The Driver. Cinder Buggy was labeled "a fable of iron and steel." Satan's Bushel focused on agriculture - specifically wheat. While Blue Wound has been more comprehensive, industry and agriculture have formed the background for the plot and the fables contained therein.

Chapter 13 is the most anti-war sounding chapter thus far. I use the word "sounding" because Garrett's writings have sometimes been used by the modern anti-war crowd in their attempts to justify retreat before any enemy. But Garrett's opinions were more subtle than that. In this chapter, Garrett sought not peace at any price, but isolationism. Garrett sought to prove that Germany could have survived indefinitely without going to war had she remained independant of foreign trade. To prove this thesis, Garrett's main character pointed out that Germany survived for four years during (what we call) World War I without access to its overseas markets.

If any war served as a good example to support the concept of isolationism, World War I was that war. Had we not interfered in that war, we would have avoided needless deaths and weakened the great credit bubble that would pop more than a decade later. Garrett would provide more details of this argument in The Bubble that Broke the World in the beginning of the 1930's. The difference between the two books is that Bubble made arguments from specific facts related to the war and war debt. Bubble cited speeches, specific policies and specific financial consequences. Blue Wound was an allegory based on the simplest elements of the story. [And Garrett did not know, in 1921, that the credit expansion that funded the war would contribute to a financial crisis within a decade after Blue Wound's publication.]










Garrett's arguments regarding trade, independence and isolationism will become more relevant as our own modern dependence on foreign products creates bigger problems. The umbilical cord stretches thinner and thinner in our time.

Despite the ominous warnings contained in Blue Wound, it is almost comforting to read a story in which a character with special knowledge and insight accompanies the narrator and provides a window into the past, the future, other places or the entire world at once.
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Check here for part VIII.

The Blue Wound - part V - Apex - Japan

1921





Check here for parts I, II, III and IV of the Blue Wound live blog.

Chapter 10, "Apex" describes the history of Japan from the middle of the 19th century until 1921. Garrett does not use that name, but it becomes obvious what country he writes about.



Garrett provides the best explanation I have ever seen for an isolationist trade policy, which explanation he summarized on page 89:

The point never to be lost sight of was that the people who made their own things so far as they could, instead of buying them from foreigners, were always more prosperous than those who sold the raw produce of their fields and mines and bought manufactured goods from others.

The reasons for this belief were greater than the mere desire to increase wages for laborers or promote special interests. Garrett told the story of how this island gradually lost control of its own formerly idyllic way of life and then fought to establish itself as a leading economic power and contend for control of greater Asia.









The reader could only guess how the story would end, as Garrett's characters predicted vaguely the outbreak of World War II 20 years later (". . . the feud will reach its apex").

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update - Click here for part VI of this live blog.