The Great War of the Quartet (The Imperial Timeline Book 1) (41 page)

Emily had had to cajole her cousin to go along, but it would presumably do her quite well. The theater was a rather small one, and it seemed a little excessive to have to pay 30 cents per ticket, but now it was too late for Helen to change her mind. She had left her son with a somewhat reliable German neighbor, and they had arrived to the theater almost right on time for the show. Before the feature, there were the short films, and Emily didn’t particularly care for silly, “comedy” short. Helen seemed to like them, however, and Emily had helped Helen look her prettiest to the best of her ability so that she could enjoy herself. She had consulted an excellent magazine that had contained a wonderful set of useful advice on how to slim down, and it made Helen look a lot less fat. Emily couldn’t blame Helen for being a bit vain, and she knew well how harrowing it was to be a human whale, and Helen was quite the sensitive one to boot.

As the projectionist was going through the films leading up to the feature presentation, a travelogue from Hispaniola came on. The chief island of the Swedish West Indies was situated right between Cuba and the prize from the Spanish War—Puerto Rico Territory—and the film had a visitor to the island’s capital of Carolina talk while color footage of the tropical colony provided some exotic curiosity to the audience. Emily had hardly ever ventured outside the state of New York, and certainly not to the Caribbean. Most of America was a blank
terra incognita
to her, and even states within reasonable reach to her would have been entirely unknown to her if it had not been for books, magazines, and motion pictures like these. She quite enjoyed the educational films, and it was the closest she would ever want to get to places like the West Indies.

“Those bananas look mighty tasty,” the narrator chirped as groups of negro women and children were stupidly grinning at the cameraman in the middle of a banana plantation.

Emily was vaguely familiar with the Swedish West Indies as a source of cigars, Swedish and Cuban cigars being quite popular, but she had never really thought about it as a source of tropical fruit. After showing the happy negro plantation workers, the program went on with its brief presentation of the island. Obviously, all short travelogues were very superficial, and presenting a country with thousands or maybe millions of people in just a few minutes had to require a quite truncated finished product. It seemed a bit odd that there were still colonies in the Americas, and the Swedish West Indies was presumably the most significant one. Cuba wasn’t a colony, it was an independent and free country, and Brazil had only ever been lost to foreign domination because of treasonous Democrats. Other than small exceptions like Brazil, the Swedish West Indies, or —including the million square mile Japanese elephant in the room up in the extreme northwest—the hemisphere was home to more free people than the rest of the world combined. Even if one would put Brazil, Alaska, and the small British, Dutch, and French Caribbean colonies together it was only a small part of the Americas, and there was no doubt in Emily’s mind that the New World was infinitely freer and more prosperous than the Old World.

“While the plantations have changed little in the past century, the city of Carolina, once founded as the capital of
Saint-Domingue
has been transformed by the Swedish administration.

The cathedral finished in 1899 is the largest Lutheran church in the Western Hemisphere,” the narrator explained as a large church building was shown. “Much of the native population is traditionally Roman Catholic, but the Lutheran State Church has become one of the most familiar public institutions in the colony…”

“This is the Royal Palace,” the narrator said when the film exhibited a very big, ornate palace with bright white walls, “home to the colonial administration and the representatives of the government. Hispaniola does not have a legislature, and the gubernatorial government is appointed directly by the Swedish monarch to make policy and administer the colony. The queen may be a distant and absent ruler, but every time money changes hands,” the narrator said as a couple of mulattoes were bartering in a market, “the queen appears to her colonial subjects.”

A paper bill with the ordinary markings of paper money had a young woman’s portrait rather than the kinds of portrait Emily associated with money. Founding
fathers
, and people of that sort. She wasn’t sure if she had ever heard of money having a female face of an actual woman before.

“The Swedish West Indies has three official languages, and printed on the local banknotes is the colony’s motto, ‘
pour Dieu, la reine et patrie
’
in French, Spanish, and Swedish. Yes, one cannot easily deduce the nationality of the queen from the locals in the villages and plantations around Carolina in the west where most people speak Creole French more readily than Swedish or on the sugar plantations around Gustavshamn in the east where Spanish is more widely spoken…”

At one point in the short film, the narrator introduced the audience to one of the landed families, a group of charming young women being described as wealthy, perhaps young patricians. They were quite the contrast to the negroes and mulattoes with their bright hair and pale faces shielded from the sun by broad-brimmed hats. Indeed, when one of the young women removed her hat she looked like the starkest contrast you could find to the people shown before. Like night and day. Emily smirked at the sort of pun that suited visual difference between Caribbean negroes and the pale Scandinavian aristocrats from the distant colonial power.

Emily did not know northern Europe very well, but she thought of Scandinavians as essentially a kind of Germans, and since they had a queen they were obviously a feudal and undemocratic people. The only people in Europe who were democratic as far as she was concerned were the French, America’s erstwhile allies and compatriots in the republican struggle against monarchism and oppression. Well, ordinarily America’s allies, but the ungrateful Democrats had failed to lift a finger in France’s hour of need, which surely would lead to France’s defeat against the overwhelming force of these sorts of degenerate aristocrats.

She wasn’t sure whether Scandinavia was in the war or not, but she thought they probably were. The inbred German types were quite friendly with each other, so they would probably be very keen on helping the German Kaiser conquer Europe. Emily was quite worried about the future of the world, what with the Chinese in Brazil and the northwestern corner of North America and the British in Canada, it was hard to feel at ease. Those weak, cowardly Democrats had been sabotaging America ever since they started the Civil War, and since then they had prevented a counter-intervention to counter the Chinese in Brazil, they had prevented America from annexing Cuba, and they had retreated—
retreated!
—from Mexico before that war had time to be won. It seemed so obvious that the only real way for America to survive was to pursue its Manifest Destiny—“from the North Pole to Panama.” It wasn’t fashionable to think that these days, but Emily didn’t mind being in a minority when she was so self-evidently on the right side of history. Maybe once the Democratic Disaster and his lot were thrown out the Republican Old Guard could annex the rest of Mexico and Central America. And perhaps even go beyond Panama. There was no real natural limit to how great the country could be, as long as the expansion was slow enough so the Latin mulattoes could be taught English, republicanism, and industriousness so they could put it in practice. She wasn’t sure if she thought that negroes and Latin mulattoes were unable to live orderly and productively. The Palmetto State—the
Nigger State
—was obviously not completely dysfunctional since the negroes there were Republicans who defied the Democratic stranglehold that held firm in all other Southern states. And if negroes could learn to vote and support good Republican governance, then surely most races could learn too since everybody knew that negroes were the laziest and least susceptible to learning.

The theater was a good place to spend an evening, and after the short comedy films and the short film about the Swedish West Indies, the newsreel showcased some fascinating moving pictures in a short reportage about the war in Africa. Emily was rather exhausted from all the war reporting, but she had not heard much about the war in the colonies. It was a little odd to see Germans with their stiff uniforms but with military slouch hats rather than ordinary German peaked caps. The soldiers marching through the city in the French Congo were negroes in the familiar German style, and although the footage was from Africa, it was hard to usually picture negro soldiers wearing proper uniforms and carrying modern rifles. It just seemed unusual.

“The Quartet and the Entente is fighting an uneven battle,” the narrator explained to the accompaniment of film showing soldiers running and explosions from artillery bombs.

It was all rather disturbing to her senses, and she did not like the way they showed such explicit things like bombs exploding. She didn’t understand people who liked to see violence like that.

“The command of the seas have allowed the Japanese and German armies to occupy most of France’s overseas empire, and in October of last year the Spanish commander in Morocco surrendered after waging a long campaign against his superior adversary…”

“Africa plays another role in this war than just as a battlefield for dominion over colonies. The German army has recruited several regiments of African soldiers from ferocious warrior peoples of the jungles of the German Kongo, the Cameroons, and Togoland.”

The screen showed a quaint German city with a column of negro soldiers dressed as German soldiers with ordinary German civilians waving. They wore just the same uniforms and helmets, and they were marching in that very strutting German way, like black-faced Germans. It was frightening to see them strut in that Prussian way with no trace of the kind of lazy sauntering you would expect from them. And each of the pitch-black men carried a rifle. It was like a Civil War nightmare come to life.

“According to the German war ministry it has shipped some 40,000 African soldiers to Europe, and the locals in this small town in northern Germany have perhaps never seen their colonial subjects before,” the man explained while on the screen some German girls were handing out flowers to negro soldiers.

Films from Europe always looked strange, and the combination of the soldiers with German girls dressed in German peasant dresses just made for a rather bizarre sight. Even stranger than just the old-timey feel she got from films showing rustic Europe without colonial soldiers to mix up the film and make it weird.

“Germany has taken in tens of thousands of Africans for the past year to help replace farm labor, and even in some parts of Austria can one amidst the picturesque hills and valleys spy one of the queer men working in the fields…”

After showing a few pitch-black men working on a farm that looked like a picturesque New England farmstead, the screen went on for a sequence of a bit of levity. Emily wasn’t the only one who laughed when a negro waved from the screen wearing an Austrian folk hat and short pants and long stockings… It was just so funny and bizarre! When he did that strange German jumping and clapping his thighs she lost it completely, but everyone had to agree that it was just a hilarious sight, like something out of a silly cartoon, only real.

However, as much as it was a laugh to see men as black as the night dress up like an Austrian with the funny pants and stockings, Emily would have expected the man reading the lines to express a lot less harmless levity about the enemies of the Entente. After all, Africa was poised to be divided between the Chinese and the Germans, and that couldn’t be good for America. If the Entente would lose, then things would be very bad for America, so there was every reason to worry if those negroes were helping Germany win. That wouldn’t be right. Why were negroes fighting for the Germans anyway? Wouldn’t that be like slaves fighting for their masters? It seemed rather stupid on the part of the slaves…

After the war reportage, the newsreel carried a short silly story about some sort of experimental fashion, and one about some kind of remarkable socialite party somewhere with a bunch of famous and glamorous people. It annoyed Emily that so many people were interested in motion picture starlets and wealthy, handsome men. What good ever came of that kind of silly dissection of vapid people?

“The mines have attracted young men from across the territory,” the newsreel voice said, as a short story about Zacatecas Territory was being introduced.

Although she was quite pleased with the conquests from the Second Mexican War, she still thought that the final treaty had been a betrayal of the long fight against bandit Mexicans since only about half of Mexico had actually been won. While they had been at it, Emily felt that they should have finished the job and liberated all of Mexico.

“It is hard work, but the territory has fast become home to a large population. Zacatecas comprises an area marginally smaller to the state of Oregon but its population has grown rapidly for the past thirty years of peace and growth. Industrious men from across America and from abroad work hard in the territory’s ‘Silver Country,’ and like settlers of the great march to the Pacific coast, the railroads carry thousands of men with little luggage but a strong work ethic and dreams of future prosperity. This once quiet little village has become home to almost twenty thousand men, most of them from Oklahoma and the Midwest leaving behind their farm lives to dig for silver, zinc, and other bountiful riches of this land…”