In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the ethics of our treatment of animals. Philosophers have led the way, and now a range of other scholars have followed from historians to social scientists. From being a marginal issue, animals have become an emerging issue in ethics and in multidisciplinary inquiry. This series will explore the challenges that Animal Ethics poses, both conceptually and practically, to traditional understandings of human-animal relations. Specifically, the Series will:
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More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14421
Felice Cimatti • Carlo Salzani
Editors
Animality in Contemporary Italian Philosophy
Editors
Felice Cimatti
University of Calabria
Arcavacata di Rende, Italy
Carlo Salzani Messerli Research Institute
Vienna, Austria
The Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series
ISBN 978-3-030-47506-2 ISBN 978-3-030-47507-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47507-9
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1 Introduction: The Italian Animal—A Heterodox Tradition 1
Felice Cimatti and Carlo Salzani
Par t I Animality in the Italian Tradition 19
2 Animality and Immanence in Italian Thought 21
Felice Cimatti
3 Aldo Capitini, Animal Ethics, and Nonviolence: The Expanding Circle 51
Luisella Battaglia
4 What Is Italian Antispeciesism? An Overview of Recent Tendencies in Animal Advocacy 71
Giorgio Losi and Niccolò Bertuzzi Part II Animality in Perspective 95
5 Beyond Human and Animal: Giorgio Agamben and Life as Potential 97
Carlo Salzani
6 Deconstructing the Dispositif of the Person: Animality and the Politics of Life in the Philosophy of Roberto Esposito 115
Matías Saidel and Diego Rossello
7 Animality Between Italian Theor y and Posthumanism
Giovanni Leghissa
8 For the Critique of Political Anthropocentrism: Italian Mar xism and the Animal Question
Marco Maurizi
9 Experiencing Oneself in One’s Constitutive Relation: Unfolding Italian Sexual Dif ference
Federica Giardini
“Il faut bien tuer,” or the Calculation of the Abattoir
Massimo Filippi
Rober to Marchesini 13 From Renaissance Ferinity to the Biopolitics of the Animal-Man: Animality as Political Battlefield in the Anthropocene
Laura Bazzicalupo
14 The Animal Is Present: Non-human Animal Bodies in
Valentina
Sonzogni
Animality Now
Leonardo Caffo
notes on Contributors
Luisella Battaglia is Professor of Ethics and Bioethics at the University of Genoa and the University Suor Orsola Benincasa of Naples. In Genoa she founded the Istituto Italiano di Bioetica, of which she is scientific director, and from 1999 is a member of the Comitato Nazionale per la Bioetica. She is a co-founder and since 2017 director of the Festival di Bioetica. Her publications include Etica e diritti degli animali (1997); Alle origini dell’etica ambientale. Uomo, natura, animali in Voltaire, Michelet, Thoreau, Gandhi (2002); Bioetica senza dogmi (premio Le Due Culture 2010); Un’etica per il mondo vivente. Questioni di bioetica medica, ambientale, animale (2011); Poterenegato. Approcci di genere al tema delle diseguaglianze (2014); and Uomo, Natura, Animali per una bioetica della complessità (2016).
Laura Bazzicalupo was Full Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Salerno and has retired in 2018. She works on the crossing of aisthesis and politics. Her main topics of investigation are biopolitics, the economy of the governance, the productivity of power, and the crisis of democracy. She is on the editorial board of several political philosophical journals and is editor-in-chief of Soft Power: Euro-American Journal of Historical and Theoretical Studies of Politics and Law. Her recent publications include Il governo delle vite. Biopolitica ed economia (2006); Superbia (2008, latest edition 2018; translated into Spanish and Bulgarian 2015); Biopolitica, una mappa concettuale (2010; translated into Spanish 2016 and Portuguese 2017); Eroi della libertà (2011); Politica. Rappresentazioni e tecniche di governo (2013); and Dispositivi e soggettivazioni (2014). Quite
recently she has published in English the essays “Economy as Logic of Government” (Paragraph, 2016) and “The Scene of Politics in an Atonal World: Hegemony, Contagion, Spectrality” (Politica Comùn 9, 2016).
Niccolò Bertuzzi is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Scuola Normale Superiore and a member of COSMOS (Centre on Social Movement Studies). His main research interests are political sociology and social movement studies. He recently published the monograph I movimenti animalisti in Italia. Strategie, politiche e pratiche di attivismo (2018). He also investigated other social movements, protests and forms of participation, and in particular the one against Expo 2015. His articles appeared in some international journals such as Modern Italy (“The Contemporary Italian Animal Advocacy,” 2018), Social Movement Studies (“No Expo Network: A Failed Mobilization in a Post-political Frame,” 2017), Interface (“No Expo Network: Multiple Subjectivities, Online Communication Strategies, and the World Outside,” 2017), Relations (“Veganism: Lifestyle or Political Movement? Looking for Relations Beyond Antispeciesism,” 2017), and Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais (“Urban Regimes and the Right to the City: An Analysis of No Expo Network and Its Protest Frames,” 2017).
Leonardo Caffo is Adjunct Professor of Ontology at the Polytechnic University of Turin and of Philosophy of Contemporary Art at Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan. His primary research is focused on animal philosophy, in the sense of a possible philosophy outside the human atmosphere. In this framework he has worked and is working on simplicity, the relation between form of life and space for life (philosophy of architecture), ontology and individuals versus ecology and relations, a new concept of posthuman and antispeciesism, and philosophy as a practice of life. His latest books include An Art for the Other (2015), Only for Them (2016), La vita di ognigiorno (Einaudi, 2016), Fragile Umanità (Einaudi, 2017), Vegan (Einaudi, 2018), and Il cane e il filosofo (Mondadori, 2020).
Felice Cimatti is Full Professor of Philosophy of Language and Mind at the University of Calabria and also teaches at the Istituto Freudiano in Rome. In 2012 he received the Premio Musatti from the Società Psicoanalitica Italiana. He is one of the radio hosts of the radio programs Fahrenheit and Uomini e profeti on Rai Radio 3 and of the TV program Zettel (Fare filosofia and Debate) for Rai (Radiotelevisione Italiana) Scuola. His research interests, moving from the semiological
study of the languages of non-human animals, mainly concern the complicated relationships between language and human mind/body. Recently he concentrated himself on the concept of “animality,” focusing in particular on what a human animality could be. On such a topic, he wrote Filosofia dell’animalità (2013) and several other texts. His many other publications include Il volto e la parola (2008), La vita che verrà. Biopolitica per “Homo sapiens” (2011), Il taglio. Linguaggio e pulsione di morte (2015), Sguardi animali (2018), A Biosemiotic Ontology. The Philosophy of Giorgio Prodi (2018), Cose. Per una filosofia del reale (2108), La vita estrinseca. Dopo il linguaggio (2018), and Philosophy of Animality: Unbecoming Human (in press). He also co-edited the volumes Filosofia della psicoanalisi. Un’introduzione in ventuno passi (with Silvia Vizzardelli, 2012); Corpo, linguaggio e psicoanalisi (with Alberto Luchetti, 2013); A come animale. Per un bestiario dei sentimenti (with Leonardo Caffo, 2015); and Abbecedario del reale (with Alex Pagliardini, 2019). Felice is present on Academia.edu.
Massimo Filippi is Full Professor of Neurology at Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, Milan, Italy; director of the Residency School in Neurology and president of the Bachelor’s Degree in Physiotherapy at the same university; chair of the Neurology Unit; chair of the Neurophysiology Unit; director of the MS Center; and director of the Neuroimaging Research Unit (NRU), Department of Neurology, Institute of Experimental Neurology, San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milan. He is member of various national and international scientific societies and boards where he covered or is covering institutional roles. He is author of over 1000 papers and editor of more than 20 books; he is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Neurology and member of the editorial boards of many international scientific journals. He is very often requested as speaker and/or chairman in national and international neurological congresses. In 2001, Prof. Filippi was awarded the “Rita Levi-Montalcini Prize” for his outstanding contributions to the study of MS. Massimo Filippi is also a thinker and militant antispecist and author or coauthor of several essays on the animal question including Ai confini dell’umano. Gli animali e la morte (ombre corte 2010); I margini dei diritti animali (Ortica 2011); Natura infranta (Ortica 2013); Crimini in tempo di pace. La questione animale e l’ideologia del dominio (Elèuthera 2013); Penne e pellicole. Gli animali, la letteratura e il cinema (Mimesis 2014); Sento dunque sogno (Ortica 2016); Altre specie di politica (Mimesis 2016); L’invenzione della specie. Sovvertire la norma, divenire mostri (ombre
corte 2016); Questioni di specie (Elèuthera 2017); and Genocidi animali (Mimesis 2018). He co-edited Corpi che non contano. Judith Butler e glianimali (Mimesis 2015), the monographic issue of Aut Aut (n. 380, December 2018) entitled Mostri e altri animali, and Jean-Luc Nancy’s La sofferenza è animale (Mimesis 2019). He also translated several works of Charles Patterson, Chris De Rose, Tom Regan, Jim Mason, Ralph R. Acampora, Matthew Calarco, and Rasmus R. Simonsen. Massimo Filippi is a founder of the Oltre la specie association and scientific director of Liberazioni. Rivista di critica antispecista and collaborates regularly with Il Corriere della Sera, il manifesto, and alfabeta2. In 2020 his new book with Enrico Monacelli will appear: Divenire invertebrato. Dalla Grande Scimmia all’antispecismo viscido (ombre corte).
Federica Giardini teaches Political Philosophy at the University Roma Tre (Rome). She is the director of the Master’s program in “Gender Studies and Policies” and has co-founded the Master’s program in “Environmental Humanities.” As the general coordinator of the IAPh Italia Research Center, she is supervising the EcoPol/Political EconomicsEcology Program. She has been working on the relational body confronting feminist difference thought, Husserlian phenomenology and Lacanian psychoanalysis (Relazioni. Differenza sessuale e fenomenologia, 2004); on feminist genealogies; on commons; and on social reproduction. Lately her research has been focusing on “cosmo-politics,” the transitional space blurring the boundaries between nature and politics (Cosmopolitiche. Ripensare la politica a partire dal kosmos, 2013; I nomi della crisi. Antropologia e politica, 2017).
Giovanni Leghissa is Associated Professor of Epistemology of the Humanities in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Turin. He graduated in Philosophy from the University of Trieste, and from the same university, he holds a PhD in Philosophy. He was visiting professor at the Institut für Philosophie of the University of Vienna and at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Karlsruhe, Germany. His work focuses on phenomenology, continental philosophy, and psychoanalysis; postcolonial, gender, and cultural studies; comparative philosophy; posthumanism; epistemology of economics; and theory of organizations. At present his main focus concerns a critique of the neoliberal model of rationality, as it has been developed both by the School of Chicago and by the theory of organizations. He has authored five books: L’evidenza impossibile. Saggio sull’immaginazione in Husserl (1999); Il dio mortale. Ipotesi sulla religi-
osità moderna (2004); Il gioco dell’identità. Differenza, alterità, rappresentazione (2005); Incorporare l’antico. Filologia classica e invenzione della modernità (2007); Neoliberalismo. Un’introduzione critica (2012); Postumani per scelta. Verso un’ecosofia dei collettivi (2015); and with Giandomenica Becchio, The Origins of Neoliberalism (2017). He has coedited with Enrico Manera Filosofie del mito nel Novecento (2015). He edited six collective volumes and special issues of journals, as well as the Italian translation of works by Husserl, Derrida, Blumenberg, Hall, de Certeau, Overbeck, and Tempels. He is member of the editorial board of the journal Aut Aut and director of the online journal Philosophy Kitchen. Rivista di filosofia contemporanea.
Giorgio Losi is a graduate student and assistant instructor at Indiana University Bloomington. His interests lie in critical animal studies, Italian literature, and cinema. Since 2013 Giorgio has been an activist with the Animal Liberation Group “Oltre la Specie,” and he is part of the editorial board of Liberazioni – Rivista di critica antispecista. In 2016 he got a master’s degree in Classics, with a thesis on Aristotle’s biological and political works. In 2018 he taught a class entitled “Crossing Animal Borders: Animal Issues in the Italian and International Debate” at IU Bloomington.
Roberto Marchesini is the director of SIUA (School of Human-Animal Interaction) and of the Centro Studi Filosofia Postumanista (Center for the Study of Posthumanist Philosophy), both based in Bologna, Italy. He has been a prominent voice in the development of zooanthropology and posthumanism in Italy and teaches human-animal interactions as dialogues between minded interlocutors in courses around the country. He has written or co-written more than 30 books and 100 scientific essays. Among his main publications for the English-speaking audience are Over the Human. Post-humanism and the Concept of Animal Epiphany (2017); The Philosophical Ethology of Roberto Marchesini (collected essays edited by Jeffrey Bussolini, Brett Buchanan, and Matthew Chrulew, 2017); and Beyond Humanism (2018). He runs an ethology blog on the major Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera, and he is also member of the following scientific and editorial boards: Minding Animals International, the World Phenomenology Institute, and the book series Numanities (Springer).
Alma Massaro received a PhD in Philosophy at the University of Genoa with a dissertation devoted to the study of Christian animal ethics in eighteenth-century England. She now teaches History and Philosophy in different high schools in Genoa. Her research interests range from animal ethics to food ethics and from moral philosophy to veterinary ethics. Her publications include two single-authored books, I diritti degli animali. Una riflessione cristiana (2018) and Alle origini dei diritti degli animali. Il dibattito sull’etica animale nella cultura inglese del XVIII secolo (forthcoming), the edited book L’anima del cibo. Percorsi fra emozioni e coscienza (2014) and the edited issue Animal Mundi. Le grandi religioni e gli animali of the journal Animal Studies (issue 13, 2015), and a number of articles and book chapters. She translated into Italian the books Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows by Melanie Joy (2012) and Concern for Animals by Deborah Jones (2013). She is also president of the Centro Studi Cristiani Vegetariani (CSCV).
Marco Maurizi collaborates with the chair of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Tor Vergata in Rome. From 2007 to 2014, he was teaching assistant at the University of Bergamo (Theoretical Philosophy, Epistemology of Social Sciences, Social Philosophy) and at the University of Tor Vergata (Institutions of Philosophy, Philosophy of Religions, Philosophical Hermeneutics). In 2014 he won a scholarship from the University of Bergamo to research on “The question of animality in Adorno, Derrida and Heidegger.” His research interests lie in the field of philosophy of history from the perspective of critical theory (Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse), Marxism (Marx, Lukács, Žižek), and dialectical philosophy (Cusanus and Hegel), with a focus on the nature/culture problem and its relevance for the definition of the status of non-human animals in the contemporary bioethical discourse. He was a member of the editorial board of the journals Liberazioni and Animal Studies. His publications include Adorno e il tempo del non-identico (2004); Al di là della Natura: glia nimali, il capitale e la libertà (2012); Cos’è l’antispecismo politico (2012); The Dialectical Animal: Nature and Philosophy of History in Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse (2012); Chimere e passaggi. Cinque attraversamenti del pensiero di Adorno (2015); Altra specie di politica (with Michael Hardt and Massimo Filippi, 2016); and Quanto lucente la tua inesistenza. L’Ottobre, il Sessantotto e il socialismo che viene (2018).
Diego Rossello holds an MA and PhD in Political Science from Northwestern University (specialization in political theory) and is an associate professor at the Department of Philosophy, Adolfo Ibáñez University, in Santiago, Chile. Former editor of Revista de Ciencia Política (2012–2016) and current co-editor of Economía y Política, his work focuses on the intersection between political theory and the critical humanities, with emphasis on early modern political thought and contemporary critical political theory. He has been a Fellow of the Paris Program in Critical Theory (Northwestern) and of the Law and Humanities Junior Scholars Workshop (Columbia). His work has appeared in journals such as Ideas y Valores, Society & Animals, Philosophy Today, New Literary History, Contemporary Political Theory, and Political Theory, among others. He is finishing his book project, entitled Political Theory at the Limits of the Human: Sovereignty, Animality, Rights.
Matías Saidel holds a PhD in Theoretical and Political Philosophy (2011) from the Italian Institute of Human Sciences, with a thesis on the ontological and impolitical perspectives on the common developed by Nancy, Agamben, and Esposito. He works as a researcher at the Argentine National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) and the Catholic University of Santa Fe (Argentina) and as Tenured Professor of Political Philosophy at the Faculty of Social Work of the National University of Entre Ríos, Argentina. He has also taught postgraduate seminars on the Common and on Neoliberal Capitalism. He has been visiting PhD student at Cornell University (2010) and postdoctoral researcher at Complutense University (Madrid, Spain, 2018). He was also a Fellow of the Summer School in Global Studies and Critical Theory (Bologna, Italy, 2017). In the last few years he has done research on the common and biopolitics in contemporary thought. His work has appeared in journals such as Revista de Estudios Sociales, Res Publica. Revista de Historia de las Ideas Políticas, Isegoría, Temas y Debates, Las torres de Lucca, Fragmentos de Filosofía, Ecopolitica, Eikasia. Revista de Filosofía, Soft Power, and TRANS/FORM/ AÇÃO, among others. He was co-editor of Roberto Esposito: dall’impolitico all’impersonale. Conversazioni filosofiche and has also published book chapters on Agamben, Nancy, Esposito, and neoliberal capitalism.
Carlo Salzani is Gastwissenschaftler at the Messerli Research Institute of the University of Vienna, Austria. He has widely published, both in Italian and English, on Benjamin, Musil, Kafka, and Agamben—and also on the animal question. His research interests presently focus on animal ethics,
posthumanism, and biopolitics. His publications include the single authored books Constellations of Reading: Walter Benjamin in Figures of Commonality (2009); Crisi e possibilità: Robert Musil e il tramonto dell’Occidente (2010); and Introduzione a Giorgio Agamben (2013) and the edited collections Philosophy and Kafka (2013, with Brendan Moran), Towards the Critique of Violence: Walter Benjamin and Giorgio Agamben (2015, with Brendan Moran), Agamben’s Philosophical Lineage (2017, with Adam Kotsko), and Saramago’s Philosophical Heritage (2018, with Kristof Vanhoutte).
Valentina Sonzogni is an art and architecture historian. She obtained her PhD at the Universität für Angewandte Kunst in Vienna and is presently director of the Archivio Piero Dorazio in Milan. She has worked in several institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art at the Castello di Rivoli, Rivoli-Turin; the Kiesler Foundation, Vienna; and the Guggenheim Foundation, New York. Her articles have appeared in various journals and books, and she has held conferences at international universities. She is the co-founder and co-director, with Leonardo Caffo, of the animal studies journal Animot. L’altra filosofia. With Caffo she has published the book An Art for the Other: The Animal in Philosophy and Art (2012).
List of figures
Fig. 14.1 Diego Perrone, Vicino a Torino muore un cane vecchio (Near Turin an Old Dog Is Dying), 2003, still from computer animation (length 5 min and 20 sec). (Courtesy Massimo De Carlo)
Fig. 14.2 Tiziana Pers, Art History Vucciria, 2018. (Photo by Umberto Santoro, color print on Hahnemühle paper. Courtesy aA29 project room)
Fig. 14.3 Tiziana Pers, Art History Vucciria, 2018. (Photo by Umberto Santoro, color print on Hahnemühle paper. Courtesy aA29 project room)
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CHAPTER 1
Introduction: The Italian Animal—A Heterodox Tradition
Felice Cimatti and Carlo Salzani
1 LittLe History of a BeLatedness
A few years ago, John Simons asserted the superiority of the AngloAmerican approach to the animal question, claiming that “most wealthy western societies outside the Anglo-American nexus have not developed similar consciousness” and singling out Spain and Italy as examples of attitudes to animals “long conditioned by the Roman Catholic Church following the extremely animal-hostile theology of Thomas Aquinas” (2002: 11). Simons’ thesis is accompanied by stereotypical statements bordering the ridiculous, such as “it is, I believe, true that no woman in France has ever won a case for sexual harassment at work,” or “it is clear that health consciousness is far more a matter of public debate in the Anglo-American sphere than it is more generally. The issue of tobacco smoking is the best example here, but a concern with dietary matters also
F. Cimatti
University of Calabria, Arcavacata di Rende, Italy
F. Cimatti, C. Salzani (eds.), Animality in Contemporary Italian Philosophy, The Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47507-9_1
F. CIMATTI AND C. SALZANI
stands out” (2002: 5, 11). However, and despite the justified remonstrations of Damiano Benvegnù (2016: 42), from a purely historical point of view, this thesis is not entirely false: on the one hand, the precedence and primacy of British animal protection movements and associations in modern history is indisputable; on the other, these movements also established a sort of philosophical “orthodoxy,” which has marked for a long time the history of animal advocacy—even in the sexist, chain-smoking countries of Southern Europe. Simons’ thesis, moreover, reflects a long-standing bias, and in order to dispute it, one needs more than outraged and righteous protests.1
A cursory look at the history of animal protection in Italy in a sense even confirms Simons’ prejudices. Giulia Guazzaloca has thoroughly researched this history and repeats Simons’ argument that a deeply rooted Catholic, anthropocentric, and creationist tradition played against the animal protection cause—together with the persistence of a predominantly peasant society, economic backwardness, widespread illiteracy, and the proud defense of local traditions (2018: 45–46 and passim).2 All of this reflected abroad into the image of a country essentially disrespectful of animal welfare, a bias which has evidently persisted to these days. Moreover, Guazzaloca repeatedly insists that “it was very often thanks to British noblemen and noblewomen that an animal-friendly sensibility was brought to Italy” and that Italian animal protection societies “for a long time benefited from the financial and organizational support of foreigners” (2018: 17–18). The foremost example is the foundation of the Società torinese per la protezione degli animali (Turinese Animal Welfare Society, later to become the Ente Nazionale Protezione Animali—ENPA), whence customarily the history of animal protection in Italy is said to begin: the Society was created on April 1, 1871, by the physician Timoteo Riboli at the instigation of national hero Giuseppe Garibaldi and of Lady Anna Winter, Countess of Sutherland, thanks to whom it established a fruitful relationship with the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and in 1897 even received the honorary patronage of Queen Victoria. And this was not an isolated case: the analogous Roman Society was founded in 1874 by Terenzio Mamiani and Lady Paget, wife of the British ambassador and vice-president of the London Vegetarian Society; the Neapolitan Society was created in 1891 at the initiative of Elizabeth Mackworth-Praed; and even much later, in 1952, the Società vegetariana italiana (Italian Vegetarian Society) was founded in Perugia by Aldo Capitini and the British citizen Emma Thomas (Guazzaloca 2018: 18–20,
110). The essential and enduring involvement of British gentry had the effect that animal protection was long perceived in Italy as a foreign phenomenon, supported mainly by bourgeois and liberal elites—and to some extent this holds even today (Guazzaloca 2018: 61).
Guazzaloca argues however that, despite this little delay (the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was founded in Great Britain in 1824 and the Société Protectrice des Animaux in France in 1845), the Italian animal protection movements basically followed a development similar to that of their Anglo-American counterparts. If the animal cause was highjacked by official propaganda during the Fascist era (not, however, to the extent of the German case), the economic boom of the postwar years brought both the country and animal advocacy on a par with the other “civilized” countries. On a philosophical level, animal advocacy remained obviously a fringe phenomenon, but also presented some emblematic figures: for example, Piero Martinetti (1872–1943), an anti-Catholic and antifascist, better remembered for being one of the very few academics who, in 1931, refused to swear an oath of allegiance to the Fascist Party. The same did (or rather didn’t) also Aldo Capitini (1899–1968), like Martinetti anti-Catholic and an advocate of vegetarianism and a major figure in Italy’s postwar nonviolent movement. As Luisella Battaglia argues in her contribution to this volume, though perhaps marginal figures, Capitini (and Martinetti) laid the groundwork for what will later become the Italian philosophical reflection in animal ethics.
The emancipative unrest of the late 1960s and 1970s resulted, in Italy just as in all other Western societies, in the flourishing of many “liberation” movements, among which also appeared a galaxy of animal protection groups (mostly directed against vivisection). If Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation (1975) was translated into Italian only in the late 1980s,3 the antivivisection pamphlet Imperatrice Nuda (Naked Empress, initially translated into English as Slaughter of the Innocent) by the Italian-Swiss activist Hans Ruesch was published in 1976 with great national and international impact, and in 1982 the architect and cofounder of the LAV (AntiVivisection League), Alberto Pontillo, even coined a new term, “animalismo” (today the most used in animal advocacy discourses), to identify a new, rational rather than merely compassionate and emotional way of relating to the animal question (cf. Guazzaloca 2018: 124).4
The delay in the translation of Singer’s founding text seems therefore to reflect again the general (albeit slight) delay of Italian thought in absorbing, and conforming to, the Anglo-American “orthodoxy.” The 1
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of What America did
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: What America did A record of achievement in the prosecution of the war
Author: Florence Finch Kelly
Release date: December 29, 2023 [eBook #72543]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1919
Credits: The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT AMERICA DID ***
WHAT AMERICA DID
T T L N Y F
WHAT AMERICA DID
A Record of Achievement in the Prosecution of the War
BY FLORENCE FINCH KELLY
NEW YORK
E.
P. DUTTON & COMPANY
681 FIFTH AVENUE
C , 1919, B E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
Printed in the United States of America
PREFACE
My purpose in this book has been to condense into a brief account just those things that the ordinary man or woman wants to know about how we prepared for and waged our share in the world war. I have tried to picture the large outlines of achievement, to present the important facts, and to show how it was all inspired and rushed forward by the flaming spirit of the people. Volumes will be required, and will of course be written, to tell comprehensively and in detail the complete story of America’s many-sided effort in the prosecution of the war. But I have sought, rather, to make such a book as would meet the needs of the every-day reader by disregarding details and weaving into the panorama of our war adventure only the essential facts of each phase of war effort and the spirit by which it was all unceasingly animated.
In such a volume, it seemed to me, there was no place for account of the controversies that have raged over almost every step of progress, nor for mention of criticisms or investigations or even of the mistakes that delayed by a few weeks or a few months the reaching of the peak of achievement in this or that particular. All of them, doubtless, will be chronicled in those many volumes that will tell the story of America’s participation in the war comprehensively and in detail. Otherwise, they will all be forgotten in six months. It is achievement that counts, and this book aims only to be a record of things that were done.
But it is in no boastful spirit and with no vainglorious purpose that “What America Did” is presented. There is no one of the millions who shared in that doing but knows and is glad to say that beside what Britain, or France, or Italy did or Belgium suffered America can only stand with bent head and reverent heart. It is much to be desired that a similar record, presenting outlines and essential facts within a space possible for the reading of the average busy person, of the achievements and sacrifices of each of these nations should be
prepared for our own and for coming generations. For the sum total of their testimony would so utterly disprove the old, old lie that a democracy can not be efficient and so summarily cast it into outer darkness that men would never again say it or believe it as long as time lasts. If this little volume is privileged to do its share toward proving that “the highest and best form of efficiency is the spontaneous coöperation of a free people” I shall feel it an honor to have done the work of assembling and presenting its evidence.
To those many officials and temporary assistants of the Government—they are far too many to mention separately—who have given me their cordial and painstaking coöperation in my effort to make all the facts and figures and statements of this work accurate and authoritative I wish to acknowledge my very great indebtedness. Without their constant and most courteous help the book would have been impossible.
F
F K . New York City, May, 1919.
XVI. P M
XVII. T M
XVIII. T B C
XIX. F F
XX. A C
PART TWO
THE NATION BEHIND THE FIGHTERS
XXI. F
XXII. T B B
XXIII. O N
XXIV. I P
XXV. W - C T I
XXVI. “T G M W ”
F N
T M
T S P
L W
B -B F F
R R
F U E
A H N
WHAT AMERICA DID
FOREWORD: ENTERING THE WAR
When the United States entered the war, April 6th, 1917, she had an army, including all the forces of the Regular Army, the National Guard and the Reserve Corps, totaling 202,510 men and 9,524 officers, a navy not large but well prepared, and the nucleus of an aeronautical section so small and undeveloped that it was negligible. Behind these fighting forces that, except the navy, were insignificant in comparison with the vast numbers of men swaying back and forth across the battlefields of Europe was a nation that ever since its birth had held the profound conviction, a fundamental of its political creed, that this country should never allow itself to be drawn into the quarrels of Europe.
Generation after generation had watched transatlantic wars blaze up and go their bloody way and had seen their flames fed by racial hates and jealousies, commercial greed, desire of territory, and dynastic and personal ambitions. And each successive generation had detested more deeply the whole foul crew of those motives and had been more determined that America should have no concern in the struggles they inspired. No one who does not understand how deeply rooted was this conviction in the political beliefs and ideals, the traditions, the very life of the American people can appreciate what it meant to them to plunge into the war. It demanded no less than a revolution in their methods of thought and in their attitude toward the rest of the world. The Monroe Doctrine, moreover, which for nearly a century had been almost as fundamental in our political life as the Constitution itself, made our abstention from interference in Europe a point of honor. For in its declaration that Europe must keep its hands off the western hemisphere was the implied and
recognized obligation that the United States must keep its fingers out of Europe.
Until within a few months of our entrance into the war the vast majority of our people, probably no less than nine-tenths of those who were reading and thinking about it, saw in it nothing more than one of those recurring European quarrels, such as their fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers had watched from this side the Atlantic with growing determination that this country should not be entangled in their strife. All that vast majority believed profoundly that the United States should hold aloof from this war for the same reasons that it had kept out of the previous bloody struggles. The American people can scarcely be blamed that they did not for a long time perceive the real cause of the war—the desire of the German Emperor and his people to win world dominion and establish a German autocracy over the conquered peoples. For no nation, and very few individuals, even among the near neighbors of Germany, at first realized that this was the goal of the Kaiser and his Government. Some of those nations had now and then apprehended danger, but only each one for itself, but upon the fingers of one hand could be counted the statesmen and publicists of Europe who perceived the intention of world conquest, until the field-gray legions had been started upon the adventure. And those few who had declared such a conviction concerning German purpose had had their trouble for their pains. For no one had heeded their warning. Slowly, as evidence accumulated that convicted Germany out of her own mouth and was surveyed in the light of the event to which it all pointed, did the governments and peoples that were being attacked come to a realization of the truth.
The American people were still longer in understanding the full significance of the purpose with which Germany launched the war. For their knowledge that through many centuries one after another of the European powers had striven through blood and devastation and agony to gain dominance over the others made them for a long time heedless of the meaning of the accumulating evidence and led them, in all honesty and conscientiousness, to absolve themselves of any responsibility or obligation. German propaganda of the most
insidious and plausible sort, its sources well concealed, was busy everywhere and, although it had no success in changing the direction of the spontaneous sympathies of the people, it did aid in preventing them from discerning for many months the real cause and purpose of the war.
Moreover, that any nation in the twentieth century should lust for world dominion and should set out to gain it seemed to the average American mind so impossible, so insane a purpose that it was loath to believe the truth. More and more evidence had to be accumulated and pressed home, more and more proof of the satanic methods by which the Germans were seeking to gain both their immediate and their ultimate ends had to be shown the American people before they could realize the full truth and the full significance of the German purpose. Not until that purpose ceased to stagger their belief did the sense of obligation begin to stir their spirits.
Hardly less universal and profound than the political conviction that this nation should stay out of European entanglements and let Europe settle her own quarrels in her own way was the moral and intellectual conviction that war is a wasteful and wicked means of bringing about any desired result. For more than a generation this belief had been growing and striking deep root in the minds and hearts of the American people. The nation that sprang to arms in April, 1917, was a nation that loathed war from the bottom of its heart.
So powerful and so universal were these convictions, that the country should be kept aloof from European dissensions and that war should be considered only as a last resort in a righteous cause, that no leader could have put the country wholeheartedly into the war until the masses of the people were convinced that the moment had come when they must enter it. And they were not, in their millions, thus convinced until the events near the end of 1916 and early in 1917 had shown them the path they must take. Then it was —and until then it would not have been—a united and determined country that took up the cross of war and faced the ascent of Calvary —how completely and closely united and how sternly determined the pages of this book will try to show.
PART ONE THE FIGHTING FORCES
SECTION I. ON LAND.
CHAPTER I
THE MAKING OF THE ARMY
The United States sprang into the greatest war the world has ever known, a war in which men and machines and resources were being consumed in enormous quantities, with an army numbering, all told, only 212,000. The first necessity was to create, train and equip an army that would, at the earliest possible moment, number millions of men and thousands of officers. American sentiment had always been strongly opposed to the principle of compulsory military service and the only attempt the country had ever made to use the draft system, during the Civil War, had caused dissatisfaction, disturbance and riot in civil life and in its military results had been practically a failure. Through many days of discussion in Congress and throughout the country the question was threshed out, while enlistments to the number of over 800,000 were swelling the ranks of the Regular Army, National Guard and Reserve Corps organizations. In the end, there was general agreement that only the draft system could furnish the enormous numbers of men required and draw them from civil life with democratic justice and with due regard to social and economic interests.
As a large number of foreign born citizens had come here to escape the compulsory military service of their native countries, there were many grave fears of the result and it was even expected that in centers of foreign population there would be riotous demonstrations of protest. But those who were thus apprehensive had not rightly estimated the intelligence, the democracy and the Americanism of the whole citizenship of the country, foreign as well as native born.
The success of the Selective Service Law, enacted by Congress on May 18, 1917, was as spectacular as it was complete. The entire machinery of registration, compilation and report was organized and made ready for operation in the eighteen days following the enactment of the law and was wholly manned by volunteer service from civil life. On June 5th, in a single day, without disturbance or
