Джеймс Филип - George Washington's Ghost

You and I share a common analysis of the errors our forebears made in earlier wars with the English. Fortunately, His Excellency Il Presidente de Soto, as evinced by the unwavering support he has given the General Staff, understands perfectly the lessons of our ongoing post-conquest struggle with our historic enemies.

A hundred years ago, what are now the South Western territories of the Commonwealth of New England, were provinces of New Spain, administrative entities within the Empire of México. Now our fortresses and mines in Alta California, and guarding the passes of the Sierra Madre are all that remain inviolate north of the Rio Grande. In short, not even the Great Valley of México is safe from the avarice of our enemies, who already covet and send raiding parties to disrupt the gold mines of California which are so critical to our ongoing national development. In every war we lose more ground, or are driven back to our start lines in the mountains or the deserts of our North East; and at home another schism strikes at the heart of our government. And always, those in power – people like you and I, and his Excellency, Il Presidente, whom I believe to be a profoundly good, and wise man – have sheltered behind the myth that we were always doomed to fail.

The enemy is too powerful!

We are too weak!

Frankly, we have never been honest with ourselves. The truth is that in previous wars the English have rarely committed more than a tiny proportion of their Imperial energy to ‘swatting away’ our piecemeal attempts to reclaim what is rightfully ours.

We, the Mexican people, even today in alliance with our Catholic brothers on Cuba, Hispaniola and Santo Domingo, and in league with our so-called coalition of the willing – which we both accept may not amount to anything meaningful in military terms when the going gets tough – of our Central and Southern American friends, notwithstanding the technical assistance and equipment gifted to us by our German colleagues, cannot hope to prevail if and when even a small part of the nascent military and economic resources of just New England, let alone the rest of the British Empire, are mobilised against us as surely, one day they will be.

Thus, we must accept that in the long-term, we cannot defeat the English on the battlefield.

What we can do, and never have done before with sufficient steadfastness, is to test the moral fibre of our enemies. This time we must fight well-enough and long-enough to discover if New England (particularly the ‘Commonwealth’ of those pampered East Coast Colonies) has the stomach for the long haul, and more importantly, we must prolong the war for however long it takes to allow the fissures we know to exist between the First Thirteen and the ‘Old Country’ back in Europe to widen.

In this, I do not think that we can rely on our German friends.

Their interests lie in weakening English power in the Americas and in controlling the oil wells of Gran Colombia, Venezuela and the Southern Caribbean. It remains to be seen how deeply embedded Berlin’s Concessions in Sucre, Anzoátegui, and Monagas are in fact, rather than theory. Personally, I doubt if those presences in Caracas, Cumaná and New Barcelona, are worth any more to the Kaiser than that fetid enclave-cum-abomination at San Juan. Nevertheless, if the Germans (while they obsess over oil wells in the Southern Caribbean) are happy to continue to offer our forces ongoing materiel and technical support, and to make available to us intelligence which otherwise would be denied to us, we must ‘play along’.

I know that this is as painful to your sense of honour as it is to mine, my friend. Especially, as our Kaiserliche Marine allies treat your people like serfs but we must tolerate it a little longer. If things go according to plan you will soon be rid of them. I think we can take it as read that when the shooting starts Berlin will order its ‘advisors in the Indies’ to return home for fear of inflaming tensions in Western Europe.

Shortly, all our plans will come to fruition.

For what it is worth I believe that the English will fight this war, at least at the beginning, as they have fought every war with us in the last century. At the outset they will think it is just another ‘border war’, and that they can deal with us at their leisure.

Little do they suspect that this strategy will not work this time!

Digressing, I think that your perceptive analysis of the lasting effects of the attack by Dominican irregulars on the British Atlantic Fleet in New York Bay two years ago, is spot on. The response of the New England authorities was heavy-handed and chaotic, and alienated large numbers of previously loyal former citizens of New Spain who mistakenly, were under the impression that they were in some way ‘safe’ in the First Thirteen. You were right to suggest that the attacks tended to dent the Royal Navy’s aura of invincibility. The other thing we learned from that episode was that, within the old English colonies the ruling elite were not so much worried about another war with us, as to who exactly they could get to pay for it!

In any event, I reiterate the consensus of the last meeting of the Chiefs of Staff, which has since been formally ratified by the President of the Republic.

We will use all the tools in our arsenal this time.

Moreover, we will demand that the Germans fully participate in the initial stages of the war. We will use all our modern aircraft. We will employ every available submarine against the English…

Saturday 22nd April

El Ojo del Diablo, Provincia Norteña de Sonora

Eyebrows had been raised among his colleagues back at the University of Cuernavaca at El Departamento de Geología de la Academia Nacional de Ciencias Naturales – the Geological Department of the National Academy for the Natural Sciences – when Professor Rodrigo de Monroy y Pizarro Altamirano, despite being six years past the customary ‘active service’ cut-off point of fifty-five years of age, had volunteered for active military service last year.

He was still the tall, broad-shouldered, rangy man he had been in his prime except, inevitably, not so fleet of foot and he ached in the mornings, and was sometimes, stooped with weariness. His formerly dark head of hair was ever-more streaked with grey, and his face, darkened by the Aztec ancestry that had long been ingrained in all but the most recent generations of migrants from Old Spain, was lined and weathered, set around grey brown eyes which had retained their capacity to unexpectedly twinkle with rueful mischief.

Inevitably, many of his oldest friends, and to a man, the majority of the Fellows in his departmental common room who had arched eyebrows, suspected some unseemly military fervour had gripped their esteemed Dean, whom everybody had assumed had long since bidden farewell to the warrior mantle.

True, Rodrigo was a hero of each of the three most recent wars with the gringo interlopers of New England; last time around, back in the 1960s he had been captured and held by the ungodly, for nearly a year as the bickering about the so-called ‘de-militarised zone’ dragged on interminably.

It was also true that although he still proudly retained the rank of Teniente Coronel – Lieutenant Colonel – in the Reserve Forces of the Ejército de Nueva España (the Army of New Spain), notwithstanding his long friendship with Army Chief of Staff Felipe Santa Anna – with whom he had fought beside in two of those wars – for several years after the last war had been a prominent, albeit gentlemanly, voice in the Peace Movement, a veritable thorn in the side of successive regimes in México City.