Dr. Seuss Goes to War

A conscientious ex-pat American, my father made sure I was brought up on Sesame Street and the books of Theodor Seuss Geisel. I learned many valuable lessons from this education, including that going to war over how you buttered your bread would be stupid, that eventually you could pester someone into eating anything no matter how weird it looked, and that if a bird asks an elephant to tend their nest for a bit before going off an extended holiday, it would be presumptious for the bird to then expect the elephant to give up the hatchling he has looked after for so long. Also that any such hatchling would be an interesting cross between a bird and an elephant.

A more deeply thinking child would have realised that the good Doctor's books revealed a social conscience amongst the bizarre creatures and amusing machinery, one that had been initially informed by the rise of fascism in Europe and latterly by racial discrimination at home. Seuss' views were first expressed in the cartoons he drew for New York's PM newspaper between 1941 and 1942, now collected in this book which I have recently been re-admiring. Seuss targets Charles Lindbergh and the America-Firsters (as well as Hitler, etc.) with vicious glee, and with the striking comic imagery so familiar from his later tales. Animals feature heavily, such as Lindbergh's "Ostrich Bonnets," all wonky necks and brainless smiles ("Forget the terrible news you've read, your mind's at ease in an ostrich head"), or "Vanquished Europe" as an enormous moose happily taking a bite out of a bemused Hitler's arse ("Quite dead I shoot him...unt still, by Himmel, he bites!). Best is Uncle Sam as a plump and scruffy eagle - his physique not dissimilar to the Cat in the Hat's - recurring frequently with a full range of emotion. However, despite the consistent and righteous polemic against anti-semitism in Nazi Europe and American isolationism, and against Jim Crow in the military, there is a sad and unwitting irony in Seuss' representation of the Japanese, and of Japanese Americans. All have the same sly, squinty ugliness, and are quite openly portrayed as a fifth column. One hopes that Seuss eventually came to terms with the stars on Japanese bellies.