"War Talk at Pun'kin Center"
by Cal Stewart
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Perhaps the clearest indicator of the American mindset towards the war came from Cal Stewart through his "Uncle Josh" persona in a 1915 Edison release of "War Talk at Pun'kin Center." Stewart's Uncle Josh Weathersby character had the legs of a trooper. If judged by the number of recordings that were pressed, Cal Stewart tapped the consciousness of America in that period when it was in the midst of epochal flux. Josh was a stereotypical country bumpkin who reflected the view from rural America and reinforced the city folks' prejudices toward them. Despite its great metropolises, America was a rural nation. Its attitudes were shaped by a rural economy; thus, when Uncle Josh spoke, people were listening. In "War Talk," a group of men are sitting around the general store doing what men did when they weren't planting, plowing, or sowing—wasting time. The conversation begins with a reference to the German introduction of chlorine gas at the battle Ypres in April of 1915, as horrific a development as any of the technological innovations the Great War would produce. But instead of revulsion, the mention of gas is turned into scatological humor and locker-room references to one of the company most affected by it. In the midst of the reference to the war, somebody says, "We ain't got no war. All we got is a war tax." With that the war became an inconvenience—a burden on the pocket book Then after an old Civil War anecdote about staying in step and being able to do so—revealing the individuality and stubbornness of the rural recruit and the urban perception of the ignorance of the same type, "finally Hank Weaver said, 'Then, there's them Bel-Gy-Uns." In what may be the only recorded commentary on the Belgian atrocities, Stewart, unwittingly perhaps, plays one of the turning points of the American attitude toward Germany into a forum which makes clear that the center of concern for most Americans was no farther away than their own front rooms. Telling his story, Uncle Josh (Stewart) further recalls the words of neighbor Weaver:
'Course I guess maybe the Germans did get to fighting them Gallians
[French/Belgians]
over on their ground, and they probably knocked
down a lot of their corn fodder and
mussed up their medder [meadow]
fields some, and one time I was goin' to speak right
out in meetin' and
say what I thought about it, but after the President's proclamation
[of neutrality, 4 August 1914], I made up my mind, I was goin' to be
mutual [i.e., neutral],
but our womenfolks ain't. Here I am goin'
around with my pants held up with a ten-penny
nail and a clothespin
and a flag of truce fluttering from my rear while my wife and gals is
sewing for Belgium. I wrote a song about it. I'll sot down the
melodeon and see if I can sing
it for you [sings]:
All the folks at our house are busy as can be
Sewing for them Belgians what live across the sea
I've got nothin' left to wear
Not much between me and the air
If I grumble, they don't care—
Gosh, I wish I wuz a Belgian.
Gosh, I wish I wuz a Belgian,
I'd have lots of things to wear
Gosh, I wish I wuz a Belgian,
People sewing for me everywhere.
With all those clothes and a brand new shirt
I'd be a regular gosh-darned flirt
Gosh, I wish I wuz a Belgian.
Deacon Weatherspoon said he didn't know, but he guessed if they heerd
that song that they'd either stop the war or start another one.
In one routine, Stewart addresses the great issues of the American culture he represents (family and home), those that were of only conversational passing at best (Belgium and the war), the popularity of the President ("goin' to be mutual"), and the relief effort for the downtrodden in Belgium. The war is too far away to be concerned with. Belgium is a source for the sympathy and industry of "womenfolk" and for aiding and sheltering the little guy; what the President wants is what we need to do; war is so far removed that it can only be characterized in terms of the most aggravating of local discomforts ("mussed up their medder fields"); or stopped and started for a song. With his malapropisms and homespun humor, Stewart paints a picture of a nation almost completely bemused and fascinated by the European side show ("shootin' gas")—but blissfully unconcerned with it. The depths of their ignorance and the irony it creates is maximized in the refrain of Uncle Josh's song, "Gosh, I wish I wuz a Belgian." Richard Harding Davis, who wrote of the atrocities in Belgium, particularly at Liege, for American readers, might suggest that no one of their right mind would so wish.
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