School prayers - 22 December 1995

Towards the end of the First World War after the first American troops had arrived in France, an American doctor was assigned to General Pershing's Paris headquarters to take charge of the health of the American Expeditionary Force, and very soon he had an S.O.S. call from the southern sector of the front. Several different American army camps had reported an outbreak of a disease, which the army doctors couldn't diagnose. It didn't seem to be contagious though in most places two or three friends got it, violent symptoms, stomach pains, nausea, thirst, delirium. The attending doctors were stumped and alarmed, for there'd been a death or two.

The colonel doctor in Paris looked at the message and telegraphed for a list of names of the men afflicted. It came back they had one thing in common: all the names were Italian. The colonel doctor in Paris who was to become a famous epidemiologist had an idea. He telegraphed back: "Are there mushrooms in the vicinity of the victims?" There were, so he sent another message: "Procure charcoal immediately, other measures to follow." The colonel was a New Yorker but well acquainted with the neighbouring states of New England and he remembered having early in his career, taken care of a young American a boy, a child from Connecticut, first generation American born of Italian immigrants.

The parents had been in the habit in their native land of mooching through the countryside looking for one particular, and as far as they were concerned, a succulent mushroom. And some years later soon as they were settled in Connecticut, their little boy had run around the countryside and spotted what looked like very much the same mushroom. In Connecticut it was safe and succulent, in France it looked the same but it was poisonous.

The thought that much trouble and a life or two could have been saved in France if the doctor's had spotted where the men came from by their names was what made me wonder about those withering pictures of the first American troops in Bosnia huddled against the snow-blind wind, where they came from and did anybody at the Pentagon think of carefully picking the men who could ride out that winter? Well plainly armies can't afford the luxury of breaking up a division according to place of birth. But the other night on the telly we had an unwittingly comical reflection of this very theme, a brief exchange between an American television reporter and a soldier. The reporter, judging from his question came I should guess from the Florida peninsular or southern California as some similar semi-tropical spot. "Well soldier," he said. "How do you like the weather here?" And the soldier all wrapped up in his camouflage patchwork quilt – not much camouflage against a dead white landscape – looked to the reporter as the song says, square down in the eye, he said: "Have you ever been in Buffalo this time of the year?" That was the interview. Buffalo in Upstate New York gets normally well over 100 inches of snow each winter and lies in the full force of the Canadian wind. Already this December it's had over 40 inches.

The first reports from Bosnia on the reception of the Nato troops were good enough for the Nato commander and American admiral to say: "I'm tickled pink to see how things have gone and I hope they'll stay that way." We hope so too, even as I talk, for the possibilities of mischief, ill-feeling, misunderstanding, eruptions of ethnic hate could happen and be exploited overnight. And one moving aside here, as Christmas approached, was of many church congregations of many faiths holding special twilight services for the safety of the Nato mission.

Incidentally, talking of many faiths, there's a new and I think regrettable story, to add to my thoughts the other week on the never ending ever wrangling debate, in and out of Congress, on whether prayers in the public schools, in the American sense, violate the Constitution's ban on setting up a state religion. I recited some pretty ludicrous cases for example: a suit brought by a man, of atheists, against a whole state, Colorado, for permitting a stone monument in a public park to have chiselled on it the Ten Commandments. The point is this: if you're going to celebrate the Christian religion you ought to do it in a Christian church on demonstrably Christian property and not out there shamelessly in public where it could lead innocent citizens to think that the United States had suddenly adopted Christianity as its official religion. Horrors!

But now the latest outrage. There is/has always been a splendid Christmas tree in Grand Central Station in New York, there was one this year until a week ago, but maybe because the festival of Hanukkah was upon us, somebody put up a menorah, and lit all the candles. Why not? However this time, a sudden commotion one morning in the station, a hullabaloo from Muslims protesting the flaunting of the symbols of two religions. This has never happened before maybe because only recently have we become more aware of the American Muslim population.

Well the board that runs Grand Central and supervised its restoration back to the splendour of the old concourse simply took down both the Christmas tree and the minora. Where all this will end, knows only God. Time was, more often than not, come Christmas and the concourse was winding up its session breathing goodwill all around and echoing the president's proclamation – he often did put one out – of the right of Americans to enjoy this great festival. Franklin Roosevelt once actually I recall, uttered the name of Jesus Christ, which would cause an uproar today for reasons just elaborated.

This year, the scene in both the Senate and the House was lamentably different, unprecedented I believe. I don't recall such a continuous demonstration of ill will amplified by demagoguery. It all had to do with the issue, the balancing of the budget by 2002 that has practically obliterated every other pressing concern of American life: welfare, abortions, school prayer, poverty, crime, drugs, all the things that our fine and famous ex-governor of New Jersey gave as the reason why he would not seek a seat in the Senate, that the state Republicans had rushed to offer him, because he said, the Senate has become a mean place and does not stay with the things it ought to be talking about and working on all the time.

I won't bore you by detailing the tricks and gestures of demagoguery, and this debate, the shameless rhetoric worthy of Charles Dickens at his worst, writing about say the death of Little Nell, but each party has oversimplified and dramatised the other party's plan for a balanced budget and so talked it into deadlock. Let me explain, a balanced budget in 7 years, that's what it's all about and after months of squabbling, the president and the Republicans agreed on that. By the way, there hasn't been a balanced budget since the 1960s.

And also by the way, what makes this whole debate more gruesome is the coincidence of the time of year. It's the time when the Congress normally signs a bill authorising the money that has to be spent on keeping the wheels of government turning. But now it's withheld the money for the administrative offices, of all the bureaus: agriculture, the Treasury, Veterans' Bureau – no cheques – immigration office – no passports – so on. And all the non-partisan government agencies: the national museums, the National Parks, the National Forests, monuments, tourist attractions.

This year, the Congress, the House, in the main refused to sign a bill or even a continuing resolution, which is a temporary expense account, to keep the wheels turning while Congress gets more time to argue on what it's worked up about. Well as I say, it's very worked up indeed about agreeing on a bill to balance the budget. It put through a resolution three weeks ago to send those three quarters of a million federal employees back to work, but this time it refused. Who is it? A question never answered, a villain, not so far as I know defined. I dare to define it. The number of freshman congressman in this Congress is about 140, a record in the body of always 435 members. They are mostly of course Republicans, that's where the seizure, pardon me, the new acquisition of power, came from in the last election.

I think when this budget debate is eventually settled, and it could be tomorrow, it might be next June, it will be seen that what arrested the so-called Gingrich revolution, what stopped it in its tracks was the ideological fervour of Mr Gingrich's most ardent revolutionaries namely the freshman Republicans. On both domestic and foreign policy, they have been disturbingly, how shall I say downright, on foreign policy, they are newborn isolationists. American troops must go into action only against an army physically invading the United States. They have shown they know little history, especially the history of the 1920s, and therefore may be doomed to repeat it. On domestic policy, they have never heard of the great maxims of James Madison, the true architect of the Constitution and so the real founding father of this republic. They want the whole cake of their pet projects, if it means shutting the government down indefinitely. They voted for instance, to abolish the federal administration of Medicaid, the only system for the past 30 odd years that guarantees medical care for the very poor. They would turn welfare 60 years old upside down by denying money for aid to dependent children. They passed the bills and the president exercises his final right and vetoes them.

The freshman Republicans, I say, seem unacquainted with that passage, that day in the original debates in the 1780s over making the Constitution. One day James Madison said that good government must be based on ambition counteracting ambition, since in any human society there would always be disagreement and so compromise was an essential element of government. A mocking delegate got up and asked: "Is Mr Madison saying that the frailties of human nature are the proper elements of good government?" Madison replied, "I know no other".

May I wish you the old English greeting and still the American greeting, a merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

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