Post by Storyteller on Dec 9, 2017 20:19:30 GMT -8
An audio recording was disseminated amongst the Sabbat of several territories. Any Sabbat would have access to it. ((If you are outside the Sabbat and think you would have access, please check with the Storyteller.))
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I spoke the other day of the colossal military disaster which occurred when the so-called High Command failed to withdraw our forces from New York at the moment they knew that their position in the city was decisively broken in the Bronx and in Lower Manhattan. This delay entailed the loss of fifteen or sixteen of our divisions, and threw out of action for the critical period the whole of our forces in the city. Our forces were indeed rescued by bold action from New Jersey, but this only served to snatch defeat from the jaws of annihilation. This loss will inevitably take some time to repair, and in the first two weeks of the institution of the High Command, the battle in New York has been lost. When we consider the heroic resistance made by our forces against heavy odds in this battle, the enormous losses inflicted upon the enemy, and the evident exhaustion of the enemy, it may well be the thought that these 25 divisions of the best-trained and best-equipped troops might have turned the scale. However, the High Command had to fight without them. Only three divisions or their equivalent were able to be utilized in a meaningful way due to the poor deployment of troops in the city. Our forces have suffered severely, but they have fought well. We sent every Cainite we could to New York, and though their efforts amounted to failure, their efforts are not in vain.
It is pointless to recite these facts for recrimination. That would be a fruitless endeavor, as the High Command has already whitewashed their poor decisions with more garbage and empty propaganda. No, I recite them to explain why we have between twelve and fourteen fewer packs fighting the Camarilla scum in our current troubles. Why we have all but lost our foothold in New York City. Why the battlefront has shifted west.
New York remains the jewel of the New World, there is no denying that. There is also no denying that there is no way for us to take the city from our current position. We have tried more than once, and it remains in the slimy grip of the Ivory Tower.
We must change our tactics. We must think of the future instead of the past. It is time for new tactics, a new regime of thinking. It is time for a New World Order.
Of this I am quite sure, that if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future. Therefore, I will not hold past affiliations against any Cainite who comes to the Order now. Any problems of the past, or even of the present, will be dealt with and put to rest. I offer a big tent under which we can shape the world that is to come.
The disastrous military events which have happened during the past fortnight have not come to me with any sense of surprise. Indeed, I indicated a fortnight ago as clearly as I could that the worst possibilities were open; and I made it perfectly clear then that whatever happened in New York would make no difference to my resolve of to fight on, "if necessary for years, if necessary alone.” I will reset our world alone, and I will do it until the job is done. But only if I have to. During the last few days, several of our packs, licking their wounds from the recent defeats, have approached me about this Order. They see the big picture better than most. They see the future of The Sword. That future, comes through me.
We have, therefore, today a very large and powerful military force. This force comprises all our best-trained and our finest troops, including scores of thousands of those who have already measured their quality against the enemy and found themselves at no disadvantage. We have incorporated into our forces every willing Cainite for whom we have a weapon. We expect very large additions to our weapons in the near future, and in preparation for this we intend forthwith to call up, drill and train further large numbers. And these very high-class forces will now take part in the battles that are to come.
The battles will shift now to the west. The enemy will look to consolidate territory, take back the West Coast cities that have fallen from their grasp. That is where we will fight them. We will fight them in San Francisco, under the noses of the Anarchs. We will fight them in Canada, where they think we are weak. And we will fight them in the deserts of Las Vegas, Tucson, and Albuquerque. We will fight them here, or we will fight them at the doors of Mexico City, when the stakes cannot be higher.
As far as invasion on a great scale is concerned, we are far more capable of meeting it today than we were at many periods in the last decade and during the early days of our history, before we had proceeded abroad, before we had claimed the New World as our own.
I will not go into the details of my plans here. All I will say is that untiring vigilance and mind-searching must be devoted to our cause, because the enemy is crafty and cunning and full of novel treacheries and stratagems. The Sword may be assured that the utmost ingenuity is being displayed and imagination is being evoked from large numbers of competent officers, well-trained in tactics and thoroughly up to date, to measure and counterwork novel possibilities. Untiring vigilance and untiring searching of the mind is being, and must be, devoted to the subject, because, remember, the enemy is crafty and there is no dirty trick he will not do.
I have thought it right upon this occasion to give The Sword some indication of the solid, practical grounds upon which we base our inflexible resolve to continue the war. There are a good many who say, “Never mind. Win or lose, sink or swim, better die than submit to tyranny - and such a tyranny.” And I do not dissociate myself from them. But I can assure them that there are good and reasonable hopes of final victory. We may now ask ourselves: In what way has our position worsened since the beginning of the war? It has worsened by the fact that the Tower has conquered a large part of the largest city in the New World. This aggravates the possibilities of attack and adds to our defensive preoccupations. It in no way diminishes, but on the contrary definitely increases, the power of our encircling blockade. We do not know whether military resistance will come to an end in New York or not, but should it do so, then of course the Tower will be able to concentrate their forces, both military and industrial, upon the rest of the New World. But for the reasons I have given to The Sword, these will not be found so easy to apply. If invasion has become more imminent, as no doubt it has, we, being relieved from the task of maintaining a large army in New York, have far larger and more efficient forces to meet it.
If the Tower can bring under its despotic control the industries of the territories it has conquered, this will add greatly to its already vast armament output. On the other hand, this will not happen immediately, and we are now assured of immense, continuous and increasing support of all kinds from other parts of the New World.
I do not see how any of these factors can operate to our detriment on balance before the summer comes; and the summer will impose a strain upon the Tower's regime, with all under it writhing and starving under its cruel heel, which, for all their ruthlessness, will run them very hard. We must not forget that from the moment when we declared war it was always possible for the Tower to turn all her power upon our territory, together with any other devices of invasion she might conceive, and that we could have done little or nothing to prevent her doing so. We have, therefore, lived under this danger, in principle and in a slightly modified form, during all these months. In the meanwhile, however, we have enormously improved our methods of defense, and we have learned what we had no right to assume at the beginning, namely, that the individual Cainite has a sure and definite superiority. Therefore, in casting up this dread balance sheet and contemplating our dangers with a disillusioned eye, I see great reason for intense vigilance and exertion, but none whatever for panic or despair.
During the last four years of the last war The Sword has experienced nothing but disaster and disappointment. That was our constant fear: one blow after another, terrible losses, frightful dangers. Everything miscarried. And yet at the end of those four years the morale of The Sword was higher than that of the Tower, who had moved from one aggressive triumph to another, and who stood everywhere triumphant invaders of the lands into which they had broken. During that war we repeatedly asked ourselves the question: How are we going to win? and no one was able ever to answer it with much precision, until at the end, quite suddenly, quite unexpectedly, our terrible foe collapsed before us, and we were so glutted with victory that in our folly we threw it away.
We do not yet know what will happen in New York or whether the resistance will be prolonged. If we are now called upon to endure what has been suffered in New York, we shall emulate the courage of our comrades, and if final victory rewards our toils all shall share the gains, aye, and freedom shall be restored to all. We abate nothing of our just demands; not one jot or tittle do we recede. So many have joined their causes to our own. All these shall be upheld.
What is called the Battle of New York is now over. I expect that the Battle of Las Vegas is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of our civilization. Upon it depends our own life, and the long continuity of our institutions. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. The Tower knows that he will have to break us in this city or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all the New World may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, moonlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including Mexico City, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the Abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of recent perversions. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if The Sword shall last a thousand years, Cainites will still say, “This was their finest night.”
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I spoke the other day of the colossal military disaster which occurred when the so-called High Command failed to withdraw our forces from New York at the moment they knew that their position in the city was decisively broken in the Bronx and in Lower Manhattan. This delay entailed the loss of fifteen or sixteen of our divisions, and threw out of action for the critical period the whole of our forces in the city. Our forces were indeed rescued by bold action from New Jersey, but this only served to snatch defeat from the jaws of annihilation. This loss will inevitably take some time to repair, and in the first two weeks of the institution of the High Command, the battle in New York has been lost. When we consider the heroic resistance made by our forces against heavy odds in this battle, the enormous losses inflicted upon the enemy, and the evident exhaustion of the enemy, it may well be the thought that these 25 divisions of the best-trained and best-equipped troops might have turned the scale. However, the High Command had to fight without them. Only three divisions or their equivalent were able to be utilized in a meaningful way due to the poor deployment of troops in the city. Our forces have suffered severely, but they have fought well. We sent every Cainite we could to New York, and though their efforts amounted to failure, their efforts are not in vain.
It is pointless to recite these facts for recrimination. That would be a fruitless endeavor, as the High Command has already whitewashed their poor decisions with more garbage and empty propaganda. No, I recite them to explain why we have between twelve and fourteen fewer packs fighting the Camarilla scum in our current troubles. Why we have all but lost our foothold in New York City. Why the battlefront has shifted west.
New York remains the jewel of the New World, there is no denying that. There is also no denying that there is no way for us to take the city from our current position. We have tried more than once, and it remains in the slimy grip of the Ivory Tower.
We must change our tactics. We must think of the future instead of the past. It is time for new tactics, a new regime of thinking. It is time for a New World Order.
Of this I am quite sure, that if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future. Therefore, I will not hold past affiliations against any Cainite who comes to the Order now. Any problems of the past, or even of the present, will be dealt with and put to rest. I offer a big tent under which we can shape the world that is to come.
The disastrous military events which have happened during the past fortnight have not come to me with any sense of surprise. Indeed, I indicated a fortnight ago as clearly as I could that the worst possibilities were open; and I made it perfectly clear then that whatever happened in New York would make no difference to my resolve of to fight on, "if necessary for years, if necessary alone.” I will reset our world alone, and I will do it until the job is done. But only if I have to. During the last few days, several of our packs, licking their wounds from the recent defeats, have approached me about this Order. They see the big picture better than most. They see the future of The Sword. That future, comes through me.
We have, therefore, today a very large and powerful military force. This force comprises all our best-trained and our finest troops, including scores of thousands of those who have already measured their quality against the enemy and found themselves at no disadvantage. We have incorporated into our forces every willing Cainite for whom we have a weapon. We expect very large additions to our weapons in the near future, and in preparation for this we intend forthwith to call up, drill and train further large numbers. And these very high-class forces will now take part in the battles that are to come.
The battles will shift now to the west. The enemy will look to consolidate territory, take back the West Coast cities that have fallen from their grasp. That is where we will fight them. We will fight them in San Francisco, under the noses of the Anarchs. We will fight them in Canada, where they think we are weak. And we will fight them in the deserts of Las Vegas, Tucson, and Albuquerque. We will fight them here, or we will fight them at the doors of Mexico City, when the stakes cannot be higher.
As far as invasion on a great scale is concerned, we are far more capable of meeting it today than we were at many periods in the last decade and during the early days of our history, before we had proceeded abroad, before we had claimed the New World as our own.
I will not go into the details of my plans here. All I will say is that untiring vigilance and mind-searching must be devoted to our cause, because the enemy is crafty and cunning and full of novel treacheries and stratagems. The Sword may be assured that the utmost ingenuity is being displayed and imagination is being evoked from large numbers of competent officers, well-trained in tactics and thoroughly up to date, to measure and counterwork novel possibilities. Untiring vigilance and untiring searching of the mind is being, and must be, devoted to the subject, because, remember, the enemy is crafty and there is no dirty trick he will not do.
I have thought it right upon this occasion to give The Sword some indication of the solid, practical grounds upon which we base our inflexible resolve to continue the war. There are a good many who say, “Never mind. Win or lose, sink or swim, better die than submit to tyranny - and such a tyranny.” And I do not dissociate myself from them. But I can assure them that there are good and reasonable hopes of final victory. We may now ask ourselves: In what way has our position worsened since the beginning of the war? It has worsened by the fact that the Tower has conquered a large part of the largest city in the New World. This aggravates the possibilities of attack and adds to our defensive preoccupations. It in no way diminishes, but on the contrary definitely increases, the power of our encircling blockade. We do not know whether military resistance will come to an end in New York or not, but should it do so, then of course the Tower will be able to concentrate their forces, both military and industrial, upon the rest of the New World. But for the reasons I have given to The Sword, these will not be found so easy to apply. If invasion has become more imminent, as no doubt it has, we, being relieved from the task of maintaining a large army in New York, have far larger and more efficient forces to meet it.
If the Tower can bring under its despotic control the industries of the territories it has conquered, this will add greatly to its already vast armament output. On the other hand, this will not happen immediately, and we are now assured of immense, continuous and increasing support of all kinds from other parts of the New World.
I do not see how any of these factors can operate to our detriment on balance before the summer comes; and the summer will impose a strain upon the Tower's regime, with all under it writhing and starving under its cruel heel, which, for all their ruthlessness, will run them very hard. We must not forget that from the moment when we declared war it was always possible for the Tower to turn all her power upon our territory, together with any other devices of invasion she might conceive, and that we could have done little or nothing to prevent her doing so. We have, therefore, lived under this danger, in principle and in a slightly modified form, during all these months. In the meanwhile, however, we have enormously improved our methods of defense, and we have learned what we had no right to assume at the beginning, namely, that the individual Cainite has a sure and definite superiority. Therefore, in casting up this dread balance sheet and contemplating our dangers with a disillusioned eye, I see great reason for intense vigilance and exertion, but none whatever for panic or despair.
During the last four years of the last war The Sword has experienced nothing but disaster and disappointment. That was our constant fear: one blow after another, terrible losses, frightful dangers. Everything miscarried. And yet at the end of those four years the morale of The Sword was higher than that of the Tower, who had moved from one aggressive triumph to another, and who stood everywhere triumphant invaders of the lands into which they had broken. During that war we repeatedly asked ourselves the question: How are we going to win? and no one was able ever to answer it with much precision, until at the end, quite suddenly, quite unexpectedly, our terrible foe collapsed before us, and we were so glutted with victory that in our folly we threw it away.
We do not yet know what will happen in New York or whether the resistance will be prolonged. If we are now called upon to endure what has been suffered in New York, we shall emulate the courage of our comrades, and if final victory rewards our toils all shall share the gains, aye, and freedom shall be restored to all. We abate nothing of our just demands; not one jot or tittle do we recede. So many have joined their causes to our own. All these shall be upheld.
What is called the Battle of New York is now over. I expect that the Battle of Las Vegas is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of our civilization. Upon it depends our own life, and the long continuity of our institutions. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. The Tower knows that he will have to break us in this city or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all the New World may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, moonlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including Mexico City, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the Abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of recent perversions. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if The Sword shall last a thousand years, Cainites will still say, “This was their finest night.”