An English Thanksgiving, 1942

By THOMAS FLEMING

With Americans in uniform serving all over the world today, the idea of them celebrating Thanksgiving abroad does not strike anyone as unusual. With Americans locked in a world war in 1942, it certainly was.

The hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops fighting the Axis powers in North Africa, the South Pacific and Europe celebrated the first global Thanksgiving as best they could, in the steel bulkheads of a warship's mess or the canvas of a jungle tent. England—teeming with American soldiers and sailors and airmen, ready to defend our ally against a possible German invasion and beginning preparations for an assault on Nazi-conquered Europe—was another matter.

In those dark days, Americans took special pleasure in displaying their homegrown holiday to the Mother Country. The English were dubious at first but slowly realized they were being invited to share in something very special.

Helping to win them over was an extraordinary act of generosity very much in keeping with the spirit of the holiday. Merchant ships had carried tons of frozen turkey across the submarine-infested Atlantic for the big day. Then the Yanks announced they would donate all of it to the thousands of British war wounded in hospitals. Instead they would dine on roast pork and eat plum pudding for desert, alas without the standard rum sauce. "The quartermaster failed to deliver the rum," a newsman reported.

Americans also took advantage of their holiday abroad to walk in the footsteps of the Pilgrims who created the first Thanksgiving in the New England wilderness in 1621. One officer sat in the pew once occupied by the legendary Miles Standish, the Pilgrim's military leader, in the small parish church at Chorley, in the county of Lancashire. The Chorley town hall flew an American flag on Thanksgiving Day—the first time in their long history that the citizens had ever honored the flag of another nation.

Getty Images

U.S. Army Cpl. Heinz Arnold warms up the pipes in London's Westminster Abbey.

The Lord Mayor of Boston, in Lincolnshire, invited 100 American servicemen to be his guests for a modest wartime dinner. Afterward, a senior officer laid a wreath on a memorial to five pre-Revolutionary War royal governors who had been born in the historic city. An American private laid another wreath in the cold dark cells where some Pilgrims were confined in 1607 while trying to escape to religious freedom in Holland.

Even more thrilling to those with a sense of history was a visit to Southhampton, where a U.S. Army detachment stood at attention before the pier where the old freighter, Mayflower, was fitted out for her trans-Atlantic voyage. At Plymouth they visited the quay from which the Pilgrims boarded. Not far away, the Archbishop of Canterbury conducted a service in the ruins of St. Andrew's Church, where some of the Mayflower's passengers prayed before they began their 3,000-mile voyage. Virginia-born Lady Astor was on hand for these ceremonies, calling Americans "my compatriots" and joking with a Southerner from Georgia, Private Billy Harrison, about their superiority to "damn Yankees" from New York.

The most dramatic ceremony was in London's Westminster Abbey, where English kings and queens have been crowned for centuries. No British government had ever permitted any ritual on its altar except the prescribed devotions of the Church of England. But on Nov. 26, 1942, they made an exception for their American cousins.

No orders were issued to guarantee a large audience. There was only a brief announcement in the newspapers. But when the Abbey's doors opened, 3,000 uniformed men and women poured down the aisles. In 10 minutes there was not a single empty seat and crowds were standing in the side aisles. One reporter said there was a veritable "hedge of khaki" around the tomb of Britain's unknown soldier of World War I.

Cpl. Heinz Arnold of Patchogue, N.Y., played "Onward Christian Soldiers" on the mighty coronation organ. With stately strides, Sgt. Francis Bohannan of Philadelphia advanced up the center aisle carrying a huge American flag. Behind him came three chaplains, the dean of the Abbey, and a Who's Who of top American admirals, generals and diplomats. On the high altar, other soldiers draped an even larger American flag.

Their faces "plainly reflected what lay in their heart," one reporter noted, as the visitors sang "America the Beautiful" and "Lead On O King Eternal." The U.S. ambassador to Britain, John G. Winant, read a brief message from President Franklin D. Roosevelt: "It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord. Across the uncertain ways of space and time our hearts echo those words." The Dean of Westminster and one of the Abbey's chaplains also spoke. "God has dealt mercifully and bountifully with us," the chaplain said. "True, we have had our difficulties . . . but all of these trials have made us stronger to do the great tasks which have fallen to us."

Throughout Britain, the first global Thanksgiving gave men and women from the New World and the Old World a much-needed feeling of spiritual solidarity. Let us hope that today's overseas service men and women can have a similar impact on a troubled and divided world. Happy Thanksgiving—and our nation's sincerest thanks— to them all, wherever they may be deployed.

Mr. Fleming is a former president of the Society of American Historians. This article was adapted from his ebook, "An American Feast: Six Memorable Thanksgivings," just out from New Word City.

And the Fair Land

Any one whose labors take him into the far reaches of the country, as ours lately have done, is bound to mark how the years have made the land grow fruitful.

This is indeed a big country, a rich country, in a way no array of figures can measure and so in a way past belief of those who have not seen it. Even those who journey through its Northeastern complex, into the Southern lands, across the central plains and to its Western slopes can only glimpse a measure of the bounty of America.

And a traveler cannot but be struck on his journey by the thought that this country, one day, can be even greater. America, though many know it not, is one of the great underdeveloped countries of the world; what it reaches for exceeds by far what it has grasped.

So the visitor returns thankful for much of what he has seen, and, in spite of everything, an optimist about what his country might be. Yet the visitor, if he is to make an honest report, must also note the air of unease that hangs everywhere.

For the traveler, as travelers have been always, is as much questioned as questioning. And for all the abundance he sees, he finds the questions put to him ask where men may repair for succor from the troubles that beset them.

His countrymen cannot forget the savage face of war. Too often they have been asked to fight in strange and distant places, for no clear purpose they could see and for no accomplishment they can measure. Their spirits are not quieted by the thought that the good and pleasant bounty that surrounds them can be destroyed in an instant by a single bomb. Yet they find no escape, for their survival and comfort now depend on unpredictable strangers in far-off corners of the globe.

How can they turn from melancholy when at home they see young arrayed against old, black against white, neighbor against neighbor, so that they stand in peril of social discord. Or not despair when they see that the cities and countryside are in need of repair, yet find themselves threatened by scarcities of the resources that sustain their way of life. Or when, in the face of these challenges, they turn for leadership to men in high places—only to find those men as frail as any others.

So sometimes the traveler is asked whence will come their succor. What is to preserve their abundance, or even their civility? How can they pass on to their children a nation as strong and free as the one they inherited from their forefathers? How is their country to endure these cruel storms that beset it from without and from within?

Of course the stranger cannot quiet their spirits. For it is true that everywhere men turn their eyes today much of the world has a truly wild and savage hue. No man, if he be truthful, can say that the specter of war is banished. Nor can he say that when men or communities are put upon their own resources they are sure of solace; nor be sure that men of diverse kinds and diverse views can live peaceably together in a time of troubles.

But we can all remind ourselves that the richness of this country was not born in the resources of the earth, though they be plentiful, but in the men that took its measure. For that reminder is everywhere—in the cities, towns, farms, roads, factories, homes, hospitals, schools that spread everywhere over that wilderness.

We can remind ourselves that for all our social discord we yet remain the longest enduring society of free men governing themselves without benefit of kings or dictators. Being so, we are the marvel and the mystery of the world, for that enduring liberty is no less a blessing than the abundance of the earth.

And we might remind ourselves also, that if those men setting out from Delftshaven had been daunted by the troubles they saw around them, then we could not this autumn be thankful for a fair land.

Partisanship Set Deficit Panel on Path to Failure

Is there any political price to be paid for failure?

That's the question confronting Washington in the wake of the collapse of the congressional supercommittee that was supposed to come up with $1.2 trillion in deficit cuts by this week. Congress now has failed not once but twice this year to perform its most basic task of adequately managing the budget.

There are many reasons for the partisanship that produces this dysfunction, but the most basic one is this: Voters have yet to show that they will punish lawmakers for failing to come together to get something done.

To the contrary, the rewards today tend to go to politicians who remain intransigent, while the pain is meted out to those who attempt to compromise with the other party. Members of Congress are only human, and they respond logically to the incentives and rewards they see before them.

Until that changes, dysfunction is likely to persist. Voters proclaim they hate the hyperpartisanship in Congress—congressional job approval hovers near 10%—yet the same voters regularly reward that hyper-partisanship by re-electing those responsible for it, while occasionally tossing out those who dare to cross party lines to seek compromise. What is the incentive for lawmakers to break the pattern?

The explanation for this seemingly counterintuitive dynamic starts with how Congress is put together in the first place—that is, the process by which congressional districts are drawn up, a ritual now under way anew all around the country. Every 10 years, after the Census, state legislatures redraw their state's allotment of the 435 districts in the House of Representatives, thereby composing the political DNA of Congress.

Thanks to computerized tracking of voters block-by-block, this process of redistricting has become an ever more precise exercise in drawing up partisan districts in which voters are segregated into colonies that are safe for Republicans or safe for Democrats, creating a big incentive for lawmakers to stay on a partisan track. In a sense, political leaders now choose their voters rather than the other way around, says J. Gerald Hebert of the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center.

Associated Press

Rep. Jeb Hensarling, left, and Sen. Patty Murray, center, are co-chairs of the congressional supercommittee tasked with finding $1.2 trillion in deficit cuts by this week. Partisanship is one reason the panel is expected to fail.

If you want to know how effectively this system works to create safely partisan districts, look at the state of California. In the last four election cycles, California, with its 53 House districts that are up for re-election every two years, has held 212 elections for House seats. In all those elections, there has been exactly one case in which a seat changed party hands.

That means the Democratic and Republican parties held onto their seats 99.5% of the time. Usually the same representative was simply re-elected, while other times faces changed but party affiliation remained the same. In one case, a California lawmaker was sent to jail for taking bribes, but his party held the seat anyway.

As that suggests, House members increasingly are elected not by appealing to a cross-section of voters, but rather by appealing to a carefully selected group of voters from their own party. Then, the way to stay in office is to cater to partisans at the base of your own party, rather than by angering those partisans by attempting to compromise with the other side.

So while control of the House has changed hands twice in the last six years, that's because a small subset of House seats—perhaps 15% of the 435—are truly competitive swing districts that move between the parties. In the majority of districts, members live on by staying safely in their partisan foxholes, voting the party line and never risking engagement with the other side.

The lawmakers who try to compromise with the other side anger the partisan base on which they depend—and, perhaps more important these days, tempt outside ideological groups of the left or right to swoop and fund a primary challenger. California voters tried to break this chain last year by passing a referendum that sets up a citizen's commission to take the redistricting task away from state lawmakers, and other states are attempting similar moves or pushing the task to the courts, but the fate and effectiveness of those efforts remain uncertain.

But that's only the House, some will say, and doesn't explain a similar hyper-partisanship in the Senate. But increasingly the House is the breeding ground for senators; indeed, four of the six senators who served alongside six House members on the deficit super-committee had served previously in the House.

Senators from both parties will tell you that the partisan ethos of the House now permeates the Senate, where it is only aggravated by filibuster rules that mean 60 votes rather than a simple majority of 51 is required to get anything meaningful done. And the threat of outside groups mounting primary challenges to those who violate party orthodoxy is even more acute in the Senate.

Obviously, some voters want their leaders to stick hard to partisan principles, though a majority claim to want compromise. As long as the system and its voters reward the former and punish the latter, however, nobody should be surprised at the outcome.

Write to Gerald F. Seib at jerry.seib@wsj.com

The 32 Rules of Thanksgiving Touch Football

Thanksgiving is Thursday and there's no avoiding it—make the drive, eat the turkey, pass the cranberry goo, and try not to say something you regret. If you can survive until dessert without crying at the table or sticking a fork in someone's arm, you're home free—just inhale the pecan pie, hit the couch, and pass out watching the NFL.

New Line/Everett Collection

The rules of touch football could have saved the "Wedding Crashers" from a great deal of pain.

But for the love of Lombardi, go outside and play some Thanksgiving touch football. It's a perfect opportunity for family bonding, or at least calorie-burning. Unless you're in a fraternity or live inside a Tommy Hilfiger commercial, you probably play touch football only once a year, and Thanksgiving is that day.

Here are the official rules of Thanksgiving Family Touch Football:

1. If you have a healthy relationship with your family and speak to them all the time, you're playing touch. If you see your family only once a year, it's tackle.

2. Find a nice patch of grass. It doesn't have to be big. You don't need a regulation 100 yards. Half the people in your family, if they ran 100 yards, they'd wind up in the hospital for a month.

3. The game must be played before dinner. Nobody wants to play football after Thanksgiving. Nobody wants to wear pants after Thanksgiving.

4. All family on the field! Everyone plays. Mom, Dad, Grandpa, Grandma, Cousin Jake, and Regis the one-eyed Jack Russell terrier. Don't laugh. Regis is the best receiver you've got.

5. The following things are prohibited from Thanksgiving touch football: spikes, eye black, sticky gloves, Jets jerseys, running with a martini glass and a lit cigar, Norv Turner.

6. A Nerf ball is okay but you should own a leather football. A leather football is one of the things every home must have, like a dishwasher and a bourbon distillery in the garage.

7. No footballs with wings or propellers or tails or streamers. Here's a good rule: If the football would make Dick Butkus throw up, don't use it.

8. It's two-hand touch. One-hand touch is for lazy people who buy turkey sandwiches out of vending machines.

9. Two completions is a first down. Not as simple as it sounds—just ask the 2011 Indianapolis Colts.

10. No taunting, cursing or back-handed compliments. That's what Thanksgiving dinner is for.

11. Unless you live in California, Hawaii or Florida or some fancy place like that, the ground is probably going to be squishy with cold mud, and someone in your family is going to fall down face-first and ruin his or her Thanksgiving outfit. This is not cause for alarm. This is the highlight of the game.

12. It's okay to play with kids but don't baby them. Just because your 7-year-old niece is playing quarterback doesn't mean you can't intercept her screen pass and run it back for a touchdown. She's got to learn sometime not to throw into triple coverage.

13. The count is five "Mississippi." And it's a full four syllables—not a rushed "MISS-IPPI" and knocking grandpa to the ground.

14. But if you are old enough to have grandchildren, and you sack the quarterback, and do an elaborate sack dance, you will be worshipped forever.

15. Keep the Tebowing to a minimum. The fad is already old.

16. No, you don't get to be "permanent QB." Not if you want anybody to like you.

17. No show-off football lingo. No screaming "trips left" or "zone blitz." Uncle Dale doesn't want to play the "nickel package." He wants to get this stupid game over with, have a vodka and stand in the kitchen eating stuffing with his hands.

18. But there's always one control freak who wants to diagram elaborate plays. Just listen to whatever they say, and forget it immediately.

19. There are only two plays you need for touch football: "Everybody Go Out" and "Everybody Go Deep."

20. No, that running play never works. Ever.

21. Don't throw the ball too hard. This is the mistake a lot of touch football QBs make. They see an opening, and they chuck it 99 mph like John Elway, and peg Aunt Frances in the neck.

22. A little pass interference never hurt anyone. Don't be a wimp.

23. If you throw six interceptions in a row, let someone else play quarterback, or sign with the Washington Redskins.

24. Three-minute halftime. Don't kill the momentum. Anything longer, and aging muscles seize up. Remember: if Daddy sits, Daddy is d-o-n-e.

25. If you're playing on a city street, please don't dent the blue Honda, or I will find you.

26. If you're a random guest at Thanksgiving, it's your job to be good at touch football. Lie and say you "played a little" at Alabama and pray you don't completely embarrass yourself.

27. If you find yourself surrounded by middle-aged men in blue jeans and a quarterback who keeps getting picked off, you're not with your family. You've accidentally walked into a Brett Favre Wrangler spot.

28. Punting is okay, but it's hard. You know that weird fact about how hippopotamuses kill more people than lions or tigers? Well, punts are the hippopotamuses of touch football. Botched punts break more windows and hit more cars than any other play in the game. You can look it up. Be careful.

29. Goes without saying, but if it snows, it's a classic.

30. Take it easy. You don't want any injuries that can't be treated with a bag of frozen peas.

31. If you win your game and stand undefeated, please let LSU know you're available to play in the BCS championship.

32. When you think about it, there's really only one rule for Thanksgiving touch football: Take your shoes off before going in the house, or Mom is going to kill you.

We have to do better on inequality

The principal problem facing the US and Europe for the next few years is an output shortfall caused by a lack of demand. Nothing would increase the incomes of all citizens – poor, middle-class and rich – as much as an increase in demand and associated increases in incomes, living standards and confidence in institutions and the future.

It would, however, be a serious mistake to suppose that our problems are only cyclical or amenable to macroeconomic solution. Just as the evolution from an agricultural to an industrial economy has far-reaching implications for almost all institutions, so too does the evolution from an industrial to a knowledge economy. Trends that pre-date the Great Recession will be with us long after any recovery.

The most important of these is the strong shift in the market reward for a small minority of citizens relative to the rewards available to most citizens. According to a recent Congressional Budget Office study, the incomes of the top 1 per cent of the US population, after adjusting for inflation, rose by 275 per cent from 1979 to 2007. At the same time, the income for the middle class grew by only 40 per cent. Even this dismal figure overstates the case of typical Americans, as the number unable to find work or who have abandoned the search has risen. In 1965, only 1 in 20 men between 25 and 54 was not working; by the end of this decade it will probably be 1 in 6, even if the full cyclical recovery is achieved.

Those who remain serene in the face of these trends or favour policies that would disproportionately cut taxes at the high end assert that snapshot inequality is acceptable as long as there is social mobility within lifetimes and across generations. The reality is that there is too little of both. Inequality in lifetime incomes is only marginally smaller than inequality in a single year. According to the best available information, intergenerational mobility in the US is now poor by global standards and probably for the first time no longer improving. Take just one statistic: the share of US college students that comes from families in the lowest quartile has fallen over the last generation while that from the richest has increased.

Why has the top 1 per cent of the population done so well relative to the rest? The answer probably lies substantially in changing technology and globalisation. When George Eastman revolutionised photography, he did very well and, because he needed a large number of Americans to carry out his vision, the city of Rochester had a thriving middle class for two generations. By contrast, when Steve Jobs revolutionised personal computing, he and the shareholders in Apple (who are spread all over the world) did very well but a much smaller benefit flowed to middle-class American workers both because production was outsourced and because the production of computers and software was not terribly labour intensive.

There is no question that this will be more important to the politics of the industrialised world than its response to a market system that distributes rewards increasingly inequitably. To date the debate has been distressingly polarised.

On one side it is framed in zero-sum terms and the disappointing lack of income growth for middle-class workers is blamed on the success of the wealthy. Those with this view should ask themselves whether it would be better if the US had more entrepreneurs like those who founded Apple, Google, Microsoft and Facebook, or fewer. Each contributed significantly to rising inequality but it bears emphasising that companies with a single owner, such as a private equity firm, pay successful CEOs more than public companies do. Where great fortunes are earned by providing great products or services that benefit large numbers of people, they should not be denigrated.

At the same time, those who are quick to label any expression of concern about rising inequality as misplaced or a product of class warfare are even further off base. The extent of the change in income distribution is such that it is no longer true that the overall growth rate of the economy is the principal determinant of middle-class income growth – how the growth pie is distributed is at least as important. That most of the increase in inequality reflects gains for those at the very top at the expense of everyone else further belies the idea that simply strengthening the economy will reduce inequality.

Indeed, focusing on American competitiveness could exacerbate inequality, if that means corporate tax cuts or the protection of intellectual property for the benefit of companies that are not primarily producing in the US.

What then is the right response to rising inequality? There are too few good ideas in current political discourse and the development of better ones is crucial. Here are three.

First, government must be careful that it does not facilitate increases in inequality by rewarding the wealthy with special concessions. Where governments dispose of assets or allocate licences, there is a compelling case for more use of auctions to which all have access. Where government provides insurance implicitly or explicitly, premiums must be set as much as possible on a market basis rather than in consultation with the affected industry. A general posture for government of standing up for capitalism rather than particular well-connected capitalists would also serve to mitigate inequality.

Second, there is scope for pro-fairness, pro-growth tax reform. When there are more and more great fortunes being created and the government is in larger and larger deficit, it is hardly a time for the estate tax to be eviscerated. With smaller families and ever more bifurcation in the investment opportunities open to those with wealth, there is a real risk that the old notion of “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations” will become obsolete, and those with wealth will endow dynasties.

Third, the public sector must insure that there is greater equity in areas of the most fundamental importance. It will always be the case in a market economy that some will have mansions, art and the ability to travel in lavish fashion. What is more troubling is that the ability of the children of middle-class families to attend college has been seriously compromised by increasing tuition fees and sharp cutbacks at public universities and colleges.

At the same time, in many parts of the country a gap has opened between the quality of the private school education offered to the children of the rich and the public school educations enjoyed by everyone else. Most alarming is the near doubling over the last generation in the gap between the life expectancy of the affluent and the ordinary.

Neither the politics of polarisation nor those of noblesse oblige will serve to protect the interests of the middle class in the post-industrial economy. We will have to find ways to do better.

The writer is Charles W. Eliot university professor at Harvard, and a former US Treasury secretary (1999-2001) and director of the National Economic Council (2009-2010)