We can learn some history by reading alternative histories. I learned about the importance of the Scipios by reading Poul Anderson's story about time travellers who eliminated the Scipios. In SM Stirling's Daggers In Darkness, a crowd in 1922(b) salutes Theodore Roosevelt by making the Bellamy Salute:
"...stand to attention, eyes front, put the right hand over the heart, and then extend that arm stiffly at a forty-five degree angle, palm up." (p. 97)
I read this passage in haste just before going out to drive my daughter and granddaughter to Morecambe seafront for a Burrito and a view of the sunset and I missed the crucial significance of that single concluding two-letter word. I misremembered the passage as stating that the palm should be "open." I practiced making the salute to see if it came out any differently to what I expected. Aileen told me to stop doing it. (Don't try this in public, folks!)
Stirling has educated me and maybe some others about the Bellamy Salute. It is so easy nowadays to google and (sometimes) clear up misunderstandings.
5 comments:
8-)
They dropped the extended-arm part of the Bellamy Salute in the 1930's in OTL. It was too easily misinterpreted, especially if people forgot the 'palm up' part, which often happened.
In the Black Chamber timeline, there are no Fascist or National Socialist movements, so America gets a monopoly on the gesture.
Life's little ironies...
I thought that one moral of this DAGGERS IN DARKNESS passage was precisely that: that symbols have different significances in different contexts like, indeed, the swastika.
The whole "Pledge of Allegiance" is kind of creepy even without the salute.
Dividing 'one nation indivisible' with 'under God' makes it just that much worse. That deliberately excludes anyone who believes in zero or plural gods.
Jim: the "under God" thing was added in 1954.
Otherwise it's just a standard patriotic effusion, as far as I can see. All communities need common rituals and myths to encourage a sense of collective identity.
I might add that if you start with the right palm laid over the heart, it's a bit more natural to keep the palm up. That's what happens if you move the hand out in a direct arc.
Both that and the Fascist salute were probably based on French 18th-century interpretations (in historical paintings) of Roman 'gestural language' involving pledging allegiance or hailing a superior. Which may or may not have actually corresponded to the arm-out gesture.
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