Dimitri > Recent Status Updates

"Napoleon's brilliant tactic of striking inland meant that the French coasting trade had less significance since it no longer presented the Army of Italy's main supply train. The Army of Italy now had Piedmont & Lombardy to feed it."

And no large fleet battles, only an exemplary blockade of Toulon. The Royal Navy in the Mediterranean in 1796 was running out of targets to interdict.

Thus the strong parachute & panzer divisions deployed on the northern front covering the Rhine approaches while in the south only the weakest forces were stationed, keeping powerful panzers in a fairly central position behind a weaker screen of infantrymen, to respond to any attack by moving quickly to contain the threat.

The critical factor in the underdevelopment of a durable & functional village structure, the reason for this fluidity was, as in the case of the household, the absence of traditions of primogeniture. [?]

So far as the scouting plane is concerned, the obvious.. is the provision of a floating aeroplane base.. the future appears to lie between a mothership adapted to take on board the necessary compliment.. and a more thorough going sheme in which the floating bases take the form of a specialised vessel with a clear deck of sufficient area to permit machines being launched or alighting without entering the water at all.

THE BOMBER WAR, WW2.

"We may take it that in the future any such points will be duly protected by the fighting aeroplanes of the enemy. Consequently the bomb-dropping machine will need to be also a fighting machine itself, with a capacity to hold its own with the enemy. Or it will need to act in conjunction with a supporting fleet of fighting machines to overpower, or at least hold, the enemy during the operation."

"Protection by armour and shield contrasted" -the paragraph title refers to a gun shield. It does compare as poorly as a 1 lb canon to a Lewis machine gun in terms of rate of fire, weight, amount of ammo... but the author does not discard the possibility of developing a canon suitable for aeroplane use. He judges it more likely than two machine guns, meaning two operators. Oktober 1914. Fokker is coming.

"Any explosive projectile of less than 1 lb weight is banned by the Declaration of St. Petersburg of 1868* ..*the signatories to this Declaration include representatives of the following... the German Confderation & semi independent States were also signatories but in view of the doctrines of modern Germany as touching the value of international treaties, her signature cannot be taken as meaning anything."

[On aeroplane vs aeroplane] The tactical scout's duties are of such a character that if it be driven away by hostile aircraft, it has for the time being ceased to fulfil its mission and so either it must always operate with a protective force of fighting machines within call, or it must itself be armed, and be rendered capable of putting on a fight.

[On the principle of CONCENTRATION, Lanchester continues the naval analogy by comparing the Grand Fleet to the Channel Fleet plus Mediterranean Fleet] "If it had been really necessary for any political or geographical reason, to maintain two separate battle fleets at such distance asunder as to preclude their immediate concentration of attack, the cost to the country would have been enormously increased"

[The N square law: the square of a force's numerical strength multiplied by the fighting value of its individual units. Weapons such as rifle vs. MG are a variation, as is concealment] "such variations are far less common in naval than military warfare. The individual unit, the ship, is always the gunners mark. When we come to deal with aircraft... we find the conditions in this respect closely resemble the Navy's."

"An aeroplane operating at high altitude will probably need to be hunted and driven off by armed machines of its own kind [given the muzzle velocity, upward range & air resistance of rifle, machine gun and 1-pounder quickfire canon] "it would be necessary to fire into quite a different part of the heavens from that in which the aeroplane is seen, akin to sighting into the Great Bear to hit the Pole Star"

The exact mode(s) of signalling adopted do not so far appear to have been definitely disclosed. Some reports give the aeroplane as turning sharply when over the enemy's position; others a smoke bomb is let fall to indicate the position.. others again mention lights; it appears that lamps of sufficient power to be visible in daylight are actually being employed by the German aircraft.

It is more than probable that it its connection with the varied duties which in the future must fall to the Fourth Arm in its tactical usage, that differentation of type and specialisation of type will eventually become most marked. At present practically no attempt in the direction of specialisation has taken place [ between a strategic scout , an auxiliary to tactical operations or against the hostile air service]

The foregoing does not constitute a demonstration that the air service is in the future destined to become as important an auxiliary to an army in the field as the cavalry of today, although this is in effect the belief of the present author.

It is not yet possible to draw conclusions of a lasting nature from the actual usage of aircraft in the present war.. the machines avaliable are entirely without armor or defence of any kind and, dirigibles apart, are, generally speaking, without guns or other offensive armament of an effective character.

The monarchy governed Russia with the assistance of five institutions. The civil service, the security police, the gentry, the army and the orthodox Church.

"The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War [...] Copyright 1960?" He said slowly. His voice trailed away, then firmed again. "That's impossible."
"Is it? Look here." She pointed to a section he hadn't yet noticed, something called 'Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data. The author, someone named Bruce Catton, was listed as having been born in 1899.

A Nod to the master.

Having in the early 1700s laid claim to the status of a European power, the requirement to match her Western rivals in military might & economic productivity forced the monarchy partially to dismantle the matrimonial institutions which had served it well as long as Russia had been essentially an Oriental power competing with other Oriental powers.

If Leningrad became politically isolated from the rest of the USSR [during Barbarossa] Stalin feared that an opposition faction might seize control there & sue for a separate peace. Yet the appointment of Voroshilov was a blunder, one that would leave a catastrophic legacy for the city he was supposed to protect.

At the same meeting at OKW [Finnish] Lt.Gen. Heinrichs is supposed to have suggested.. that if the attack on the USSR went ahead, Germany should occupy the Åland Islands. This would provide Finland with a pretext to mobilise since it could be made to look as a precaution against a GERMAN attack. From Åland the Luftwaffe could later support the Finnish operations on Hanko.

These weren't just regrettable side-effects of an Anglo-French intervention but the real, hidden agenda behind the Allied offer of help, a fact that the Scandinavian leaders were fully aware of. The aim was to turn Scandinavia into a gigantic battleground, by which the British & particularly the French hoped to keep their expected future clash with Germany as far away from their own territory as possible.

"That thing in there.. I want to nail that.. that, whatever it is that could do that to a human being..I want it so bad I can taste it."
"Does it taste like a sandwich Deborah? Because.."
"GODDAMN IT"

Of course it was a terrible thing, and the world would be a much better place without someone in it who could do that, but did that mean we had to miss lunch?

"Written history usually reflects something of the time in which it was composed. I wrote this book in the later nineteen-thirties.. human distress inevitably became a major theme of the book. The dismal course of this war still seems to me an object lesson on the dangers and disasters which can arise when men of narrow hearts and little minds are in high places."

Foreword, 1963.

"Symphony orchestras are the musical media most suitable for democracy once it has achieved the supreme democratic virtue of sitting still and taking no part whatever in what is going on around."

He remembered also the idle young Lords of the fallen great house of Hwang & he bade his two sons sharply each morning to come into the fields with him & he set them at what small labor their hands could do, guiding the ox & the ass & making them, if they could not accomplish no great labour, at least to know the weariness of walking back and forth along the furrows.

Firewagons! One had heard of them.. chained one to the other & drawn neither by man nor beast but by a machine breathing forth fire and water like a dragon. He said to himself many times that he would go and see it, but there was never time.. then there was always distrust of that which one did not know and understand. It is not well for a man to know more than is necessary for his daily living.

YES, PEASANT. IT IS!

De Ochrana mag er dan niet in geslaagd zijn de Russische Revolutie te voorkomen, ze boekte zoveel succes bij het vergiftigen van het denken van revolutionaire gangmakers dat de bolsjewieken elkaar 30 jaar na de val van de tsaar nog altijd afmaakten in een heksenjacht naar niet bestaande verraders

"Never had Britain been launched upon a war that, once started, remained so lacking on all sides in certainty of aim and direction, and of any semblance of cohesive vision and intent"

Lacking? Seven different coalitions. Six different territorial adjustments. Napoleon usually on the (preemptive) defense. It's not the Unconditional Surrender of the American Civil War or WW2.

Directions change.

[Part 2] It's tought that his shaky writing was down to a condition called essential tremor, a neurological disorder that causes involuntary and rhythmic shaking, particularly in the hands. There's a curious incident in 1 manuscript where his writing improves dramatically from the line above. Perhaps he just had a rest or even an alcoholic drink (such as common small ale), which can temporarily calm tremors.

[Part 1]There was a scribe in the 13th C. Who has come to be known as the "Tremelous Hand", on account of his shaky, left-leaning script. His writing has been identified in 20 manuscripts all associated with Worcester, so likely he was a monk there. He added annotations to Old English manuscripts, translating individual words into Middle English or Latin above the Old English words to update the text for readers.