Dimitri > Recent Status Updates

Presenting the text in this way ["per cola et commata", inversed paragraphs] certainly makes it easier to read but also to absorb the meaning. The spaces between the sections allows for a mental pause, to reflect and internalize the words before moving on to the next section.

There was also the "self operating machine gun" This would open fire when an object passed in front of its barrel. Probably a welcome invention for men fearful of the dark, the robot allowed them to catch a nap in their trenches. The obvious difficulty that the Finns could easily avoid the aim directly ahead.

OH 1993, 2003 WANTS A WORD?

The Gulf War would be fought for [plainly stated & rigidly maintained] relatively modest objectives. Bush & his men concluded that the price of total victory would be infinite responsibility for rebuilding a hostile nation with no tradition of democracy but with immensely complex internal politics. This was and is in retrospect a sensible strategic calculation.

A corps commander sought clairvoyance. During combat he disengaged himself from the immediate mayhem to look ahead 24 to 72h. His job was not to kill the enemy but to provide killing opportunities for his tactical subordinates by putting the enemy in harm's way.

In one way, however, Wood [from 4th Armoured] differed sharply from Patton. He avoided moving tanks at night.

...now I want to see how Wood will react to Patton's preemptive plan for a 48h turnaround deployment at night.

[..] in the mid 1070s, the English did not appreciate William's finer qualities. As far as they were concerned he was responsible for the death of Harold & countless thousands of their fellow countrymen. The fact that he had spared those who surrendered seems to have made no difference to his popularity.

"We are glad to see you. But you'll be very well advised to leave again as soon as you can". As they fanned out through Afghanistan, the Soviet troops heard much the same thing: their arrival was sometimes welcomed with flowers: but they too were reminded that their early departure would be even more welcome.

Shakespeare became famous not as a dramatist but as an author. His editors progressively removed him from the theatre and confined him to the page. In Pope's edition of 1725 the best passages were identified by double commas in the margin & readers had analytical indexes to help them extract, as the play-goer could not, favoured speeches and scenes; a play's dramatic unity, perceived in performance, was lost.

Not everyone understood that high Chinese officials rarely believe that foreign firms deserve much return for their investments. "Anyone who thinks China is an easy market is in the wrong business "

"That being so, China remained a prize, perhaps the largest single price, of the Pacific war. In a larger historical sense indeed, the Japanese American war in the Pacific was perhaps nothing less than a war for China."

Don't oversell that middle kingdom perspective, sir...

It was as though the "United States" refused to give up and was not about to pass from the ages with a black mark against her remarkable history. She had survived 48 long years of sailing the seas and being laid up, and unlike many of her sister ships who went quietly to the scrap yard, she was not going willingly to her death, but with her heart and soul resisting to the end.

Alexander the Great... reckoned his tactical range no more than 8 days march from the point of bulk re-supply, usually a maritime depot, since an ox ate its own load over that period.

By locomotive track... the journey from Rome to Cologne, 67 days marching for a legion, could be completed in less than 24 hours.

[A tool for the violent application pastoral skills of efficient, one-stroke burchering and guiding the herd]
The legacy of the chariot was the warmaking state, the chariot itself to be the nucleus of the campaigning army.

War is always limited, not because man chooses to make it so, but because nature determines that it shall be

The 1923 idea of a People's War sounds too 1945:

It was to be a most brutal kind of warfare that knew no rules & employed terroristic means of execution-style attacks against enemy commanders as much as against the population, poison gas, kidnapping, flooding and general destruction of infrastructure, in short, a mixture of scorched earth tactics with conventional operations.

MAHAN: "The one particular result which is the object of all naval action, is the destruction of the enemy's organized force & the establishment of one's own control over the water.. The sound general principle that the enemy's fleet, if it probably can be reached, is the objective paramount to all others; because the control of the sea, by reducing the enemy's navy, is the determining consideration in a naval war."

"General Simpson, a paternal figure of rather unusual appearance who always kept a completely bald shaven head like an early Kojak..."

By 1982, I guess Yul Brunner comparisons were out of fashion. Who loves ya, Charlie?

There were things I wanted to tell her. That she should go out trick-or-treating no matter how sad she felt about her daddy.

That she had at least 53 long and busy years ahead of her & probably many more.

Most of all someday her brother was going to put on a uniform and she must do her very, very best to talk him out of it.

Only kids forget. Every teacher knows this. And they think they're going to live forever.

"Did he have a story, one where his wife was either a little cracked or an outright villain? I tought yes. And did people believe it? The answer to that one was easy. doesn't matter if you're talking 1958 or 2011. In America, where surface has always passed for substance, people always believe guys like Frank Dunning."

[Not just in America: handsome, slick, easy smile-and-handshake fools people everywhere]

Hilde Speer: Als het Spandau dagboek in absolute zin Waar had willen zijn, had het een psychologisch zelfportret moeten worden. Hij selecteerde zo zorgvuldig uit zijn brieven dat het uiteindelijk een opgepoetst boek werd. Niet in de zin van politieke gedachten of zijn schuld, maar op een nog veel dieper niveau. Hij had al zijn privé gevoelens weggelaten of gewijzigd.

[Moltke after 1871] advocated a strategy based on defensive-offensive operations. No longer seeking a rapid decision marked by decisive battles, he planned to operate offensively, moving into enemy territory east & west [allocating equal forces to the two fronts!] to disrupt mobilisation & occopy easily defensible lines & have the enemy suffer heavy casualties in futile attacks against German defensive firepower.

At its best the Prussian general staff system institutionalized combat efficiency by ensuring that in a given situation different staff officers, educated to a common fighting doctrine, would arrive at approximately the same solution for making the most effective employment of available forces.

Even more interesting was Engels discussion of the possible strategy of a western campaign... The real danger to French security he considered to be its weak Belgian frontier because in spite of European treaties "history has yet to show that in case of war Belgium's neutrality is more than a a scrap of paper" With Paris fortified, France could defend itself offensively on the frontier [or] a final stand on the Aisne

"All night long the listeners reported scraping and straining noises from below but these grew fainter & fainter.." They listened for hours and then the following afternoon heard a "sharp piercing noise. Only 1 thing in the world could make a sound like that.. the crack of a revolver. More of these pistol cracks followed. In all, 25 shots came from the bottom of the sea." Then, silence.

From a U boat located by hydrophones "a propeller was heard, faintly turning or attempting to turn.. the submarine was making a little progress, but fitfully. She would go a few yards and then pause." The surface vessels dropped more depth charges & listened again. "There was a lumbering noise such as might be made by a heavy object trying to drag its bulk along the muddy bottom.."

In modern times we are constantly confronted with the interrelation of industrial and financial strength on one hand & political and military strength on the other. This interrelationship is one of the most critical and absorbing problems of statesmanship. It involves the security of the nation and, in large measure, determines the extent to which the individual may enjoy life, liberty, property and happiness.

We often speak as tough the 18th century discovered the worship of the machine but this is a half-truth. It was the 17th century that discovered the machine, its intricate precision, its revelation of mathematical reason in action. The 18th century gave this notion a Newtonian twist, whereas the 19th century worshipped not the machine but power.

Systems of ideas, though usually self limiting in their spread, are harder to kill than men, or even than nations. Of all the kinds of war a crusade, a total war against a system of ideas, is the hardest to win.

Most important of all was that Spain under Philip had moved from victory to victory. Fate, men called it in the 16th century, or Divine Providence. Centuries later they were to talk about the Wave of the Future or the Triumph of objective historical forces, but all they meant really, at either time, was that one success or failure seems to foreshadow another, because it's easier ...than to imagine a change.