Time Out of Joint

In 1582, as the Catholic world prepared to adopt the new Gregorian calendar, German pamphleteers lampooned the strife that attended the change:

The old calendar must be the right one for the animals still use it. The stork flies away according to it, the bear comes out of his hole on the Candlemas day of the old calendar and not of the Pope’s, and the cattle stand up in their stalls to honor the birth of the Lord on the Christmas night of the old and not of the new calendar. They also recognize in this work diabolical wickedness. The Pope was afraid the last day would come too quickly. He has made his new calendar so that Christ will get confused and not know when to come for the last judgment, and the Pope will be able to continue his knavery still longer. May Gott him punish.

“Inanimate objects were not so stubborn.” An Italian walnut tree that had reliably put forth leaves, nuts, and blossoms on the night before Saint John’s day under the old regime dutifully adopted the new calendar and performed its feat on the correct day in 1583. A traveler wrote, “I have today sent a branch, broken off on Saint John’s day, to Herr von Dietrichstein, who no doubt will show it to the Kaiser.”

(Roscoe Lamont, “The Reform of the Julian Calendar,” Popular Astronomy 28:1 [January 1920], 18-32.)

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Performance Review

The index to David Lloyd George’s 1938 War Memoirs sums up his feelings about Field Marshal Douglas Haig:

his refusal to face unpleasant facts
his limited vision
Germans accustomed to his heavy-footed movements
his stubborn mind transfixed on Somme
his misconceptions concerning morale of German army
obsessed with Passchendaele and optimistic as to military outlook
none of his essential conditions for success prevail at Passchendaele
misrepresents French attitude
his plans strongly condemned by Foch
misleads Cabinet about Italian Front
prefers to gamble his hopes on men’s lives than to admit an error
completely ignorant of state of ground at Passchendaele
fails to appreciate the value of tanks
not anxious for success on Italian Front
a mere name to men in the trenches
narrowness of his outlook
incapable of changing his plans
his judgement on general situation warped by his immediate interests
his fanciful estimates of man-power
jealous of Foch
does not expect big German attack in 1918
distributes his reserves very unwisely
his conduct towards Fifth Army not strictly honourable
his unwise staff appointments
his defeatist memorandum of 25/3/18
unfairly removes Gough from command of Fifth Army
his complaints as to lack of men unjustified
does not envisage Americans being of use in 1918
stubbornness
unreliability of his judgments
launches successful attack of 8/8/18 […] but fails to follow it up
his censorious criticism of his associates
his attempt to shirk blame for March, 1918, defeat
only took part in one battle during War

Also: “unequal to his task”, “industrious but uninspired”, “did not inspire his men”, “entirely dependent on others for essential information”, “the two documents that prove his incapacity”, “unselfish but self-centred”, “his inability to judge men”, “liked his associates to be silent and gentlemanly”, “his contempt for Foch”, “his intrigues against Lord French and Kitchener”, “his failure at Loos”, “his ingenuity in shifting blame to other shoulders than his own”, “his shabby treatment of Gough”, and “his conspiracy to destroy General Reserve”. He found in Haig’s diaries “a sustained egoism which is almost a disease.”

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Queries

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Questions put by Benjamin Franklin to his Junto, a club for mutual improvement that he founded in Philadelphia in 1727:

  • How shall we judge of the goodness of a writing? Or what qualities should a writing have to be good and perfect in its kind? (His own answer: “It should be smooth, clear, and short.”)
  • Can a man arrive at perfection in this life, as some believe; or is it impossible, as others believe?
  • Wherein consists the happiness of a rational creature?
  • What is wisdom? (“The knowledge of what will be best for us on all occasions, and the best ways of attaining it.”)
  • Is any man wise at all times and in all things? (“No, but some are more frequently wise than others.”)
  • Whether those meats and drinks are not the best that contain nothing in their natural taste, nor have anything added by art, so pleasing as to induce us to eat or drink when we are not thirsty or hungry, or after thirst and hunger are satisfied; water, for instance, for drink, and bread or the like for meat?
  • Is there any difference between knowledge and prudence? If there is any, which of the two is most eligible?
  • Is it justifiable to put private men to death, for the sake of public safety or tranquillity, who have committed no crime? As, in the case of the plague, to stop infection; or as in the case of the Welshmen here executed?
  • If the sovereign power attempts to deprive a subject of his right (or, which is the same thing, of what he thinks his right), is it justifiable in him to resist, if he is able?
  • Which is best: to make a friend of a wise and good man that is poor or of a rich man that is neither wise nor good?
  • Does it not, in a general way, require great study and intense application for a poor man to become rich and powerful, if he would do it without the forfeiture of honesty?
  • Does it not require as much pains, study, and application to become truly wise and strictly virtuous as to become rich?
  • Whence comes the dew that stands on the outside of a tankard that has cold water in it in the summer time?

From Carl Van Doren’s biography. “New members had to stand up with their hands on their breasts and say they loved mankind in general and truth for truth’s sake. … In time the Junto had so many applications for membership it was at a loss to know how to limit itself to the twelve originally planned.”

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Points of Pride

She’s the girl that makes the thing that drills the hole that holds the spring
That drives the rod that turns the knob that works the thingumebob,
And it’s the girl that makes the thing that holds that oil that oils the ring
That works the thingumebob THAT’S GOING TO WIN THE WAR!

— Popular song of 1942

“I’ve Danced With a Man, Who’s Danced With a Girl, Who’s Danced With the Prince of Wales”

— Popular song of 1927

Dr. Polycarp was, as you all know, an unusually sallow bimetallist. ‘There,’ people of wide experience would say, ‘There goes the sallowest bimetallist in Cheshire.’

— G.K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill, 1904

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Dead Letters

In 1814, as the British burned Washington, commander Sir George Cockburn targeted the offices of the National Intelligencer newspaper, telling his troops, “Be sure that all the C’s are destroyed, so that the rascals cannot any longer abuse my name.”

British politician Thomas Erskine (1750-1823) had such an enormous ego that, it was said, one newspaper had to curtail its coverage because its “stock of capital I’s was quite exhausted.”

| History · Language

Briefly

Asked whether he could summarize the lessons of history in a short book, Columbia historian Charles Beard said he could do it in four sentences:

  1. Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power.
  2. The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small.
  3. The bee fertilizes the flower it robs.
  4. When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
| History · Quotations

First Impressions

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In 1668, Charles II’s court was dominated by five high councillors rather than a single favorite, raising concerns of a threat to the throne’s authority.

It didn’t help that their names literally spelled CABAL: (left to right) the Lord Clifford of Chudleigh, the Earl of Arlington, the Duke of Buckingham, the Lord Ashley, and the Duke of Lauderdale.

In fact the five were fractious and mistrustful, and the group broke up within a few years. But Lord Macaulay called them “the first germ of the present system of government by a Cabinet.”

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