OPEN DEMOCRACY
30 June 2014
The 'White Feather Girls': women's militarism in the UK
(Nicoletta F. Gullace)
The suffrage movement was split by the Great War. Most often remembered are the pacifists. But the militant history of feminist war supporters in Britain, and the audacity of the 'White Feather Girls' who shamed young men into enlisting, must also be remembered in this centenary year.
In 1914 and '15, notorious bands of women roamed the cities of England giving white feathers of cowardice to men wearing civilian clothes. Why would so-called 'white feather girls' wish to humiliate men not in uniform? This question has puzzled feminists for 100 years, since the first feathers of World War I were pinned to the lapels and hatbands of young men by disdainful flappers wishing them to enlist in the army. The 'White Feather Brigade' was established in Folkstone by Admiral Charles Penrose Fitzgerald, an ardent war-supporter who wished to see Britain institute mandatory military service. His idea spread through the country with astonishing rapidity. As young women combed beaches, high streets, trams, theaters, and places of resort, pinning tiny white feathers to men casually strolling or socializing with their friends, they sent shock waves through society. Not only were those men pinned with the mocking 'Order of the White Feather' profoundly humiliated, but commentators began to decry the immodesty of forward young women who had the audacity to insult perfect strangers and tell men what to do. Remarkably, the recollections of male victims suggest that they continued to feel this stain upon their honor well into old age. Why would women use their sexual power to shame men into the army when their pacifist sisters were meeting, organizing, and in 1915, braving great danger to travel to The Hague, with precisely the opposite aim: to stop the war?
The Order of the White Feather raises interesting questions about women's response to the Great War. For pacifist feminists, ranging from Sylvia Pankhurst to Virginia Woolf, as well as the many rank and file members of the Women's International League of Peace and Freedom, the obvious feminist position on war was to be against it. Yet, to fully understand the dynamics behind the white feather campaign, we need to recognize the range of both feminist and feminine response to war and to examine why those militarist women who supported the conflict might have chosen the path they did.
The Great War split the feminist movement with seismic violence. Despite a multiplicity of philosophical differences among pre-war suffragists, most had been united in their opposition to war. Yet, in 1915, the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) - Britain's largest suffrage organization - expelled its pacifist members as Millicent Fawcett admonished her followers to 'show ourselves worthy of citizenship, whether our claim to it be recognized or not.' Meanwhile, the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) turned itself into a junta of pro-war militants, distinguished by an enthusiasm for war that rivalled the radical right. Indeed, the confluence between the ideology of the WSPU and the actions of the white feather girls was so striking that Christabel Pankhurst's pacifist sister, Sylvia, even surmised that the two groups were one and the same. While the extraordinary war enthusiasm of both the WSPU and the white feather girls has made them objects of peculiar, and often horrified, curiosity, uncovering the sources of their radical nationalism offers insight into the pro-war sentiments of many more moderate women who, during World War I, repudiated the pacifist cause.
Why would feminists split over the question of peace, a value that had once stood at the heart of the suffrage movement? First, the representation of the war itself was carefully designed to appeal to women. The brutal German invasion of Belgium in August 1914 was immediately characterized as a 'rape', and graphic images of sexual assault and the torture of women and children began to pour out of the occupied territories, gaining primacy as Britain's ostensible reason for entering the war. The 'Rape of Belgium' brought forth evocative images of women in danger and electrified world opinion in favor of a war with complex causes that were difficult for feminists to oppose.
As pacifism grew in power after the war, atrocity stories were increasingly cast into doubt. If accounts of German 'barbarism' had little basis in reality, the slaughter of millions of idealistic young men appeared catastrophic and senseless. While new scholarship suggests that the Germans terrorized invaded populations and precipitated a refugee crisis of enormous magnitude, the invention of 'propaganda' as a sociological concept in the 1930s nevertheless fostered the growing reputation of World War I as a futile waste of life. If we consider that the feminist militarists of World War I believed what they read in the press, and that more of it was true than we once believed, their nationalism becomes more comprehensible. For many feminists who supported the Government war effort, the enemy was not the British military state, but the militarized masculinity of a rapacious German Army.
The war also opened up a host of opportunities for women. The Pankhursts sponsored gigantic parades demanding female admittance to union jobs, while engaging in a theatrical strike-breaking campaign in the North, where they argued that women workers would never 'down tools'. Similarly, the NUWSS raised and equipped women's ambulance corps and hospital units, many of which were shipped to the front in an enduring spectacle of women's bravery, patriotism, and capacity to aid in righteous war. As Radclyffe Hall's fictional Stephen Gordon recognized, for many 'odd' women, competent, strong, and in Stephen's case lesbian, the war finally offered a sense of true purposefulness.
Shrewd feminists like Pankhurst and Fawcett realized that patriotic sacrifice could greatly enhance women's claim to citizenship as well. When the issue of franchise reform reemerged in 1916, the case for women's suffrage was far more difficult to oppose. Not only were women loyally supporting the war effort, making munitions, and doing jobs formerly done by enfranchised men, but many were risking their lives as doctors, nurses, and ambulance drivers at the front. As press campaigns pilloried un-enlisted 'shirkers', they simultaneously praised women for their valiant contributions. Indeed, the Representation of the People Bill of 1918 not only re-enfranchised soldiers, but included female householders over thirty, under aged veterans, and military nurses, while disenfranchising conscientious objectors for seven years. Patriotism, rather than sex, was the new qualification for the vote.
Surely, however, such arguments meant little to the bands of teenage girls hopping cheekily onto buses and trams to offer white feathers. That many of them were slapped, pinched, knocked down or - most mortifyingly of all - confronted with a handless stump or footless leg, attached to a disabled veteran who had inadvertently been given a feather, should surely have dissuaded them from this irritating hobby. Why then did they continue to give out white feathers, even after the adoption of conscription in 1916? For some, the act was clearly a gesture of liberation and a moment of excitement and fun. One veteran claimed that he would go to the theatre district in the hope of getting a feather and then make off with the 'feather girl' once he had revealed he was a soldier. Stories in women's magazines played on this trope, offering fictional tales of white feather girls whose 'pluck' brought them into the arms of a heroic VC. As music hall stars sang 'We don't want to lose you but we think you ought to go', and posters like 'Women of Britain, SAY GO!' shouted from hoardings, daring girls felt increasingly entitled to echo these themes to the flesh-and-blood men lingering in their midst.
If some women were looking for a bit of fun as they policed the boundaries of acceptable masculine behavior, others were clearly just angry at those men who refused to serve. The contempt many white feather-givers felt for the un-enlisted can be read in the anonymous letters that were often enclosed with a feather sent through the mail. A Bath railway porter was invited by a girl scout troop to come join them, as washer up; a conscientious objector seeking exemption was called a 'trench dodger' and a 'chicken heart', while an underage boy was sent a feather and told to wear 'a frilly white dress'. For women, some of whom had probably been subject to harassment or hoots from men as they travelled on trams or walked home from work, the opportunity to harass and shame men in return must have been somewhat tempting.
Sadly, women had more to gain from supporting the war than from opposing it. As feminist pacifists were pilloried as 'cranks', and Sylvia Pankhurst found herself pelted with paint and rotten fruit by angry soldiers who objected to her peace meetings, militarists like Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst became darlings of the conservative press and even received the coupon of coalition endorsement when Christabel stood for Parliament in the famous Khaki Election of 1918. Partial though the suffrage victory was, it opened the door to an equal franchise ten years later, and temporarily eclipsed the achievements of those women who had striven for peace.
As the guns quieted in November 1918, and the war receded into a nightmarish memory for those who served, the price of the dead hardly seemed worth the chimerical victory consolidated at Versailles. Haunted by the apparent futility of the Great War, we as feminists have understandably celebrated our pacifist sisters while conveniently forgetting the militant history of those feminist war-supporters who helped force open the door of the parliamentary vote. Only if we understand them too - with their calculation, their boldness and their ability to win the approval of powerful men - will we recognize the allure of right wing causes for Conservative women who wish to share political power without challenging the social values that have helped bring about war.
Fonte:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/nicoletta-f-gullace/white-feather-girls-womens-militarism-in-uk
Mais:
http://1914centenary.com/2013/11/06/quaker-white-feather-diaries-explore-objections-to-war
http://docs.google.com/file/d/14ldmmHj9p7xALAtPRaPnIQwGCGzDqLPq (Saki)
Isadora Duncan
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DAILY MAIL
13 July 2012
Incredible pictures reveal the pioneering plastic surgery carried out on First World War facial gunshot victim by leading British surgeon
(Tom Goodenough)
His is the face of one of the very bravest of our ancestors and his scars pay testament to the horrors he endured in the trenches of the Great War.
But staring back from the camera, the pictures also demonstrate the work of the pioneering British plastic surgeon who attempted to help some of the men get their lives back after they had suffered terrible injuries.
Dr Harold Gillies is renowned for developing the first skin grafting and plastic surgery techniques to treat the World War One soldiers left wounded with severe facial disfigurements.
The physician performed some 11,000 operations at the Queen's Hospital in Sidcup, Kent, between 1917 and 1925.
And Dr Harold Gillies work was so groundbreaking that he eventually received a knighthood in 1930.
Until now, however, very little has been known about the family stories behind the surgeon's work.
But on the 130th anniversary of the surgeon's birth and 95th anniversary of the Sidcup hospital where plastic surgery began, details of the pioneering surgery have been released online.
The records are an index of the 2,328 soldiers who were treated at The Queen's Hospital during the war and in its aftermath, with information including their names, regiments, ranks and the injuries they sustained.
Debra Chatfield, family historian at findmypast.co.uk who are launching the files on their site, said Dr Harold Gillies work was inspiring: 'The medical world owes a great deal to Dr Gillies, as do those who were treated by him in the early twentieth century and anyone who has ever received plastic surgery treatment since then.
'Without his pioneering developments in this field, plastic surgery might not be as advanced as it is today.
'These records are an important source of information for historians, the medical world and those interested in learning about the reality and aftermath of World War I.'
Due to the sensitive nature of some of the medical information, many of the hospital records and individual photographs will not be published online.
However, those whose ancestors were injured in the First World War and underwent surgery can search the collection to see if they received treatment from Dr Gillies' team.
The index makes for fascinating reading, as it conveys the extent of facial disfigurements suffered by some soldiers and shows how quickly life could change for a soldier in the First World War.
One patient who can be found in the records was Richard Walker, a Private in the Royal Lancaster Regiment of the British contingent, 3rd battalion.
Aged only 20 years old, he was wounded on 23rd October 1918 and admitted to The Queen's Hospital with a 'gunshot wound lower lip' - a severe disfigurement that would require specialist attention if he were to go on to lead a normal life again.
Another example is William M. Spreckley, a Lieutenant from the Sherwood Foresters Service in the British contingent, 16th battalion.
He was Gillies' 132nd patient and was admitted to the hospital in January 1917 at the age of 33 with a 'gunshot wound nose'.
It was three-and-a-half years before doctors were able to discharge him in October 1920.
Dr Sam Alberti, Director of Museums & Archives at the Royal College of Surgeons, said the British surgeon was a 'founding figure in the history of plastic surgery':
'(He developed) innovative procedures to help reconstruct the faces of badly injured soldiers and airmen, whose facial injuries were caused by bullet wounds and flying shrapnel and needed extensive bone, muscle and skin grafting to restore their appearance.
'Most notably, Gillies introduced the tubed pedicle which used the patients' own tissue to aid reconstructive surgery and reduce the chance of rejection.
'The files associated with his work are an unparalleled resource for the study of this important branch of medicine and family history.'
* * *
Henry Pickerill and Harold Gillies: the changing faces of war
Harold Gillies and Henry Pickerill's pioneering treatment of soldiers with facial wounds during the First World War helped form the basis of modern plastic and facial reconstructive surgery. Gillies was born in Dunedin, New Zealand, and made a career in England; Pickerill was born in England and became the first director of the University of Otago's dental school in Dunedin. During the First World War the two served at Queen Mary's Hospital at Sidcup, Kent, a specialist hospital for facial injuries, where Gillies led the British section and Pickerill the New Zealand section. The two men were highly competitive and Pickerill, in particular, refused to acknowledge his Kiwi colleague's contribution. But they each contributed to the development of plastic surgery.
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Pickerill took leave from the university in 1916 to join the New Zealand Dental Corps. Arriving in England in March 1917, he transferred to the New Zealand Medical Corps and established a unit for the treatment of facial and jaw injuries at No. 2 New Zealand General Hospital at Walton-on-Thames in Surrey.
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Gillies was 32 years old when war was declared. He volunteered for the Red Cross and in 1915 joined a Belgian ambulance unit as a commissioned officer. While serving in France, Gillies became aware of the many soldiers suffering jaw and facial wounds. On his return to the United Kingdom, he persuaded the military authorities to establish a specialist ward for facial injuries at Cambridge Military Hospital in Aldershot.
On 1 July 1916 the Somme offensive took place and, although the hospital had been allocated an extra 200 beds, it was overwhelmed when 2000 patients turned up - 'a stream of wounded, men with half their faces literally blown to pieces, with the skin left hanging in shreds and the jawbones crushed to a pulp that felt like sand under your fingers.'
- - -
It was decided to create a purpose-built facility for soldiers with facial injuries - Queen Mary's Hospital at Sidcup in Kent, which opened in July 1917 with around 300 beds. Its capacity was quickly increased to 560 beds, but eventually nearby hospitals and private houses were also pressed into service. Some of the benches in Sidcup were painted blue, indicating that they were for patient use only - and to warn the public that they might be occupied by someone who was distressing to look at.
Gillies, in command of the hospital, decided to open it to soldiers and staff from Britain's dominions, and to divide it into units. The British section was led by Gillies and the New Zealand section by Major Henry Pickerill.
RESTORING FACES
The two major innovations that Gillies introduced were the tubedpedicle method and the epithelial outlay technique for reconstructing eyelids. He famously trialled both procedures on 20-year-old Able Seaman Willie Vicarage, who had been badly burnt in an explosion during the battle of Jutland in 1916. Tube pedicles were created by cutting out a flap of healthy skin from the chest, shaping it into a tube, then attaching it to the graft area on the face. This resulted in a 'pipeline' of living tissue with a good blood supply, and it also closed off the graft area to infection. Gillies developed the eyelid technique after worrying about Vicarage, who had to spend all night during an air-raid trying to sleep with his eyes open because his lids had been burnt off.
The New Zealand section, led by Pickerill, treated over 200 New Zealand, British and other Commonwealth troops. Pickerill quickly earned a reputation as a first-class plastic and maxillofacial (jaw and face) surgeon. Supported by surgeons, dentists, anaesthetists and medical illustrators, he was part of a team that helped pioneer new techniques of tissue transfer, higher standards of hygiene to combat infection and new methods of administering anaesthesia.
For men missing parts of their face and jaw, treatment was a slow and gradual process, sometimes taking several years to complete. To avoid sepsis (blood infection), surgical procedures were carried out in stages. Depending on the severity of the wound, a patient at Sidcup could undergo as many as a dozen operations. Pickerill kept meticulous records of his section's work. Photographs, watercolour sketches, diagrams and wax models recorded each stage of treatment.
RIVALRY
Pickerill and Gillies enjoyed a 'healthy' rivalry at Sidcup. Both men had strong personalities and this led to differences of opinion on occasions. After the war, Pickerill and Gillies jealously guarded their reputations by claiming ownership of developments and techniques pioneered at the hospital.
- - -
Pickerill, his team and 59 patients returned to New Zealand in 1919, where treatment continued at the facial and jaw department of Dunedin Hospital. Pickerill also resumed his position as dean of the dental school. Later he decided to specialise in plastic surgery - first in Sydney, then in Wellington and Auckland, and finally at Bassam Hospital in Lower Hutt, which he and his second wife, Cecily, also a surgeon, established in 1939. It specialised in treating cleft lips and palates in children. He died in 1956.
- - -
After the war, Gillies continued to perform reconstructive surgery and also pioneered transgender and cosmetic surgery. He was awarded a knighthood in 1930, before returning to medical service during the Second World War. In 1946 he was elected the first president of the British Association of Plastic Surgeons.
[...] He was never good at saving, which is why he was unable to retire after the Second World War, and he kept working until shortly before his death on 10 September 1960. He was 78 years old.
HIDDEN TRACK: http://drive.google.com/file/d/17TTCQezip7PycAdAOSwX0HNy3DxUyFDT
Fontes:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2173166/Pioneering-plastic-surgery-First-World-War.html
http://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/video/pickerill-and-gillies-great-war-story
Mais:
http://www.nzonscreen.com/title/great-war-stories-gillies-pickerill-2014
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gueules_cassées
http://www.ozy.com/flashback/the-birthplace-of-plastic-surgery/3814
Trechos de artigos de Karl Kraus - da coletânea Nesta Grande Época.
Exposición De Guerra ["Kriegsausstellung", en Die Fackel, agosto de 1916]:
En el pabellón de la exposición de arte del Cuartel de Prensa de Guerra, el Presidente del Cuartel de Prensa de Guerra y Director del Archivo de Guerra, Mariscal de Campo Maximilian Ritter von Hoen, dio la bienvenida al Archiduque y se puso a su disposición para la visita de esa sección. En dicho pabellón se había dado cita una gran parte de los pintores y los artistas del cuartel de prensa de guerra, quienes se unieron a las personalidades que acompañaban al Archiduque en su ronda.
Gran interés despertó el concierto de la Orquesta de Prótesis, compuesta por 40 músicos con un solo brazo, que saben dominar de forma admirable sus instrumentos con brazos artificiales y que interpretan artísticamente las más difíciles piezas de ejecución [juego de palabras entre künstlich ("artificial") y künstlerisch ("artístico")]. Por la noche, la iluminación del "Karst" [Pequeño espejo de agua que brota en suelo rocoso, exótico como paisaje y útil como manantial de agua. Aquí se refiere Puntualmente al "Karst" de Viena.] y del campo de batalla mediante enormes faros eléctricos fue descomunalmente efectiva. Impetuosa aceptación encontró el "Periódico del soldado tirolés", que poco más o menos era impreso ante los ojos del público de la exposición en la imprenta que se encuentra en el fortín de dicho diario.
¡Y yo fui invitado a la "apertura" de esto! Es decir, la "redacción de La Antorcha". Pero no existe tal redacción: sólo asume esa función para devolver invitaciones, para que al menos el intento por invitarme tenga que pagar el franqueo. ¡La guerra en exposición! Yo visitaría una exposición de paz en la que no hubiera para ver más que los ganadores de la guerra ahorcados, los héroes de la guerra del dinero que, cuando la patria llamó, hayan entendido: ¡ahora hay que escarbar juntos! ¿O acaso no hay más entradas para algo así porque los expositores las tienen todas? Yo no voy de ninguna manera a una exposición de guerra en la que ellos son expositores. ¿Que poco más o menos ante mis ojos sea impreso el Periódico del soldado tirolés? ¿Debería tener que reconocer la parasitosidad de Viena bajo la iluminación del "Karst", bajo la luz de los enormes faros? Debería observar la horrorosísima exhibición de una "orquesta de prótesis" (¿qué otra atracción principal puede todavía imaginar la antihumanidad?) y, en contraste violento con esto, la reunión de aquellos otros artistas que se habrían vuelto malos pintores aun cuando hubieran venido al mundo sin brazos. ¡Qué inexpresable es todo esto cuando uno tan sólo se imagina que pudo ser exhibido! Pero una abolición de la guerra ¿no seduce todavía más a la humanidad? Yo aceptaría la invitación.
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La Aventura Tecno-Romántica ["Das Technoromantische Abenteuer", en Die Fackel, mayo de 1918]:
Yo, por mi parte, desde el comienzo de esta acción fui del parecer de que la caída de cabeza de la dignidad humana tiene su causa en un bacilo cerebral, del que tan sólo la ciencia -también a merced de él- hasta ahora ha sido incapaz de encontrar la pista. La impresión de que toda la comunidad, partícipe activo o pasivo del sacrificio, está integrada por moradores de manicomios específicos se debe no tanto a la velocidad de su determinación para revolcarse en la deshonra y la culpa, una velocidad que aumenta a diario, sino a la total insensibilidad ante a los contrastes espirituales y éticos entre los que se desarrolla este drama espeluznante. Se creería que ante lo sistemático de una providencia que a cada hora hace padecer a los justos la muerte por fuego, agua, tierra o aire, mientras un hombre bañado por el sol de la Engadina lleva sobre su traje de bufón la inscripción "The Tank" para identificarse como miembro de la tripulación de un trineo [Engadina es un valle alpino situado al este de Suiza]; que ante las contradicciones que se ven o se oyen constantemente, la conciencia de la vileza del emprendimiento todo debería llevar a que el universo rompa en un grito. Pero más aún que por lo evidente de una clasificación injusta en virtud de la cual existen la protección ante la muerte y la salvación del martirio, y en virtud de la cual se prostituyen las mismas Erinias que esa humanidad lleva prendidas a sus talones, es por otra instancia que se completa todavía más la imagen de una era de cerebro carcomido: la situación de un tiempo que sufre la competencia entre los más heterogéneos caracteres de época que se cruzan en él, pero ya no lo percibe. El fenómeno, al que veo operar en dirección hacia un victorioso hundimiento, es el de la "simultaneidad". Es la inmediatez de conectar un juego de formas medievales con una invención moderna mediante la cual de golpe se hace posible el envenenamiento de un frente de batalla y de extensas regiones por detrás suyo; es el empleo de una heráldica deslucida en la consumación de acciones en las que la química y la fisiología han combatido hombro con hombro: eso es lo que arrasará con las criaturas vivientes más rápido aún que el propio veneno. Cuando el llamamiento de la Cruz Roja en Ginebra se pregunta:
¿Debe la victoria convertirse en ultraje y vergüenza pues ya no será de agradecer a la valentía y la lucha honrosa de los hijos de la patria? El saludo a los combatientes que regresan, ¿ya no es más para esos héroes que sin vacilación jugaron su vida por la patria en las trincheras, sino tan sólo para el hombre que sin peligro personal alguno se deshizo de sus enemigos por medio del veneno y entre los más tremendos sufrimientos de sus víctimas?
Está muy cerca de decir que lo especial del dios alemán es que viene no sólo de una nube de gas, sino también de una máquina; que también en la contingencia de una mina, una bomba aérea o un torpedo, y en general en las acciones dirigidas contra la mera cantidad o el enemigo invisible, la valentía y la lucha honrosa no tienen parte alguna ni en quienes las realizan ni en quienes las esperan; que la falta de valentía de la parte actuante se corresponde con la abundancia de mártires entre los que están a la espera; que las trincheras recién mencionadas, en las que se jugó la vida por la patria, pertenece a esos recursos bélicos que hoy muy raramente llegan a emplearse, y para rematar, que en esta guerra por lo general no se ha desenvainado la espada desde aquella histórica sesión del Reichstag del 4 de agosto de 1914.
Además, y dicho sea de paso, si esa ideología inmortal y fundada en conceptos heroicos aún no fuese ya problemática en vista de los métodos modernos, podría eventualmente ella misma ponerse a pensar si la guerra era antes lo bastante bella como para formar el corazón de generaciones enteras; si renunciando con audacia a los avances de la técnica, es justamente la confrontación de fuerzas musculares la más noble actividad humana; y si el todavía una y otra vez ejercitado combate honroso de los hijos del país, basado en que un hijo del país acuchille al otro en las costillas o en bajar el pulgar haciendo recatadamente la vista gorda, ha brindado el más digno basamento a una educación de siglos en pos de los ideales patrióticos. Por lo menos seguiría siendo un deber moral el inculcar a los niños que la pelea cuerpo a cuerpo supone un grado de honra superior al asesinato alevoso, y más todavía respecto de aquel cuyo anónimo instigador encuentra a su víctima en la cantidad anónima.
Pero en lo que a los gases respecta, la distancia conceptual entre el instrumento y la gloria con él relacionada es por supuesto la mayor y más horrible; y eso que la Cruz Roja siente, lamentablemente tan en vano, ha sido repetidamente dicho por mí hasta manifestar por último la posibilidad de expulsar del gremio de las fuerzas armadas al ejército que utilice gases venenosos, en razón de un comportamiento ante el enemigo que según el antiguo concepto de la honra militar es todo lo opuesto al coraje. Al fin y al cabo, todo este abominable contraste está definitivamente acoplado al juego de palabras de una ofensiva rica en cloro. Un mal chiste podría ordenar ese caos, pero además se atenuarían todos los horrores si en vez de probar la eficacia de la química de cada bando sobre el cuerpo de cientos de miles de legos, se aplicara la idea de demostrarla mediante una confrontación científica entre los laboratorios.
Desde que se ha ligado con la técnica, el valor olvidó que la cantidad tiene al menos el límite de la locura, y que alguna vez será alcanzado el punto en que el predominio de las fuerzas no militares resulte tan palmario que lo más pertinente sea traspasarles la disputa de esos certámenes, de modo tal que excluya el fomento simultáneo de los intereses del poder estatal, o sea la aniquilación de la vida humana. Pues si se puede transmitir a través de distancias como de Berlín a Viena la voz humana, y por tanto también la de mando, ¿por qué no le sería posible a la técnica, que hace de la maravilla de hoy la comodidad de mañana, inventar un aparato por el cual algún inútil para el servicio militar valiéndose de un botón, conmutador o palanca, desde su escritorio en Berlín, haga saltar Londres por los aires, y viceversa? Cuando la esperanza en el éxito de un ataque con gas es patriotismo y el horror ante ello es alta traición (por lo cual yo, por ejemplo, soy uno de los más grandes reos de alta traición de todos los tiempos y batallas), esa patraña mortal -sin la cual al mismo tiempo la humanidad cae en el ridículo sólo puede ser zanjada proponiendo la evaluación teórica de los inventos de cada bando, y en vez de a los generales, designar de nuevo a los técnicos como doctores honoris causa (si por mi fuese, como los de filosofía). La disparidad entre la acción y la ideología que lleva a la rastra: sólo de ahí viene la espantosa nube de gas en la que gloriosamente nos asfixiamos.
Una vestimenta colorida y el deber de llevarse la mano a la frente al avistar un superior, y todo lo con ello relacionado y que se exige incluso ante la muerte, pueden ser excelentes costumbres e instituciones: sólo que lo que éstas pueden lograr precisamente con el moderno modo de morir, y hasta qué punto lo estimulan o lo impiden... ¡justo eso es imposible de inventar! A ese caos total de conceptos, deberes, sufrimientos, exigencias, en que una vida tampoco antes libre de pesares se ha hundido de cabeza, aquí le ha brotado una realidad como símbolo. ¿Quién que contemple siquiera de lejos a los pasajeros de un tranvía en Viena podría tener aún esperanza? Ese montón de mugre y miseria en medio del cual el material humano está enmarañado de tal modo que apenas se puede distinguir cada miembro: uno sostiene firme esta imagen y se pregunta si aquí queda lugar para la "disciplina", y acaso para un "servicio de control" que establezca si aquella fue transgredida porque reservistas, viejos reservistas, "no se ponen de pie ante oficiales que viajan con ellos o no les ofrecen el asiento". Pues "los civiles que viajan con ellos tienen esto por una verdad evidente y se expresan también sobre ese comportamiento desafiante e indisciplinado de la tropa". Pero esto no lo ha inventado ningún Brueghel el Joven. El diablo mismo, cuando lo viera y oyera y estuviera ya ahí en el medio, aplastado, expuesto a todas las consecuencias del racionamiento de jabón, no oiría sin embargo otra cosa que el elocuente lamento de la humanidad, y además una pobre voz de mujer que le grita con insistencia: "¡Por favor, adelante! ¿Alguien sin boleto? ¡Adelante, por favor."
Y la lluvia llueve cada día, y otra vez se agolpa un séquito proveniente del campamento de Wallenstein, y ahora empujan hacia adentro bolsas y mochilas, y... no obstante hay lugar para la idea que nos domina a todos, pues en el inescrutable designio humano hemos descubierto que la vida es mucho más bella con carestía, muerte y mierda. Pero, ¡alto!, si todavía hay lugar para la disciplina, también alcanza para el concepto de honor. A uno que no quería adelantarse aunque era un capitán la pobre voz le gritó que no tenía la menor educación, pues ella no sabía que era un capitán, porque él no estaba identificado como tal, sino vestido con ropa civil. A pesar de eso, la superioridad lo autorizó a presentar una queja. Ella le había gritado "¡adelante!", pero él gritó que no quería "abandonar su puesto". Por lo tanto, ella debería haberse dado cuenta de que la ropa civil era sólo una apariencia. En la audiencia judicial ella dijo que jamás le había ocurrido algo así, si bien estaba "acostumbrada a muchas cosas con la guerra en los tranvías" (queriendo decir la Guerra Mundial). Agitado, el capitán le preguntó si puesto que estaba de civil, lo había tomado por un desertor. Ella replicó que estaba muy lejos de tales pensamientos, porque "¿qué tiene que ver la guerra con los tranvías eléctricos?". El juez la condenó pues el civil era un militar. ¡Todo esto ocurre, mientras ocurre todo esto!
Durante una retirada, uno que tenía que ordenar le gritó desde el automóvil a uno que tenía que obedecer y tenía un ojal desabrochado: "¡Usted, ahí! ¡Arréglese el uniforme!" Y muchos que ya no podían escapar yacen en el fondo del Drina. En un hospital de Cracovia, con los que están postrados por el gas o un disparo en el vientre se hacen prácticas de saludo militar ni bien pueden ponerse en pie. ¡Un milagro tras otro! Son los viejos ornamentos para la nueva naturaleza de la muerte. Pero como ésta, recién salida de la retorta, todavía no pudo inventar ninguno nuevo, la autoridad no puede prescindir de los viejos ornamentos. ¡Pues no sólo debe haber dulce, sino también decorum! Sólo que el poder necesita de la nueva muerte para conservarse, sólo que el antiguo dominio no abdica de buena gana al deberle su posición a la química [juego de plabras entre abdanken ("abdicar") y verdanken ("deber")], sólo que las insignias ahora dependen de los productos químicos: he ahí lo que nuestra cultura triunfante ha consagrado sin remedio a la muerte por envenenamiento. La humanidad, que ha dilapidado su fantasía en inventos, ya no puede imaginarse la eficacia de los mismos: ¡de lo contrario, debería suicidarse con ellos en señal de arrepentimiento! Pero puesto que en sus inventos ha dilapidado también su dignidad, vive y muere por cualquier poder que se vale de tales progresos contra ella. Lo inimaginable de las cosas vividas a diario, la incompatibilidad entre el poder y los medios para imponerlo: esa es la situación; y como siempre sucede, la aventura tecno-romántica en la que nos hemos metido llevará la situación a un final.
Mais:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rg-uGpBhs2g
Trechos de Pietro Mascagni and His Operas (2002), de Alan Mallach.
Mascagni was also supporting his two surviving siblings: his youngest brother, Paolo, whose tuberculosis had diminished his ability to support his family, and his older brother, Francesco, in a nursing home for nearly a decade. With few other immediate sources of income at hand, the forty-five thousand lire from Cines for Rapsodia Satanica, as well as the fifty thousand promised for a second film score, were much on his mind.
Meanwhile, Europe was gradually moving toward war. From the beginning, Mascagni was passionately opposed to Italy's involvement, convinced that only if Italy stayed out of the war could his homeland come through without material or moral disaster. At home, too, he found little solace. His relationship with Lina had become cold and distant; as he wrote, "Yesterday I had lunch with Lina... I ate reading, as usual, my newspaper, without speaking a word."
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On April 26 Italy signed the secret Treaty of London, agreeing to intervene on the side of the Entente. Before the end of May, Italy was at war.
During early 1915 Mascagni was largely unaware, like most of his compatriots, of the political maneuvering taking place. After finishing Rapsodia Satanica in February, he returned to Rome, where he had been engaged to conduct a short opera season dedicating the newly rebuilt Quirino Theater.
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At the fourth performance in Florence, Mascagni collapsed in his dressing room after the first act, with a high fever and acute rectal pains. [...] His condition was soon diagnosed as a rectal fissure, known as a rhagades. [...] He had gone from morphine to heroin injections to dull the pain, but even so, he found it difficult merely to stand on the podium. For a man whose health since childhood - except for episodes more emotional than physical - had been nearly perfect, this condition, which would torment him for the next few years, was painfully demoralizing.
By May preparations for intervention were clearly visible. Arriving in Milan, Mascagni was shocked to see signs of mobilization - troops, long lines of trucks and automobiles - everywhere. Frightened and outraged, he tried hard to convince himself that Italy was not about to enter the war, writing Lolli: "The war will not be! It would be Italy's ruin, total, irreversible, eternal ruin! It is not possible that our land lacks one man, just one, capable of opening the eyes of our rulers ... And if [there is war] I will weep forever over my country, destroyed by ... a band of madmen and criminals." War fever had pushed everything else aside, and the tour was disbanded. The entire city, lying in the shadow of the Austrian lines in the Alps, was preparing for war; as he wrote Lolli, Milan "was in a state of total lunatic delirium."
In nearly constant pain, he withdrew to his Milan villa, taking frequent short hot baths, applying gauze soaked in cocaine rectally, and going back to bed, determined to avoid the operation his doctors were pressing on him. He no longer had any illusions about the course of the war, writing Lolli, "I see with the greatest misery that our leaders are lunatics: to push this country into war is a true crime!"
Italy's musical world shared the nation's ambivalence. Toscanini and Leoncavallo were passionate interventionists. Leoncavallo, who was "determined," in Weaver's words, "to become the bard of the holy war, in conscious imitation of Verdi," quickly composed a patriotic opera, Goffredo Mameli. Luigi Illica, too, was an interventionist. Although fifty-eight years old, he set aside his work and left Castell'Arquato, enlisting as a corporal in the artillery.
Although Mascagni had little fondness for the French, who he felt had manipulated Italy into war, and considerable personal affection for Vienna and the Viennese, these feelings paled in comparison to his horror of Italian intervention. Puccini shared Mascagni's sentiments. Although his emotional sympathies may have been with the Central Powers, his opposition to the war itself went far deeper, as he wrote Tito Ricordi early in 1915: "Much as I may be a Germanophile, I have never wanted to show myself publicly for either side, so much do I deplore the way war spreads its torments in the world."
Once Italy had entered the war, Mascagni dutifully supported his country and his two patriotic sons, both eager to take part in the war. Dino planned to sign up immediately, while Mimi wanted to join as soon as he finished his exams at the University of Urbino, to which his father had sent him in the hopes that in that isolated spot he might finally settle down and earn his law degree. Mascagni, as always the doting father, set about smoothing his sons' path into the war. Although still in intense pain, he left Milan immediately for Turin, where Dino, who had opened a motorcycle workshop, sought his help to obtain a coveted spot in an aviation battalion. A week later, after Mimi had finished his exams, he joined them in Turin, seeking to be accepted in an equally competitive automotive battalion. Mascagni went to work lobbying for his sons appointments, offering the army the use of the family sedan and even trying to arrange for Teresio, the Mascagni family chauffeur, to be assigned to the same unit as Mimi.
Mascagni threw himself into the war effort, spending much of his energy organizing and conducting benefit concerts, even putting aside his feelings to share the podium at La Scala in 1916 with the French composer Andre Messager in a benefit for the Franco-Italian League. For all his willingness to devote his time to benefit concerts, Mascagni steadfastly refused to compose patriotic music, prompting criticism both from colleagues and the public. [...] Mascagni did contribute a short work, however, to an album assembled by the Italian Red Cross to benefit the victims of the war.
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Although Mascagni was ready to do his duty as an Italian, he never wavered in his conviction that the war was a tragedy, for humanity in general and for Italy in particular. He voiced his position with unusual clarity in an article entitled "To the Sources of Melody," which he wrote for the weekly Il Mondo in November 1915, explaining his feelings about patriotic music, and the war itself, in thoughtful, even prescient words:
Those who set about writing operas on patriotic subjects are making a mistake ... when the war is over, our disgust over this terrible slaughter will be so overwhelming that no one will want in the least either to hear or speak about those works ... The war is dragging us back centuries. It is making us walk backward on the path of civilization ... When will the most daring social ideas, the achievements of internationalism and socialism, end up? All is drowned, lost.
He then set forth what was to be his artistic credo for the war years, his definition of the music demanded by such terrible times. "The war must carry us back to the music of feeling, to the sources of melody," he wrote. "We have all seen the evolution that has taken place in music during the last years of universal peace. Let us hope that [the war] will lead us back to the simplicity and purity of melody." This credo stands behind Lodoletta, the one opera Mascagni composed during the war years.
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During the first half of 1915, Mascagni's work at the Quirino in Rome, his chronic pain, and the gathering war clouds had occupied his mind and prevented him from thinking about operatic projects.
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While Mascagni may sincerely have felt that he was writing a work that would serve as a corrective to the horrors of the war, he was unable to graft his sincerity onto a libretto in which true feeling and passion - as he accurately divined - were so largely lacking.
[...] the creative integrity of the work remains questionable. There is a quality of recycled goods about Lodoletta, of a willed attempt to capture the faraway spirit of L'Amico Fritz, or even of Iris, another story of an innocent girl lost in the big city.
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With both of his sons at the front, Mascagni lived for weeks in a state of anxiety, not knowing if they were alive or dead. On November 16, 1917 he learned that Mimi was alive but still had no word from Dino, who had been in the heart of the fighting. Finally, on November 29 he learned that Dino was a prisoner of war, in a camp in western Hungary. His son's telegram, in which he begged for clothes and money, sent Mascagni into a frenzy of activity, appealing to the Vatican and sending packets of money everywhere in the hope that one might reach the camp.
Mascagni's concern for his son's fate made his financial worries even more urgent. Offered a lucrative opportunity in Turin, he took it despite the shame he felt. "It’s at a movie theater," he wrote Lolli "it is a beautiful one, grand and elegant, and I know that they are organizing everything very nicely, but is a movie theater just the same. You see how far I have sunk?" For one thousand lire a day, Mascagni conducted Rapsodia Satanica twice daily, the film playing above his head.
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The end of August [1918] found Mascagni in Milan, directing the fall season at the Teatro Lirico, where he remained through October. Rain fell constantly, and the influenza epidemic swept through Milan. Emy fell ill, and at one point ten of the fourteen sopranos in his chorus were out with the disease. To amuse himself, he set Anna Lolli's poem "Bimba Bionda" to music, sitting down at the piano at 3 A.M. on the night of September 19, after his return from the Lirico and a late dinner, writing the song in one sitting, finishing at precisely 7:15 A.M.
Meanwhile, after months of stalemate, the momentum at the front had finally turned in favor of the Italian army. In an offensive that began on October 24, 1918, the army swept the now disorganized Austrian troops before them, crossing the Piave, taking Vittorio Veneto on the thirtieth, and entering Trent and Trieste on November 3. The next day the Austrians and Italians signed an armistice. For Mascagni, Italy's victory meant that Dino would soon be back. Between performances, he rushed to Turin to prepare Dino's apartment for his return, buying him a new Gillette safety razor and putting a score of Lodoletta on his son's piano.
Two weeks later, the bedridden Dino reached Trieste, from which he was taken to a military hospital in Teramo, in the foothills of the Abruzzi mountains. As soon as he had lowered his baton on the last performance of the season, Mascagni rushed to his son's bedside, where Dino threw himself into his father's arms, kissing him and sobbing. After a week with his son, Mascagni was back in Milan, responding to an urgent summons from Renzo Sonzogno.
After a week in Milan, where between stockholders' meetings and sessions with attorneys Mascagni managed to write two more numbers for Si, he rushed back south, this time to Naples, to take charge of the San Carlo opera company for the 1919 carnival season.
Mais:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDAkIlZyWfw
Enrico Caruso (págs. 101-127)
Trechos de Weber: Las Ciencias Sociales Ante La Modernidad (2015), de Erica Grossi.
Los contrastes sociales y económicos se hacen más evidentes, las antinomias entre diferentes sistemas de valores suscitan choques y transformaciones políticas que el hombre y el estudioso Weber interpreta como señales superficiales del terremoto de la época que se está preparando en lo más profundo de su tiempo. En este sentido, como sucede con otras figuras clave del pensamiento y de la filosofía modernos igualmente sensibles a las señales subterráneas e invisibles de las crisis en curso -de Friedrlch Nietzsche a Jacob Burckhardt, hasta Aby Warburg-, también Weber puede asociarse con la definición de «sismógrafo» de las transformaciones violentas de la modernidad. En su posición de observadores y eruditos coherentes con los movimientos histórico-sociales y culturales del tiempo presente, es decir, todos expuestos a las variaciones del equilibrio entre las diferentes secciones del terreno cultural en el que se apoyan, perciben antes y con mayor intensidad las señales de lo que empieza a moverse bajo la superficie. La definición de «sismógrafo» aplicada a estos estudiosos trata, por tanto, de describir una condición epistemológica y biográfica por la que el propio cuerpo del observador se vuelve instrumento de reverberación de las crecientes sacudidas de un terremoto histórico.
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En las conciencias de estos lúcidos observadores-visionarios, dichas vibraciones que se van aproximando a la superficie de lo real se manifiestan bajo la forma de verdaderas crisis nerviosas, neurosis que marcan su existencia de la misma manera que la punta de los sismógrafos dibuja sobre el papel la marca gráfica irrefutable de la catástrofe ya en marcha. Existencialista y defensor del uso de la imaginación en el método de las ciencias histérico-sociales, pues, Max Weber también se ajusta a esta definición, que se manifestará en la crisis nerviosa que sufre en el otoño de 1897. Solo un año antes se había trasladado a la Universidad de Heidelberg, pero la enfermedad lo obliga a suspender el trabajo académico. Hasta aproximadamente 1901 padece un estado agudo de agotamiento que lo obliga a permanecer sentado durante días enteros con la mirada fija en el vacío a través de la ventana de casa.
[...] aun viviendo en la época aparentemente pacífica y prometedora de la Alemania imperial e industrial de finales del siglo XIX, Weber se ve arrollado por la perturbación de la angustia y de las tensiones que suscita el avance a un ritmo incontrolado de la modernidad sobre la falla geológica del siglo XX europeo. En estas pocas conciencias aisladas ya se siente la crisis existencial de la condición histórica moderna; el «malestar en la cultura» que en Freud se convierte en enfermedad del siglo XX.
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La neurosis de Weber, a caballo entre los dos siglos, al igual que la de Warburg cuando estalló la Primera Guerra Mundial, es la propagación en su conciencia crítica de las violentas transformaciones que la radicalización de la modernización social dicta a cada aspecto de la realidad.
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A la vanguardia desde el principio en lo tocante a la reconstrucción de la Europa de posguerra, trabaja sin tregua en la redefinición de Alemania y de la asamblea europea de Estados nacionales en la permanente «ebullición de contrastes, no solo económicos o de clase, sino de temperamento y de ideas [...]».
Como se manifestaron a nivel psíquico personal, un nihilismo subterráneo y una conciencia trágica del peligro para la historia de la humanidad y del Occidente moderno vibran en la superficie de su compromiso intelectual en los años de la consulta para la firma del armisticio de Versalles (1919), sin que ninguna resolución logre reconfortarlo. Acostumbrado a la manifestación de la neurosis cultural moderna, «prevé, de hecho, resueltos los contrastes económicos, otros conflictos de poder y de prerrogativas» como intrínseco «destino de la razón».
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De la guerra moderna a la modernidad como conflicto
Cuando en 1914 estalla la guerra -hito histórico para Europa y para el mundo occidental implicado en el primer conflicto global e «imperialista»-, Weber ya ha publicado la mayor parte de sus principales obras metodológicas y teóricas. En ellas, como hemos dicho, el Weber observador intentó alertar a su época de la tendencia a la que parecía estar destinada la razón en sus radicalizaciones técnicas y burocráticas.
Pese al período aparentemente pacífico de la historia europea entre 1815 y 1914, los rasgos emblemáticos del progresivo «desencantamiento del mundo» descritos por Weber se han convertido en condiciones estructurales de la conflagración mundial: por un lado, el declive del liberalismo y la aparición de un estado de potencia, y por otro, la amenaza a las libertades del individuo debida a la burocratización de la sociedad moderna.
Durante la guerra, Weber no tarda en pasar de posiciones de apoyo a la legitimidad política y económica de la beligerancia alemana a las de duro enfrentamiento con compañeros y corrientes de pensamiento que apoyan y defienden ideológicamente esa beligerancia. Teórico de una ciencia empírica de los fenómenos de la realidad analizados en los distintos factores sociales, económicos, políticos y religiosos, Weber acaba convirtiéndose en un defensor crítico de la guerra. Tras abandonar el partido conservador se aleja también del movimiento pangermánico que, en los años de la guerra, predica el odio racial y la violencia nacionalista.
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En 1915, mientras tanto, lo vuelven a llamar a filas para prestar servicio como director responsable de un grupo de hospitales militares en la región de Heidelberg. Ese mismo año, publica también la primera parte -Introducción, Confucianismo y Taoísmo- de La Ética Económica de las Religiones Universales, un trabajo titánico que estudia la sociología de las religiones extendida también a culturas no europeas, al que añadirá Hinduismo y Budismo y Judaísmo Antiguo (publicada entre 1916 y 1917).
Son estos años los más difíciles para la acción social y política del hombre y del intelectual Weber, llamado a los salones de la diplomacia europea para contribuir a las decisiones estratégicas relativas a la catástrofe de la guerra que está teniendo lugar. Ocupado en misiones oficiosas entre Bruselas, Viena y Budapest, vive una vez más la frustración teórica entre convicción y responsabilidad de la acción: por un lado, la certeza de la legitimidad de los «objetivos» de la política de potencia de la Alemania beligerante y, por el otro, la oposición a todo «medio» de ejecución de la guerra. Su ferviente producción propagandística en el Frankfurter Zeitung es, en este complicado momento, la prueba de fuego de la contradicción personal y científica vivida en su experiencia diplomática. Esta tensión se condensa en las restricciones efectivas de una acción política que solucione la catástrofe y cuyas consecuencias sean positivas para distintas colectividades, políticamente enfrentadas y, lo más importante, económicamente desiguales. Contrario siempre a la dilatación del conflicto y crítico con las fracasadas instituciones autoritario-burocráticas y feudales del régimen prusiano, publica entre 1917 y 1918 los ensayos más duros contra la política posbismarckiana, cuyas estrategias considera nefastas para el presente democrático y parlamentario de Alemania.
De Parlamento y Gobierno a La Nueva Alemania, la reflexión de Weber acerca de la formación de los sistemas políticos modernos, acerca de las prácticas estatales de monopolio de la fuerza y de la renovación de la administración democrática del Estado se sistematiza basándose en la tragedia de la guerra mundial y de la posterior crisis de las instituciones ante la reconstrucción.
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Entre noviembre de 1918, después de la capitulación de Alemania, y otoño de 1919, como delegado alemán en Versalles, Weber siente una frustración cada vez más radical frente a la acción política científicamente orientada. La dicotomía entre las lógicas «instrumentales» defendidas por los artículos punitivos contra la «responsabilidad» de guerra de Alemania y las «morales», en concreto del espíritu de «venganza» de los vencedores contra los vencidos y viceversa, tiene el límite manifiesto del vacío en el plano de los resultados. Solo una acción «razonable» capaz de negociar entre los medios convenientes -aunque agresivos, «es preciso mancharse las manos»- y los fines responsables puede reportarle al político de profesión que se dedique con verdadera pasión el resultado más ampliamente válido, eficaz y «justo» para las contingencias vigentes. Con este espíritu, en el último año políticamente comprometido de su vida de estudioso, Weber participa en la fundación del Partido Democrático Alemán junto a su hermano Alfred y otros amigos, con los que muy pronto entra en conflicto debido a la orientación socialista adoptada por la organización.
Su vida termina tan solo unos meses después de su nombramiento como consejero de la comisión para la redacción de la Constitución de la recién nacida República de Weimar.
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Enfermo de neumonía, más conocida como la epidemia posbélica de la fiebre española, Max Weber muere en junio de 1920 a la edad de cincuenta y seis años, dejando incompleta Economía y Sociedad (póstuma, 1922).
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En sus últimos años de vida, entregados a la ciencia, Weber asimismo les dedica a estas expresiones de la vocación profesional -la del científico y la del político- las reflexiones más vinculantes sobre la actualidad del mundo lacerado por la Primera Guerra Mundial.
Mais:
http://faustianeurope.wordpress.com/2007/07/24/oswald-spengler-and-faustian-culture
http://www.bonaventura.blog/2014/arnold-zweig-der-streit-um-den-sergeanten-grischa
http://www.bonaventura.blog/2014/arnold-zweig-die-feuerpause
Trechos de Harry S. Truman: A Life (1994), de Robert H. Ferrell.
In the last months of 1916 and early in 1917, just before the United States entered the World War and [Harry] Truman himself went to war, he engaged in one more effort to make money. Not long after returning from Commerce he became acquainted, actually through Culbertson, with an oil wildcatter, David H. Morgan, and went in with him in a venture that involved buying leases in Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and Louisiana.
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When the United States entered the World War, the company had not yet gotten its well down far enough. The manpower shortage forced the company's officers to dispose of the leases and go out of business. Not long afterward one of the major national oil companies tapped the pool. Had Truman done it, he would have become a millionaire.
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The decision to go into the army during World War I was the crucial event of Harry Truman's life, and he made that decision, let it be added, because he was a patriotic citizen of the United States, and not because of what the army might do for him. To be sure, he was no student of the great issues that divided Europe, and if he read about the carnage on the front - the killing by machine guns, artillery, and poison gas - he never mentioned it in letters to Bess. Nor did he understand the submarine issue that divided the United States and Imperial Germany. The sinking of great liners with frightful loss of life does not seem to have crossed his mind; again, he never mentioned it. Like millions of other Americans, he had felt as remote from Europe as if Jackson County were somewhere in China surrounded by the Great Wall.
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The farmer near Grandview was an unlikely candidate for the draft; he would not have to go - he was thirty-three years old - but he had belonged to the Guard and thought he should volunteer.
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Much more important, the army also showed him that he could be a leader of men. Never before had he undergone such an experience. The Guard was a casual organization, really just a lot of fun. But when he became commander of Battery D, he found himself with 193 men of diverse backgrounds, far different from the bank clerks and salesmen and lawyers in the Guard. He had to control them, else they would control him. His success made him understand he could do the same on a much larger scale.
And, as matters turned out, when he came back to Kansas City after the war he had a political base. [...] "My whole political career," he once said, "is based upon my war service and war associates."
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He worked so hard, he said afterward, that he told his associates they should make him a sergeant. Instead, they made him a first lieutenant.
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At Camp Doniphan the regiment went to school, which kept everyone occupied and helped take their minds off the living conditions. How helpful this tuition was for fighting the war in France is difficult to say. One suspects it was theoretical instruction that had kept generations of West Point cadets out of mischief.
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He found an optician, a member of the Scottish Rite, who sent him to an oculist who made a thorough examination, and charged $5; Dr. Leonard in Kansas City charged ten. He returned to the oculist, who charged $17.50, less 10 percent, for two pairs of regulation aluminum frames and glasses, with an extra lens he had chipped on the edge in grinding [...].
The group then boarded the USS George Washington, a former German liner, the same ship President Wilson later took to the Paris Peace Conference.
- - -
After landing "somewhere in France," actually Brest, April 13, 10:00 A.M., after a fourteen-day passage, the lieutenant and friends spent a few days in the Hotel des Voyageurs.
- - -
Truman liked to say that infantrymen were the heroes of World War I and artillerymen had "soft jobs" ("Join the artillery and ride"). This was true for some artillery units, but Truman's battery saw more than its share of action, first in a quiet sector in the Vosges Mountains, then at St.-Mihiel, the Meuse-Argonne, and Verdun. Indeed, the action in the quiet sector produced what battery members described as the Battle of Who Run, which was no easy affair and showed coolness on the part of the battery commander. American troops were known for stirring things in quiet sectors, and Truman's regiment sent over several hundred rounds of gas.
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The Meuse-Argonne was something else, a terrifically hard battle that began on September 26, lasted until the end of the war, and cost the lives of twenty-six thousand Americans, nearly the equivalent of a big World War I square division. It was the most costly battle in the nation's history. Captain Truman marched his men for twenty-two nights, and on one stretch believed he did not sleep for sixty hours. Horses died by the thousands. Men weakened with the strain - Truman's weight dropped from 175 pounds to 135. After the battle opened, the 129th got into several actions. According to Truman's chief mechanic, McKinley Wooden, "They'd fire those guns, then they'd pour a bucket of water down the muzzle and it'd come out the breech just a-steaming, you know."
- - -
A little before sundown one day, a German plane came right over the battery's position; Truman moved the guns back a hundred yards and to the right two hundred, and not fifteen minutes later "they just shot that orchard all to hell. If he hadn't done that there might not have been a one of us left." Once the captain received the opportunity all battery commanders hope for: he happened to see an enemy battery coming into range and setting up its guns. He waited until the commander sent back the horses, and then gave his own battery the order to fire as fast as possible. The men sent up forty-nine rounds in two minutes, smothering the enemy battery.
- - -
The 35th Division was two weeks in the line at the Meuse-Argonne, and after resting went back for three more in front of Verdun, a grisly place. Every time a German shell came over, it dug up bodies left from the battle of 1916. Wooden spread his blankets in a place on Dead Man's Hill, woke up the next morning, and "I looked over on this shelf, and there was a skull there, a bullet hole right through there. Then, over here on this shelf, there was another skull, a bullet hole right through here. I looked outside and saw a blown-off man's leg sticking up out of the ground." The battery remained there until the armistice ending the war.
After such experiences the armistice was a great relief. At breakfast on November 11, Sergeant Edward Meisburger reported to Captain Truman's dugout to find the captain with a wide grin on his face, stretched out on the ground eating blueberry pie. He gave the sergeant a piece and said, between bites, handing Meisburger a sheet of paper: "Sergeant, you will take this back and read it to the members of the battery." The men thus learned the war would end at 11:00 A.M. Fifteen minutes before the end, the battery fired its last shell. The men had sent ten thousand rounds into the German lines. A battery of French 155s behind Truman's battery shot off its surplus ammunition until just before 11:00, and for the rest of the day the Frenchmen held a celebration, then caroused through the night. At one point they insisted upon saluting their next-door neighbor, the local American commander, one man at a time, which kept Truman awake as they marched past: "Vive President Wilson! Vive le capitaine d'artillerie americaine!"
- - -
For a while, before and after Christmas, officers and soldiers managed leaves, and Captain Truman obtained his share. He was in Paris in late November, where he saw Notre Dame, Napoleon's tomb, the Madeleine, and the Folies Bergères. He and fellow officers engaged a taxi and drove down the "Champ Ellesee" (he gave up on the spelling, he said), the rue Rivoli, across the Alexander III Bridge, and down the boulevard de l'Ópera and many side streets. Traveling to Marseilles, the Truman group attended a performance by the dancer Gaby [Deslys], who threw a bunch of violets, caught by the future president of the United States. In Nice they took rooms at the Hotel de la Méditerranée, "a dandy place overlooking the sea." Truman and Major Gates "bought an interest in an auto" and drove across the border into Italy at Menton, back by way of the Grande Corniche, Napoleon's road running on top of the foothills of the Alps: "It is a very crooked road and around every turn is a more beautiful view than the last one." The group visited Monte Carlo and went inside the casino, but could not gamble because they were in uniform.
But as months passed, and a lack of ships kept the AEF from returning home ("Lafayette, we are still here"), discipline began to slip.
- - -
During all this time the larger political and diplomatic scenery passed Truman by. The letters show no interest in the proceedings of the Paris Peace Conference. He wrote two or three to Bess and the Noland sisters referring facetiously to "Woodie" - President Wilson - and relating his contempt for subjects that aroused the American president: "For my part, and every A.E.F. man feels the same way, I don't give a whoop (to put it mildly) whether there's a League of Nations or whether Russia has a Red government or a Purple one, and if the President of the Czecho-Slovaks wants to pry the throne from under the King of Bohemia, let him pry but send us home." On one occasion Captain Truman saw President Wilson. He and a group of soldiers stood across the street from the Hotel Crillon while Wilson walked down the steps to a waiting automobile.
- - -
[...] landed at New York on Easter morning, April 20, 1919.
[...] The rest was anticlimax. In New York the mayor's welcome boat came out and the band played "Home, Sweet Home," and almost everyone wept - even the most hardened member of the battery sniffed, Truman said. Welfare organizations overwhelmed the men with gifts. "The Jews gave us handkerchiefs, the Y.M.C.A. chocolate, the Knights of Columbus, cigarettes; the Red Cross, real homemade cake; and the Salvation Army, God bless 'em, sent telegrams free and gave us Easter eggs made of chocolate." The unit crossed from Hoboken to Camp Mills on Long Island, and there everyone ate mountains of ice cream. Captain Truman went into the city and visited the house of the sister of his battery barber, Frank Spina, where he ate spaghetti and "nearly foundered." Thereafter came the train ride out to Camp Funston, Kansas, with a stop for the parade in Kansas City, and mustering out on May 6.
The experience was unforgettable, its importance for the future national and international leader crucial.
- - -
The memories of the battery never dimmed, neither those of the commander nor those of his men. In Truman's twenty-one-line article in Who's Who, he devoted five lines to military service in World War I, including the Guard and Reserves, and only two to the presidency. The files of the Truman Library contain hundreds of letters to the president of the United States from former members of the battery, and every time a letter arrived for "Captain Harry" it received a personally dictated answer, usually with a handwritten postscript. Each year the division held a reunion; at one of them, in Kansas City in the late 1940s, the battery assembled in a large room, and President Truman brought in General Eisenhower, then army chief of staff, and Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, the president's personal chief of staff. He went around and introduced each member of the battery: "By God," Wooden remembered, "he called pretty near all of us by our first names." At the inaugural in 1949, the president invited the battery to Washington. That morning everyone had breakfast together. Someone called him "Mr. President," and he put up his hand. "We'll have none of that here," he said. "I'm Captain Harry." Battery D marched in the inaugural parade in single file on each side of the president's automobile, each man carrying a cane and wearing a red armband with a gold-colored D.
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When Truman died in 1972, one of his members of Battery D, Abe Gladstone, said: "Captain Harry had a few favorites but I wasn't one of them. But he was my favorite and always will be." When Bess passed on, ten years later, five veterans of the battery attended her funeral, four of them in wheelchairs.
Mais:
http://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxwrrqPyqsnINnEydVlaUjBPNXM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMu6qzeX7KA
Les deux amours de Guillaume Apollinaire à l'ombre de la guerre. Des amours illusoires?
La correspondance à Lou l'automne 1914 jusqu'au 15 avril 1915.
Après avoir séjourné à Nice, Apollinaire se retrouve à Nîmes ou il commence une formation militaire. Avant de connaître Lou, Apollinaire avait voulu s'engager dans la guerre mais comme son origine était polonaise italienne, il ne fut pas accepté que six mois plus tard quand les pertes des hommes avaient commencé. Le rapport d'Apollinaire au vol des statuettes au Louvre joue probablement aussi ici son rôle. Même s'il fut acquitté, sa réputation était salie. Une justification de sa renommé s'est aussi mêlée dans l'intérêt soldatesque, mais la nouvelle demande de s'enrôler ne fut faite que quand il comprit que sa relation d'amour avec Lou était en péril.
Les lettres à Lou sont très érotiques dès le début: Dans la lettre du 28 septembre 1914 il décrit par exemple le vertige qu'il ressent en remarquant les yeux grands et beaux de la "biche" et le 3 octobre 1914 il rêve d'un jardin dont les fruits seraient ses seins multipliés à l'infini et plus dignes que les pommes d'or gardées par les Hespérides. Dans la même lettre il affirme qu'il l'aime mais qu'il n'ose guère le lui dire. Il lui semble l'avoir toujours aimée, il n'aimera jamais d'autres femmes et il continue: "Ce ne sont pas là paroles vaines puisque je n'ai jamais écrit cela à aucune femme..." Un discours qui doit être contestable et même invraisemblable si l'on connaît sa relation avec Marie Laurencin. Avant elle, il avait aussi déclaré sa flamme à une gouvernante anglaise, Annie Playden, lors d´un séjour en Allemagne en 1901-1902. Il poursuivit aussi Annie Playden en Angleterre.
Le 18 octobre 1914 quand Lou est partie de Nîmes après avoir rendu visite à Apollinaire, il songe avec volupté au regard de Lou, à leurs étreintes et baisers affolés, aux frissons et aux tendresses, disputes et réconciliations.
Lou a évidement d'autres amants. Cependant Apollinaire veut être le maître de la situation. Il semble vouloir décider des amants de Lou et écrit dans la lettre de Nîmes le 28 octobre 1914.
- - -
Le ton de cette lettre est assez possesif: Lou lui appartient y compris son amant Toutou, mais bien sûr qu'Apollinaire est flatté quand d'autres hommes flirtent avec Lou.
Le 23 décembre 1914, Lou a maintenant un autre amour, Toutou. Apollinaire sait très bien ce que Toutou représente pour Lou, il accepte donc un ménage à trois et écrit: "Mon amour exquis, donne-moi aussi des nouvelles de Toutou, qui par son amour pour toi et par celui que tu as pour lui est désormais pour moi une partie de moi-même."
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Cependant dans une lettre datée du 4 janvier 1915 et écrite à son ami Serge Férat, il décrit "l'adoration" comme faite à "l'adoré" parmi des vapeurs de la cocaïne et de l'opium. La folie d'amour faisait-t-elle partie de la totalité guerrière, noyée dans des drogues?
"Fais vite connaissance avec le commandant du port, des aviateurs, etc. ... fumerie, cocaïnerie, la guerre était devenue un paradis artificiel. Ca a duré un mois. J'ai connu alors l'adorée, j'ai souffert 1 mois et demi, passé conseil de révision, pris, puis bonheur fou, ne pouvant plus me décider à signer l'engagement. J'ai signé finalement. Ai tout rompu et suis parti à Nîmes sans laisser mon adresse ni on nom polonais. Le lendemain de mon arrivée au Corps elle était à la porte de la caserne et est restée 9 jours ici."
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En 1907 Apollinaire avait déjà sous le pseudonyme "G A" publié un petit roman plutôt pornographique: Les Onze Mille Verges, dont les "scènes de pédérastie, de saphisme, de nécrophilie, de scatomanie, de bestialité se mêlent de la façon la plus harmonieuse".
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Il est heureux, parce que Toutou est envoyé au front, il déconseille à Lou d'y aller. Est-ce que c'est vrai qu'il aime Toutou ? On peut se permettre d'en douter.
Apollinaire reçoit une lettre de Lou datée du 27 février. Lou écrit qu'elle va aller à Paris et le 6 mars 1915 Apollinaire se demande pourquoi. Apollinaire se sent triste, il peut être envoyé au front n'importe quand. Probablement pas pour le même "Front" que Toutou, car toutes les troupes de Nîmes sont envoyées vers les Turcs pour aider les Serbes.
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Le 4 avril, le Jour de Pâques, Apollinaire va se déplacer au front, il dit adieu à Lou. Il se cite soi-même dans Alcools où il écrit: "Je suis fidèle comme un dogue." Il dramatise en disant qu'il préfèrerait mourir. Il dit aussi qu'il l'a beaucoup aimée et que ça c'est la plus belle chose au monde et il espère qu'elle aussi l'a aimé, du moins pendant quelques mois. Il aimerait le savoir, mais il veut qu'elle dise la vérité. Il lui conseille de faire attention à sa vie et à ne pas se fier au premier venu.
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Le 16 avril 1915 donc un jour après qu'Apollinaire avait écrit ce poème d'adieu il prend contact avec Madeleine Pagès, la jeune oranaise, qu'il avait rencontrée dans le train le 2 janvier 1915 en lui envoyant une carte postale où il écrit qu'il n'a pas pu envoyer son livre de vers parce que son éditeur est aussi aux Armées comme lui. Naturellement il demande si elle se souvient de lui. Le 5 mai 1915 il reçoit un paquet de cigares exquis de Madeleine. Il les partage avec ses combattants et ils la remercient tous. La correspondance aura une suite et les lettres à Madeleine en mars-mai 1915 traitent des réflexions sur la vie au front par exemple ce que lisent les soldats. Apollinaire écrit aussi qu'il était venu au front avec des inquiétudes, mais qu'il n'a pas souffert de l'angoisse, peut-être parce qu'il en avait l'expérience déjà comme l'homme vivant dans une grand ville moderne avec des bruits et des dangers. Ses lettres sont assez longues.
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Le 20 mai 1915 il refere un article du journal Temps qui raconte que les catholiques allemands en Lorraine sont defendus de venerer et d'invoquer Jeanne d'Arc qui fut beatifiee en 1909. Cela incite Apollinaire a penser a son temps en Allemagne et a une vieille legende qui se joue la. Selon cette legende le temps serait une illusion. Probablement il reflechit sur l'interpretation du temps, ce qui aussi etait actuelle avec les theories d'Einstein et de Bergson et ce qui aussi etait liee avec les theories de l'ubiquite dans la litterature et la peinture. L'article sur les catholiques en Lorraint devien un preetexte pour mentionner cela.
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Avec la lettre du 3 septembre 1915 il rajoute des poèmes où il célèbre la guerre, les poèmes témoignent d'un assez bon humeur et de l'enthousiasme tout à fait différent de celui qu'il écrivit à Lou où le bonheur est relaté à l'amour et à la mort.
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Cependant le 2 décembre 1915 à Madeleine, Apollinaire décrit la guerre comme une horreur mystérieuse métallique muette mais non silencieuse à cause des bruits épouvantables. En haut cependant flotte leur amour comme un ange. Dans la tranchée il se sent comme un troglodyte de la préhistoire. Il écrit:
"Je sens vivement maintenant toute l'horreur de cette guerre secrète sans stratégie mais dont les stratagèmes sont épouvantables et atroces."
[...] Le 9 décembre 1915 il écrit même qu'il déteste la guerre et il pense qu'une petite blessure pourrait le mettre à l'abri.
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La dernière lettre à Lou dans la correspondance rassemblée dans "Lettres à Lou" est datée du 18 janvier 1916. À ce temps-là il a été en permission en Oran et il a rendu visite à Madeleine, il commente la visite d'un ton laconique ainsi: "Moi j'ai fait un voyage épatant." La lettre est courte et il dit qu'il à beaucoup à faire parce qu'il est pour l'instant commandant de la compagnie. Il s'habitude à la guerre, il souhaite à Lou de belles amours et beaucoup de bonheur. "Embrasse Toutou de ma part."
Quand on lit la correspondance à Madeleine entièrement après Noël jusqu'au 17 mars, quand il fut blessé, le ton reste chaleureux et pleine d'amour tandis que les passages érotiques manquent. Apparemment Madeleine s'inquiète et dans une lettre datée le 13 février 1916, Apollinaire écrit qu'il se trouve: "(...) dans un état de chasteté morale très rand, non qu'il y ait un voeu, mais cela doit venir de toutes ces manoeuvres, de ce qu'on n'est jamais seul, de ce qu'on a si peu de temps à soi."
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Apollinaire est las de l'hiver et en plus il doute de la justification de la guerre, le 11 mars 1916 il écrit: "J'ai causé hier avec un curé bleu intelligent il m'a dit sur cette guerre les choses les plus justes. Le bon sens s'est réfugié dans le cerveau des femmes et des vieux prêtres." Apollinaire a un grand besoin de sommeil.
Mais c'est après sa blessure que ses lettres deviennent de moins en moins coumoins fréquentes. Apollinaire subit pendant ce temps quelques opérations. Annette Becker qui a écrit une biographie de guerre d'Apollinaire souligne le changement de caractère qu'Apollinaire subit après sa blessure le 17 mars 1916, il ne faut pas oublier qu'il fut trépané. Des amies l'ont décrit comme: irascible, déprimé, sa mémoire avait des défaillances, des colères brusques l'emportaientt.
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La dernière lettre est datée le 23 novembre 1916:
"Ma chère petite Madeleine. Je suis fatigué et il y a si peu d'amitiés pour moi en ce moment à Paris que j'en suis navré."
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Le 2 mai 1918, Apollinaire se maria avec Jacqueline Kolb, le 9 novembre il mourut de la grippe espagnole, affaibli par la guerre et sa blessure. Le même jour un autre Guillaume (II), l'empereur, abdiqua, l'armistice est signé le 11 novembre et le 13 novembre le cortège funèbre d'Apollinaire eut des problèmes à frayer le chemin à cause de la foule qui salua l'armistice. Une fin qui peut trouver des ressemblances avec sa vie.
Fonte:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/search/publication/1971076
Mais:
http://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxwrrqPyqsnITnNGWThETDZUaFE
http://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxwrrqPyqsnIeE84cF9TRmJhejA
http://cine-monstro.blogspot.com.br/2010/05/um-belo-filme-de-guillaume-apollinaire.html
Trechos de Recollections And Reflections (1936), de Joseph John Thomson.
The work I did in connection with the war was mainly in association with the Board of Invention and Research (B.I.R.). This Board was instituted in July 1915 when Mr Arthur Balfour was First Lord, for the purpose of giving the Admiralty expert assistance in organising and encouraging scientific effort in connection with the requirements of the Naval Service.
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The most urgent need of the Admiralty at the time the B.I.R. was instituted was some method of detecting submarines, and means were taken at once to start experiments with this subject. The most obvious method of detecting a submarine is by the sound it makes. It had long been known that sound travels well through water, and various methods had been devised for detecting it. Thus, if a tube is closed at one end with a diaphragm and lowered into water through which sounds are passing, the diaphragm will be thrown into vibration and produce in the air in the tube sound waves of the same pitch as those in the water. These can easily be detected by the ear or by a microphone. The problem of detecting a moving submarine by the sound it makes is a most difficult and complicated one. In the first place, the vessel which is hunting the submarine itself produces noises when it is not at rest, by its engines, its motion through the water, and so on. In bad weather these drown all others. Thus a microphone submerged in the water and carried along by a ship will give tongue even when there are no submarines in the neighbourhood.
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[...] any resonance effect will destroy the quality of the noise of the submarine and make it more difficult to detect. It would be much easier than it is to detect a submarine, if it were a musical instrument and gave out a definite note. Even if we can identify a noise as due to a submarine we require, if we are to catch it, to know the direction from which it comes. The velocity of sound through water is about 4-3 times that through air. This will be the proportion between the wave-length in water and air respectively. An opaque object placed in the way of a wave will not cast a definite shadow unless the diameter of the object is many times the wave-length. Thus if we determine the direction of the sound in water by placing an object in its way and finding where the shadow is, we have to use much larger objects than would be necessary in air.
The B.I.R. began their attack on the detection of submarines by obtaining from Sir Ernest Rutherford a report on the various methods which had been employed, or suggested, for detecting sounds in water. He reported that the microphone method was by far the most promising.
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The Submarine Committee of the B.I.R., after a visit to Hawkcraig in September 1916, reported that conditions were unsatisfactory. One cause of this was that the Navy was then divided into two parties, Fisherites and Anti-Fisherites, and that every scheme associated in any way with Lord Fisher was regarded by the latter party with grave suspicion and dislike. There was so much prejudice of this kind that I believe B.I.R. was said by the Anti-Fisher party to stand for Board of Intrigue and Revenge. Towards the end of 1916 it was decided to transfer the work of the B.I.R. on submarines from Hawkcraig to Harwich, and a laboratory was built at Parkeston Quay. This change improved matters, but it had involved a loss of several months just at the time when a detector had been devised which, as far as could be tested by experiments on a small scale, promised to be of service in detecting submarines. It was essential that it should be tested by fitting the apparatus to some vessels in the Fleet and seeing how it behaved under service conditions. It was only to be expected that under these conditions defects would be detected which would require further experiments at the Experimental Station to overcome. If it had not been for the delays just mentioned, efficient submarine detectors would have been available months earlier than they were and much loss of life prevented.
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Professor Langevin, whom I am proud to be able to say is an old pupil of mine, discovered, when working in France at the detection of submarines, a method by which oscillations could be produced in plates of quartz, so rapid that their wave-lengths were small compared with the size of the plate, and which allowed a great amount of energy to be put into the vibrations, so that the sound they produced was very intense. This method depends on a recondite property of quartz, which had been discovered years before by an investigation made solely with the object of increasing our knowledge of physics without any thought of practical application. There were many other instances in the war of the practical applications of physical phenomena known previously only to students of the higher parts of physics. Indeed we should expect that any part of our knowledge of the properties of matter or of the laws of physics might receive a practical application.
- - -
The B.I.R. and the similar institutions in France and America kept in touch with each other by liaison officers: at one time the French one in England was the Louis de Broglie, a very eminent French physicist, and the American officer was my old pupil the late Professor Bumstead, then Professor of Physics in Yale University, while Sir Ernest Rutherford, Sir Richard Paget and Captain Bridge visited America and France for the same purpose.
Besides the Committee on Submarines there were Committees on Aeronautics, Naval Construction, Marine Engineering, Internal Combustion Engines, Oil Fuel, Antiaircraft, Noxious Gases and Ordnance and Ammunition.
Part of the work of the B.I.R. was the examination of the suggestions and schemes sent in by inventors, and the general public, for dealing with problems connected with the war. These were so numerous that they required a large staff of clerks and a number of experts from the Patent Office to cope with them. In the first six months after the formation of the B.I.R. we had over five thousand inventions sent in, and the number increased rapidly as the war went on. I should think before it ended the number had increased to well over 100,000; of these not more than thirty proved to be of any value. Though very little that was important for the prosecution of the war came out of this cloud of inventions, its political effect was very considerable. Every invention sent in was examined by experts: no one could say that he had sent in an important invention of which no notice was taken. If there had not been the B.I.R., many would have written to the newspapers, and created an impression that the Government were too casual about the war. Each air raid in London was followed by a crop of hundreds of suggestions for capturing the bombarding Zeppelins. Some of these were very naive. One was to have large balloons moored over London each carrying thick ropes heavily smeared with bird lime and flying at a great height. The idea was that the bombers, when they passed over London, would strike against a rope, stick to it and be captured. Another proposal for ending the war was more elaborate. It was to collect a flock of cormorants, feed them on white food, and peg this in horizontal and vertical lines against the walls of the room in which they were kept. This would give the walls the appearance of brick-work, the food representing the mortar. When they had had sufficient training, they were to be liberated as near as possible to Krupp's works at Essen. The cormorants, when they saw the chimneys, would think the mortar was food, peck it away, the chimneys would fall down, and the Germans, not being able to receive arms and munitions from Krupp's, would surrender.
Proposals like these gave no trouble: they were a comic relief in a very serious and harassing drama. There were, however, others equally ridiculous which gave a great deal of trouble. For example, we received an application from an inventor saying that he had devised a method of preventing aeroplanes passing over our lines: for this he asked £7,000,000. He would not say what the nature of the invention was, but said he would do so after we had given an undertaking that we would construct a piece of apparatus after his plans and, if it did what he claimed, give him the £7,000,000. If we had accepted this offer, it would have obliged us to take skilled mechanics, which were very difficult to get, from important work, and go to the expense of constructing a thing which it was highly improbable would be of any use: we therefore turned it down. Then paragraphs began to appear in the newspapers saying that we had rejected a scheme which might end the war, even though the inventor had agreed to let the payment depend on the scheme being successful.
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Another proposal which got considerable support from some influential people came from an inventor who claimed to have produced gold from quicksilver. It is true that quicksilver in a vessel containing gas at a low pressure sometimes gets coated over with a yellow film of some compound of quicksilver when a current of electricity passes through the gas. To some people everything that glitters is gold, and the inventor, who had observed this, thought he was making gold out of quicksilver. This had been brought to the notice of the Government and again an agitation began, urging them to do something.
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The most dramatic naval event in the war was the destruction of German warships at the battle of the Falkland Islands by the fast cruisers Invincible and Inflexible which he [Lord Fisher] had introduced into the Navy. He was strongly in favour of using oil fuel in our ships, and he often talked of the desirability and possibility of submersible cruisers. Though he did so much to introduce into the Navy every possible mechanical contrivance which could make it more efficient, yet in his view the tactics of this mechanised fleet should be as full of the spirit of adventure as those of the old Navy.
- - -
The experience we had at the B.I.R. showed the danger of leaving the investigation of the applications of science until war breaks out, trusting to being able to improvise some makeshift on the spur of the moment. The transition from the laboratory to the workshop or to the ship is one that in most cases takes a long time and much work and expense. Effects which are of trivial importance in the small-scale experiments in the laboratory, may be vital on the large scale necessary for practical utility. Faraday said of his discovery of the phenomenon of electromagnetic induction that it was a babe, and no one could say what it might do when it grew to manhood; but it took more than thirty years for it to pass from the nursery of the laboratory to the rough-and-tumble of the workshop.
- - -
My experience at the B.I.R. brought home to me how intense and widespread was the eagerness of men of science to do something to help to win the war. Many problems came before us on which it was important to get expert opinion from physicists, chemists, engineers and mathematicians.
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He [Richard Threlfall] had given up his Professorship at Sydney some time before, and had become a member of the firm Albright & Wilson of Oldbury, near Birmingham, the largest manufacturers of phosphorus in the country, and probably knew more than anyone else in England about phosphorus. He applied this knowledge with great success to war purposes and, through him, phosphorus played a considerable part in the war. It was used for making smoke screens behind which a vessel could hide from an enemy ship. His phosphorus bombs, too, proved very useful. He was also the first to suggest the use of helium in place of hydrogen for airships. Helium is not inflammable and does not explode, and so is a complete safeguard against fire. An airship requires, however, a very large quantity of helium, and at that time there were no appreciable supplies in our Empire. [...] The best results were given by a well in the Bow River district in Ontario, where there was about 3 parts of helium in 1000 parts of the gas coming out of the earth. This, though much smaller than that for the Texas wells, is much larger than any known in other parts of our Empire.
Threlfall was a chemist and engineer as well as a physicist, so that his services were in continual request for reports on projects submitted to the B.I.R..
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CAMBRIDGE DURING THE WAR
With the breaking out of the war in August 1914 there began a period lasting for more than four years when everyone had to give up his usual work and turn to something which might help to enable us to win the war. Those undergraduates who were physically fit joined the Army, taking at first commissions in the Regular Army, and later in Kitchener's. The older men helped with the work in Government offices, e.g. the Foreign Office and the Admiralty. Some who had an especially intimate knowledge of some foreign language, or were adepts at acrostics or cryptograms, joined the department which was established for decoding the German wireless messages; others went as masters in schools to free a younger man for service in the Army. Some of those who remained in Cambridge undertook to patrol the streets at night to see that all lights were out, as it was thought very important to make it as difficult as possible for the Zeppelins to locate Cambridge. In this they were very successful, as Cambridge was never bombed in the war, though bombs fell within a few miles. It was so dark at night that people who, like myself, are bad at seeing in the dark, when they went out, were continually bumping into people in the streets.
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The cloisters of Trinity College very early in the war were used for a hospital for some of those wounded in the earlier battles.
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The loss of Trinity men in the war was grievously large: on the panels in the College Chapel the names of more than 600 Trinity men who fell in the war are inscribed, including three of the younger Fellows of the College. Keith Lucas, F.R.S., killed in an aeroplane accident, was a College Lecturer in natural science, and a man of remarkable ability. He had done important work in physiology; he excelled also in designing instruments for scientific research, and invented an internal combustion engine on a novel principle.
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[...] the names of many younger men who had already distinguished themselves in many walks of life, and done enough to show that much might have been expected from them. They one and all have endowed the College with the precious heritage of being able to count among its members so many who have made the supreme sacrifice for their country.
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About 16,000 Cambridge men served in the war: of these 2652 were killed, 3460 wounded and 497 reported as missing or prisoners; 12 obtained the Victoria Cross, 899 the D.S.O. and 5036 were mentioned in dispatches.
Things were at the worst in the academical year 1917-18. Only 281 students matriculated; the number of men students had fallen to a fraction of the normal value, and since the greater part of the income of the University comes from fees, the financial position was very serious.
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The Armistice was signed in November 1918. The Government made liberal grants to help those who had served in the war to come back to the University, and these did so in great numbers.
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The war had lasted for more than four years, which is a year longer than an undergraduate's stay in College, and we were afraid that there might be no one to hand down the traditional conventions, to restart the clubs and other forms of undergraduate activity. This fear, however, proved baseless: though these students had gone through the grim experiences of the war and were older than the pre-war undergraduates, it was surprising to see how like their ways were in most things. They talked very little about the war; they seemed almost to wish to blot it out of then-lives, and to have just the same experiences as those who came before them. There was no breach of continuity, in fact hardly a bump in the crossing from war to post-war times. As the boat race takes place in March and no one had returned until the middle of January there was no time to make preparations, but the cricket match with Oxford, which is not played until July, came off.
The cessation of the war relieved us from much anguish and anxiety and raised great hopes: we thought that, as we had weathered the storm, the rest would be comparatively plain sailing to prosperity greater than the nation had ever had before. These hopes have certainly not been fulfilled. I think, too, there has been a considerable change in the views about war held by not a few of the younger men. In the war there were in the University some conscientious objectors, but not very many; several of these were Quakers, and the greater number objected to war on religious grounds. There were very few whose sincerity could be questioned; indeed it required great moral courage, or exceptional physical cowardice, to face the odium of being a conscientious objector rather than go to the Front. I think in another war the conscientious objector will be a much more serious difficulty than he was in the last: there will be many who would fight to defend their country if it were attacked, but who would not go into another country and attack it.
Mais:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t63tJVkDEew
http://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1906/thomson/documentary
http://manualdaquimica.uol.com.br/quimica-geral/modelo-atomico-thomson.htm
