Showing papers on "Battle published in 1978"

The political crisis of the 1850s

Abstract: Holt sees the Civil War as representing a breakdown in America's democratic political process, more specifically the Second Party System of Whigs and Democrats. He demonstrates this system's success, beginning in the 1820s and 1830s, in confining sectional disputes safely within the political arena. With the breakdown of vital two-party competition in the 1850s, sectional issues increasingly took on ideological dimension, causing, Americans North and South to see in them dangerous threats to cherished republican institutions. No longer manageable within the arena of politics, sectional differences had to be resolved with in the arena of battle. The Political Crisis of the 1850s offers a clearly written account of politics (state and federal), sectionalism, race, and slavery from the 1820s through to the Civil War, brilliantly combining the behavioral and ideological approaches to political history.

Most Secret War

Abstract: Reginald Jones was nothing less than a genius. And his appointment to the Intelligence Section of Britain's Air Ministry in 1939 led to some of the most astonishing scientific and technological breakthroughs of the Second World War. In "Most Secret War" he details how Britain stealthily stole the war from under the Germans' noses by outsmarting their intelligence at every turn. He tells of the 'battle of the beams'; detecting and defeating flying bombs; using chaff to confuse radar; and many other ingenious ideas and devices. Jones was the man with the plan to save Britain and his story makes for riveting reading.

Going After Cacciato

Abstract: Winner of the National Book Award, 'Going After Cacciato' captures the peculiar mixture of horror and hallucination that marked the Vietnam War, this strangest of wars. In a blend of reality and fantasy, this novel tells the story of a young soldier who one day lays down his rifle and sets off on a quixotic journey from the jungles of Indochina to the streets of Paris. In its memorable evocation of men both fleeing from and meeting the demands of battle, 'Going After Cacciato' stands as much more than just a great war novel. Ultimately it's about the forces of fear and heroism that do battle in the hearts of us all.

The Byzantine theocracy

Abstract: Foreword, Introduction 1. The christian empire: the image of God upon earth 2. The viceroy of God: the plenitude of imperial power 3. The battle over images: the challenge of popular belief 4. The working compromise: the limits of imperial control 5. The monks and the people: the oppo-position to the palace and the hierarchy 6. Decline and fall: the end of the Kingdom of God on earth Notes Index.

Ctesias as Historian of the Persian Wars

Abstract: THE BATTLE OF PLATAEA according to the history of Ctesias of Cnidus preceded the battle of Salamis. This egregious blunder, which is certainly an error of the historian, not of Photius, to whom we are indebted for a summary of this part of the work, is a famous one.' Yet despite it Ctesias' version of the Persian Wars did not fail to impress certain authors of the ancient world, although most avoided his grosser errors. Nor have some modern scholars, ransacking all the late sources in the search for fresh insights, found it unprofitable reading.2 An examination of the account in its entirety should reveal how hazardous is the procedure of picking out seemingly attractive details without close scrutiny of the whole, and will perhaps tell us a little about how history was sometimes written in the fourth century. Almost nothing is known about Ctesias' life beyond the bare facts that he was a native of Cnidus and spent some seven years as physician at the court of Artaxerxes II, before leaving Persia in 398/7. We have no information as to when he was born. However, since he seems to have written his Persica between 398/7 and circa 390, i.e., more than thirty years after the date normally accepted as the date of the publication of Herodotus' Histories, he can scarcely have had much contact with men

A battle history of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1941-1945

Abstract: The first non-Japanese language battle history of the Imperial Japanese Navy in World War II to recount the war in the Pacific as the Japanese saw and officially recorded it.

The Offensive and the Problem of Innovation in British Military Thought 1870-1915

Abstract: In January 1910, at the annual Staff College conference of General Staff officers, the Director of Staff Duties, Brigadier General Kiggell, remarked that after the South African war (1899-1902) the War Office had come to the conclusion that fire power was the decisive factor in battle, and that therefore the sword and bayonet were out. 'But this idea is erroneous', declared Kiggell, 'and was proved to be so in the late war in Manchuria [1904-1905] Everyone admits that. Victory is now won actually by the bayonet, or by the fear of it.' At the same conference the Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), General Sir William Nicholson, pointed out that formal doctrine now no longer stated 'the decision is obtained by superiority of fire', but instead 'a superiority of fire makes the decision possible.'l In the years immediately before the first world war, therefore, and at the highest levels, the British army was turning against the concept of fire power as the central factor in modern war, and towards more traditional principles.2 This attitude was not so strong as to prevent the War Office from experimenting with automatic rifles and machine guns, nor was there lacking a solid core of fire power supporters such as Major McMahon and Captain J.F.C Fuller, while the musketry training of the British Expeditionary Force certainly reached high levels before 1914. But fundamentally, the lessons of fire power as demonstrated in South Africa and Manchuria were not taken fully to heart, and indeed a regression took place between 1900 and 1914. Why should this be so? Possible answers may emerge from studying the debate on the introduction and development of a weapon that was the essence of fire power the machine gun.3 After noting the initial reaction of

Birth control and abortion in Canada, 1870-1920.

Abstract: IN THE SPRING of •9o8 the congregation of Toronto's St James' Cathedral was informed by the Reverend C. Ensor Sharp that the Almighty interested himself directly in the demographic details of Canada's declining birth rate: 'God abhors the spirit so prevalent nowadays which contemns [sic] motherhood. How it must grieve Him when He sees what we call race suicide; when He sees the problem of married life approached lightly and wantonly; based on nothing higher and nobler than mere luxury and gratification of passion. '1 This fear of 'race suicide' to which Sharp referred had been popularized in North America by President Theodore Roosevelt whose statement, 'The woman who flinches from childbirth stands on a par with the soldier who drops his rifle and runs in battle,' was only the most famous remark to be made by a generation of social observers who attributed the shrinking size of the Anglo-Saxon family to the 'selfishness' of women. By the turn of the century Canadians were well acquainted with such concerns. In the Canadian edition of Sylvanus Stall's What a Young Man Ought to Know (• 897 ), the author expressed his horror that many women married, not to bear children, but '... for the purpose of practically leading a life of legalized prostitution ...'2 Crown Attorney J.W. Curry, Kc, addressing the city pastors of Toronto in • 9 o •, claimed

Kallias of Sphettos and the revolt of Athens in 286 B.C.

Abstract: The long honorary decree for Kallias of Sphettos, found in the excavations of the Athenian Agora in 1971, is here published for the first time, illustrated with general and detailed photographs, with a translation and line-by-line commentary. The author has further explored the wealth of information to be gathered from the inscription, which adds greatly to our understanding of Athenian history between the battle of Ipsos in 301 and the battle of Kouroupedion in 286 B.C., the ensuing peace with Demetrios, and the acquisition of foreign aid for the nationalist regime. These discussions are followed by an appendix giving the Greek texts of the literary and epigraphic testimonia, and a chronological table, which provides a historical summary at a glance for this troubled period.

The price of glory : Verdun, 1916

Abstract: Verdun was the battle which lasted ten months in which at least 700,000 men fell along a front of fifteen miles. The aim was less to defeat the enemy than to bleed him to death. Verdun's once fertile terrain is even now the "nearest thing to desert in Europe". The book is not only a chronicle of the facts of death, it is a study of the men who fought there, and one that shows Verdun to be the key to an understanding of World War I. It also investigates the minds of those who waged it, the traditions that bound them, and the world that gave them the opportunity.

Katherine Mansfield: A Darker View

Abstract: The works of Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923), one of England's most gifted short story writers, have influenced over eight decades of writers. A friend to Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence, and Bertrand Russell, Mansfield left a literary legacy collected in The Garden Party, In a German Pension, and numerous anthologies. Biographies appearing after her death idealized her, but Meyers sets the record straight in his assessment of the author's life and career, revealing a woman with a self-destructive disdain for convention and respectability. Born and raised in New Zealand, Mansfield threw herself into several love affairs with men and women before living with literary critic John Middleton Murray. Meyers chronicles their tempestuous relationship (one that mixed abuse with devotion) and the years she fought a losing battle with tuberculosis.

The Dilemmas of British Pacifists During World War II

Abstract: World War II raisec difficult moral issues for British pacifists. By 1939 Nazi totalitarianism had made many pacifist convictions appear untenable and particularly in 1940, after the fall of France, many leading pacifists and thousands of the rank and file disavowed former princiDles and supported the war. The majority who renounced their !x. pacifism were non-religious and traditional liberal internationalists and socialists. Christian pacifists constituted the main part of those who retained their convictions--convictions which upheld personal refusal to bear arms and the philosophy of non-resistance, whoever the aggressor. By this definition the majority of World War II British pacifists belonged to three organizations: the Society of Friends, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and the Peace Pledge Union. Secular pacifists were grouped in the Peace Pledge Union; even there they were probably in a minority. Many Pacifists in the inter-war period, whether they had participated in battle or not, had derived their convictions from the traumas of World War I and its aftermath. But unless they were Christian most found that beliefs so derived were not of sufficient strength to withstand Hitlerism, self-doubt and public contempt. The Quakers' peace testimony was of long standing. It had deepened in the Boer War and had been tested to the limit in World War I. when Quakers had provided the only organized Christian oppositi on to the war. In 1916 the Quaker, Henry Hodgkin, had helped to found the Fellowship of Reconciliat-ion to remedy the lack of Christian pacifist unity. Under the chairmanship of Canon Charles Raven, the FoR set out after 1 932 to uunify denominational pacifist fellowships at home, and t o advocate positive policies of reconciling hostile nations. By January 1939, the FoR had affiliated nine denominational peace fellowships, of which the most significant were the Methodist Peace Fellowship (M.PF) and the Anglican Pacifi st Fellowship (APF). Throughout the war mermbership of denominational peace fellowships remained remarkably stable, and in some cases increased even though each fellowship constituted a small minority of its church or denomination. The most diverse pacifist organization, the Peace Pleedge

The World War: An Economist’s View

Abstract: In 1919, the University of Uppsala resumed its summer courses which had been cancelled during the war years. The newspapers, which during the summer carried advertisements for these courses, also contained news about the final terms for peace offered by the Allied Powers to Austria, the discovery of a corpse believed to be that of Rosa Luxemburg, the downfall of Bela Kun, a battle between the British and bolshevik navies in the Gulf of Finland, as well as warnings to the Swedish public to be wary of false banknotes, forged by the bolshevik regime. At the same time the newspapers had to make significant reductions in their editions because a wave of strikes had hit them, begun by a typographers’ strike.

Bernard-Lazare: Antisemitism and the Problem of Jewish Identity in Late Nineteenth-Century France

Abstract: Frontispiece facing Preface Part I. Before the Dreyfus Affair: 1. Roots, milieu and Symbolism 2. The journalist with a mission 3. Anarchism 4. 'Le Judaisme voilal'ennemi' 5. Antisemitism, its history and causes Part II. The Dreyfus Affair: 6. Involvement 7. The Battle: Une erreur judiciaire: la verite sur l'Affaire Dreyfus 8. Behind the front lines 9. The moral syndicate: the dreyfusard movement Part III. After the Dreyfus Affair: 10. Antisemitism reconsidered 11. Zionism 12. Last battles and last works Epilogue Plates Notes Bibliography Index.

Vietnam Postmortem: A Senseless Strategy

Abstract: American strategists struck out in Vietnam. Our forces won every battle, but this country lost the war. That scandal, contrary to conventional wisdom, had little to do with our ally's lack of spirit or President Thieu's poor leadership. It had little to do with disciplinary problems that deviled American troops during the later stages. It had little to do with constraints on US air power or privileged sanctuaries. It had little to do with outside logistic support for our opposition until the fracas was almost finished. The cause was a senseless strategy that foiled us for 14 straight years. It turned this so-called superpower into a sorry giant like George Foreman, who lost his heavyweight championship in Zaire because he couldn't cope with Ali's strange style. The pity of it is that, unlike Foreman, we fashioned winning concepts in the final stages of that fiasco, but failed to stay the course. That subject has been summarily dismissed in US decision-making circles, where conventional concepts still hold sway. Military men especially are convinced that unfettered firepower could cure an established insurgency. This critique says it can't. The Legacy of Earlier Wars Top-level US leadership has never been very subtle when it comes to war. Strategy takes a back seat to physical strength and tactics in the White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department. When the "chips are down," we've always poured on the power until opponents were crushed. Our ruling councils, whose members were schooled in conventional combat before the showdown in Vietnam, subscribed to that approach. Threats in earlier US wars were classically military. Direct strategies on both sides featured force, not fraud or finesse. Political, economic, social, and psychological pressures were strictly secondary once the shooting started. US force predominated. We were prime movers in World War II, and although UN units fought in Korea, ours was the prime contingent, and we were in command. Technology, not strategic theory, was this country's trump card. Masses of materiel from the military-industrial complex turned most every trick. Atom bombs stopped the Japanese during World War II, and they restarted stalled talks in Korea. Our whole approach to conflict coupled the theories of Clausewitz with the bombing concepts of Douhet. One stressed killing combatants, the other blasting civilians. Military victory was our major conscious aim. We achieved it in World War II (at the cost of later agony), but inconclusive Korea left a sour taste, convincing men like MacArthur that there is no suitable substitute. He featured that theme--"There is no substitute for victory"--in a fervid farewell address to Congress in 1951, and he echoed it at West Point 12 years later. "Your mission," he told the cadets, "is to win" in armed combat. Revolutionary Challenges US leaders learned those lessons too well. They forgot that winning combinations cannot be switched from one time period to another without very precise appreciation for changes that transpire in the interim. Concepts are just as tough to transplant from place to place, unless the problems peculiar to one locale are pertinent in the others. Certainly, there was clear evidence as early as Eisenhower's era that insurgency of the sort in southeast Asia bore little resemblance to conflicts this country experienced in Korea or Europe. The threat faced was ambiguous, as opposed to the clear-cut threat of a conventional conflict. Further, the decisive strategy was indirect rather than direct; the decisive force was political rather than military; the decisive participant was not an outside force, but the local people; the impact of technological advantage was trivial rather than telling; and, the desired culmination was political, rather than military, victory. There was no overt military threat at the onset. Frontal assaults were out. …

The Historian and Battle

Abstract: writer to climb a mountain-Cezanne’s Mont St. Victoire in Provence, as it happened-Winston Churchill, I think, the first statesman to have flown in an airplane, Joseph Conrad the first, and probably the last, major novelist to have gone around Cape Horn under sail. Thus far, no intellectual has gone into space. I suspect that the NASA personnel selection board finds what it probably calls a “negative correlation” between speculative intellectual habits and suitability for deep space missions, and I can certainly see that I would not myself choose as a capsule companion someone whose mind might well be working on problems of the persistence of self or the space-time continuum when we were supposed to be carrying out a docking maneuver. “Later, later,” are the least impatient words I would expect to hear on my lips in the circumstances. But if we do not know and cannot guess who will be the first man to take a reasonable prose style beyond the stratosphere and bring it back again, we do know who was the first historian to take part in a battle; and the answer, as with so many historical firsts, is Thucydides. He undoubtedly took part in a small naval battle in 424 B.C. Thereafter, the accounts of battles to which we can attach the names of historians as participants flow thick and fast until in our own times it sometimes seems difficult to find major historians who cannot make that claim. The great American admiral-professor Samuel Eliot Morrison was said not only to be perfectly content to let it be known that he had been present at many of the major naval battles of the Pacific war, but was not averse to having it be thought that he had actually stood at Nimitz‘s shoulder and even occasionally waved his hand. Battle is unquestionably one of the most popular of all historical subjects, as something to read about, whether the reader can test the accounts by personal experience or not, and as something to describe, even if the writer saw nothing of the events, but especially if he did. As a result, the shelves of history libraries, whether arranged by date or by country, are burdened with books about battles, ‘or with books in which battles figure very largely. It is only in libraries arranged by subject or name that the pacifically inclined reader can escape from the sight, smell, and taste of blood. Many libraries arranged by theme make the possibility of such an escape almost total, lunging from Dewey Decimal number 354 to Dewey Decimal number 356 across the blood-stained 355, as if it carried the risk of infection. I remember as a freshman at Balliol, already seriously infected by an

The genesis of The Battle of Maldon

Abstract: The Battle of Maldon is usually taken by modern scholars to be a reasonably accurate account of the way in which the battle developed. While not everyone today would necessarily agree with Gordon's statement, ‘the account of the battle in the poem, in so far as its statements can be checked, is accurate in every particular’, it nevertheless remains indicative of a not uncommon attitude. This attitude has been accentuated both by such fantasies as that of the late Professor Tolkien, who invented a poetic aftermath for the poem, and by attempts to localize the site of the battle following the indications provided in the poem. Reviews of Byrhtnoth's generalship also presuppose that the poem presents a realistic account of the battle, so that tactical decision can be evaluated. Some voices have been raised against taking the poem's account too literally, and many commentators now tend to assume a general, if not a detailed, accuracy. Most would perhaps agree with Professor Cross when he writes ‘the poet has selected from, elaborated on, and presumably omitted from a knowledge (not necessarily detailed) of the real events to suit his own purpose as distinguished in the poem’. Even this presupposes that the author was using historical evidence as the basis of his poem.

One of Ours: Willa Cather's Losing Battle

Abstract: Although Willa Cather sometimes stubbornly defended One of Ours as one of her favorite works, most readers tend to feel dissatisfied with it. Several reasons have been offered for its “failure,” among them the complaint that it has no definable point of view,1 or that Cather was so close to Claude Wheeler that she could not achieve appropriate authorial distance.2 I believe that these are justifiable criticisms, but for me they do not strike at the heart of what is wrong with the book. In One of Ours Cather makes a technical decision that puts a weak character at the center of her novel, thus precluding a strong affirmation of values in her usual mode. This seems to force her into a rather desperate assertion that any value, even a false one, is better than no value at all. The two components of most Cather novels are (1) a clear statement of values, usually in the form of an ideal which is pursued and affirmed with vigor, and (2) a strong character who is the human embodiment of that ideal.

Peter Shaffer's Recurrent Character Type

Abstract: PETER SHAFFER'S The Royal Hunt of the Sun (1964) and Equus (1973) were both produced by the National Theatre Company; they enjoyed even greater critical and commercial acclaim than his earlier successes. The Battle of Shrivings, however, received almost unanimous scorn from the London critics when it was produced at the Lyric Theatre in February 1970. While The Royal Hunt of the Sun and Equus were hailed for their spectacular dramaturgy, The Battle of Shrivings was seen as a retreat to the comfortable ease of the well-made plot and the domestic setting which worked effectively in Five Finger Exercise (1958) and Black Comedy (1967). Shaffer has since returned to the play, rewriting it as Shrivings (1974). In its present form, Shrivings demonstrates more significant affinities with The Royal Hunt of the Sun and Equus than with his earlier works. These three plays, his most recent full-length dramas, form an impressive triad in which Shaffer recurrently employs certain themes, techniques of characterization,...

Herodotos' account of the battle of Marathon and the picture in the stoa poikile

Abstract: The date, authorship, and contents of the Stoa Poikile picture which depicted the battle of Marathon suggest that it was Kimonian in inspiration and biased in favour of the Miltiadids. After an examination of the descriptions of the picture given by various ancient authorities, a composite description can be formulated which is found to be almost identical to the Herodotean account. The major discrepancy - the mention of the marsh in Pausanias - can be removed by taking into account the materials and techniques of the ancient artist. It can then be argued that the Herodotean account was based substantially on the picture and therefore also biased in favour of the Miltiadids.

This child is mine! The battle cry for custody.

Abstract: In Canada and the United States there are over one million divorces annually involving at least that number of children. Divorce frequently involves matters of access and custody. Lawyers acting on behalf of their clients may request psychiatric consultation as to the emotional stability of the client. In custody cases, the child or children may be evaluated by a child psychiatrist. In a divorce action between two adults, it may be valid for the psychiatrist to see one party to the dispute and offer a psychiatric opinion. In custody matters, a psychiatrist must see both parties to the dispute as well as the children. If only one parent is seen it is almost impossible to offer expert testimony. Divorce proceedings result from marital incompatibility. The deficits attributed to each spouse in the marital relationship do not necessarily bear upon the ability to be a parent. Yet in custody contests, frequently the two qualities of suitability for marriage and suitability for parenting are confused. When a child psychiatrist is involved, he or she is asked to comment not only on the emotional stability or problems of the child but also on the fitness of the parents. If each parent has a child psychiatrist involved in the evaluation, the adversary position is fortified and the possibilities for compromise are jeopardized. Since the children are invariably traumatized, guilt-ridden and insecure, it is important that the child psychiatrist attempts to minimize the vindictiveness and anger which are inherent in some custody disputes. By acting in the child's interests, and guiding the lawyers to allow one child psychiatrist to perform the total evaluation, some loosening of an adversarial stance is likely, and new possibilities for negotiation and compromise are created. The structuring of such an evaluation must be completed before any member of the family is seen. A case illustration is provided to point out the nature of the requests made of the lawyers and techniques used in negotiations. The child psychiatrist, in remaining child-focused, is in a unique position to avoid representing one side to the conflict and to provide the court with an evaluation which will aid the judge to make an informed decision.

Yuriwaka and Ulysses. The Homeric Epics at the Court of Ouchi Yoshitaka

Abstract: T , nHE medieval Japanese narrative Yuriwaka Daijin ('The Great Lord Yuriwaka') is a fictional elaboration of the historical account of the Mongol invasion of Japan in the thirteenth century. The hero of the story is a young nobleman by the name of Yuriwaka-or Yurikusawaka, the probable original pronunciation.I Yuriwaka is selected by the gods of Japan to command the Japanese forces in the war against the Mongols. He sets sail with a mighty fleet and, after a threeyear stalemate at sea midway between Japan and the Asian continent, destroys the Mongol fleet in a sudden battle in which Shinto and Buddhist deities come to his aid. On the return voyage, Yuriwaka stops at a bleak, uninhabited island far off the coast of Japan. While he is in a death-like sleep his deputy, Beppu, sails away with the fleet, abandoning him there to die of starvation. But Yuriwaka survives, and three years later the gods intercede and enable him to return to Japan. He is so changed in appearance that not even his most devoted servants recognize him. Beppu meanwhile not only has usurped the position of lord of the province but also has been insinuating his affections on Yuriwaka's wife, a woman of great beauty. But he is informed that she may not remarry until she fulfills her vow to transcribe a sacred Buddhist text one thousand times. Yuriwaka, who has