Infinite Wisdom

"Although there have been comparatively mild autocrats, Stalin was not one of those."

--	Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment

La Triviata

• When the United States declared war on Germany in April of 1917, the only war plans on hand were for the defense of the country against a British invasion from Canada, a conflict with Japan in the Pacific, involving a possible invasion of the West Coast, or a German invasion of the East Coast from the West Indies.
• During the late eighteenth century, young boys accepted by London’s Marine Society for training to serve in the Royal Navy were each issued a copy of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe.
• Not until 1939, the very eve of World War II, did Australia feel the need to establish diplomatic relations with the United States, China, and Japan, having hitherto been represented by the British ambassadors to those nations.
• In 1830, over objections that long distance communications were not a military concern, the Prussian Army finally acceded to proposals by officers who had been impressed by how Napoleon had benefitted from his signal service and formed an optical telegraph section in the Guard Pioneer Battalion.
• During the Battle for France, in 1940, eleven Luftwaffe aircraft strayed into Swiss airspace and were shot down by Swiss fighters (four of which lost were in the fighting), which prompted Herman Goring to initiate a campaign of sabotage against the Confederation, which proved wholly unsuccessful.
• Some estimates suggest that only about 30 percent of Union soldiers during the Civil War were married, a figure that is lower than that for men in Confederate service, since the South dipped much more deeply into its manpower pool than did the North.
• During World War II, nearly one in five American families – 18.1 percent – had at least one member in uniform.
• During the opening phase of the First World War in the West, as German forces pressed into Belgium and France, their reliance on radio increased, but their sending many messages in plain language provided an intelligence bonanza to the Allies; whereas in the East, even worse communications security by the Russians gave the Germans the advantage.

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