Infinite Wisdom

"To the one who unites and employs the greatest force in the shortest time at the decisive point belongs victory in war, as well as in every other physical and moral contest."

La Triviata

• On March 22, 1918, Britain’s “Defence of the Realm Act” was amended to impose a £100 fine on any woman suffering from a venereal disease who had or solicited sexual intercourse with a member of His Majesty’s Armed Forces, a sum today equivalent to perhaps £4,000.
• During their occupation of France in 1940-1944, the German Army carried off for scrap many of the 550 statues that had been erected across the country during the Third Republic (1870-1940), to honor various politicians or served as allegories of civic virtue, most of which were so ugly, so unpopular, or so obscure that after the Liberation they were not replaced.
• Although the American colonies were in revolt against the Crown, in 1776, when Benjamin Franklin learned that British Captain James Cook was undertaking another voyage of exploration, he convinced the Continental Congress to order that American forces should not interfere in the great explorer’s expedition, and where possible even render assistance.
• During World War I, 20 percent of all American men 18-45 served in the armed forces, of whom approximately a fifth were foreign born.
• Forced to flee with a small band of followers from Gallia Cisalpina (northern Italy) after the Battle of Mutina in the spring of 43 BC, Decimus Junius Brutus, one of Caesar’s assassins, had the humiliating experience of having to pay a toll of one denarius per man to King Cottius of Susa, who controlled the only available pass across the Alps.
• Following the Yalta Conference, in February of 1945, Winston Churchill met for talks with Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia, conducted during an elaborate lunch, at which, out of deference to the king’s Moslem sensibilities, the Prime Minister’s booze was served in colored glasses and referred to as “medicine”.
• In 1810, French commerce raiders and privateers captured 619 British merchant ships, the highest loss of vessels in a single year in British history until the twentieth century.
• Thomas G.W. Settle (USNA 1919) had a most unusual naval career, being a qualified balloonist and airshipman, with several air records to his credit, who during World War II oversaw blimp operations in the Pacific until mid-1944, when he was transferred to command the USS Portland (CA-33), earning a Navy Cross for Surigao Strait, and rising to vice-admiral post-war.

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