The (Russian) officer corps was top-heavy with a superabundance of aged generals whose heaviest intellectual exercise was card-playing and who, to save their court perquisites and prestige, were kept on the active list regardless of activity. Officers were appointed and promoted chiefly through patronage, social or monetary, and although there were among them many brave […]
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“If we are to be crushed,” Bassompierre recorded their sentiment, “let us be crushed gloriously.” In 1914 “glory” was a word spoken without embarrassment, and honor a familiar concept that people believed in.
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Though a profound student of Clausewitz, Foch did not, like Clausewitz’s German successors, believe in a foolproof schedule of battle worked out in advance. Rather he taught the necessity of perpetual adaptability and improvisation to fit circumstances. “Regulations,” he would say, “are all very well for drill but in the hour of danger they are […]
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Tags:Bureaucracy·bureaucrats·Initiative·leadership·military·Regulation·Tactics·war
Though a profound student of Clausewitz, Foch did not, like Clausewitz’s German successors, believe in a foolproof schedule of battle worked out in advance. Rather he taught the necessity of perpetual adaptability and improvisation to fit circumstances. “Regulations,” he would say, “are all very well for drill but in the hour of danger they are […]
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Tags:Bureaucracy·bureaucrats·Initiative·leadership·military·Regulation·Tactics·war
Echoes of the secret meeting of the Committee of Imperial Defence angered the Cabinet members who had been left out and who belonged to the sternly pacifist wing of the party. Henry Wilson learned he was regarded as the Villain of the proceedings and that they are ‘calling for my head’. At this time began […]
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One constant among the elements of 1914—as of any era—was the disposition of everyone on all sides not to prepare for the harder alternative, not to act upon what they suspected to be true.
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Tags:History·leadership·Politics·Psychology·sociology·war·WW1
A new book, “The Great Illusion” by Norman Angell, had just been published, which proved that war had become vain. By impressive examples and incontrovertible argument Angell showed that in the present financial and economic interdependence of nations, the victor would suffer equally with the vanquished; therefore war had become unprofitable; therefore no nation would […]
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Tags:philosophy·sociology·war·WW1
The last-named, Prince Danilo, ‘an amiable, extremely handsome young man of delightful manners’, resembled the Merry Widow’s lover in more than name for, to the consternation of British functionaries, he had arrived for the funeral the night before accompanied by a ‘charming young lady of great personal attractions’ whom he introduced as his wife’s lady-in-waiting, […]
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Tags:Adultery·Monarchy·Royalty
So gorgeous was the spectacle on the May morning of 1910 when nine kings rode in the funeral of Edward VII of England that the crowd, waiting in hushed and black-clad awe, could not keep back gasps of admiration.
That’s some opening line for a history book…
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Nothing in France is free from sexual assignment. I was leafing through the dictionary, trying to complete a homework assignment, when I noticed the French had prescribed genders for the various land masses and natural wonders we Americans had always thought of as sexless, Niagara Falls is feminine and, against all reason, the Grand Canyon […]
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