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...ession that things lying losely [sic] about may be picked up by anyone, as instance the case the other day of a man who was sent to prison for looting some valuable furs from a wrecked house. It is this impression which must be checked firmly if, to the very great misfortunes suffered by bombed-out victims, is not to be added that of grievous injury by their own countrymen. A last note from the Guardian (7): It may now be stated that in recent air...

17 Comments

...d ends in the hands of the civilian workers of the Buna. The traffic is an instance of a kind of 'kombinacja' [combination] frequently practised: the Häftling, somehow saving a ration of bread, invests it in Mahorca; he cautiously gets in touch with a civilian addict who acquires the Mahorca, paying in cash with a portion of bread greater than that initially invested. The Häftling eats the surplus, and puts back on the market the remaining ration....

...tive mythology of Rosenberg and Krieck were virtually unknown. Hommes, for instance, writes that "the concept that twice two make four is somehow differently tinged in the minds of a German, a Frenchman, a Negro, or a Jew." I suspect G. A. Sutherland of Victoria Park knows where Needham is coming from, even if his target is British broadcasting rather than German scholarship (8): By its action in protecting the public from the pernicious singing o...

...Peter Hennessy. The Secret State: Preparing for the Worst 1945-2010. London: Penguin, 2010. Second edition. The instant classic on how the British government has gone about defending the realm, particularly in preparations for the Third World War. Hennessy has updated it with information from masses of newly declassified files from the Cold War, and has a first stab at telling the story of the post 9/11-era....

18 Comments

...The workers of the Humboldt-Deutz, the diesel-engine plant in Cologne, for instance -- some of whom were killed on the night of May 30 last -- must inevitably take the risk of war. Just as our merchant seamen who man ships which the U-boats (equipped with Humboldt-Deutz engines) would have tried to torpedo. Were not the aircraft workers, their wives and children, at Coventry just as much 'civilians' as the aircraft workers at Rostock and their fam...

3 Comments

...e Fell Types are far prettier, but look difficult, or at least tedious, to install. Font management is one of LaTeX's biggest weaknesses.) Just insert the following in your preamble and you're done: \usepackage[fullveryoldstyle]{kpfonts} Well, almost. This simply replaces every s with a long s, which is not right. Most importantly, long s is generally not used at the end of a word, so you need to replace these with 's='. Here's what the first para...

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...owledge that 'in any real crisis they could count on support that would be instantaneous and automatic': the Dominions have known that if they ever had to face actual aggression the Navy and other Imperial Forces would come to their aid at once. Reid's conclusion is that there is no need for any 'supra-national Government controlling political, economic, and social affairs [...] The share of sovereignty to be given up need only be military'. As th...

6 Comments

...on provided. Most of the people have lost everything, and clothing in many instances had also to be provided by the citizens of the burghs. Jean Kelvin, in the 'Women's Topics' column (7) writes the most effective piece on the Clydeside blitz today. She is proud of the new meaning given to the shipbuilding term 'Clydebuilt': 'All that it implies in rugged strength and reliability in times of stress has been won by its people this past week'. This...

3 Comments

...far as to say that 'in the opinion of the British Government far too many instances have occurred, both in China and in Spain, where these general rules have been plainly disregarded and where there has been a deliberate attack upon civilians'. Turning to the second of Noel-Baker's issues, that of bombing attacks on British ships engaged in the Spanish trade, the prime minister says that 'We do not admit the right of General Franco or anybody els...

26 Comments

...pilots, perhaps also on the same date? Bäumer: "We had a 2-centimeter gun installed on the front (of the aircraft). Then we flew down low over the streets, and when we saw cars coming from the other direction, we put on our headlights so that they would think another car was approaching them. Then we shot them with the gun. We had a lot of successes that way. It was great, and it was a lot of fun. We attacked trains and other stuff the same way."...