…tate and an international police force. Is it too much to believe that the human intellect is equal to the problem of designing a world state wherein neighbours can live without molestation; in collective security? It does not matter what the state is called; give it any name you please: — League of Nations; Federated Nations; United States of the World. Why should there not be a world police; just as each nation has a national police force?3 It’s…
…ng in the central blue; Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm, With the standards of the peoples plunging thro’ the thunder-storm; Till the war-drum throbb’d no longer, and the battle-flags were furl’d In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world. There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe, And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.1 Though Tennyson is actually speaking of a…
…the terrorist attacks, and the crowds of people gathered around the various floral memorials were hard to miss. The three bombers on the Underground all diverged from Kings Cross St Pancras; one detonated his bomb between there and Russell Square. And Tavistock Square is just north of Russell Square. So my personal geography overlapped that of the terror attacks, and as my research is all about fear, panic, terror, Bloomsbury was an oddly appropri…
…the radiation emitted by an atomic bomb must fall outside the visible spectrum, concluding that ‘the bomb acts as an X-ray generator of unimaginable power’.3 So a bomb could be detonated at high altitudes to blind large numbers of people, or to ruin huge areas of crops. Atomic bombs carried by long-range rockets would be the ‘ultimate weapon’.4 Such attacks might in time assume even more vicious forms. The rockets might be detonated nearer to the…
…ed by a solitary Handley Page V/1500, a four-engined bomber which had been designed to bomb another capital city, Berlin. Several of its bombs hit the King’s palace, which seems to have caused some panic, and rather less material damage, but most of all showed that the terrain and the soldiers which had caused more than one bloody defeat for the British were no longer to be relied upon. A few days later, Afghanistan sued for peace. Therefore Afgha…
…on of them? I’d be tempted to say the latter — the Cliopatricians are only human, after all, and can only add those blogs which come to their attention — but I can’t think of any they’ve missed. Also, the rate of growth of the blogosphere may be slowing — it’s hard to say, as Technorati seem to have stopped publishing their quarterly state of the blogosphere reports. Here’s one change: the Australian share of the military historioblogosphere has d…
…echoslovakia; and L. C. Knights urged that international and social reconstruction be undertaken on the basis of humane (and socialist) values, otherwise ‘the alternative is to wait in despairing fatalism for the end of our civilisation’.1 These sorts of sentiments are more common from the left than the right, but not exclusively so. The problem is, though, that these statements are usually ambiguous. Obviously, my first impulse is to interpret th…
…uence the course it has taken. There’s no choice at that late stage but to run with it. So I was grateful to David for taking me on. And in the end, although our relationship was not always easy, he did help me produce the best thesis I could write, so I’m grateful for that too. Some of the ideas from that thesis have unexpectedly carried over into my current research, so his influence lives on! We also had fun: although aviation history was not h…
…nt progress in impact-loading resistant steel cases), allowing radios, instruments, etc., to be driven directly from the engine; constant speed propellors (thereby proving that the weight and efficiency issues that had previously made these dodgy had been overcome); an unprecedented loaded-to-empty weight relationship, and the huge aspect ratio of the Wellesley wing, together demonstrating the advantages of geodetic structure specifically, but in…
…the street or in the bus, his wife and children in their homes […] People running underground, trying to escape from poison gas, knowing that at any hour of the day or night death or mutilation was ready to come upon them […] He felt that he could not put the British people in this position over a cause which did not ‘transcend ordinary human values’, and the Sudetenland was not such a cause (Daily Mail, p. 8). An international commission has met…
