…ces of the terrible contest. The twisted metalwork was covered with blood, human bodies were lying about in the pierced compartments torn almost to ribbons, and arms, legs, and headless trunks were squashed between bent metal plates and rods, or rammed up between the machinery.9 Nice! I borrowed this book a couple of times while doing my thesis (in the facsimile edition put out by Routledge/Thoemmes Press in 1998, together with The War of the Wenu…
…was susceptible to domestic pressure, and bombardment managed to minimise human casualties while it destroyed items of economic and personal value. The result was that the besieged Boers rejected the chance to escape when it was available to them and surrendered to the British even though they had not run out of food or ammunition. Other battles fought during the Boer War could not be won by bombardment alone. Both Boers and the British managed t…
…fortunately made this unnecessary. But by 1924 the world is on the edge of ruin again: Six years later found Europe an armed camp with every nation snarling at every other nation. Scientific soldiers gave lectures in which they stated their ideas of the next war: civilised human beings talked glibly of raining down myriads of germs on huge cities. It was horrible — incredible: man had called in science to aid him in destroying his fellowmen, and s…
…actually blood, which the Sky Folk dump overboard after vivisecting their human specimens. Mr Verulam’s body was similarly dumped overboard, partially skinned. In true Lovecraftian fashion he had kept a diary of the terrifying things he had seen and heard: The boy next to me has gone. I saw what was done to him before he disappeared. It is too awful. I dare not even attempt to describe it. I lay in the farthest corner of my cell shivering and scr…
…ounded by a bomb dropped outside the Bedford Hotel on Southampton Row (off Russell Square) on the night of 25 September, despite his own head wound. His name isn’t given; I like the way he is standing in the shadows, as though uncomfortable with the attention. Thirteen people were killed in this incident (eleven according to the film) after ignoring official instructions to take cover, as the text archly notes. A 14 year old boy was killed inside…
…this stuff about flying saucers amount to? What can it mean? What is the truth?’ Didn’t he already know that the truth was disturbing enough to shake the foundations of religious belief? No, as it stands this story fails a few basic sanity checks and no confidence can be placed in it. The scientist who told it to the MoD seems to have been sincere enough, but I have the feeling that somewhere down the line a leg was being pulled. Having said all…
…l be necessary for all the free peoples to remould it together. And it is true; something has changed in the United States. On page four, a speech by President Roosevelt — who is seeking reelection for a third term in two months’ time — at Newfound Gap, Tennessee, is quoted: “I am asking,” he said, “for absolute national unity to defend the American way of life against the greatest attack ever launched against the freedom of the individual, which…
…muddle and confusion. ‘Nazi Child Murder Must be Ended’: “If any trace of humanity remains in the human race, such deeds as the Nazi murder of children must be ended,” declared Cardinal Hinsley when he addressed the Society of the Sword and Spirit in London yesterday. “The massacre of the innocents,” he said, “began with spiritual murder by inhuman upbringing. The massacre of children at sea and from the air has manifested to the whole world what…
…the first person to do so was Houdini the following year (I think that’s true for any form of powered flight, including airships). Surely there would have been some curiosity about who might be have achieving this great feat nightly in Australian skies? But I can find only two suggestions. One was published in the Queanbeyan Age on 17 August. It does in fact note that ‘many have been the conjectures as to its [the airship’s] origins and object’….
…w the damage caused was negligible. But if the enemy’s purpose was the destruction or damage of historic buildings, he may well claim a substantial addition to his record of senseless destruction of the noblest works of man. Guildhall has been severely damaged, and thus a modern tyrant has had his passing revenge on the source and home of resistance to despotism and lawlessness in the past. The Central Criminal Court was another very suitable targ…
