Jack (or Jill?) the Ripper on This Day in History

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This Day In History: Mary Ann Nichols was murdered on this day in 1888. She is the first of Jack the Ripper's confirmed victims. The canonical five Ripper victims are Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly.

There have been many theories as to who the Jack the Ripper might have been, including Alice in Wonderland author Lewis Carroll, Prince Albert Victor, son of Edward VII and grandson of Queen Victoria, British artist Walter Sickert, a German sailor named Carl Feigenbaum who was executed for murdering a New York woman in 1894, and Whitechapel mortuary attendant Robert Mann. 

Some believe that Jack the Ripper was an American. Richard Mansfield, an American actor working on the London stage was one such suspect. Mansfield was performing in the London production of the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in 1888 during the time that Jack the Ripper was murdering women in London. One frightened theatre-goer wrote to the police accusing Mansfield of the murders because he could not believe that any actor could make so convincing a stage transformation from a gentleman into a mad killer without being homicidal. 

American serial killer H.H. Holmes has also been accused to being Jack the Ripper, and the timeline of his killings certainly makes that seem possible, and Holmes' great-great-grandson, Jeff Mudgett, certainly believes so, and he wrote the book Bloodstains to prove it.

Others actually believe that Theosophist Madame Helena Blavatsky and Alice in Wonderland author Lewis Carroll may have been the killer. Even Sherlock Holmes author Arthur Conan Doyle faced scrutiny as the possible JTR.

Others, like Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle believed it might have been a woman, a Jill the Ripper, possibly a midwife. "The idea was that a midwife would be the only type of woman capable of killing in such a gory way. Rumors that Mary Kelly was pregnant at the time of her death fed into the theory, due to a midwife’s easy access to other women’s homes. No one would look twice at a midwife with blood on her clothing, and moreover she could slip away from her crime scenes unnoticed the way the Ripper was notorious for doing."~Emily Rose

Jack the Ripper is featured in hundreds of works of fiction and works which straddle the boundaries between fact and fiction, including the Ripper letters and a hoax diary: The Diary of Jack the Ripper. The Ripper appears in novels, short stories, poems, comic books, games, songs, plays, operas, television programmes, and films. More than 100 non-fiction works deal exclusively with the Jack the Ripper murders, making it one of the most written-about true-crime subjects. The term "Ripperology" was coined by Colin Wilson in the 1970s to describe the study of the case by professionals and amateurs.

See also: On Jack the Ripper by John E. Watkins 1919
https://thebookshelf2015.blogspot.com/2017/12/on-jack-ripper-by-john-e-watkins-1919.html

Jack the Ripper Identified
Unmasking Jack the Ripper more than 130 years after he vanished.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/wicked-deeds/201401/jack-the-ripper-identified

Your's Truly, Jack the Ripper by Robert Bloch
http://www.unz.org/Pub/WeirdTales-1943jul-00083

The Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett, On This Day in History

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This Day In History: The Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett, was born on this day in 1930. Buffet is an American investor, business tycoon, and philanthropist, who is the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. The Berkshire Hathaway stock is the most expensive in the world (presently at 430,901.00). He is considered one of the most successful investors in the world and has a net worth of $96 billion, making him the fifth-wealthiest person in the world, behind Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Bernard Arnault and Mark Zuckerberg. Buffett earned most of his wealth after age 60.

Buffet is the most mentioned person in financial circles, and when he buys and sells, everyone takes notice.

On Bitcoin he stated, "In terms of cryptocurrencies, generally, I can say with almost certainty that they will come to a bad ending."

Buffet bought his first stock when he was 11 years old, and made $53,000 by the age of 16. He also eats like Trump, preferring Cokes and McDonalds.

He reads a stack of books every day, “Read 500 pages like this every day. That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest.”

Some more fun facts about Warren Buffett:

He was rejected by Harvard Business School.

He has lived in the same humble house since 1958.

Thanks to rising stock prices, Buffett made 37 million dollars a day in 2013.

He owns 20 Madam Lee suits and has never paid for them. They were all given to him by the designer. He also never paid for his iPhone...which was given to him by Apple CEO Tim Cook in 2020. Up to that time he just used a flip phone. 

Buffett drives a 2014 Cadillac XTS, a car you can get for as low as $45,000. Buffett had his daughter buy it for him, since he was worried that a billionaire wouldn’t get a good price. 

His biggest investment came as a result of a salad dressing scandal: "Buffett owes one of his first big killings to a Wall Street scandal almost no one remembers - the fascinating story of Tino De Angelis. In 1963, De Angelis's company, Allied Crude Vegetable Oil, had a neat little scheme going. De Angelis figured out that instead of buying and selling ships filled with vegetable oil, he could load the ships with water and just a little oil floating on top. De Angelis used the phantom oil as collateral for loans, borrowing in excess of $175 million (over $1.2 billion in today's dollars) against worthless tanks full of water. He was able to hoodwink his lenders for quite some time." Nasdaq dot com 

American Express was one of the companies duped in this scheme, and as a result their stock lost half of its value. Warren Buffett took notice and bought $13 million worth of AXP stock. Today, Buffett's total investment in the company is worth over $7.8 billion.

Buffett is not a great economist however: "The avuncular Buffett is an investment genius; I enjoyed and agreed with everything he said on investing. But, like his friend Bill Gates, he’s also an autistic idiot savant. That’s someone who is a genius at one thing, and a fool at most everything else. Most people assume that if you know about investing, you must also know about economics, which is a related discipline. But that’s completely untrue. It’s analogous to thinking that someone who knows how to drive a car also knows how one works. Economics is the study of how men go about producing and consuming; investing is the practice of allocating capital for maximum returns. Buffett’s grasp of economics is shallow, conventional, and unrelated to his success as an investor."~Doug Casey

Philosopher and Heretic John Locke on This Day in History

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This Day In History: English philosopher and physician John Locke was born on this day in 1632. Locke was a real “Renaissance Man” who found time to be an expert in, not only medicine, but also metaphysics, epistemology, political philosophy, philosophy of mind, philosophy of education, economics, the Bible and theology (moving from Calvinist trinitarianism to Socinianism and Arianism, though he is still referred to as a Protestant Scholastic). He would go on to inspire David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant and the founding fathers, particularly Thomas Jefferson.

Locke was the Father of Classical Liberalism (Libertarianism). He stated that each person has a property in himself, and property precedes government. Unlike Descartes, Locke thought the mind was a blank slate (tabula rasa). The earth is given to humans in common. Locke’s doctrine that governments need the consent of the governed is central to the Declaration of Independence. He advocated separation of powers and believed that revolution was not only a right but an obligation at times.

John Locke wrote his major works in his 60's, and never really found time for a wife or romance. He did have an interesting feud with Isaac Newton. Newton would send strange, paranoid letters accusing Locke of trying to “entangle [him] with women.”

His rejection of the Trinity Doctrine would have branded him a heretic and had him burned at the stake in a previous century.

"With Milton and Newton there is another name constantly associated, as sharing the same distinguished mental rank, JOHN LOCKE. The evidence of his Unitarian belief is so complete that no one now denies that he held the same theological opinions on this subject as the poet and the philosopher. He had well considered the Scriptural, and also the historical, arguments for and against the Trinity. He says, 'The fathers before the Council of Nice speak rather like Arians than the orthodox.'

'There is scarcely one text alleged by the Trinitarians which is not otherwise expounded by their own writers.'

'It [the Trinity) is inconsistent with the rule of prayer directed in the Sacred Scriptures. For if God be three persons, how can we pray to Him through His Son for His Spirit'?"

Buy: And the Word was a god: A New Book on the Most Disputed Text in the New Testament - John 1:1  and The Dark History of the Trinity, is now available on Amazon by clicking here...and both are only 99 cents

Locke, like others of his time, was fascinated with alchemy: "Newton’s friend and follower, the philosopher John Locke, was also a reader of Philalethes and a serious student of both chymical medicine and chrysopoeia. If Newton was a 'magician,' then so were Boyle, Starkey, and Locke." ~William R. Newman

The History and Mystery of Alchemy is now available on Amazon...and it is only 99 cents.

Locke wrote the following on reading and thinking: "This is that which I think great readers are apt to be mistaken in. Those who have read of everything are thought to understand everything too; but it is not always so. Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking makes what we read ours. We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections; unless we chew them over again, they will not give us strength and nourishment. There are indeed in some writers risible instances of deep thought, close and acute reasoning and ideas well pursued. The light these would give would be of great use, if their readers would observe and imitate them; all the rest at best are but particulars fit to be turned into knowledge; but that can be done only by our own meditation and examining the reach, force and coherence of what is said; and then, as far as we apprehend and see the connection of ideas, so far it is ours; without that it is but so much loose matter floating in our brain. The memory may be stored, but the judgment is little better and the stock of knowledge not increased by being able to repeat what others have said or produce the arguments we have found in them. Such a knowledge as this is but knowledge by hearsay, and the ostentation of it is at best but talking by rote, and very often upon weak and wrong principles. For all that is to be found in books is not built upon true foundations nor always rightly deduced from the principles it is pretended to be built on. Such an examen as is requisite to discover that, every reader’s mind is not forward to make, especially in those who have given themselves up to a party and only hunt for what they can scrape together that may favor and support the tenets of it. Such men willfully exclude themselves from truth and from all true benefit to be received by reading. Others of more indifference often want attention and industry. The mind is backward in itself to be at the pains to trace every argument to its original and to see upon what basis it stands and how firmly; but yet it is this that gives so much the advantage to one man more than another in reading. The mind should by severe rules be tied down to this at first uneasy task; use and exercise will give it facility, so that those who are accustomed to it, readily, as it were with one cast of the eye, take a view of the argument and presently in most cases see where it bottoms. Those who have got this faculty, one may say, have got the true key of books and the clue to lead them through the maze of variety of opinions and authors to truth and certainty. This young beginners should be entered in and showed the use of, that they might profit by their reading. Those who are strangers to it still be apt to think it too great a clog in the way of men’s studies, and they will suspect they shall make but small progress if, in the books they read, they must stand to examine and unravel every argument and follow it step by step up to its original.

I answer, this is a good objection and ought to weigh with those whose reading is designed for much talk and little knowledge, and I have nothing to say to it. But I am here enquiring into the conduct of the understanding in its progress towards knowledge; and to those who aim at that, I may say that he, who fair and softly goes steadily forward in a course that points right, will sooner be at his journey’s end, than he that runs after everyone he meets, though he gallop all day full speed.

To which let me add that this way of thinking on and profiting by what we read will be a clog and rub to anyone only in the beginning; when custom and exercise has made it familiar, it will be dispatched in most occasions without resting or interruption in the course of our reading. The motions and views of a mind exercised that way are wonderfully quick; and a man used to such sort of reflections sees as much at one glimpse as would require a long discourse to lay before another and make out in an entire and gradual deduction. Besides that, when the first difficulties are over, the delight and sensible advantage it brings mightily encourages and enlivens the mind in reading, which without this is very improperly called study."

See also Over 320 Books on DVDrom on Thinkers and Philosophy

Renaissance Man, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, on This Day In History

 

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This day in history: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (pronounced Gur-ta) was born on this day in 1749. He is considered to be the greatest German literary figure of the modern era. 

According to A.J. Jacobs, "When Goethe wasn’t busy explaining to people how to pronounce his name, he found time to be a critic, journalist, lawyer, painter, theater manager, statesman, educationalist, alchemist, soldier, astrologer, novelist, songwriter, philosopher, botanist, biologist, color theorist, mine inspector, and issuer of military uniforms. Well, at least he didn’t supervise irrigation schemes, that slacker. Oh wait. My mistake. He was also a supervisor of irrigation schemes. I was familiar with the phrase 'Renaissance Man,' but Goethe is like a Renaissance Man with access to amphetamines. I can’t figure out how he fit all these jobs into a single life, much less the one-page single-spaced résumé that employers generally request. He makes Leonardo da Vinci look like a lazy bum."

Goethe became an overnight literary celebrity after writing The Sorrows of Young Werther in 1774. The book recounts an unhappy romantic infatuation that ends in suicide. Werther's funeral became one which "no clergyman attended" and that made the book deeply controversial at the time, for on the face of it, it appeared to condone and glorify suicide. The book would go on to inspire a rash of copycat suicides. The men were often dressed in the same clothing "as Goethe's description of Werther and using similar pistols." Often the book was found at the scene of the suicide. This led authorities in certain areas to ban the book, and the clothing style of Young Werther. 

In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Frankenstein's monster finds the book and sees Werther's case as similar to his own, of one rejected by those he loved.

However, Goethe's greatest literary would be his Faust, wherein Faust makes a compact with the Devil. The State authorities in Berlin suppressed the production of "Faust," until certain "dangerous passages" concerning freedom were deleted.   

As a poet Goethe had few rivals. Consider his dark and gloomy "The Erl King":

Who rides there so late through the night dark and drear?

The father it is, with his infant so dear;

He holdeth the boy tightly clasp'd in his arm,

He holdeth him safely, he keepeth him warm.

"My son, wherefore seek'st thou thy face thus to hide?"

"Look, father, the Erl King is close by our side!

Dost see not the Erl King, with crown and with train?"

"My son, 'tis the mist rising over the plain."

"Oh, come, thou dear infant! oh come thou with me!

For many a game I will play there with thee;

On my strand, lovely flowers their blossoms unfold,

My mother shall grace thee with garments of gold."

"My father, my father, and dost thou not hear

The words that the Erl King now breathes in mine ear?"

"Be calm, dearest child, thy fancy deceives;

the wind is sighing through withering leaves."

"Wilt go, then, dear infant, wilt go with me there?

My daughters shall tend thee with sisterly care

My daughters by night on the dance floor you lead,

They'll cradle and rock thee, and sing thee to sleep."

"My father, my father, and dost thou not see,

How the Erl King is showing his daughters to me?"

"My darling, my darling, I see it aright,

'Tis the aged grey willows deceiving thy sight."

"I love thee, I'm charm'd by thy beauty, dear boy!

And if thou aren't willing, then force I'll employ."

"My father, my father, he seizes me fast,

For sorely the Erl King has hurt me at last."

The father now gallops, with terror half wild,

He holds in his arms the shuddering child;

He reaches his farmstead with toil and with dread,—

The child in his arms he finds motionless, dead.

Goethe was also very quotable. Consider: 

Painting and tattooing the body is a return to animalism.

If a man sets out to study all the laws, he will have no time left to transgress them.

Which is the best government? That which teaches us to govern ourselves.

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.

With knowledge grows doubt.

The most foolish of all errors is for clever young men to believe that they forfeit their originality in recognizing a truth which has already been recognized by others.

He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.

The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.

The solution of every problem is another problem.

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action.

Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.

He who does not expect a million readers should not write a line.

Nothing is worth more than this day.

The history of knowledge is a great fugue in which the voices of the nations one after the other emerge.

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.

Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.

All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience.

Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that, you can make anything happen.

I call architecture frozen music.

As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.

You are certainly wrong to compare suicide ... with great accomplishments, since it cannot be considered as anything but a weakness. After all, it is easier to die than to endure a harrowing life with fortitude.

Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.

Beauty can never really understand itself.

It is not always needful for truth to take a definite shape; it is enough if it hovers about us like a spirit and produces harmony; if it is wafted through the air like the sound of a bell, grave and kindly.

History-writing is a way of getting rid of the past.

It is much easier to recognize error than to find truth; for error lies on the surface and may be overcome; but truth lies in the depths, and to search for it is not given to everyone.

Piety is not an end, but a means: a means of attaining the highest culture by the purest tranquility of soul. Hence it may be observed that those who set up piety as an end and object are mostly hypocrites.

Beauty and Genius must be kept afar if one would avoid becoming their slave.

No one is more of a slave than he who thinks himself free without being so.

An intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous.

At all times it has not been the age, but individuals alone, who have worked for knowledge. It was the age which put Socrates to death by poison, the age which burnt Huss. The ages have always remained alike.

Death is a commingling of eternity with time; in the death of a good man, eternity is seen looking through time.

I see my discourse leaves you cold;

Dear kids, I do not take offense;

Recall: the Devil, he is old,

Grow old yourselves, and he'll make sense!

It is a belief in the Bible, the fruits of deep meditation, which has served me as the guide of my moral and literary life. I have found it a capital safely invested and richly productive of interest.

One of the most striking signs of the decay of art is the intermixing of different genres.

Patriotism ruins history.

America, you have it better than our continent, the old one.

Nothing venture, nothing gain.

A world without love would be no world.

Doesn't surprise me that Christ our Lord

preferred to live with whores

& sinners, seeing

I go in for that myself.

A true German can't stand the French,

Yet gladly he drinks their wines.

One is never satisfied with a portrait of a person that one knows.

He who does not speak foreign languages knows nothing about his own.

Nothing is more damaging to a new truth than an old error.

Everything is simpler than one can imagine, at the same time more involved than can be comprehended.'

People should talk less and draw more. Personally, I would like to renounce speech altogether and, like organic nature, communicate everything I have to say visually.

American Monster, Ed Gein, on This Day in History

Deviant: The Shocking True Story of Ed Gein, the Original "Psycho"

This Day In History: American murderer and body snatcher Ed Gein was born on this day in 1906. Also known as the Butcher of Plainfield or the Plainfield Ghoul, Ed Gein exhumed corpses from local graveyards and fashioned trophies and keepsakes from their bones and skin. His crimes were so remarkable that he inspired some of the most iconic horror movies of all time: Psycho (1960), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), and The Silence of the Lambs (1991).

Mental Floss calls Ed Gein's house one of the "5 Scariest Buildings in America." Gein confessed that he visited graveyards in the area at least 40 times with the intent to dig up bodies of women who had recently died.

Did you know that there are more than 222,000 unsolved murders since 1980. In 1965, the U.S. homicide clearance rate was 91 percent. By 2017, it had dropped to 61.6 percent, one of the lowest rates in the Western world. That means about 40 percent of the time, murderers get away with murder. On the bright side, the prevalence of serial killers have dropped 85 percent in the past 40 years. When a serial killing is defined as the killing of three or more victims, the number drops to 138 serial killers operating in 1987 and 26 in 2015. The number remains at two for 2019. Some of the reasons for the low numbers is that people don’t hitchhike anymore...everyone has a cellphone and there are cameras everywhere.

Interesting fact: There is a legal Murder Zone in Yellowstone National Park. "There is a stretch of 50 miles within Yellowstone that crosses parts of Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. If someone were to commit murder on this piece of land, the crime would take place in the state of Idaho, but under Wyoming's discretion. This portion of Yellowstone is unpopulated, with no potential jury members living in the area. Therefore, no jury trial can take place." ~Jessika M. Thomas 

See also Notorious Criminals, Crimes & Criminology - 100 Books on DVDrom

For a list of all of my digital books on disk and ebooks (PDF and Amazon) click here

Horror Master Tobe Hooper on This Day in History

 

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Special Edition)

This day in history: American horror movie director, screenwriter, and producer Tobe Hooper died on this day in 2017. Hooper's breakout film was 1974's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which was Hooper's attempt to make a modern retelling of Hansel and Gretel. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was produced on a budget of $60,000 and would go on to make over 30 million dollars. 

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre has been described as "the ultimate pro-vegetarian film" due to its animal rights themes. In a video essay, film critic Rob Ager describes the irony in humans' being slaughtered for meat, putting humans in the position of being slaughtered like farm animals. Director Tobe Hooper has confirmed that "it's a film about meat" and even gave up meat while making the film, saying, "In a way I thought the heart of the film was about meat; it’s about the chain of life and killing sentient beings." Writer-director Guillermo del Toro became a vegetarian for a time after seeing the film.

The film was marketed as being based on true events, though in reality it was a work of fiction. However, the character of Leatherface and minor story details were inspired by the crimes of Wisconsin murderer Ed Gein who committed his crimes back in the 1950's. Ed Gein's crimes would also go on to inspire Hitchcock's Psycho, and Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs.

The film went on to become a classic of the genre, and was described in 2010 by The Guardian as "one of the most influential films ever made." Hooper subsequently directed the horror film Eaten Alive (1977), followed by the 1979 miniseries Salem's Lot, an adaptation of the novel by Stephen King. Following this, Hooper signed on to direct The Funhouse, a major studio slasher film distributed by Universal Pictures. The following year, he directed the supernatural thriller Poltergeist, which was written and produced by Steven Spielberg.

In the 1980s, Hooper directed two science fiction horror films: Lifeforce (1985) and Invaders from Mars (1986), followed by The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986), a big-budget sequel to his original film. The 1990s saw Hooper directing various horror and sci-fi projects, including Spontaneous Combustion (1990), which he also co-wrote; the television anthology film Body Bags (1993); and The Mangler (1995), another adaptation of a Stephen King story.

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Hooper directed several projects throughout the 2000s, including the monster film Crocodile (2000), an episode of the sci-fi miniseries Taken (2002), and two episodes of Masters of Horror (2005–2006). He would also co-produce another Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 2003 starring Jessica Biel (one of my favorite movies). He would also go on to produce The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006) and Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013). 

The British Film Institute cited Hooper as one of the most influential horror filmmakers of all time. Ranker has Tobe Hooper listed as one of the top 10 best horror directors in film history, alongside John Carpenter, George Romero, Wes Craven, Alfred Hitchcock, Sam Raimi, James Wan, David Cronenberg, Guillermo del Toro and James Whale.

This Kindle book, 70 Forgotten Ghost Stories is now available on Amazon by clicking here...and it is only 99 cents and Edgar Allan Poe - An Exhumation is available on Amazon by clicking here...and it is only 99 cents

David Hume and the Psychology of Obedience on This Day in History

This Day In History: Scottish Philosopher David Hume died on this day in 1776. One puzzle that Hume posed is especially pertinent today in the era of mass lockdowns. In his First Principles of Government, Hume wrote, "Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers."

200 years prior to Hume, Étienne de La Boétie wrote his "Discourse on Voluntary Servitude" wherein he wonders, "how it happens that so many men, so many villages, so many cities, so many nations, sometimes suffer under a single tyrant who has no other power than the power they give him; who is able to harm them only to the extent to which they have the willingness to bear with him; who could do them absolutely no injury unless they preferred to put up with him rather than contradict him. Surely a striking situation!"

Henry David Thoreau thought about this as well: “Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. . .The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.” (Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience)

The need to obey may be instinctual and have been a way to protect ourselves in the past. We have been conditioned to obey for thousands of years, but that does not explain why we obey mandates from on high that are clearly immoral and even evil.

“We may be genuinely puzzled as to how people could obey commands that seem both bloodthirsty and stupid. Puzzlement can vanish when we realize that in the eyes of their perpetrators the hideous crimes of history are not hideous crimes at all, but acts of loyalty, patriotism and duty. From the vantage point of the present we can see them as hideous crimes, but ordinarily from that same vantage point we cannot see the crimes of our own governments as hideous or even as crimes.” (Don Mixon, Obedience and Civilization)

It was the great H.L. Mencken that figured out how easily we are manipulated: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

However, it is not compliant sheep that moves societies forward, but the few and the brave who are willing to disobey.

“Man has continued to evolve by acts of disobedience. Not only was his spiritual development possible only because there were men who dared to say no to the powers that be in the name of their conscience or their faith, but also his intellectual development was dependent on the capacity for being disobedient, disobedient to authorities who tried to muzzle new thoughts and to the authority of long-established opinions which declared a change to be nonsense.” (Erich Fromm, On Disobedience and Other Essays)

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David Hume: How Easily the Masses are Manipulated by the Few

https://thebookshelf2015.blogspot.com/2018/02/david-hume-how-easily-masses-are.html

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Sophia Brahe and The Alchemist on This Day in History

 

The History and Mystery of Alchemy is now available on Amazon...and it is only 99 cents.

This day in history: Danish noble woman and horticulturalist Sophia Brahe was born on this day in 1559. While described as working in astronomy, chemistry, and medicine, for the time she was living in, this meant she was also involved in astrology and alchemy. 

According to astrology, a person was marked for life by the positions of the planets at the exact time of his birth. With alchemy, the adept would try to find ways to turning base metals (like iron) into gold. Other saw that alchemy might have useful medicinal contributions.

Her brother was Tycho Brahe, a great mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, and alchemist. He has been described as "the first competent mind in modern astronomy to feel ardently the passion for exact empirical facts". Most of his observations were more accurate than the best available observations at the time. He was so confident in his superiority as a mathematician that he entered into a sword duel with another man to end an argument as to who was the greatest Danish mathematician. Brahe was one of those alchemists that used that particular science to promote medicine. In his own time, Tycho was also famous for his contributions to medicine; his herbal medicines were in use as late as the 1900s.

Sophia would go on to marry Erik Lange, a man so obsessed with Alchemy that he used up most of his fortune with alchemical experiments. There is a certain irony in a wealthy man going broke in his quest for gold.

Sophia would go on to learn astronomy on her own and she authored a 900 page long genealogy that is still considered a significant source of information on the early history of Danish nobility. Today, Sophia is regarded as one of Denmark’s and Scandinavia’s first female researchers and writers. 

It is now actually possible to turn base metals into gold, though not through the alchemical process. In 1981, physicists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory changed bismuth into gold using a nuclear process. 

Paulo Coelho's best-selling book The Alchemist was published on this day in 1988. The book follows a young Andalusian shepherd in his journey to the pyramids of Egypt, after having a recurring dream of finding a treasure there. Along the way he runs into an Englishman looking for an alchemist...The boy also encounters a wise alchemist who also teaches him to realize his true self. Originally written in Portuguese, the book became a widely translated international bestseller. It sold more than 150 million copies by some reports.

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The Mysterious Appearance of Angels During a World War I Battle on This Day in History

This day in history: The Battle of Mons happened on this day in 1914. There is an angelic legend attached to this battle. "The legend goes as follows. During the midst of battle in Belgium, the onslaught continued as the heavily outnumbered British troops tried to retreat as the invading German forces pursued them every step of the way, through both the fields and heavily wooded areas around the Mons Conde channel. Then just as all hope was lost for the British, something that could only be defined as divine intervention occurred, heavenly angels appeared over the bloody battlefield, encouraging what remained of the British forces to stand and fight for what they believed and defeat the Germans. Suddenly behind the defending British troops appeared the mythical bowmen of Agincourt, legendary soldiers who fought for England against the French during the hundred year war, or angelic warriors as depicted in other versions, this divine force was being led by none other than Saint George himself, inflicting massive casualties to the advancing German forces completely annihilating them, winning the battle for the British in the process." ~HistoryHub

Hereward Carrington wrote about this in 1919:

Peculiarly conflicting evidence has been presented in the case of a semi-religious vision which is said to have been seen by numbers of soldiers on the historic retreat from Mons—I refer to the now-famous "Angels of Mons." The main outlines of this incident are doubtless too well known to need more than the briefest mention. At the very moment when the German hordes seemed about to overwhelm the British Army, phantom warriors (so the story goes) intervened— English bowmen from the field of Agincourt—and kept the Germans at bay until the main army succeeded in making good its escape. Such was the report, circulated at the time.

No sooner had this account been spread than Mr. Arthur Machen, a well-known English writer, came forward, and asserted that he had invented the whole tale, in his story "The Bowmen," which was then published in book form. The whole story, he claimed, originated in his imagination. As opposed to this, however, several soldiers now came forward, and asserted that they had actually seen the phantom army referred to, or something very like it; and Mr. Harold Begbie published a book, On the Side of the Angels, in which he produced quite a volume of evidence, varying in excellence from first-hand reports to mere hearsay; and Mr. Ralph Shirley, the editor of the Occult Review, also published a booklet, The Angel Warriors of Mons, containing additional evidence.

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The case is assuredly puzzling. I do not for one moment pretend to say that phantom bowmen actually took part in this historical battle, or that they saved the British army from destruction—as has been asserted in the past; but, on the other hand, it appears to me that the evidence which was presented at the time cannot be brushed aside as easily as it has been in certain quarters, as unworthy of serious consideration. Rather, we have here, it seems to me, on any theory, a remarkably interesting psychological problem,—one which is well worthy of being recorded and being studied,—at least from that point-of-view. Partly because of this, and partly because it throws so interesting a light upon the early days of the war, I reproduce here, by kind permission, a portion of an article by Miss Phyllis Campbell, published in the Occult Review, September, 1915. It runs as follows:—

The torrent of blistered, bleeding, stony-eyed Belgian refugees which had poured through our hands unceasingly, night and day, for the first hot breathless weeks of last August, was suddenly stemmed by the wounded. The miseries of those first wounded cannot ever be written. To those who tended them they brought like misery, for, individually and in the mass, they expressed a conviction of swiftly approaching disaster. They bore their sufferings with unexampled heroism; but their very dumbness suggested the hopeless silence of defeat. When they spoke at all, they spoke, if they were French, of "soixante-dix"; if they were British they said heavily they were "up against it now." One man, a Highlander, opened his dying eyes and urged us to fly while there was time. "Get awa', lassie," he whispered. "Get awa'! They Germans is no men; they're devils. All Hell is open now.''

Briefly, that is what all the wounded thought—what they all sought to convey to us, and as the days dragged on and the bloody toll increased, the members of the ambulance diminished. They, or their fathers and mothers, remembered "soixante-dix," and those who could go went; and so our work became harder, and the wounded poured in and in, till the expectation of quick victory for the Allies faded, and though the small band of us remaining disdained to acknowledge fear, yet we also were instructed by the commandant to prepare for retreat, taking the wounded with us. Then came the torrid days of Mons, and suddenly a change in the wounded, utterly unaccountable. The French, who had tolerantly accepted badges and medals of the saints from the Catholics of our post, now eagerly asked for them, and were profusely grateful for "holy pictures"—those little prints of saints and angels so common in all Catholic communities. But what puzzled the post was that these men, without a solitary exception, demanded invariably, "St. Michael" or "Joan of Arc."

Also, these men, in spite of their horrible wounds and great weakness from loss of blood, were in a state of singular exaltation. We thought at first that some of them had been supplied with wine, but that was clearly impossible, as our post was the first stop, and the trains came right through from the clearing station, without attention of any sort, as the fighting was then at its fiercest.

This curious mental condition in the wounded continued during the long retreat on Paris. Many of the wounded died in our hands, but the living no longer urged us to fly; they "died in hope," as if they were mentally visioning victory, where their immediate forerunners had only seen defeat.

I tremble, now that it is safely past, to look back on the terrible week that brought the Allies to Vitry-le-Francois. We had not had our clothes off for the whole of that week, because no sooner had we reached home, too weary to undress, or to eat, and fallen on our beds, than the "chug-chug" of the commandant's car would sound into the silence of the deserted street, and the horn would imperatively summon us back to duty,— because, in addition to our duties, as ambulancier auxiliare, we were interpreters to the post, now at this moment diminished to half a dozen.

Returning at 4.30 in the morning, we stood on the end of the platform, watching the train crawl through the blue-green of the forest into the clearing, and draw up with the first wounded from Vitry-le-Francois. It was packed with dead and dying and badly wounded. For a time we forgot our weariness in a race against time, removing the dead and dying, and attending to those in need. I was bandaging a man's shattered arm with the majeur instructing me, while he stitched a horrible gap in his head, when Madame d'A_____, the heroic President of the post, came and replaced me. "There is an English in the fifth wagon," she said. "He demands a something—I think a holy picture." The idea of an English soldier demanding a holy picture struck me, even in that atmosphere of blood and misery, as something to smile at, but I hurried away. "The English" was a Lancashire Fusilier. He was propped in a corner, his left arm tied up in a peasant woman's head 'kerchief, and his head newly bandaged. He should have been in a state of collapse from loss of blood, for his tattered uniform was soaked and caked in blood, and his face paper-white under the dirt of conflict. He looked at me with bright courageous eyes and asked for a picture or a medal (he didn't care which) of St. George. I asked if he was a Catholic. "No," he was a Wesleyan Methodist (I hope I have it right), and he wanted a picture, or a medal of St. George, because he had seen him on a white horse, leading the British at Vitry-le-Francois, when the Allies turned.

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There was an R. F. A. man, wounded in the leg, sitting beside him on the floor; he saw my look of amazement, and hastened in. "It's true, Sister," he said. "We all saw it. First there was a sort of a yellowish mist like, sort of risin' before the Germans as they come to the top of the hill, come on like a solid wall they did—springing out of the earth just solid—no end to 'em. I just give up. No use fighting the whole German race, thinks I; it's all up with us. The next minute comes this funny cloud of light, and when it clears off there's a tall man with yellow hair in golden armour, on a white horse, holding his sword up, and his mouth open as if he was saying, 'Come on, boys, I'll put the kybosh on the devils.' Sort of 'This is my picnic' expression. Then, before you could say jackknife, the Germans had turned, and we were after them, fighting like ninety. We had a few scores to settle, Sister, and we fair settled them!''

"Where was this?" I asked. But neither of them could tell. They had marched, fighting a rearguard action, from Mons, till St. George had appeared through the haze of light, and turned the Germans. They both knew it was St. George. Hadn't they seen him with his sword on every "quid" they'd ever had? The Frenchies had seen him, too, ask them; but they said it was St. Michael.

The French wounded were again in that curiously exalted condition we had remarked before—only more so—a sort of self-contained rapture of happiness— "Yes" it was quite true. The Boches were in full retreat, and the Allies were being led to victory by St. Michael and Joan of Arc.

"As for petite Jeanne d'Arc," said one soldier, "I know her well, for I am of Domremy. I saw her brandishing her sword and crying, 'Turn! Turn! Advance!" Yes, he knew others had seen the Archangel, but little Joan of Arc was good enough for him. He had fought with the English from Mons—and little Joan of Arc had defeated the English—par exemple' Now she was leading them. There was a combination for you! No wonder the Boches fled down hill.

After the train crawled out, and we had time to speak, the President drew me aside, and confided to me, that a wounded officer of high rank had told her he had seen St. Michael at Vitry-le-Francois. He was quite close to the Blessed Visitant and there could be no doubt on the subject. At first he thought he was to die, and, as he had been a violent Agnostic and materialist all his life, that this was a warning to him to make swift repentance in preparation for judgment. Soon, however, he saw that, so far from requiring his life, God had sent assistance in the fight, and that so clearly was on the side of the Allies, that the Germans must needs therefore be evil, and of the Devil.

I then told Madame d'A____ the story of the two British soldiers who wanted pictures of St. George, and we decided to compare notes with the others. Only one of us had not heard the tale of the Angelic Leaders, and she had been detailed by the majeur to guard three wounded Germans, one of whom had died of tetanus, the other two had gangrene. Her duty was to stand some paces off and prevent any one touching them, so she had consequently no opportunity of conversation.

On discussing the matter between the trains of wounded, we remarked: First, that the French soldiers of all ranks had seen two well-known saints— Joan of Arc—to whom many of those delirious with the torrid heat and loss of blood were praying—that she was in armour, bareheaded, riding a white horse, and calling "Advance," while she brandished her sword high in the air; and St. Michael the Archangel, clad in golden armour, bareheaded, riding a white horse, and flourishing his sword, while he shouted "Victory!" Second, the British had seen St. George, in golden armour, bareheaded, riding a white horse and crying while he held up his sword, "Come on!"

There were individual discrepancies, naturally, but in the main the story was the same, seen in cold blood at a moment of despair, and continued in the realization of victory. It was always related quietly and sanely, in a matter-of-fact fashion, as if it were a usual and quite expected occurrence for the lords of heaven to lead the hosts of earth. Of one thing all were assured—that the Germans represented the powers of evil, and that so doubtfully did victory hang in the balance, that the powers of good found it necessary to fight hand in hand and foot to foot with the Allies, lest the whole world be lost.

That night we heard the tale again, from the lips of a priest this time, two officers, and three men of the Irish Guard. These three men were mortally wounded, they asked for the Sacrament before death, and before dying told the same story to the old abbe who confessed them.

That was our last night with the ambulance at the post, we were now moved on to the hospital, and took our regular work as ambulancier. There we had time to hear more, and the men told us in fragments of the long retreat from Mons, fighting all the way like Trojans, marching night and day, and day and night, of the men falling in the ranks and being kicked to their feet by the officers—of the officers falling off their feet drunk with sleep, and being kicked and pushed to their feet again by the men—of men who dragged and carried their officers, of officers who dragged and carried their men—of horses falling dead in their traces, and of men who harnessed themselves in and dragged the guns—of motor transport that drove itself with drivers hanging dead asleep over the wheels, or sitting with wide-open eyes, and dead hands steering the munitions and food of the retreating army.

For forty-eight hours no food, no drink, under a tropical sun, choked with dust, harried by shell, and marching, marching, marching, till even the pursuing Germans gave it up, and at Vitry-le-Francois the Allies fell in their tracks and slept for three hours— horse, foot and guns—while the exhausted pursuers slept behind them.

Then came the trumpet call, and each man sprang to his arms to find himself made anew. One man said, "I felt as if I had just come out of the sea after a swim. Fit! just grand! I never felt so fit in my life, and every man of us the same. The Germans were coming on just the same as ever, when suddenly the 'Advance' sounded, and I saw the luminous mist and the great man on the white horse, and I knew the Boches would never get Paris, for God was fighting on our side...."

Additional evidence, as to the actuality of visions seen by many of the men at this time was soon forthcoming. An officer, for example, who had shared in the historic Mons retreat, reading what Mr. Machen had said regarding the origin of these phenomena, wrote to the London Evening News, for September 14 (1915), giving an account of certain visions he himself has seen—differing, however, considerably from the "historic" phenomena. The letter was in reply to a statement made by Mr. Machen to the effect that:

"It is odd that nobody has come forward to testify at first hand to the most amazing event of his life." "It is this remark," wrote the officer in question, "which inclines me to write," and he proceeds to tell his own experiences. It appears from this account that on August 26,1914, he was fighting in the battle of Le Cateau. From this sanguinary engagement his division retired in good order and was marching all the night of the 26th and during the 27th with only two hours' rest.

"On the night of the 27th," says Mr. Machen's correspondent, "I was riding along in the column with two other officers. We had been talking and doing our best to keep from falling asleep on our horses.

"As we rode along I became conscious of the fact that, in the fields on both sides of the road along which we were marching I could see a very large body of horsemen. These horsemen had the appearance of squadrons of cavalry, and they seemed to be riding across the fields and going in the same direction as we were going, and keeping level with us.

"The night was not very dark, and I fancied that I could see the squadron of these cavalrymen quite distinctly.

"I did not say a word about it at first, but I watched them for about twenty minutes. The other two officers had stopped talking.

"At last one of them asked me if I saw anything in the fields. I then told him what I had seen. The third officer then confessed that he too had been watching these horsemen for the past twenty minutes.

"So convinced were we that they were really cavalry that, at the next halt, one of the officers took a party of men out to reconnoitre, and found no one there. The night then grew darker, and we saw no more.

"The same phenomenon was seen by many men in our column. Of course, we were all dog-tired and overtaxed, but it is an extraordinary thing that the same phenomenon should be witnessed by so many people.

"I myself am absolutely convinced that I saw these horsemen; and I feel sure that they did not exist only in my imagination. I do not attempt to explain the mystery—I only state facts."

The above evidence, which is obviously of considerable importance, does not appear in Mr. Harold Begbie's book On the Side of the Angels, which claims to be a counterblast to Mr. Machen's Bowmen, the evidence apparently having come to light too late for insertion. Mr. Begbie, however, gives a very detailed account of another first-hand record,—which is perhaps,—at least up to the present date,—the most important statement of the kind with the exception of the Lieut.-Colonel's. This is the record of a certain wounded soldier, a lance-corporal, who was lying, at the time the statement was made public, at an English hospital, and, in fact, was awaiting an operation, which has since been performed. Though the lance-corporal's name is not given, it is well-known to a number of people who have been investigating these matters, and in particular Mr. Begbie went out of his way to have a long interview with the soldier in question. The statement was first made by him in conversation with the hospital nurse, who in turn repeated it to the Lady Superintendent of the Red Cross,—Miss M. Courtney Wilson. This account was first given with no idea at all of its attracting public attention, but merely in casual conversation with the nurse referred to, and the narrator was a good deal surprised to learn of the publicity that had been given to it. "He is a soldier," says Mr. Begbie (quoting a friend of his who went to see him), "of many years' service, with a clean military record. I should take him to be a man of two or three and thirty. He spoke to me of his vision in a cool, calm, matter-of-fact way, as of something he had certainly seen. He made no attempt either to theorize or dogmatize about it. His whole narrative was marked by sincerity." The soldier's verbatim statement is given by Mr. Begbie, and it may be worth while reproducing it here, though it appears in an abbreviated form in The Angel Warriors of Mons.

"I was in my battalion in the retreat from Mons on or about August 28. The German cavalry were expected to make a charge, and we were waiting to fire and scatter them so as to enable the French cavalry who were on our right to make a dash forward. However, the German aeroplanes discovered our position and we remained where we were.

"The weather was very hot and clear, and between eight and nine o'clock in the evening I was standing with a party of nine other men on duty, and some distance on either side there were parties of ten on guard. Immediately behind us half of my battalion was on the edge of a wood resting. An officer suddenly came up to us in a state of great anxiety and asked us if we had seen anything startling (the word used was 'astonishing'). He hurried away from my ten to the next party of ten. When he had got out of sight I, who was the non-commissioned officer in charge, ordered two men to go forward out of the way of the trees in order to find out what the officer meant. The two men returned reporting that they could see no sign of any Germans; at that time we thought that the officer must be expecting a surprise attack.

"Immediately afterwards the officer came back, and taking me and some others a few yards away showed us the sky. I could see quite plainly in mid-air a strange light which seemed to be quite distinctly outlined and was not a reflection of the moon, nor were there any clouds in the neighbourhood. The light became brighter and I could see quite distinctly three shapes—one in the centre having what looked like outspread wings, the other two were not so large, but were quite plainly distinct from the centre one. They appeared to have a long loose hanging garment of golden tint, and they were above the German line facing us.

"We stood watching them for about three-quarters of an hour. All the men with me saw them, and other men came up from other groups who also told us that they had seen the same thing. I am not a believer in such things, but I have not the slightest doubt that we really did see what I now tell you.

"I remember the day because it was a day of terrible anxiety for us. That morning the Munsters had had a bad time on our right and so had the Scots Guards. We managed to get to the wood and there we barricaded the roads and remained in the formation I have told you. Later on the Uhlans attacked us and we drove them back with heavy loss. It was after this engagement when we were dog-tired that the vision appeared to us.

"I shall never forget it as long as I live. I lie awake in bed and picture it as I saw it that night. Of my battalion there are now only five men alive besides myself, and I have no hope of ever getting back to the front. I have a record of fifteen years' good service, and I should be very sorry to make a fool of myself by telling a story merely to please any one."

Our author obtained further interesting information from the soldier when he went to interview him, especially as regards the impression that the vision made upon the other men in his regiment.

"It was very funny," he said. "We came over quiet and still. It took us that way. We didn't know what to make of it. And there we all were, looking up at those three figures, saying nothing, just wondering, when one of the chaps called out, 'God's with us!'— and that kind of loosened us. Then when we were falling in for the march, the captain said to us, 'Well, men, we can cheer up now; we've got Some One with us!' And that's just how we felt. As I tell you, we marched thirty-two miles that night, and the Germans didn't fire either cannon or rifle the whole way."

Mr. Begbie inquired of the lance-corporal if he had met any of the men who saw the vision since he had got back to England. He stated that he had only met one—a sergeant of the Scots Guards who was lying in Netley hospital, and added, "He remembers it just the same as I do." "Of course," he continued, "these chaps in here won't believe it. They think I must have dreamed it, but the sergeant in the Scots Guards could tell them. I have never seen anything like it before or since—I know very well what I saw."

Such is the character of the first-hand evidence which has come to us regarding the most remarkable religious vision of the war—"The Angels of Mons." Some see in this merely a wide-spread delusion; a systematic hallucination, followed by an eager public credulity—a species of toxic delirium followed by a form of popular hysteria. Yet perhaps the case cannot be dismissed so lightly as this; visions of varying characters were undoubtedly seen by many soldiers at this time; and if ever the men of earth had need of the hosts of heaven to help them, it was then! Another view of the case might perhaps be tenable—for instance the following, communicated by a New Zealander to the columns of the Harbinger of Light (Melbourne):

"Testimony of a similar character has poured in ever since the memorable retreat from Mons, when General French's 'contemptible little army' was saved from annihilation by what many people are convinced to have been the direct intervention of powerful spiritual forces. We know of no reason for questioning this conclusion. On the other hand there is abundant Biblical and other evidence which supports the occurrence of such phenomena, including the very significant incident in relation to Elisha and 'the young man,' when the latter, on having his spiritual eyes opened—or, as we say in these modern times, after he had become clairvoyant—saw the hillside covered with celestial horsemen, who had come to the aid of the hard-pressed prophet.

"The spirit world is a greater reality and much nearer to us than most people think, and the emissaries of the Most High keep constant watch over mundane affairs and unceasingly direct the evolution of the human race. This spiritual truth is not generally recognized today, but the time is coming when it will be universally accepted, and mankind will be compelled to realize it is literally true that 'the angel of the Lord encampeth round them that fear Him, and delivereth them.'"

Whatever the ultimate truth regarding these "Visions" may prove to be, however, it is certain that, from the psychological and historical points of view, they deserve careful consideration and study; and it is because of these reasons that I have deemed them worthy of inclusion in this book. From any point of view— whether they be regarded as a species of remarkable hallucinatory experiences, or as a direct manifestation of the spiritual world—they constitute an essential historical part of the psychology of the present war; and, as such, they justify their insertion in this book, and particularly in this Chapter.

And thus, by dream and vision,—by deeds of heroism and self-sacrifice,—has the soul of man become regenerated—has a great Spiritual quickening and revival spread through all the nations—for nations have become regenerated no less than individuals.

Indeed, as M. Le Bon says—and what he says of France applies equally to the soldiers of all the Allies, though no one will begrudge France—bleeding yet glorious—the words of praise he bestows upon her:—

"France will no doubt emerge regenerated and all the stronger from the present tragedy, for the heroic qualities of her defenders show that the anarchy which seemed to threaten her was purely superficial. The dauntless courage of our young men is a consoling sight to the wondering eyes of us who behold it. They will have lived through the most prodigious adventure in history, an epoch whose grandeur transcends that of the most far-famed legends. For what are the exploits of Homer's warriors, or the gallant feats of Charlemagne's fabulous companions, or the combats of paladins and magicians, compared with the gigantic struggles at whose progress the world looks on amazed?

"No one could have foreseen the marvellous efflorescence of the self-same virtues of men who come from the most widely sundered classes of society. Withdrawn from their tranquil existence on the farm, in the office, the workshop, the school, or even the palace, they find themselves abruptly transported into the heart of an adventure so stupendous and impossible that only in dreams have men ever had glimpses of its like. Truly they are new beings whom threatened France has seen rise up in her defense; being created by a rejuvenescence of the astral soul, which sometimes slumbers but never dies. Sons of the heroes of Tolbiac, Bouvines, and Marengo, these dauntless fighters felt all the valour of their glorious fathers revive within them at their country's first call. Plunged into a hideous inferno, they have often spoken heroic words such as history makes immortal. 'Arise, ye dead!' cried the last soldier in a trench surrounded on every side, to his wounded companions who had been laid low by the enemy's machine-guns. Greece would have plaited crowns for that man and sung his memory.

"To die a hero in a noble cause is an enviable lot for one who has believed himself destined to naught save an empty and monotonous existence; for not according to length of days is life worth living, but according to work accomplished, and the defenders of the sacred soil of our fathers, the handicrafts-men of our future, they who have forged a new France on the anvil of Fate, our dead, who yet are immortal, are already entered into the pantheon of those demi-gods whom the nations adore and whom the hand of Time himself can no more harm."

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