“I do not know exactly why, in the twentieth century, the dominant fashions in English prose moved relentlessly in the direction of ever greater simplification and aesthetic minimalism. I do not even entirely regret it. Tastes change, and some of the change has been a corrective of certain excesses of the past. But, on the whole, the result has been a kind of official dogma in favor of a prose so denuded of nuance, elegance, intricacy, and originality as to be often little better than infantile, not only in vocabulary but also in artistry and expressive power—a formula, that is, for producing writers whose voices are utterly anonymous in their monotonous ordinariness. Most of the fiction one reads today in literary journals is atrociously written, as are most of the essays, principally because writers have been indoctrinated in a style so rigid, barren, brutal, dry, and idiotically naïve that the best it can elicit from them is competent dullness.” – David Bentley Hart, “How to Write English Prose”
Category: History
“By the end of November 1943, the new Allied Control Commission working with the [new] Italian Government was at the end of its rope. The 1943 harvest had fallen 25 to 30 percent below normal; amassing grain under the old unpopular Fascist system completely broke down and the major portion of the short harvest found its way into the black market. Even the low 150-gram bread ration [a little more than a quarter-pound per person daily] could not be maintained, and the only way to prevent mass starvation in urban centers such as Naples seemed to be a crash program of imports.” – Robert W. Coakley and Richard M. Leighton, “The Army and Civilian Supply – I,” Global Logistics and Strategy: 1943-1945
“The minor wars in Ethiopia, Spain, and Albania had placed a severe strain on the Italian economy; three years of World War II as a German ally pushed it to the brink of collapse. Italy entered the war in 1940 unprepared and was never able to mobilize her economy in efficient fashion. Though nominally an ally, Italy was forced into an economic as well as political and military dependence on Germany that left her at the mercy of the Nazi overlords of Europe. The country did not prosper under the German hegemony.” – Robert W. Coakley and Richard M. Leighton, “The Army and Civilian Supply – I,” Global Logistics and Strategy: 1943-1945
“The appearance of economic order, prosperity, and self-sufficiency that Mussolini’s fascist government had been able to create was in reality only a facade that cloaked Italy’s long-standing economic ills. The country was almost entirely dependent upon the outside world for coal and oil, and much more so for essential raw materials and even foodstuffs than the Fascists admitted.” – Robert W. Coakley and Richard M. Leighton, “The Army and Civilian Supply – I,” Global Logistics and Strategy: 1943-1945
“The invasion of Sicily was the first Allied operation for which there was a definite civilian supply plan prepared in advance. The plan, to cover a 90-day military period, was based on the assumption that once the dust of battle settled, Sicily would be self-sufficient except for coal and oil. For such immediate relief needs as arose, AFHQ [Allied Force Headquarters] hoped to rely mainly on stockpiles in North Africa. Only 12,100 tons of food were requested from the United States, and some thought even that quantity excessive. The Allied Military Government of Occupied Territory (AMGOT) instituted in Sicily soon found this optimism entirely unwarranted. Whether there was enough grain to provide bread for all the people was a debatable proposition, but, for the moment quantity was irrelevant, since the lack of transport, the colossal black market, farm hoarding, and the ravages of battle kept grain out of the cities. Two months after the invasion, cities such as Palermo were still living ‘hand to mouth’ with ‘not even 24 hours reserves of breadstuffs in the town.’” – Robert W. Coakley and Richard M. Leighton, “The Army and Civilian Supply – I,” Global Logistics and Strategy: 1943-1945
“The War Department, while insisting adamantly on military control over civilian supply during the initial phases of operations in overseas theaters, also sought vigorously to limit that responsibility to the narrow field of relief. This attitude in the end produced serious delays in the provision of rehabilitation supplies necessary for the resuscitation of transportation and communication facilities, and industrial and agricultural production in liberated areas. Slow progress in rehabilitation almost inevitably resulted in larger and larger demands for relief. The experience in every liberated territory pointed to the need for a balanced economic program with internal transport as perhaps the real heart of the problem. The military formula of food, fuel, and sanitary and medical supplies was therefore hardly a satisfactory one.” – Robert W. Coakley and Richard M. Leighton, “The Army and Civilian Supply – I,” Global Logistics and Strategy: 1943-1945
“At the outset of the North African campaign, on 13 November 1942, President Roosevelt declared: ‘No one will go hungry, or without the means of livelihood in any territory occupied by the United Nations, if it is humanly possible within our power to make supplies available to them.’ This announcement heralded the beginning of a civilian supply problem that was to complicate the work of military logisticians immensely. It was not just a matter of humanitarian concern as the President’s announcement might suggest, but one of military necessity. Disease and disorder in rear areas or lack of co-operation from local governments could easily disrupt lines of communications and endanger the success of military operations.” – Robert W. Coakley and Richard M. Leighton, “The Army and Civilian Supply – I,” Global Logistics and Strategy: 1943-1945
“America’s a hustle.” – Noelle Valdivia, “Bliss,” The Penguin
“During the first two years after the German attack in 1941 the urgency of Soviet needs had been so great, the threat of Soviet collapse so imminent and foreboding for the Allied cause, that almost any effort or sacrifice seemed justified in order to deliver supplies. This sense of urgency died hard even under the changed conditions of the last half of the war when victory over Germany and Japan seemed assured. The postwar implications of thus helping to strengthen the Soviet position in Europe and Asia were either not foreseen or ignored.” – Robert W. Coakley and Richard M. Leighton, “Aid to the USSR in the Later War Years,” Global Logistics and Strategy: 1943-1945
“In the postwar period the United States was to be forced to resort to new devices to maintain a going British economy and to bolster British military strength, starting with a loan in 1946 and progressing through the Marshall Plan and the Mutual Security Program. A forthright approach to the problem in 1945 might have saved much lost time and have been more economical in the end. Certainly the restrictive attitude of the JCS [Joint Chiefs of Staff] played some part in preventing such a forthright approach to a situation in which Presidential direction was uncertain and a practical policy vacuum existed. It seems evident that both Roosevelt and Truman, the latter perhaps belatedly after Potsdam, saw the need for helping the British in their postwar economic adjustment, but Roosevelt’s hand was faltering in the last six months of his life and he did not take the necessary steps either to lay down a clear policy for the executive branch to follow or to secure the legislative authority that would have made the course of his successor easier. Without legislative authority, Truman felt his hands were tied, and lend-lease was allowed to lapse without any real consideration of how it might be used as an effective instrument of U.S. policy in promoting postwar adjustments—just as it had been used during hostilities as an extremely effective means for fighting a coalition war.” – Robert W. Coakley and Richard M. Leighton, “The End of the Common Pool,” Global Logistics and Strategy: 1943-1945
“The British did not have quite the same respect for the ‘scientific’ calculation of requirements that the Americans at least professed to have, and regarded the end result as merely an educated guess. It is at least possible that American insistence that the British determine their requirements far in advance was also conditioned less by their confidence in anybody’s ability to do so than by their desire to keep production plans stable and not allow them to be continually disrupted by British demands for bits and pieces.” – Robert W. Coakley and Richard M. Leighton, “Lend-Lease and the Common Pool,” Global Logistics and Strategy: 1943-1945
“There’s much to be said for looting the past.” – Leon Rooke, Shakespeare’s Dog
“The framework of plans for the final massive assault against Japan had been started in 1943 and 1944; the military machine for executing them was in existence and needed only to be moved into position. Schooled in the necessity of preparing for every contingency, fearful that public pressures might lead to the premature dismantling of the military machine, and, for the most part, unaware of the new technological revolution brewing in the laboratories and on the testing grounds, American military staffs continued to work at completing the structure around the framework of plans until the very moment that the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima presented startling evidence of the arrival of a new age in warfare.” – Robert W. Coakley and Richard M. Leighton, “Logistics of a One-Front War,” Global Logistics and Strategy: 1943-1945
“The argument can certainly be made that the Japanese would hardly have surrendered except in the certain knowledge that the United States had the means, the plans, and the intent to invade, whatever the effects of bombing (atomic and conventional), blockade, and Soviet entry into the war. Legitimate criticism can still be directed at the massive scale on which the final effort against Japan was planned when forces of the Army and Navy and of America’s allies are taken into consideration, at the seeming absorption of the military staffs in preparing for the execution of plans that had generated a momentum of their own, and at their failure to take into consideration in their plans the possibility of Japan’s collapse, or to even begin a downward adjustment of force requirements until that collapse was a certainty.” – Robert W. Coakley and Richard M. Leighton, “Logistics of a One-Front War,” Global Logistics and Strategy: 1943-1945
“On 6 August 1945 an American B-29 dropped one atomic bomb on Hiroshima. On 8 August the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and its Far Eastern armies began their march into Manchuria. On 9 August another atomic bomb fell on Nagasaki. On 15 August a Japanese Government that had long before concluded that the war was lost made known its intention to surrender. On 2 September the surrender was consummated in ceremonies aboard the U.S.S. Missouri. The war against Japan thus came to its end in a manner radically different from that which the military planning staffs had envisaged. The elaborate plans and preparations for invasion of Japan had no ultimate utility.” – Robert W. Coakley and Richard M. Leighton, “Logistics of a One-Front War,” Global Logistics and Strategy: 1943-1945
“On many Pacific islands supplies were to deteriorate in open storage until 1950 when the United States was to find a new and unexpected use for them in the Korean War. A naval historian, commenting on the roll-up of naval supplies in the South Pacific, has summed up the effort of the Army just as fittingly: ‘The logic of rolling forward rear bases was impeccable. In the case of personnel its urgency could not be denied. But to set up a cross current against the normal flow of supply and support proved to be extremely difficult, if not impracticable. Much of the usable material was in fact moved forward. The rest remained in the South Pacific to be locally disposed of or to stand as a monument to the unsparing waste of war and the greater importance of time over cost.’ The ‘greater importance of time over cost’ might indeed be designated as the most important factor in logistics in World War II.” – Robert W. Coakley and Richard M. Leighton, “Logistics of a One-Front War,” Global Logistics and Strategy: 1943-1945
“Whenever commerce is introduced into any country probity and punctuality always accompany it.” – Adam Smith, Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue and Arms
“We are dealing with distances half way around the world. We are dealing in personnel by the million. We are dealing with supply in millions of tons. A mass of detail and delicate timing is involved.” – General Brehon B. Somervell, USA, Commanding General, Army Service Forces, May 15, 1945 (as quoted by Robert W. Coakley and Richard M. Leighton, “Logistics of a One-Front War,” Global Logistics and Strategy: 1943-1945)
“That final victory over Japan was assured, there was no longer any doubt in U.S. councils. Timing was the vital question. American staffs, reflecting the temper of American public opinion, were impatient. Their impatience, nevertheless, did not permit them to underestimate Japanese ability to resist. To the Army staff, at least, mass invasion seemed the quickest way, indeed the only way, in which Japanese capitulation could be assured. It was also undoubtedly the costliest way both in human lives and resources.” – Robert W. Coakley and Richard M. Leighton, “The Pacific in Transition,” Global Logistics and Strategy: 1943-1945
“Surprise from above is never as shocking as one from below.” – Dan Gilroy, “The Axe Forgets,” Andor
“There is a history in all men’s lives, figuring the nature of the times deceas’d; the which observ’d, a man may prophesy, with a near aim, of the main chance of things as yet not come to life, which in their seeds and weak beginnings lie intreasured. Such things become the hatch and brood of time.” – William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Second Part 3.1
“Byzantine art was anonymous and impersonal. In the art of western Europe, at any rate since the late Middle ages, individual personalities attract much of our attention, so that the history of European art does not concern itself merely with the evolution of forms: it is also the story of persons who lived known lives, who introduced innovations, who expressed their opinions on art, who exerted an influence on other known artists. Nothing of the kind applied to Byzantine art. In Byzantium artists were regarded as craftsmen and no interest was felt in recording their names or their personalities.” – Cyril Mango, “The Ideal Life,” Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome
“Time in its irresistible and ceaseless flow carries along on its flood all created things, and drowns them in the depths of obscurity, no matter if they be quite unworthy of mention, or most noteworthy and important, and thus, as the tragedian says, ‘he brings from the darkness all things to the birth, and all things born envelops in the night.’ But the tale of history forms a very strong bulwark against the stream of time, and to some extent checks its irresistible flow, and, of all things done in it, as many as history has taken over, it secures and binds together, and does not allow them to slip away into the abyss of oblivion.” – Anna Comnena, Alexiad (trans. Elizabeth A. S. Dawes)
“The body of history is indeed mute and empty if it is deprived of the causes of actions.” – Theophanes Continuatis (as quoted by Cyril Mango in Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome)
“The city was the setting of dances and jests, of taverns, baths and brothels. Women went about with uncovered heads. Everything about them was indecent: their speech, their gestures, their costume, their hair-style, the movement of their limbs and the sidelong glances they cast. Young men, too, such as were to be seen in the city, simulated effeminacy and let their hair grow long. Indeed, people went so far as to decorate their boots.” – Cyril Mango, “The Ideal Life,” Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome
“The human soul was visualized as a citadel that had to be vigilantly guarded against external attack. Its weakest points were its gates which were five in number, corresponding to the five senses. The first gate, that of speech, needed to be fortified by the braces and cross-bars consisting in the constant recitation of Holy Scripture: in this way all undesirable entrants would be excluded. The second gate was that of hearing: it was essential not to admit through it any idle gossip or anything unseemly. The third gate, that of smell, had to be bolted in the face of all sweet scents which had the effect of slackening the ‘tension’ of the soul. The gate of sight was particularly exposed; hence it was important to see as few women as possible and avoid the theatre. The proper function of sight was to behold the beauties of nature. The fifth gate, that of touch, had to be guarded against soft clothing, comfortable beds and contact with other human bodies.” – Cyril Mango, “The Ideal Life,” Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome
“Whatever the shortages of equipment that may have remained in the Pacific by the fall of 1944, none was so serious as the shortage of troop labor to perform the thousand and one tasks involved in the operation of a supply line in territory where facilities were primitive and native labor either nonexistent or totally unskilled. The shortage of service troops in the Pacific was a chronic condition—one that began with the arrival of the first American troops and endured until the end of the war. It was a contributing factor to practically every other problem of Pacific logistics. The shortage of port battalions contributed to every instance of ship congestion, the shortage of Quartermaster troops to every instance of spoiled rations, that of Engineer construction battalions to every instance of failure to build airfields, roads, and other facilities on time. The inadequate supply of service troops imposed far more severe limitations on the pace of the Pacific advance than did the supply of combat units. As General Somervell wrote from the South Pacific in September 1943, it was not ‘a case of “frills”—but one of getting beans, shoes and bullets to the men who are fighting and to save those fighting from being laid out with pestilence,’ of building facilities at primitive bases which the Japanese did not have the resources or ability to match. ‘It would be a great mistake,’ he said, not to supply service troops ‘in full measure and make the most of this advantage.’” – Robert W. Coakley and Richard M. Leighton, “The War Against Japan, 1943-44,” Global Logistics and Strategy: 1943-1945
“God rules mankind by inspiring fear of Hell and promising reward in Heaven, in other words with a stick and a carrot. Likewise, the Emperor governs his subjects through fear: his enemies are thrown in prison, banished, disciplined by the whip, deprived of their eyesight or of their life. Even innocent people ‘serve him in trembling’: they may be sent into battle or given unpleasant tasks, but no one dares to disobey.” – Cyril Mango, Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome
“The first Engineer units sent out were too lightly equipped; they did not have either adequate quantities of equipment or heavy enough equipment for clearing jungles and building in jungle terrain. The initial conception, in fact, was apparently that much of the construction work in the Pacific would be pick and shovel work. It soon became clear that one of the principal points of American superiority over the enemy lay in heavy construction equipment—bulldozers, cranes, rollers, graders, crushers, drilling equipment, power shovels, power saw mills, and so forth—that could do the work of many men.” – Robert W. Coakley and Richard M. Leighton, “The War Against Japan, 1943-44,” Global Logistics and Strategy: 1943-1945
“Multiple handling and transshipment at several points took their toll in breakage, deterioration, and pilferage. Storage north of Australia or New Caledonia was usually inadequate, and deterioration in open storage in a tropical climate appallingly swift. Rations spoiled, canvas rotted, ammunition became unusable, and machinery rusted. ‘There has been considerable wastage in all types of supplies . . . ,’ wrote Somervell from the South Pacific in September 1943. ‘This loss has been particularly high in ammunition and rations. No one really knows how much food has been spoiled. It is certain, however, that as much as 50 percent of some types of ammunition has gone to waste and hundreds of thousands if not millions of rations have been lost.’ In June 1943 an observer thought at least 40 percent of the rations in SWPA [Southwest Pacific Area] spoiled or unconsumable.” – Robert W. Coakley and Richard M. Leighton, “The War Against Japan, 1943-44,” Global Logistics and Strategy: 1943-1945