“In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt but, being season’d with a gracious voice, obscures the show of evil? In religion, what damned error but some sober brow will bless it, and approve it with a text, hiding the grossness with fair ornament? There is no vice so simple but assumes some mark of virtue on his outward parts.” – William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice 3.2
Category: History
“If the Japanese were not, in the last analysis, such formidable opponents as the Germans, their preference for death to surrender, and the mere physical difficulties of mounting operations against their entrenched positions, combined to make them seem so.” – Robert W. Coakley and Richard M. Leighton, Global Logistics and Strategy: 1943-1945
“When a human being was about to expire, a throng of demons would hasten to his deathbed in the expectation of gaining possession of his soul and would be opposed in so doing by the guardian angel. Once the soul had been parted from the body, it had to journey through the air and stop at a number of ‘customs posts’ or ‘toll houses’ (telônia) manned by demons who examined it on its deeds on earth and either let it proceed upon payment of the appropriate due, calculated in good works, or seized it there and then.” – Cyril Mango, Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome
“Demons were always ready to enter the bodies of humans and domesticated animals where, attracted by the warmth and moisture, they could dwell, like parasites, for long years. In doing so they caused various diseases and a derangement of the senses. Not all diseases, of course, were due to demons, and some would respond to medical treatment or curative waters; yet a great many were the result of possession and lay, therefore, beyond the physician’s competence. Only an exorcist could help, and his methods were rough. He would often strike the patient in the chest or throw him to the ground and step upon his neck. The demon, always unwilling to depart, could cause levitation; when forced out, he convulsed the patient, made him tear his clothes, and then left him unconscious. But the cure, once effected, was complete.” – Cyril Mango, Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome
“Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear.” – Tony Gilroy, “Rix Road,” Andor
“Avoid all gentile books. For what need have you of alien writings, laws and false prophets which lead the frivolous away from the faith? What do you find lacking in God’s Law that you should seek those gentile fables? If you wish to read histories, you have the books of Kings; if rhetorical and poetic writings, you have the Prophets, you have Job, you have the Proverbs, wherein you will find a sagacity that is greater than that of all poetry and sophistry since those are the words of our Lord who alone is wise. If you have a desire for songs, you have the Psalms, if for ancient genealogies, you have Genesis; if for legal books and precepts, you have the Lord’s glorious Law. So avoid strenuously all alien and diabolical books.” – Apostolic Constitutions (as quoted by Cyril Mango in Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome)
“Higher education [in the Byzantine Empire] was dispensed by the rhetor or sophist and was available in the larger cities only. The rhetor/sophist, if he held an established chair, was appointed by the local council and received a salary as well as benefitting from certain exemptions. In practice he also received payments or gifts from his pupils. If, on the other hand, he was a free-lance (and many of them were), he depended entirely on fees. There was thus an in-built competition between teachers which occasionally erupted into fights and the kidnapping of students. Boys normally took up higher education at the age of fifteen and pursued it as long as long as their circumstances or their desires dictated: a complete course took about five years, but many left after two or three. Naturally, most of the students came from well-to-do families.” – Cyril Mango, Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome
“If there was one institution that left an indelible mark on the Late Roman and Byzantine way of life, that was surely taxation. The imposition of regular and extraordinary levies—in kind upon the farmer and in money upon the merchant and artisan—was meant to be equitable; in fact, it hit the agricultural population harder than the urban, the poor much more than the rich.” – Cyril Mango, Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome
“If the slave was generally absent from the rural landscape, the tenant farmer (colonus) was an important feature of it. A man of degraded and anomalous status, the colonus was theoretically free, but in practice tied to his plot. He was, as a law of [AD] 393 puts it, ‘a slave of the land’. His condition was hereditary, his freedom to marry restricted, and he could not even join the army. The master of his land collected his taxes and was empowered to put him in chains if he tried to run away. It was openly admitted by the government that there was little difference between the status of a slave and that of a colonus. The authorities, of course, were not animated by pure sadism in curbing the liberties of the tenant farmer; their primary concern was the collection of tax.” – Cyril Mango, Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome
“The archaeological exploration of the Limestone Massif in northern Syria, a region that attained great prosperity thanks to the cultivation of the olive tree, has shown not only the co-existence of large and small holdings, but also a general trend, in the period extending from the fourth to the sixth century [AD], towards the break-up of the bigger estates and the growth of villages composed of relatively well-to-do, independent farmers. While the conditions in the Limestone Massif were probably untypical of the rest of Syria, not to speak of other parts of the Empire, they serve to emphasize the danger of drawing general conclusions from literary and legislative texts.” – Cyril Mango, Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome
“We have from the sixth century [AD] a much more elaborate classification of the civilian part of [Byzantine] society into ten groups, namely: 1. The clergy; 2. The judiciary; 3. Counsellors (senators?); 4. Those concerned with finance; 5. Professional and technical; 6. Commercial; 7. Those concerned with the provision of raw materials; 8. Subordinates and servants; 9. The useless (in other words, the old, the infirm and the insane); 10. Entertainers (charioteers, musicians, actors).” – Cyril Mango, Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome
“The records of the central government (and it should be remembered that the Byzantine Empire was a bureaucratic state par excellence), of the provincial administration, of the Church, of secular landlords, tenants, merchants and shopkeepers have all disappeared. As a result, we have no reliable population figures, no registers of births, marriages and deaths, no trade figures, no taxation figures—practically nothing, in short, that can be counted and used for statistical purposes.” – Cyril Mango, Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome
“In a world full of wonders man invented boredom.” – Wendy Northcutt, The Darwin Awards: Next Evolution
“The bombers, both of the attacking and the diversionary force, came through with no losses and with a minimum of damage. Enemy opposition had been slight. Antiaircraft fire was observed at two places, but only two planes sustained damage, and that slight. Fighter opposition was negligible. Three Me-109’s attacked the formation, and several others put in a silent appearance. Of those attacking, one was claimed as damaged by fire from the B-17’s. The bomber crews received no injury at all from enemy action, the only casualties having occurred when, on the way home, one plane hit a pigeon and the shattered glass from the nose of the bomber slightly injured the bombardier and navigator.” – Arthur B. Ferguson, “Rouen-Sotteville No. 1, 17 August 1942” (from James Lea Cate and Wesley Frank Craven, The Army Air Forces in World War II, Vol. One, Plans and Early Operations)
“The advisability of getting its crews into the United Kingdom outweighed the desirability of more thorough training before departure. But this meant that crews arrived with little or no experience in high-altitude flying. Pilots and co-pilots had received little instruction in flying formations at any altitude, to say nothing of maintaining tight formations at the extreme altitudes planned for day bomber missions. Many of the radio operators could neither send nor receive the Morse code. Worse yet, the gunners proved to be almost completely unfamiliar with their equipment. Many of them had had little or no opportunity to shoot at aerial targets, and several had never operated a turret in the air. This deficiency was especially disturbing to the Eighth Air Force experts because they felt sure that the ability of the heavy bombers to destroy enemy targets by daylight without prohibitive loss would depend in large part on their ability to defend themselves against enemy fighters.” – Arthur B. Ferguson, “Rouen-Sotteville No. 1, 17 August 1942” (from James Lea Cate and Wesley Frank Craven, The Army Air Forces in World War II, Vol. One, Plans and Early Operations)
“Let us sit upon the ground, and tell sad stories of the death of kings:—how some have been depos’d; some slain in war; some haunted by the ghosts they have depos’d; some poison’d by their wives; some sleeping kill’d; all murder’d:—for within the hollow crown that rounds the mortal temples of a king keeps Death his court.” – William Shakespeare, The Life and Death of King Richard II 3.2
“When Canens sang, cold rocks were moved to tears, or seemed less granite than a rock should be, the trees were swayed, rough beasts grew sentimental, and busy rivers winding miles away began to rest, to float, to fall asleep, and birds who heard her half-forgot to fly.” – Ovid: The Metamorphoses, trans. Horace Gregory
“Combat crews [on Umnak Island, Alaska] set up their own tents and until 5 June [1942] cooked their own meals. Their bivouac area was a sea of mud; water covered the ground inside many of their tents and all crews were on alert from dawn to dark, which at that time of the year extended from 0400 to 2300. They went with little or no sleep for 48-hour periods, and they performed much of their own maintenance, pumping the gas from barrels and pouring oil from five-gallon cans.” – Kramer J. Rohfleisch, “Drawing the Battle Line in the Pacific” (from James Lea Cate and Wesley Frank Craven, The Army Air Forces in World War II, Vol. One, Plans and Early Operations)
“Military necessity gave the greatest strategic importance to that section of the country [Australia] which had been least developed; the main centers of population, wealth, and transportation were in the southeast, whereas the north and northeast now held the position of key military importance. The difficulty of transporting goods overland from Brisbane to Darwin was as great as from Darwin to the Philippines, if not so dangerous. No railroad connected the two cities, which were 2,500 miles apart by the most expeditious land route. For over a quarter of this distance only a rough motor road cut through the central desert, and this road ended approximately 300 miles from Darwin to connect with a railway capable of carrying no more than 300 tons of freight per day. Repair facilities were inadequate for maintenance of either road or railway, and some of the rolling stock literally buckled under the weight of heavy American equipment.” – Richard L. Watson, “Pearl Harbor and Clark Field” (from James Lea Cate and Wesley Frank Craven, The Army Air Forces in World War II, Vol. One, Plans and Early Operations)
“[O]ne spectacular new air weapon, a drone bomb, was tested against Japanese targets . . . . The drones, specially built planes capable of carrying a 2,000-pound bomb, were radio controlled by torpedo bombers of a special naval test unit. Synchronized television screens in drone and control planes enabled the controllers to view what was ahead of the drones and to crash them against point targets. After test attacks . . . . [t]he results were inconclusive. . . . [T]here was a future for this weapon, but . . . it needed more development work and better aircraft.” – Henry I. Shaw, Jr., and Major Douglas T. Kane, USMC, Isolation of Rabaul, History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, Vol. II, “Part VI, Conclusion”
“The days passed in a blur. Every day we sent the Zeros up on frantic interception flights. The young and inexperienced student pilots had become battle-hardened veterans, their faces showing the sudden realization of death all about them. Not for a moment did the Americans ease their relentless pressure. Day and night the bombers came to pound Rabaul, to smash at the airfield and shipping in the harbor, while the fighters screamed low in daring strafing passes, shooting up anything they considered a worthwhile target.” – Commander Masatake Okumiya (quoted in Henry I. Shaw, Jr., and Major Douglas T. Kane, USMC, Isolation of Rabaul, History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, Vol. II, “Part V, Marine Air Against Rabaul”)
“One of the major points which has too often been overlooked in an evaluation of fighting power, but which determined to a large extent the efficiency of air units, was that of hygienic installations. Japanese engineers paid scant attention to this problem, dismissing the pressing matter of mosquito protection by simply rigging mosquito nets in personnel quarters. Sanitary facilities were basically crude and ineffective; certainly they contributed nothing to the morale of ground and air crews. The Americans, by contrast, swept clean vast areas surrounding their ground installations with advanced mechanical aids. Through exhaustive disinfecting operations, they banished flies and mosquitos from their airbases and paid similar attention to every phase of sanitation and disease. Some may consider this a prosaic matter, but it was vital to the men forced to live on desert islands and in the midst of jungles swarming with disease and insect life. The inevitable outcome of such neglect was a tremendous difference in the health of the American and Japanese personnel who were assigned to these forward air facilities.” – Commander Terufumi Kofukuda (quoted in Henry I. Shaw, Jr., and Major Douglas T. Kane, USMC, Isolation of Rabaul, History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, Vol. II, “Part V, Marine Air Against Rabaul”)
“Fighter pilot or bomber crewman, the Japanese naval flyer who fought at Rabaul was aware that he was waging a losing battle. The plane he flew was a torch, waiting only an incendiary bullet to set it alight. The gaping holes in his unit left by the death of veterans were filled by young, inexperienced replacements, more a liability than an asset in combat air operations. Despite the handicaps under which he fought—out-numbered, out-gunned, and out-flown—the enemy flyers fought, tenaciously right up to the day when Rabaul was abandoned to its ground defenders.” – Henry I. Shaw, Jr., and Major Douglas T. Kane, USMC, Isolation of Rabaul, History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, Vol. II, “Part V, Marine Air Against Rabaul”
“The [Japanese] pilots who began the war averaged 800 hours of flying time, and many of them had combat experience in China. Relatively few of these men survived until the end of 1943; a great many died at Coral Sea and Midway and in air battles over Guadalcanal.” – Henry I. Shaw, Jr., and Major Douglas T. Kane, USMC, Isolation of Rabaul, History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, Vol. II, “Part V, Marine Air Against Rabaul”
“There was no [Japanese] plane that flew from Rabaul that was not a potential flaming death trap to its crew. To meet the specifications outlined by the Japanese Navy, aircraft designers sacrificed safety to achieve maneuverability in fighters and long range in bombers.” – Henry I. Shaw, Jr., and Major Douglas T. Kane, USMC, Isolation of Rabaul, History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, Vol. II, “Part V, Marine Air Against Rabaul”
“Much of the plane [Mitsubishi ‘Betty’] was built of lightweight magnesium, a very inflammable metal, and in the wing roots and body between were poorly protected fuel and oil tanks. The result was a highly vulnerable aircraft so prone to burst into flames when hit that Japanese aircrews nicknamed it ‘Type 1 Lighter.’” – Henry I. Shaw, Jr., and Major Douglas T. Kane, USMC, Isolation of Rabaul, History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, Vol. II, “Part V, Marine Air Against Rabaul”
“It cannot be stressed enough that without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire.” – Zbigniew Brzezenski (quoted by Tim Judah in “Ukraine on the Brink”)
“A marked tendency to overstate successes has been a consistent feature of Russian intelligence and military BDA [Battle Damage Assessments] and planning cycles during the period leading up to and then during the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. This is an almost unavoidable consequence of the way that the Russian political system works, where reporting what seniors wish to hear, reinforcing their previous decisions and inflating successes, is an absolute prerequisite for promotion to higher rank.” – Justin Bronk, et al., “The Russian Air War and Ukrainian Requirements for Air Defense”
“Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed. Consequently he who molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed.” – Abraham Lincoln, 1858
“The one irredeemable error of a supply program is not too much, but too little.” – “Report of War Department Procurement Review Board” (quoted in Robert W. Coakley and Richard M. Leighton, Global Logistics and Strategy: 1943-1945)