Category Archive: HISTORY
BDS on Wagner
Forget the picket at Max Brenner’s, the Jewish chocolatiers! There’s a Boycott Divestment and Sanctions Movement against the playing of Wagner‘s works in Israel. We learn from an interesting piece in ‘The Australian’ of 13 May 2017, by Vic Alhadeff, the chief executive of the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies, that there is a longstanding unofficial ban, despite recent attempts to overcome it by such luminaries as Daniel Barenboim. Mr Alhadeff refers, as part of his case, to the repulsive pamphlet, “Jewry in Music” which is certainly strident and virulent, but might more properly be seen as a reflection of Wagner’s…
Continue Reading →Monkeying About
water-colour of Charles Darwin by George Richmond
May 5, 1925: Teacher John Scopes is charged with having taught evolution in a Tennessee school. Originally designed as a means of putting the town of Dayton on the map, the case became a circus when Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan rolled into town as defence and prosecuting counsel. The whole affair became a hoary old film of which The Varnished Culture has previously spoken. Scopes was convicted and fined $100 (which was overturned on appeal because, unusually, the penalty had to be stipulated by the jury rather than the trial judge). But Dayton did great business that summer….
Continue Reading →The Worst Laid Plans
Fish in a barrel
April 25, 1915: The Gallipoli gambit As Robert Burns had written, to a mouse, a mere 130 years before, “The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men Gang aft agley.” So it was with the British venture into the Dardanelles. (We described this catastrophe in detail on the 100th anniversary). Described as “a brilliant idea in theory“* it was a complete botch in practice, the donkeys in British Army central-planning winging it as they went. After all, attacking fortified cliffs with minimal support, troops “pinned down on the rocky shore, unable to reach the top of the hills and move into open…
Continue Reading →Try to Forget…
Ein Urlaubstag des Kanzlers in seinem Hause auf dem Obersalzberg bei Berchtesgaden. Auch in der Urlaubszeit arbeitet der Kanzler, neben ihm sitzend Ministerpräsident Göring. 490-38
Adolf Hitler (born 20 April, 1889 – died 30 April 1945) This garrulous monk of ravenous bent, Of whom the Duce said “Non mi piace“, Who in every message sent Sold fear at length and very archly And much that he meant. While promising Germany greatness again His goons torched the Reichstag, thus warming-up A war-ready State that was greedy for gain, Enlivened by monstering Röhm and Krupp, Tagging a part of the people as bane. He chewed upon hunks of shriveling maps, He bit and swallowed, he gulped and blew, While better men showed convulsive flaps, Appeasing while his confidence grew, Setting and priming…
Continue Reading →O Captain! My Captain!
Post mortem image taken by John B. Bachelder
Bad Night at Ford’s Theater, Good Friday, April 14, 1865. Our great pal Torrie reminds us that since 1865, Good Friday has fallen on April 14 only in the years 1876, 1911, 1922, 1933, 1995 and 2006. And now again. It marks the seventh such Good Friday since a Great Man was felled by an assassin’s pistol, less than a week after the Confederate surrender had restored the Union of the American States. As citizens of a world in which America has played such a dominant part for over…
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