Saturday, May 31, 2014

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: Cheyenne to Deadwood - $20

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: Cheyenne to Deadwood - $20

The Big Speech: An Essay on Criticism by Alexander Pope

PART 1
'Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill
Appear in writing or in judging ill;
But, of the two, less dang'rous is th' offence
To tire our patience, than mislead our sense.
Some few in that, but numbers err in this,
Ten censure wrong for one who writes amiss;
A fool might once himself alone expose,
Now one in verse makes many more in prose.

       'Tis with our judgments as our watches, none
Go just alike, yet each believes his own.
In poets as true genius is but rare,
True taste as seldom is the critic's share;
Both must alike from Heav'n derive their light,
These born to judge, as well as those to write.
Let such teach others who themselves excel,
And censure freely who have written well.
Authors are partial to their wit, 'tis true,
But are not critics to their judgment too?

       Yet if we look more closely we shall find
Most have the seeds of judgment in their mind;
Nature affords at least a glimm'ring light;
The lines, tho' touch'd but faintly, are drawn right.
But as the slightest sketch, if justly trac'd,
Is by ill colouring but the more disgrac'd,
So by false learning is good sense defac'd;
Some are bewilder'd in the maze of schools,
And some made coxcombs Nature meant but fools.
In search of wit these lose their common sense,
And then turn critics in their own defence:
Each burns alike, who can, or cannot write,
Or with a rival's, or an eunuch's spite.
All fools have still an itching to deride,
And fain would be upon the laughing side.
If Mævius scribble in Apollo's spite,
There are, who judge still worse than he can write.

       Some have at first for wits, then poets pass'd,
Turn'd critics next, and prov'd plain fools at last;
Some neither can for wits nor critics pass,
As heavy mules are neither horse nor ass.
Those half-learn'd witlings, num'rous in our isle
As half-form'd insects on the banks of Nile;
Unfinish'd things, one knows not what to call,
Their generation's so equivocal:
To tell 'em, would a hundred tongues require,
Or one vain wit's, that might a hundred tire.

       But you who seek to give and merit fame,
And justly bear a critic's noble name,
Be sure your self and your own reach to know,
How far your genius, taste, and learning go;
Launch not beyond your depth, but be discreet,
And mark that point where sense and dulness meet.

     Nature to all things fix'd the limits fit,
And wisely curb'd proud man's pretending wit:
As on the land while here the ocean gains,
In other parts it leaves wide sandy plains;
Thus in the soul while memory prevails,
The solid pow'r of understanding fails;
Where beams of warm imagination play,
The memory's soft figures melt away.
One science only will one genius fit;
So vast is art, so narrow human wit:
Not only bounded to peculiar arts,
But oft in those, confin'd to single parts.
Like kings we lose the conquests gain'd before,
By vain ambition still to make them more;
Each might his sev'ral province well command,
Would all but stoop to what they understand.

       First follow NATURE, and your judgment frame
By her just standard, which is still the same:
Unerring Nature, still divinely bright,
One clear, unchang'd, and universal light,
Life, force, and beauty, must to all impart,
At once the source, and end, and test of art.
Art from that fund each just supply provides,
Works without show, and without pomp presides:
In some fair body thus th' informing soul
With spirits feeds, with vigour fills the whole,
Each motion guides, and ev'ry nerve sustains;
Itself unseen, but in th' effects, remains.
Some, to whom Heav'n in wit has been profuse,
Want as much more, to turn it to its use;
For wit and judgment often are at strife,
Though meant each other's aid, like man and wife.
'Tis more to guide, than spur the Muse's steed;
Restrain his fury, than provoke his speed;
The winged courser, like a gen'rous horse,
Shows most true mettle when you check his course.

       Those RULES of old discover'd, not devis'd,
Are Nature still, but Nature methodis'd;
Nature, like liberty, is but restrain'd
By the same laws which first herself ordain'd.

       Hear how learn'd Greece her useful rules indites,
When to repress, and when indulge our flights:
High on Parnassus' top her sons she show'd,
And pointed out those arduous paths they trod;
Held from afar, aloft, th' immortal prize,
And urg'd the rest by equal steps to rise.
Just precepts thus from great examples giv'n,
She drew from them what they deriv'd from Heav'n.
The gen'rous critic fann'd the poet's fire,
And taught the world with reason to admire.
Then criticism the Muse's handmaid prov'd,
To dress her charms, and make her more belov'd;
But following wits from that intention stray'd;
Who could not win the mistress, woo'd the maid;
Against the poets their own arms they turn'd,
Sure to hate most the men from whom they learn'd.
So modern 'pothecaries, taught the art
By doctor's bills to play the doctor's part,
Bold in the practice of mistaken rules,
Prescribe, apply, and call their masters fools.
Some on the leaves of ancient authors prey,
Nor time nor moths e'er spoil'd so much as they:
Some drily plain, without invention's aid,
Write dull receipts how poems may be made:
These leave the sense, their learning to display,
And those explain the meaning quite away.

       You then whose judgment the right course would steer,
Know well each ANCIENT'S proper character;
His fable, subject, scope in ev'ry page;
Religion, country, genius of his age:
Without all these at once before your eyes,
Cavil you may, but never criticise.
Be Homer's works your study and delight,
Read them by day, and meditate by night;
Thence form your judgment, thence your maxims bring,
And trace the Muses upward to their spring;
Still with itself compar'd, his text peruse;
And let your comment be the Mantuan Muse.

      When first young Maro in his boundless mind
A work t' outlast immortal Rome design'd,
Perhaps he seem'd above the critic's law,
And but from Nature's fountains scorn'd to draw:
But when t' examine ev'ry part he came,
Nature and Homer were, he found, the same.
Convinc'd, amaz'd, he checks the bold design,
And rules as strict his labour'd work confine,
As if the Stagirite o'erlook'd each line.
Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem;
To copy nature is to copy them.

       Some beauties yet, no precepts can declare,
For there's a happiness as well as care.
Music resembles poetry, in each
Are nameless graces which no methods teach,
And which a master-hand alone can reach.
If, where the rules not far enough extend,
(Since rules were made but to promote their end)
Some lucky LICENCE answers to the full
Th' intent propos'd, that licence is a rule.
Thus Pegasus, a nearer way to take,
May boldly deviate from the common track.
Great wits sometimes may gloriously offend,
And rise to faults true critics dare not mend;
From vulgar bounds with brave disorder part,
And snatch a grace beyond the reach of art,
Which, without passing through the judgment, gains
The heart, and all its end at once attains.
In prospects, thus, some objects please our eyes,
Which out of nature's common order rise,
The shapeless rock, or hanging precipice.
But tho' the ancients thus their rules invade,
(As kings dispense with laws themselves have made)
Moderns, beware! or if you must offend
Against the precept, ne'er transgress its end;
Let it be seldom, and compell'd by need,
And have, at least, their precedent to plead.
The critic else proceeds without remorse,
Seizes your fame, and puts his laws in force.

       I know there are, to whose presumptuous thoughts
Those freer beauties, ev'n in them, seem faults.
Some figures monstrous and misshap'd appear,
Consider'd singly, or beheld too near,
Which, but proportion'd to their light, or place,
Due distance reconciles to form and grace.
A prudent chief not always must display
His pow'rs in equal ranks, and fair array,
But with th' occasion and the place comply,
Conceal his force, nay seem sometimes to fly.
Those oft are stratagems which errors seem,
Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream.

       Still green with bays each ancient altar stands,
Above the reach of sacrilegious hands,
Secure from flames, from envy's fiercer rage,
Destructive war, and all-involving age.
See, from each clime the learn'd their incense bring!
Hear, in all tongues consenting pæans ring!
In praise so just let ev'ry voice be join'd,
And fill the gen'ral chorus of mankind!
Hail, bards triumphant! born in happier days;
Immortal heirs of universal praise!
Whose honours with increase of ages grow,
As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow!
Nations unborn your mighty names shall sound,
And worlds applaud that must not yet be found!
Oh may some spark of your celestial fire
The last, the meanest of your sons inspire,
(That on weak wings, from far, pursues your flights;
Glows while he reads, but trembles as he writes)
To teach vain wits a science little known,
T' admire superior sense, and doubt their own!

 Part 2
Of all the causes which conspire to blind
Man's erring judgment, and misguide the mind,
What the weak head with strongest bias rules,
Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools.
Whatever Nature has in worth denied,
She gives in large recruits of needful pride;
For as in bodies, thus in souls, we find
What wants in blood and spirits, swell'd with wind;
Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence,
And fills up all the mighty void of sense!
If once right reason drives that cloud away,
Truth breaks upon us with resistless day;
Trust not yourself; but your defects to know,
Make use of ev'ry friend—and ev'ry foe.

       A little learning is a dang'rous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Fir'd at first sight with what the Muse imparts,
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts,
While from the bounded level of our mind,
Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind,
But more advanc'd, behold with strange surprise
New, distant scenes of endless science rise!
So pleas'd at first, the tow'ring Alps we try,
Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky;
Th' eternal snows appear already past,
And the first clouds and mountains seem the last;
But those attain'd, we tremble to survey
The growing labours of the lengthen'd way,
Th' increasing prospect tires our wand'ring eyes,
Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!

       A perfect judge will read each work of wit
With the same spirit that its author writ,
Survey the whole, nor seek slight faults to find,
Where nature moves, and rapture warms the mind;
Nor lose, for that malignant dull delight,
The gen'rous pleasure to be charm'd with wit.
But in such lays as neither ebb, nor flow,
Correctly cold, and regularly low,
That shunning faults, one quiet tenour keep;
We cannot blame indeed—but we may sleep.
In wit, as nature, what affects our hearts
Is not th' exactness of peculiar parts;
'Tis not a lip, or eye, we beauty call,
But the joint force and full result of all.
Thus when we view some well-proportion'd dome,
(The world's just wonder, and ev'n thine, O Rome!'
No single parts unequally surprise;
All comes united to th' admiring eyes;
No monstrous height, or breadth, or length appear;
The whole at once is bold, and regular.

       Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see,
Thinks what ne'er was, nor is, nor e'er shall be.
In ev'ry work regard the writer's end,
Since none can compass more than they intend;
And if the means be just, the conduct true,
Applause, in spite of trivial faults, is due.
As men of breeding, sometimes men of wit,
T' avoid great errors, must the less commit:
Neglect the rules each verbal critic lays,
For not to know such trifles, is a praise.
Most critics, fond of some subservient art,
Still make the whole depend upon a part:
They talk of principles, but notions prize,
And all to one lov'd folly sacrifice.

    Once on a time, La Mancha's knight, they say,
A certain bard encount'ring on the way,
Discours'd in terms as just, with looks as sage,
As e'er could Dennis of the Grecian stage;
Concluding all were desp'rate sots and fools,
Who durst depart from Aristotle's rules.
Our author, happy in a judge so nice,
Produc'd his play, and begg'd the knight's advice,
Made him observe the subject and the plot,
The manners, passions, unities, what not?
All which, exact to rule, were brought about,
Were but a combat in the lists left out.
"What! leave the combat out?" exclaims the knight;
"Yes, or we must renounce the Stagirite."
"Not so by Heav'n" (he answers in a rage)
"Knights, squires, and steeds, must enter on the stage."
So vast a throng the stage can ne'er contain.
"Then build a new, or act it in a plain."

       Thus critics, of less judgment than caprice,
Curious not knowing, not exact but nice,
Form short ideas; and offend in arts
(As most in manners) by a love to parts.

       Some to conceit alone their taste confine,
And glitt'ring thoughts struck out at ev'ry line;
Pleas'd with a work where nothing's just or fit;
One glaring chaos and wild heap of wit.
Poets, like painters, thus, unskill'd to trace
The naked nature and the living grace,
With gold and jewels cover ev'ry part,
And hide with ornaments their want of art.
True wit is nature to advantage dress'd,
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd,
Something, whose truth convinc'd at sight we find,
That gives us back the image of our mind.
As shades more sweetly recommend the light,
So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit.
For works may have more wit than does 'em good,
As bodies perish through excess of blood.

       Others for language all their care express,
And value books, as women men, for dress:
Their praise is still—"the style is excellent":
The sense, they humbly take upon content.
Words are like leaves; and where they most abound,
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.
False eloquence, like the prismatic glass,
Its gaudy colours spreads on ev'ry place;
The face of Nature we no more survey,
All glares alike, without distinction gay:
But true expression, like th' unchanging sun,
Clears, and improves whate'er it shines upon,
It gilds all objects, but it alters none.
Expression is the dress of thought, and still
Appears more decent, as more suitable;
A vile conceit in pompous words express'd,
Is like a clown in regal purple dress'd:
For diff'rent styles with diff'rent subjects sort,
As several garbs with country, town, and court.
Some by old words to fame have made pretence,
Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense;
Such labour'd nothings, in so strange a style,
Amaze th' unlearn'd, and make the learned smile.
Unlucky, as Fungoso in the play,
These sparks with awkward vanity display
What the fine gentleman wore yesterday!
And but so mimic ancient wits at best,
As apes our grandsires, in their doublets dress'd.
In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold;
Alike fantastic, if too new, or old;
Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Not yet the last to lay the old aside.

     But most by numbers judge a poet's song;
And smooth or rough, with them is right or wrong:
In the bright Muse though thousand charms conspire,
Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire,
Who haunt Parnassus but to please their ear,
Not mend their minds; as some to church repair,
Not for the doctrine, but the music there.
These equal syllables alone require,
Tho' oft the ear the open vowels tire,
While expletives their feeble aid do join,
And ten low words oft creep in one dull line,
While they ring round the same unvaried chimes,
With sure returns of still expected rhymes.
Where'er you find "the cooling western breeze",
In the next line, it "whispers through the trees":
If "crystal streams with pleasing murmurs creep",
The reader's threaten'd (not in vain) with "sleep".
Then, at the last and only couplet fraught
With some unmeaning thing they call a thought,
A needless Alexandrine ends the song,
That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.
Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes, and know
What's roundly smooth, or languishingly slow;
And praise the easy vigour of a line,
Where Denham's strength, and Waller's sweetness join.
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.
'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense.
Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar.
When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,
The line too labours, and the words move slow;
Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main.
Hear how Timotheus' varied lays surprise,
And bid alternate passions fall and rise!
While, at each change, the son of Libyan Jove
Now burns with glory, and then melts with love;
Now his fierce eyes with sparkling fury glow,
Now sighs steal out, and tears begin to flow:
Persians and Greeks like turns of nature found,
And the world's victor stood subdu'd by sound!
The pow'r of music all our hearts allow,
And what Timotheus was, is Dryden now.

       Avoid extremes; and shun the fault of such,
Who still are pleas'd too little or too much.
At ev'ry trifle scorn to take offence,
That always shows great pride, or little sense;
Those heads, as stomachs, are not sure the best,
Which nauseate all, and nothing can digest.
Yet let not each gay turn thy rapture move,
For fools admire, but men of sense approve;
As things seem large which we through mists descry,
Dulness is ever apt to magnify.

        Some foreign writers, some our own despise;
The ancients only, or the moderns prize.
Thus wit, like faith, by each man is applied
To one small sect, and all are damn'd beside.
Meanly they seek the blessing to confine,
And force that sun but on a part to shine;
Which not alone the southern wit sublimes,
But ripens spirits in cold northern climes;
Which from the first has shone on ages past,
Enlights the present, and shall warm the last;
(Though each may feel increases and decays,
And see now clearer and now darker days.)
Regard not then if wit be old or new,
But blame the false, and value still the true.
Some ne'er advance a judgment of their own,
But catch the spreading notion of the town;
They reason and conclude by precedent,
And own stale nonsense which they ne'er invent.
Some judge of authors' names, not works, and then
Nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men.
Of all this servile herd, the worst is he
That in proud dulness joins with quality,
A constant critic at the great man's board,
To fetch and carry nonsense for my Lord.
What woeful stuff this madrigal would be,
In some starv'd hackney sonneteer, or me?
But let a Lord once own the happy lines,
How the wit brightens! how the style refines!
Before his sacred name flies every fault,
And each exalted stanza teems with thought!

       The vulgar thus through imitation err;
As oft the learn'd by being singular;
So much they scorn the crowd, that if the throng
By chance go right, they purposely go wrong:
So Schismatics the plain believers quit,
And are but damn'd for having too much wit.

       Some praise at morning what they blame at night;
But always think the last opinion right.
A Muse by these is like a mistress us'd,
This hour she's idoliz'd, the next abus'd;
While their weak heads, like towns unfortified,
Twixt sense and nonsense daily change their side.
Ask them the cause; they're wiser still, they say;
And still tomorrow's wiser than today.
We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow;
Our wiser sons, no doubt, will think us so.
Once school divines this zealous isle o'erspread;
Who knew most Sentences, was deepest read;
Faith, Gospel, all, seem'd made to be disputed,
And none had sense enough to be confuted:
Scotists and Thomists, now, in peace remain,
Amidst their kindred cobwebs in Duck Lane.
If Faith itself has different dresses worn,
What wonder modes in wit should take their turn?
Oft, leaving what is natural and fit,
The current folly proves the ready wit;
And authors think their reputation safe
Which lives as long as fools are pleased to laugh.

       Some valuing those of their own side or mind,
Still make themselves the measure of mankind;
Fondly we think we honour merit then,
When we but praise ourselves in other men.
Parties in wit attend on those of state,
And public faction doubles private hate.
Pride, Malice, Folly, against Dryden rose,
In various shapes of Parsons, Critics, Beaus;
But sense surviv'd, when merry jests were past;
For rising merit will buoy up at last.
Might he return, and bless once more our eyes,
New Blackmores and new Milbourns must arise;
Nay should great Homer lift his awful head,
Zoilus again would start up from the dead.
Envy will merit, as its shade, pursue,
But like a shadow, proves the substance true;
For envied wit, like Sol eclips'd, makes known
Th' opposing body's grossness, not its own.
When first that sun too powerful beams displays,
It draws up vapours which obscure its rays;
But ev'n those clouds at last adorn its way,
Reflect new glories, and augment the day.


Be thou the first true merit to befriend;
His praise is lost, who stays till all commend.
Short is the date, alas, of modern rhymes,
And 'tis but just to let 'em live betimes.
No longer now that golden age appears,
When patriarch wits surviv'd a thousand years:
Now length of Fame (our second life) is lost,
And bare threescore is all ev'n that can boast;
Our sons their fathers' failing language see,
And such as Chaucer is, shall Dryden be.
So when the faithful pencil has design'd
Some bright idea of the master's mind,
Where a new world leaps out at his command,
And ready Nature waits upon his hand;
When the ripe colours soften and unite,
And sweetly melt into just shade and light;
When mellowing years their full perfection give,
And each bold figure just begins to live,
The treacherous colours the fair art betray,
And all the bright creation fades away!

       Unhappy wit, like most mistaken things,
Atones not for that envy which it brings.
In youth alone its empty praise we boast,
But soon the short-liv'd vanity is lost:
Like some fair flow'r the early spring supplies,
That gaily blooms, but ev'n in blooming dies.
What is this wit, which must our cares employ?
The owner's wife, that other men enjoy;
Then most our trouble still when most admir'd,
And still the more we give, the more requir'd;
Whose fame with pains we guard, but lose with ease,
Sure some to vex, but never all to please;
'Tis what the vicious fear, the virtuous shun;
By fools 'tis hated, and by knaves undone!

       If wit so much from ign'rance undergo,
Ah let not learning too commence its foe!
Of old, those met rewards who could excel,
And such were prais'd who but endeavour'd well:
Though triumphs were to gen'rals only due,
Crowns were reserv'd to grace the soldiers too.
Now, they who reach Parnassus' lofty crown,
Employ their pains to spurn some others down;

       And while self-love each jealous writer rules,
Contending wits become the sport of fools:
But still the worst with most regret commend,
For each ill author is as bad a friend.
To what base ends, and by what abject ways,
Are mortals urg'd through sacred lust of praise!
Ah ne'er so dire a thirst of glory boast,
Nor in the critic let the man be lost!
Good nature and good sense must ever join;
To err is human; to forgive, divine.

 But if in noble minds some dregs remain,
Not yet purg'd off, of spleen and sour disdain,
Discharge that rage on more provoking crimes,
Nor fear a dearth in these flagitious times.
No pardon vile obscenity should find,
Though wit and art conspire to move your mind;
But dulness with obscenity must prove
As shameful sure as impotence in love.
In the fat age of pleasure, wealth, and ease,
Sprung the rank weed, and thriv'd with large increase:
When love was all an easy monarch's care;
Seldom at council, never in a war:
Jilts ruled the state, and statesmen farces writ;
Nay wits had pensions, and young Lords had wit:
The fair sat panting at a courtier's play,
And not a mask went unimprov'd away:
The modest fan was lifted up no more,
And virgins smil'd at what they blush'd before.
The following licence of a foreign reign
Did all the dregs of bold Socinus drain;
Then unbelieving priests reform'd the nation,
And taught more pleasant methods of salvation;
Where Heav'n's free subjects might their rights dispute,
Lest God himself should seem too absolute:
Pulpits their sacred satire learned to spare,
And Vice admired to find a flatt'rer there!
Encourag'd thus, wit's Titans brav'd the skies,
And the press groan'd with licenc'd blasphemies.
These monsters, critics! with your darts engage,
Here point your thunder, and exhaust your rage!
Yet shun their fault, who, scandalously nice,
Will needs mistake an author into vice;
All seems infected that th' infected spy,
As all looks yellow to the jaundic'd eye.
Part 3
Learn then what morals critics ought to show,
For 'tis but half a judge's task, to know.
'Tis not enough, taste, judgment, learning, join;
In all you speak, let truth and candour shine:
That not alone what to your sense is due,
All may allow; but seek your friendship too.

       Be silent always when you doubt your sense;
And speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence:
Some positive, persisting fops we know,
Who, if once wrong, will needs be always so;
But you, with pleasure own your errors past,
And make each day a critic on the last.

       'Tis not enough, your counsel still be true;
Blunt truths more mischief than nice falsehoods do;
Men must be taught as if you taught them not;
And things unknown proposed as things forgot.
Without good breeding, truth is disapprov'd;
That only makes superior sense belov'd.

       Be niggards of advice on no pretence;
For the worst avarice is that of sense.
With mean complacence ne'er betray your trust,
Nor be so civil as to prove unjust.
Fear not the anger of the wise to raise;
Those best can bear reproof, who merit praise.

   'Twere well might critics still this freedom take,
But Appius reddens at each word you speak,
And stares, Tremendous ! with a threatening eye,
Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry!
Fear most to tax an honourable fool,
Whose right it is, uncensur'd, to be dull;
Such, without wit, are poets when they please,
As without learning they can take degrees.
Leave dangerous truths to unsuccessful satires,
And flattery to fulsome dedicators,
Whom, when they praise, the world believes no more,
Than when they promise to give scribbling o'er.
'Tis best sometimes your censure to restrain,
And charitably let the dull be vain:
Your silence there is better than your spite,
For who can rail so long as they can write?
Still humming on, their drowsy course they keep,
And lash'd so long, like tops, are lash'd asleep.
False steps but help them to renew the race,
As after stumbling, jades will mend their pace.
What crowds of these, impenitently bold,
In sounds and jingling syllables grown old,
Still run on poets, in a raging vein,
Even to the dregs and squeezings of the brain,
Strain out the last, dull droppings of their sense,
And rhyme with all the rage of impotence!

       Such shameless bards we have; and yet 'tis true,
There are as mad, abandon'd critics too.
The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read,
With loads of learned lumber in his head,
With his own tongue still edifies his ears,
And always list'ning to himself appears.
All books he reads, and all he reads assails,
From Dryden's Fables down to Durfey's Tales.
With him, most authors steal their works, or buy;
Garth did not write his own Dispensary .
Name a new play, and he's the poet's friend,
Nay show'd his faults—but when would poets mend?
No place so sacred from such fops is barr'd,
Nor is Paul's church more safe than Paul's churchyard:
Nay, fly to altars; there they'll talk you dead:
For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
Distrustful sense with modest caution speaks;
It still looks home, and short excursions makes;
But rattling nonsense in full volleys breaks;
And never shock'd, and never turn'd aside,
Bursts out, resistless, with a thund'ring tide.

       But where's the man, who counsel can bestow,
Still pleas'd to teach, and yet not proud to know?
Unbias'd, or by favour or by spite;
Not dully prepossess'd, nor blindly right;
Though learn'd, well-bred; and though well-bred, sincere;
Modestly bold, and humanly severe?
Who to a friend his faults can freely show,
And gladly praise the merit of a foe?
Blest with a taste exact, yet unconfin'd;
A knowledge both of books and human kind;
Gen'rous converse; a soul exempt from pride;
And love to praise, with reason on his side?

      Such once were critics; such the happy few,
Athens and Rome in better ages knew.
The mighty Stagirite first left the shore,
Spread all his sails, and durst the deeps explore:
He steer'd securely, and discover'd far,
Led by the light of the Mæonian Star.
Poets, a race long unconfin'd and free,
Still fond and proud of savage liberty,
Receiv'd his laws; and stood convinc'd 'twas fit,
Who conquer'd nature, should preside o'er wit.

       Horace still charms with graceful negligence,
And without methods talks us into sense,
Will, like a friend, familiarly convey
The truest notions in the easiest way.
He, who supreme in judgment, as in wit,
Might boldly censure, as he boldly writ,
Yet judg'd with coolness, though he sung with fire;
His precepts teach but what his works inspire.
Our critics take a contrary extreme,
They judge with fury, but they write with fle'me:
Nor suffers Horace more in wrong translations
By wits, than critics in as wrong quotations.

       See Dionysius Homer's thoughts refine,
And call new beauties forth from ev'ry line!
       Fancy and art in gay Petronius please,
The scholar's learning, with the courtier's ease.

       In grave Quintilian's copious work we find
The justest rules, and clearest method join'd;
Thus useful arms in magazines we place,
All rang'd in order, and dispos'd with grace,
But less to please the eye, than arm the hand,
Still fit for use, and ready at command.

       Thee, bold Longinus! all the Nine inspire,
And bless their critic with a poet's fire.
An ardent judge, who zealous in his trust,
With warmth gives sentence, yet is always just;
Whose own example strengthens all his laws;
And is himself that great sublime he draws.

       Thus long succeeding critics justly reign'd,
Licence repress'd, and useful laws ordain'd;
Learning and Rome alike in empire grew,
And arts still follow'd where her eagles flew;
From the same foes, at last, both felt their doom,
And the same age saw learning fall, and Rome.
With tyranny, then superstition join'd,
As that the body, this enslav'd the mind;
Much was believ'd, but little understood,
And to be dull was constru'd to be good;
A second deluge learning thus o'er-run,
And the monks finish'd what the Goths begun.

       At length Erasmus, that great, injur'd name,
(The glory of the priesthood, and the shame!)
Stemm'd the wild torrent of a barb'rous age,
And drove those holy Vandals off the stage.

       But see! each Muse, in Leo's golden days,
Starts from her trance, and trims her wither'd bays!
Rome's ancient genius, o'er its ruins spread,
Shakes off the dust, and rears his rev'rend head!
Then sculpture and her sister-arts revive;
Stones leap'd to form, and rocks began to live;
With sweeter notes each rising temple rung;
A Raphael painted, and a Vida sung.
Immortal Vida! on whose honour'd brow
The poet's bays and critic's ivy grow:
Cremona now shall ever boast thy name,
As next in place to Mantua, next in fame!

  But soon by impious arms from Latium chas'd,
Their ancient bounds the banished Muses pass'd;
Thence arts o'er all the northern world advance;
But critic-learning flourish'd most in France.
The rules a nation born to serve, obeys,
And Boileau still in right of Horace sways.
But we, brave Britons, foreign laws despis'd,
And kept unconquer'd, and uncivilis'd,
Fierce for the liberties of wit, and bold,
We still defied the Romans, as of old.
Yet some there were, among the sounder few
Of those who less presum'd, and better knew,
Who durst assert the juster ancient cause,
And here restor'd wit's fundamental laws.
Such was the Muse, whose rules and practice tell
"Nature's chief master-piece is writing well."
Such was Roscommon—not more learn'd than good,
With manners gen'rous as his noble blood;
To him the wit of Greece and Rome was known,
And ev'ry author's merit, but his own.
Such late was Walsh—the Muse's judge and friend,
Who justly knew to blame or to commend;
To failings mild, but zealous for desert;
The clearest head, and the sincerest heart.
This humble praise, lamented shade! receive,
This praise at least a grateful Muse may give:
The Muse, whose early voice you taught to sing,
Prescrib'd her heights, and prun'd her tender wing,
(Her guide now lost) no more attempts to rise,
But in low numbers short excursions tries:
Content, if hence th' unlearn'd their wants may view,
The learn'd reflect on what before they knew:
Careless of censure, nor too fond of fame,
Still pleas'd to praise, yet not afraid to blame,
Averse alike to flatter, or offend,
Not free from faults, nor yet too vain to mend.

Thursday, May 29, 2014

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Patrick Connor gets miffed

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Patrick Connor gets miffed

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Francis McCullagh

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Francis McCullagh



One of those truly larger than life figures, and this time in the persona of a journalist and author.

 

BBC News - Art of War: How comic books recall World War One

BBC News - Art of War: How comic books recall World War One

The Golden Age of Hotels









January 26, 2011

These photographs depict what had been the Townsend Hotel, and what is now the Natrona County Townsend Justice Center. This building depicts an evolution in transportation, and in the downtown landscape of cities, which incidentally has a direct legal connection.

This building was originally built in the 1920s as a nice hotel. It served in that capacity up in to the 1960s. It was well suited to do so, being only two blocks from the train depot. What it lacked, however, was parking.

Starting in the 1960s, after the massive nationwide improvement in highways, and the corresponding decline in rail transportation, this building became a bit of a flop house. It finally closed in the late 1970s, after its restaurant closed down (the restaurant had not declined like the hotel itself).

In the last decade it was rebuilt as a courthouse.

This says a lot about downtowns as they once were, and are today. Built in the golden age of hotels, this hotel was in a neighborhood of similiar hotels, all of which offered lodging and dining. They didn't offer parking. They couldn't survive the motorization of the country. They depended upon rail transportation for their business. They made, however, for a busy downtown.

Postscript

May 29, 2014

I was reminded of  this old post as one of the oldest buildings in Casper is undergoing renovations, and I took a few photographs of it this past week when those renovations revealed   a "ghost sign" that was painted on it when the building was a hotel.  I posted those photos on our Painted Brick's blog.

The former County Annex, being rebuilt as the Hotel Virginia.

The building is sort of returning to its original use as apartments, under one of its apparent former names, the Hotel Virginia. This building is older than the old Townsend Building depicted above in this thread, and its one of the oldest surviving brick buildings in Casper.  

What's interesting about this, other than the age of the building, is that this building is one block over from the Townsend.  And its on the same block as what was the Gladstone (now an office building).  It would have been catercorner from the Henning. So Casper had four brick hotels, three of which were quite substantial, withing a block of each other.

In thinking on it, if a person goes just a couple of blocks out, this trend continues.  The street depicted in this photograph is 1st Street, which was also the east/west highway at that time.  A couple of blocks away were a couple of motels, true Motor Hotels, of early vintage, one of which had a swimming pool.

Today all the major current hotels in Casper are along the interstate highway. Casper has an assortment of modern hotels and business hotels, but what's interesting about that is how the hotels had migrated by the 1960s to the interstate.  The downtown hotels were dying by that time, and by the 1980s none of the original downtown brick hotels that were located in the heart of the downtown era were still hotels. This is, of course, a very typical story, demonstrating the evolution from rail travel, to car travel, to those cars being on a state highway at first, and an interstate highway later.


Saturday, May 24, 2014

Graduating on Memorial Day Weekend

The Natrona County High School Class of 2014 graduates today, May 24, 2014.

 

It is, of course, also Memorial Day weekend..

It's been interesting for a variety of reasons. It would be interesting any way, as I'm a graduate of NCHS, my wife is a graduate of NCHS, my father in law, mother in law, two brothers in law, two uncles, three aunts, and my father graduated from NCHS; and my son attends NCHS.

And NC is undergoing major renovation. It's 80 year old swimming pool, which is where I practiced when a swim team member, and where my son has also practiced for the same reason, will be torn down in that project in a couple of weeks, with no replacement pool in the offering as the local voters refused to pass the bond that would have funded that and other projects. We were involved in the effort to pass the bond, which was narrowly defeated. All of that would have made that interesting.

But it's also interesting as the choice of Memorial Day has caused a minor flap on the party of some who are upset on the basis that they conceive of a graduation over Memorial Day weekend (but not on the day tiself) as disrespectful to veterans in general and war dead in particular.

Well, while I say honor the day, my view on that is that the critics of the graduation should relax, reconsider and frankly reflect on this.. Dates for high school graduations are pretty strictly controlled around here and they had little other choice. Beyond that, two of the young men that I've grown to know over the years are going to be leaving shortly after they graduate for Navy basic training. And it occurs to me that a lot of our war dead weren't much older when they died than those young men entering the service. Indeed, a couple of the World War Two veterans I've known, including one who attended NCHS, left high school for the army. Anyhow, it occurs to me that those young men probably would have preferred to be at a high school graduation rather than in some mud hole in Italy, some freezing pit in Belgium, or some sandy foxhole on Iwo Jima, so maybe a high school graduation is honoring them in a way that they might like to be honored.

My service, as I  have noted here before, was in the National Guard, although because of the length of training during the time during which I was receiving it, I have an Honorable Discharge from the U.S. Army (that is, we were in the active duty Army during training, and for such a long period that we qualify as veterans).  That may make my prospective a bit different, but if it does, I suspect that my point is all the more valid.  All of us in the Guard in that period were of course volunteers, with quite a few being men who had served in the Vietnam War.  It seemed to me that in our conversations, while we all had an interest in the service, we talked more about routine matters, or matters that concerned us in our daily lives.  For those men who served in 1860-1865, or 1917-1918, or 1940-1945, or what have you, who often served without a real choice, and who tended to be young men, my guess is that is all the more the case.  I"m sure that on the plaque honoring NCHS's war dead from World War Two, which is in the school lobby, and past which hundreds of  students pass each day, are the names of many young men whose souls would look back out on those familiar halls where they had walked and, if they were to speak, would say "I wish I could be there tonight".

Painted Bricks: Platte County Steam Laundry, Wheatland Wyoming

Painted Bricks: Platte County Steam Laundry, Wheatland Wyoming: This small building is still in use, and has updated windows today.  A newer sign above the door says "Coin Operated Laundry", ...

Friday, May 16, 2014

Remembering the Great War

The Centennial of the commencement of the disaster that was World War One, The Great War, is upon us.  In August of this year World War One's start will hit the century mark.


Lots of commemorations will occur in Europe, where 100 years has not dulled the sense of disaster.  The war was a big one for us here in the United States as well, but I think we'll largely fail to note the event.  That's sort of the American thing.  We passed through the bicentennial of the War of 1812 pretty much without noticing it, and some of the wars we fought we remember so little that many average Americans don't even know that they occurred.  Try dropping a reference to the Philippine Insurrection into your conversations, for example.

There's something about World War One that causes the war to stick out in the minds of Europeans in a way that just doesn't occur to us.  For Americans, World War Two is the Big War of the 20th Century, and to some extent its the Big War of all wars.  In terms of modern wars it still dominates our consciousness like no other.  It crowds out its near neighbors, including World War One, which to us is sort of unfairly characterized as a prequel to the Second World War.  It's unfair to our memory of the Great War.

Having said that, the European obsession with the disaster of the Great War may be almost unfair to its memory as well.  The war is seen as sort of a huge, homicidal disaster to Europeans, and most particularly to the British, which actually doesn't really reflect how Europeans viewed it at the time, and therefore inaccurately recalls what they thought of while they were fighting it.  We'd hardly realized, based upon the way it is recalled today in Europe, that the British, including British servicemen, felt that World War One had been necessary and a genuine victory immediately after the war. And we'd do well to recall that in spite of the horror of World War One the Germans were so upset about the losing result that they were willing to launch a second world war just a little over 20 years later, when the surviving combatants of the first war were often still of military age.

Given the centennial of the war, and the fact that we don't recall it really well, I thought it'd be worth looking at going into the centennial.  I don't intend this to be a revisionist post (and there are piles of revisionist theories about World War One) but rather a post to point out some of the things about the war that are inaccurately remembered.  World War One, it seems to me, has suffered a great deal in our recollection by being recast in the light of World War Two and the Cold War, making the war something that's shown at the wrong speed and out of focus like an early silent movie, to some degree.  And it's a war that, like all wars, indeed all historical events, that saw those who participated in it note the huge and unusual, but pass by the mundane, making us who read about it sometimes think the huge and mandate were the norm.  As a result, entire areas of the history of the war have been inaccurately mythologized.    Let's take a look at the war going in.

 American cemetery in France, following WWI.

But, before we do, let me state why I think the war looms so large in the European imagination.  It's in part, of course, because of the slaughter.  But more than that, the war destroyed The Old Order in Europe, giving us modern Europe after a long violent process that really only concluded, for the most part, in 1990 when the Soviet Union fell.  Europeans know that, and to a degree, perhaps instinctively, they mourn a bit of the passing of that order.

Okay, let's take a look at what we hear about the Great War that might need a little correction.

The War ended a long period of Peace in Europe

This is a good place to start, as it starts before the war. The Peace.

We often hear that the war seemingly came out of a long peace, and that took everyone by surprise.  Indeed, it's even noted that a popular book prior to the war stated that a big general European war was impossible for economic reasons.  Socialist of the period were fond of stating that socialism had no borders, and they meant it.  So, from both the right and the left, a general European war seemed impossible.

What we often don't hear is that Europe certainly had not seen the end of war, and the claim that sometimes is made that there'd been no European wars following the Franco-Prussian War is just flat out wrong.  The claim about wars being thought to be impossible really apply only to wars between the major European powers, or to a general war (i.e., the equivalent of a continental war).

In reality, the entire Balkans had been engaged in one war after another in the years running up to World War One.  Turkey and Greece also fought prior to World War One, in the 20th Century.

 Turkish soldiers prior to World War One.

Russia, a major European power, fought a major war with Japan, a major rising power. Granted, that's not a European war, but it was a bit war.  It could have caused a European war as the Imperial Russian Atlantic fleet actually sank a British fishing fleet in the North Sea under the panicky belief that the fishing boats were Japanese torpedo boats (a bizarre error), but the British wisely let cooler heads prevail.

 Japanese cartoon depiction of Russian cavalryman, Russo Japanese War.

And of course the British were fighting a transplanted European enemy in southern Africa at the start of the 20th Century.

Of course, none of these were general European wars, i.e., wars between the great European powers, in Europe.  Some involved great European powers, but not against each other.  The point is, however, that the often stated claim that Europeans had somehow grown bored with Peace is just wrong.  Some of the European countries had been in major wars well within a generational experience.

The war pitted unqualified democracy against unqualified totalitarianism, and the rights of small nations.



I don't mean to be revisionist here, and launch of Noam Chomsky like on some deluded Marxist vision of the war, and it's already often noted that one of the major Allies, Imperial Russia, was not a democracy.  Still, this claim should come with an asterisks. 

The reason for that is that every major combatant in the war was part of an imperial system, and imperial systems, to varying degrees, are anti democratic themselves.

It is certainly the case that the Central Powers in the war, together with the Allied Power of Imperial Russia, were not democracies.  Apologist for Germany sometimes note that it had a Reichstag with a broad theoretical franchise, but theoretical must be emphasized there.  The real power in Germany was in the traditional, mostly Prussian, landed class of which the crown was part.  The parliament was not governing the country in a complete sense.  Likewise, the Russians had an assembly, but it certainly wasn't in control, nor was the Austro Hungarian political system democratic in any meaningful sense.  As I'll probably note elsewhere, it was, in  my view, the strenuous efforts to keep the lid on democratic expression in these Old Order countries that caused the fermentation of dissent, yielding in the poisonous brew of Communism and Fascism.

 Poster for relief in the Near East.  Of the nations listed, Armenia would not secure nationhood by way of the war, although this poster depicts an Armenian girl.  Syria would emerge a French mandate.  Persia would be a British client state for many years.

But something we should note is that even democratic countries were comfortable with having overseas empires at the time, and in some cases even local empires.  And these aren't really democratic.  So, while a country like France could fight for its self defense and democracy, it could still feel okay about running the show non democratically in Indochina or Algeria.  Even the United States, which was an anti imperial power, was still fighting a guerrilla war in the Philippines running up to World War One, even though we'd stated our intent to ultimately free it.

Now, some of this must be balanced a bit.  The British Empire was the largest in the world, and therefore is frequently one of the most criticized, but it did have an amazingly good record for developing democratic institutions and setting their former colonies out into the world as British Dominions.  Canada, Australia and New Zealand were all domestically self governing leading up to World War One, although the British Parliament retained control of foreign affairs to some degree for each (including the right to declare war on their behalf.)  This was also the case for South Africa.  Indian was well on its way towards an anticipated dominion status, with the only real question being when, as opposed to if.  As noted, the US declared itself set to follow suit after the Philippines were sufficiently schooled, in our opinion, on democracy, something that would take another 30 years and a second world war.

To make this story a bit odder, however, we should also realize that it wasn't the case that the Central Powers were universally for suppressing the national dreams of small European nations, and the Allies universally in favor of the right of self determination, no matter what people thought of Wilson's Fourteen Points.  Indeed, while we hardly recall it today, Germany back independence for several nations during the war.  Granted, it did so for its own reasons, but it did it.

A really confusing example of this is provided by Poland.  In regard to Poland and Germany, we tend to think that Poland was carved out of the fallen German and Russian imperial regimes and restored to nationhood by the Allied victory in World War One, until Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union gobbled it back up in 1939. And that is partially true.

But forgotten is the fact that the Poles were proactive in seeking independence during the Great War and during the early stages of the Russian Revolution, and that the Germans backed them in part.  Germany, which occupied part of the Polish national soil itself, did this as Imperial Russia occupied more of it.  Perhaps it was being dangerously cynical, but Germany sponsored Polish nationalist in a German supplied, trained and controlled Polish revolutionary army.  They weren't the only Polish rebels in the field, however, as a much more left wing socialist native revolutionary movement had its own rebels in the field, largely behind Russian lines.  When Russia bowed out of the war, Polish soldiers in the Imperial Russian Army discharged themselves, sometimes asking their Russian officers to go along (who largely declined) and went home.  Poland was effectively born, but there was a tense period, even lasting after the Versailles Treaty, in which conservative German trained Poles and left wing Polish rebels stared each other down.  Eventually the divisions were worked out and Poland was born, even though the boundaries of Poland were not.

 As if things weren't complicated enough, while there were anti Russian German sponsored Polish troops fighting in the East, and independent leftist Polish rebels fighting there also, the Allies were recruiting Poles to fight the Germans. All with the same theoretical Polish cause of creating a Polish state.

They were not in part because another new state that the Germans backed was getting up and running, and that was the Ukraine.  Everyone agrees that Ukraine is a real nation, but often missed in that is that the Ukrainians and the Poles are so close ethnically that its very difficult to for anyone, including them, to tell where Poland starts and Ukraine stops.  Generally, about the most convenient dividing line is religious, as Ukrainians are pretty universally members of one of the Eastern churches, with some being Ukrainian Catholics (a Church which actually goes by another name), some being Ukrainian Orthodox, and some being Russian Orthodox.  Poles are almost all Roman Catholics.  This divide, however, was not regarded as sufficiently so vast as to prevent Poland from making a very serious effort at taking the Ukraine from the Soviet Union during the Russo Polish War in the 1920s.

During the Great War, Germany backed Ukrainian independence, again for its own reasons.   The Ukraine came out of the war weak, and hit teetered for some time on the verge of independence and falling to the USSR, before it ultimately did that.  A German backed Ukrainian state re-emerged during World War Two, with the Germans reprising their World War One role in those regards, but it was reabsorbed by the advancing Red Army in the same war, with some underground independence movements holding on into the late 1940s.  And it reemerged again with the fall of the USSR, and is int the news, nervously, again today.

Probably the most successful example of German backing the national aspirations of a small nations comes in the form of Finland.  Finland's history is odd in any event, but it had become a Russian vassal many decades before.  As such, it tended to have a fair degree of independence, up until the late 19th Century and early 20th Century, when the Russians, already sensing the problems that would ultimately drag the empire down, began to try to solidify the central authority of Moscow, which did not sit well with the Finns, who were really a foreign people.  During World War One the Germans armed and equipped Finnish Jaegers who fought on the German side, seeking independence for their nation.  When Imperial Russia fell, they got it, but went almost immediately into a civil war, not being able to avoid the situation that Poland ultimately did.  In that war, the better armed and trained Jaeger elements became the backbone of the Finnish Whites, while urban Finnish socialist became the Reds.  The war was a nasty miniature, uniquely Finnish, version of the Russian Civil War, and the bloodbath it created lingered on over the nation until the Soviet invasion of 1940 united the Finns against the Russians.  Here too, however, Finland basically owed a debt of sorts to Germany as Germany had backed its independence against an imperial power.

 Photos depicting Finnish Whites and German troops, in Finland towards the end of World War One.

While all of this was going on, the leading European democracy, the United Kingdom, ended up putting down a rebellion on its own soil, in the form of an Irish uprising in 1916, followed by the beginning of the terrorist campaign that would lead to the Anglo Irish War.  This is a bit more complicated than might be imagined, as Ireland, by that time, did have the franchise on an equal basis with other citizens of the United Kingdom, and Irish support for the rebels was, at that time, much much weaker than generally imagined.  Indeed, the best evidence is that the majority of the Irish opposed rebellion.  It makes for an interesting complication of the story, however, and points out that some major European nations, while democratic, still contained areas within their own nations that had divided national loyalties.

This is not to suggest the entire Fourteen Points were baloney.  The Allies, following the US entry into World War One, really did come to back the national aspirations of small or occupied European peoples.  But the story is just somewhat more confused than that.  Indeed, it's quite a bit more confused as not only did the Germans back some of the same peoples, for their own reasons, but the early USSR did as well, doing so under the belief that all nationhood was passing away rapidly anyhow, and soon the same nations would follow their Communist path. The USSR, however, got over that quickly.

And, as it can't help be noted, independence for small nations, really only meant small European nations, but that's a well known story.

It was the war that showed horse to be obsolete

American Remounts, World War One

Oh no, it was no such thing.

There's a widely held belief that World War One was the end of  the military horse.  It wasn't even close to that, but the belief is extremely widely held.

 Dramatic British recruiting post, this was more accurate than supposed. The British and Dominion forces in fact retained, and used, sabers during the war, and did plan on using cavalry to exploit breakthroughs, which in fact they did in 1918.

In fact, every nation that fought in World War One used vast numbers  of horses.  Some, acknowledging that, will simply pass it off to the artillery and transport branches of the militaries, which most realize were nearly entirely horse powered at the time.  That much is true.  Movement of most things heavy in World War One, the introduction of vehicles and tractors (yes, tractors) aside, was principally done by horse.  Most artillery at the time was horse drawn (and in the case of the Germans, this would continue to be the case through World War Two, contrary to the popular belief and German propaganda).  Most transport, ie., the process of bringing supplies of all types, and equipment of all types, up to the front, was horse drawn as well (and in the case of the Germans again, would also continue to be the case for large percentages of its forces throughout World War Two).  But the story doesn't stop there.

 British artillery poster, reflecting actual artillery transport of the period, if also depicting a scene that no artilleryman would hope to get into.

People commonly imagine that cavalry had no role in the war.  Even Lord Angelsey, who wrote the definitive multi volume history of the British cavalry throughout its history, admits to thinking that until he end up committing more volumes of his work to the First World War than any other British conflict. As that demonstrates, however, there was actually a lot of cavalry action during World War One.

The opening year of the war, when it was still a fluid war, saw all the armies use a fair amount of cavalry in the field.  When the lines grew static, however, this did begin to change.  The French, which used the "square" division, like the US would come to do, devolved their cavalry down to the division level, essentially eliminating large scale cavalry formations in favor of smaller ones. The thought was, on their part, that if they needed to they could consolidate these units.  The Germans, who grew desperately short of horses during the war, did the same, repeating a process that they would do during World War Two, and then coming to regret the decision, just as they also did during World War Two.

 U.S. Cavalry just prior to entering World War One.

The British, on the other hand, kept large scale cavalry formations throughout the war, using some of them as infantry from time to time.  Their thought was that they would need them if they were able to break through.  On several occasions during 1917 and 1918, they were proven essentially correct, but primitive communication abilities prevented their cavalry from really exploiting any breakthroughs until the very concluding months of the war.   During that time, the British and Canadians engaged in some very large cavalry assaults.

Even the U.S. Army committed cavalry to Europe, contrary to what is generally supposed.  Following the French pattern, the US mostly limited its cavalry to divisional reconnaissance troops, although the 2nd Cavalry was deployed to France as an intact cavalry regiment, and the 3d was partially so committed.  The big American problem was finding horses for cavalry, which in the end caused it to adopt the French pattern by default, as we simply were unable to transport an adequate number of cavalry mounts to Europe. At the same time, however, we kept cavalry formations on the Mexican border, out of fear that revolutionary Mexico would join the Germans against the Allies.  Cavalry had already proven its worth there in the Punitive Expedition.

As with our example along the Mexican border, the British, French, Germans and Turks all found cavalry vital in desert regions were they were fighting.  Cavalry was extensively used in North Africa, along with its close cousin mounted infantry, the most famous examples of which are the Australian assault on Beersheba and the irregular cavalry of T. E. Lawrence.  Such was also the case on the Eastern Front, where the Russians conducted several huge cavalry raids behind German lines.

Coming out of the war, most countries knew that the introduction of mechanization was going to impact he horse in war, but nobody was exactly sure how.  Most armies were not as naive about that as they've been portrayed, but most correctly understood that the day hadn't quite arrived.  Huge cavalry formations would go on to fight after World War One in the Russian Civil War and the Russo Polish War, but by the mid 30s most were exploring their options.  Even at that, cavalry hung on into World War Two, particularly in the Soviet and German armies.  The Red Army retained cavalry formations until 1953.

Finally, it was actually the lack of German cavalry that may have saved the Allies in 1918.  By that period of time, German horse supplies were so depleted they simply couldn't deploy cavalry to exploit a breakthrough, and when they achieved it, their advance, being basically infantry only, ground to an exhausted halt.  Appreciating what cavalry meant, panicky British sentries continually reported German cavalry as being just over the horizon, when in fact, it just wasn't.

All the weapons were new.



Another common misunderstanding about World War One, and often used to explain the battlefield conditions, is the belief that all the weaponry was new..  It wasn't.

Most armies that went into the war used weapons that had either been in their inventories for some time, or which were versions of weapons that had been around for some time.  In truth, the utility of many of these weapons had been already proven in the Boer War and the Spanish American War, which had answered the nagging questions about many of them

German troops, with a large number of curious German spectators, work on a German tank that's fairly obviously a copy of the British model, if in fact it is not a captured British tank.  The Germans never really did get the knack of tank warfare during WWI, which remained an Allied deal.

Rifle wise, this is certainly the case.  The Germans went to war principally armed with versions of the 98 Mauser rifle, which they had adopted in 1898.  That was a relatively new weapon really, but the Mauser itself had been proven in battle in prior version in the last decade of the 19th Century, where it had proven itself better than many competing designs. They'd retain the 98, in a short rifle variant, all the way through World War Two.  The British went to war armed mostly with the Short Magazine Lee Enfield, a rifle that they'd developed form the Long Lee they'd used in the Boer War and whose service went back to the 1890s. The Russians used the Mosin Nagant, as weapon they'd adopted in 1891 and which they're retain in slightly altered form up until it was replaced by the AK47 in most units.  Compared to these, the US's M1903 was quite new, but it was a Mauser variant itself, adopted after our Krag rifle was proven inferior to the Spanish M94 Mausers during the Spanish American War.

Pistol wise, semi automatic pistols were really coming into military service for the first time, but nobody will maintain that a pistol is a war winning weapon.  In contrast, machineguns would come to dominate the battlefield, but they were almost all designs that date back to around 1900.  New, perhaps, but not so new as to not have already seen battlefield use in various wars, such as the Boer War, or the Russo Japanese War.

Artillery came to dominate the Western Front, but most of the designs, once again, had been around for some time.  They'd evolved, but not enormously.  Most designs were around 20 years old at the time, some older, some newer.

 Massive Austrian mortar.

What that really leaves us with, of course, is aircraft, submarines, tanks and gas. Gas, however, did not prove to really be a dominating weapon.  It was nasty, and left a lasting impression, but nobody was going to win the war through gas.  Those other weapons, however really were seeing use, or at least significant use, for the very first time. And they were all hugely significant by the end of the war.

 Helmet-less Italian infantry goes into action against the Austrians.

The War disillusioned the masses everywhere.


This is partially, but not completely, true.

What the war really did was to destroy the old order, everywhere.  Where there were existing democratic institutions, this translated itself into a wider franchise.  The British, for example, feared a socialist rebellion following the war, but it was truly an idle fear.  The UK expanded the franchise, and granted Ireland dominion status.  The end had come for "Downton Abbey", but the nation didn't collapse.

 Patriotic World War One Marine Corps poster.  By 1919 the bloom was off the rose in the United States, but not elsewhere.

Where strong autocratic institutions remained the real power, however, they fell.  The Kaiser left.  The Czar and his family were murdered.  The Austrian Empire was no more.  The Ottoman Turks became just the Turks.  Even some Allied nations followed through with this process, as ultimately Imperial Japan, which was strongly autocratic, would see its Imperial crown dominated by the army in the 1920s.  Some weak democracies ultimately collapsed, as in Italy and Spain.  And bizarrely, one last gasp to autocrats was made in some of the newly independent European states.

 The British sacrifice of men in World War One surpassed that of later World War Two, but following the war the British remained proud of their role in the war.

But generally it was not the case that people came out of the war bitterly disillusioned about everything.  That was more the case, frankly for World War Two.

Post war studies showed that, contrary to the myth created in the 1950s, British solders overwhelmingly were proud of their service  and thought the war had been won, and necessary.  France created an entire myth around the glories of its soldiery, even though those soldiers had stopped advancing in 1917 and could no longer be made to do so.  Even in defeated Germany veterans were vociferous about their service and nearly worshipped, part of the process that brought about World War Two, as they refused to accept the reality of their defeat (and their rebellion at home, which they should have been very well aware of)..

 Grim 1918 vintage German Freikorps poster, recruiting German combat veterans for the German civil war, immediately after World War One.

German Freikorps poster, recruiting veterans, based on an appeal to past German martial glory.

Perhaps only in the US was there really bitter disillusionment about the war.  Americans, notoriously fickle about war, came to regard the war as a mistake by 1919 and were even hostile to returning veterans by that time.

Postscript I, The Guns Fell Silent on November 11, 1918

A really common myth about World War One is that the guns fell silent on the 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month of 1918.  In actuality, November 11, 1911, at 11:00, saw the cessation of combat on the Western Front. That is, an armistice was entered into between the Central Powers and  the Allies, but that didn't mean the end of all the fighting that was going on.

Indeed, an often missed aspect of the Armistice is that it required the Germans to retain German troops in the East in order to have them combat the Reds in the Russian Civil War.  The Russian Civil War, of course, had already broken out by the end of World War One and the Allies had committed troops to Russia in an effort to support the Russian republicans against the Reds, a mission that was frustrated by a lack of Allied forces and by White disorganization.  By the wars end, however, the Germans, who had backed Lenin against the Imperial government, found that they too were sliding into war against the Reds on the territory they occupied in the East.  A requirement of the Armistice was that they remain committed in Russia against the Whites, which they did for a time until the revolution in Germany required German troops to be redeployed at home.

Which brings us to the next point, while German war fatigue had contributed to the collapse of the Imperial German war effort, the end of the war with the Allies didn't end the fighting for the Germans.  German troops went right on fighting in the German Revolution, a bloody affair that is  a bit bizarrely omitted from the story of World War one, perhaps because it's a mess.  Basically, as the home front collapsed the German army realized that the country was going to follow Russia into revolution and it sought to save itself, tossing out the Kaiser and gathering up the Frontsoldaten for redeployment against radicalized rear area troops and sailors, and Socialist revolutionaries. As the new Social Democratic Party lead government negotiated the peace, the Germans fought out a war at home which went on until August 1919.  In the meantime, the Germans saw the formation of a lot of unofficial right wing militias that were aligned with the German Army, known as Freikorps, which also saw service in the East against the Russian Reds.  At least the British, however, took some actual military role in the German revolution themselves, committing some troops in aid of the Weimar government.

The war between the Allies and Turkey also went on.  The Ottoman Turks were German allies, of course, but the war had the same impact on the Ottomans that it had on the Hapsburg's, Romanov's and Hohenzollern's.  That is, it caused an imperial collapse.  In Turkey's case, this lead the takeover of the country by the "Young Turks", that military faction made up of younger officers.  They did not enter into peace with the Allies along with Germany (and technically were not at war with all of the Allied powers) and this lead to ongoing fighting. To add to it, seeing an opportunity, the  Turks invaded the Turkic regions of the former Russian Empire in an effort to build a greater Turkey, but were beat back by the British.  This ongoing fighting went on until 1922.

The point is that the common concept that everyone who was fighting in November 11, 1918 stopped fighting at 11:00 is simply wrong. The Germans kept on fighting in the East. The Russians were fighting each other, so were the Finns, so were the Germans.  The Turks kept on fighting the British and French, and soon thereafter the Russians.  The British, French, Japanese, and the United States had troops in Russia.  The United States still saw sporadic fighting on the border with Mexico.  The Great War might have ended, but wars certainly kept on uninterrupted.