1940 Dodge VC1 Reconnaissance | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

1940 Dodge VC1 Reconnaissance | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

National Cat Day

Today is National Cat Day.

Bias and Ignorance In The News Media

 Newspaper boy.

Newspaper reporters don't like it if you accuse them of being biased in reporting.  And, frankly, based on my limited experience with them, it certainly would not be true that they're universally biased, as some believe.  They have a pretty tough task really, which is to get a story out quickly, often on something they are really basically ignorant of, and based on extremely limited research. The better of them correct and adjust as they move along. Others don't bother.  Those inclinations are true of everyone, and I've likewise seen lawyers who go into a case with one set of views and keep it in spite of the evidence as it develops. So, a claim of global bias would not really be true.

 A WPA play, celebrating newspapers in some fashion.

But it is true that on some stories, historically, the news media has taken a position based on its views and stuck with it, issuing its stories accordingly.  The U.S. went through a horrible period of "yellow journalism" in the early 20th Century, which nationally saw its reflection in what amounted to campaigning for the Spanish American War, one of those contests we whipped ourselves into a frenzy about and got into without really thinking it through.  The newsmedia also did that a bit with the second Gulf War. When the conventional war yielded to a second guerrilla was, a lot of the same journals acted as if they'd always been against a war in Iraq in the first place.

Here locally, you can really see competing sides staking out their positions in regards to the Johnson County War, as the patrons of one side or another duked it out in the press.  Papers of that era, once again, often didn't try to make any bones that they were biased.

Even now, however, they can be, sometimes in subtle ways.  Other times, however, reporting is bad due to flat out ignorance, and occasionally in an inexcusable fashion.

I had the occasion recently to be involved in a long lasting legal matter in which I don't think the press was biased, but it never did quite get the story accurately.  Just ignorance at work, but that ignorance really basically played to the opposing side of the controversy.  The first reporter, however, was really a hard worker and worked to improve the reporting each time, and her stories became more and more accurate with each one, and more fair.  We did appreciate that.  When she was replaced with a second reporter, that new reporter seemed to put in minimum effort on things and the accuracy fell.  A third reporter, however, was once again a hard worker.

Still, of interest, one local journal ran the controversy as a big story several times. Another did only a little, and always in a much reduced manner.  Interesting.  Something about the story appealed to one journal, and not the other.

 Newspaper correspondents in the early wire days.

More recently a subtle bias has been in the Tribune in the regards to the story on the Court's recent decision on same gender marriage.  Now, the Tribune was frank on its view, and if I recall correctly it earlier had done an editorial on the topic urging the legislature to change the law to allow it. But of course the legislature did not, and it's probably safe to say that the majority of Wyomingites continue to hold their traditional view, which might be best described as "leave me alone, I'll leave you alone, but don't ask me to approve".  That's the traditional view in this state on quite a few things as the state has a strong libertarian streak.  The Tribune, on the other hand, has been mildly in favor of the law here being changed, although it isn't as if it's been a real cheerleader on the topic or anything.

Anyhow, as I guess I follow how the press follows things, it's been interesting to observe as on this topic the Press clearly has a view.  It shows in the terms they use, which again are to some degree probably just short hand. The term "marriage equality' shows up quite a bit in its recent reporting. And it shows in how they've continued to focus on the decision after it, having run two front page articles on the same gender couples that were the plaintiffs in the Federal suit.  It's interesting in that the general context of the articles has to do with Wyoming "achieving" "equality".  This really omits quite a bit of analysis, however, either intentionally or simply by omission.

Chief amongst the omission is the way that the story essentially has "Wyoming" doing something, when in fact the state hasn't.  The law remains the same, but rather the Court has ruled that where the law provides that a marriage is a civil contract between a man or a woman, it cannot be read that way any longer.  The omission here is most evident in those instances in which the press has declared Wyoming's "ban" on same gender marriages has been lifted.  In actuality, the state never had a ban on anything.  It simply defined a marriage as being male and female in nature, as was the universal understanding up until quite recently.

That's quite a press omission, really, as it isn't as the state has said "you shall not" so much as the Federal court has said "you will not longer apply the law as written".  I'm not arguing the case here, I'm just noting that the press's reporting here is actually off the mark.

And because this was a court decision, at a time in which a lot of lawyers still expect this to go to the U.S. Supreme Court (the Federal District of Peurto Rico just handed down a decision going the opposite way and really castigating other Federal courts for judicial legislation), the degree to which the current decision is really the final one is highly questionable. So the reporting here is a bit anemic universally. All the current Federal decisions may really serve to do is to tee the issue up for the U.S. Supreme Court and utterly nobody has any clue how that Court would rule.  Given the text of the Puerto Rico decision, the Supreme Court might actually have a very difficult time not overruling the existing Circuit Court decisions as if it did not do that, or massively and creatively limit their holding, they'll do a lot of damage in other areas.

The press has also pretty much ignored the implications for those who this puts into a moral box here, and those people do have legitimate concerns.  Last week the government of the City of Houston went after some ministers who had opposed changing the law there, and there's been examples in Canada and the U.S. having to resign their positions, and business people in California, where the law is considerably different than our own, getting into legal trouble.  The Tribune hasn't, so far, interviewed anyone who feels that the change in the reading of the law presents a societal or moral crisis, or that it isn't the basic equivalent of the progress of the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Indeed, one thing that the Press has missed everywhere is that the history of court decision of this type long term is pretty much the opposite of what they tend to believe, with the big exception being the string of Civil Rights cases that came though during the 1950s to 1970s.  Those decisions were accepted by the country over time as a whole, but otherwise the record is considerably different.  The decisions do not tend to be final and the segment of the population that feels it lost feels that it was cheated at the ballot box. And the Courts generally tend to be surprisingly willing to reverse themselves decades later.

Court battles over Roe v. Wade are a good example, as the side that lost never accepted the loss, and over a long period of time it has been largely successful in reversing the court of public opinion.  The decision itself is now generally regarded as legally anemic by those who are willing to discuss it honestly, and there's general expectation that it will either be reversed or modified at some point in the future.  Court battles over gun control are the same way, with the losing side in the Holder decision generally acting as if the Court did not rule at all and refusing to accept it. So such views are common on the right and the left.  For that reason, those who are presently celebrating in various states are really celebrating based on a false premise, that being that everyone accepts a court ruling, and that the Supreme Court will not overrule the decisions, now or in the future.

None of which is to say that a newspaper wouldn't interview the plaintiffs and run stories on them. Any good paper would.  Its rather simply an observation on how the reporting takes a certain view, omits other views, and makes quite a set of assumptions that probably aren't supported by history or analysis.  And the approach tells a lot.  The Tribune ran two stories after the local Federal Court's decision portraying the plaintiffs in that action in a heroic light.  The Journal, on the other hand, featured one pro couple and one that was against redefining the definition on marriage, without really commenting on the issue one way or another itself.  A much different approach.

 Newspaper correspondents in the 1940s scrambling for Federal crop reports.

Sometimes, however, news reporting isn't only biased, its darned near dumb.  Here's a recent example:

Well, this is something.

Not deterred by a Catholic synod's recent watering down of his views on the gay community and divorce, Pope Francis on Monday continued to please those who most appreciate his frequent breaks from traditional Catholic teachings, telling the Pontifical Academy of Sciences that he agrees with, well...science.

 No, that isn't something. That's not even news.

The Big Bang theory was developed by a Jesuit Priest, Monseigneur Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître.  A competent reporter ought to know that not only is this not news, not surprising, its just a total non event.  The Catholics have always been on board with the Big Bang theory. They came up with it.  D'uh.  But at least one of the major networks made the same amazingly stupid comment on the nightly news.Indeed, just a little research (even hitting this august site) would have revealed the following:

Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître

Lemaître was a physicists who was the first person to propose an expansion of the universe, the first to propose the "Big Bang" and he was also the first person to what is now known as Hubble's Law. The brilliant physicists was also a Belgian Catholic priest.

Category:  Catholic Priest.  Physicist. Scientist.  Mathematician. 

For that matter, Catholics have always been on board with evolution too, and some have credited Catholic scientist who preceded Darwin as prior proponents of a version of the theory or laying the ground work for it, with Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck and Georges Mendel being noted as being in this category.  A competent reporter might not be expected to know that, but a minimum amount of research would have at least revealed that evolution and Catholicism are not antithetical.  That reporters aren't picking that shows that they deserve the dope slap.

It also reveals bias in the reporting, however.  This bias is of the type once noted by G. K. Chesterton, the famous English writer, who was a Catholic, when he was asked about evolution while on a tour of the United States, and he replied, in a cutting witty way, that the questioner has apparently confused him for an American Protestant rather than the European Catholic he was.  I do not say this to in anyway discredit American Protestants (or anyone else) but to note what was apparent to Chesterton, comments of that type assume that all Christian religions have the same view on these topics, when in fact Catholics don't hold as doctrine any "young earth" theory or strict creationism theory. That people do is fine, but making comments of this type is a little like Jimmy Carter's famous comment about the Israelis and Palestinians that their problems would go away if "they just acted like good Christians".  I.e, that isn't what they are.  He undoubtedly did know that.  Here, the press really is truly inexcusably ignorant.

News reporting on firearms topics also tends to be the same way.  Generally, press reporting shows a complete lack of understanding on anything in this area and almost all of the details concerning it are inaccurately reported.  Interestingly, I've found one instance of the same expert being cited for two fairly surprising countervailing positions, which he probably really did take, but it also shows, I suppose, that even when they go to clear up their ignorance, they can get sucked into further error.

Well, all in all I don't really mean to totally dump on the press here. As noted, they have to write quickly, which does mean writing in ignorance. And we have seen the massive decline in the reporting as a viable industry in the U.S. At one time many mid sized newspapers actually sent reporters overseas for important stories, and television stations did too.  Newspapers also had reporters that specialized in the news of certain types, rather than just business, sports and other news.  All that has been a victim of economics, and it seems unlikely the day will be reversed.  So, while we have a 24 hour news cycle, a lot of that news is inaccurate.

Thursday, October 29, 1914. Turkey bombards Odessa.

The SMS Goeben and SMS Breslau, reflagged as ships of the Ottoman Navy, bombarded Russian ports Novorossiysk, Odessa and Sevastopol in the Black Sea.

The Ottoman Empire had  yet to declare war.

The Germans took the crossroads at Gheluvelt, Belgium.  Followup advances placed their artillery within range of Ypres.

Engineers flooded the lowlands near Yser to retard German advances.

French colonial troops in France, October 29, 1914.

The Polish Legion fought the Russian Army at the Battle of Mołotków with substantial losses.

The Australian government passed the War Precautions Act.

Last edition:

Wednesday, October 28, 1914. Collapsing Maritz Rebellion.

Labels: 1910s, 1914, Battle of Armentières, Battle of La Bassée, Boer Armies, British Army, First Battle of Ypres, German Army, Maritz Rebellion, South African Army, World War One

Corporate Seals

 

This is a large device for embossing corporate seals.

Corporate seals are still in use, although a lot of companies don't use them nearly to the extent that they once did, and they aren't usually the cast iron monsters they once were, such as this one.  I suppose, of course, that some companies are still using these old giant seals, but most use a seal that can fold up into a small, hand held, device.

Old style cast iron seals with a gavel.  These ones aren't quite as large.

1919

10347415_10152860709788156_6259944220924956652_n.jpg (JPEG Image, 960 × 729 pixels)

Wednesday, October 28, 1914. Collapsing Maritz Rebellion.

Rebel Boer units were attacked by the South African Army, forcing Boer general Christian Frederick Beyers to disperse his forces.

The Germans suspended attacks at Ypres to regroup.

Exhaustion and language difficulties frustrated a British effort at Neuve-Chapelle.

French troops held at Armentières in spite of a two day German artillery bombardment.

Last edition:

Tuesday, October 27, 1914. Massive Central Powers losses in the East.

Labels: 1910s, 1914, Austro Hungarian Army, Battle of the Vistula, boats and ships, Eastern Front, German Army, Imperial Russian Army, Royal Navy, The written word

Old Picture of the Day: Carrying Firewood

Old Picture of the Day: Carrying Firewood: Today's picture is a reminder that staying warm is a bigger challenge for some than others. While this picture was taken in 1908, ...

The Big Picture: Holscher's Hub: Trappers Route

Holscher's Hub: Trappers Route

Tuesday, October 27, 1914. Massive Central Powers losses in the East.

The German and Austro Hungarian armies retreated from the Vistula after losing over 60,000 men.

Greece, with permission of the Allies, occupied Northern Epirus in Albania, which upset Italy, which sent Marines to the Albanian port of Vlorë.

The HMS Audacious sank off of Rory Ireland.  Mines brought her down.

Welsh Poet Dylan Thomas worn born.  He's most famous for the following poem:

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

He died himself at a mere 39 years of age, at age at which raging against the dying light probably seems like more of an imperative than later.

Last edition:

Monday, October 26, 1914. Wars within wars.

Labels: 1910s, 1914, Antarctic, Arctic, Austro Hungaria, Canadian Arctic Expedition, Exploration, Imperial Russian Army, Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, Poland, Polish Legion, World War One

Old Picture of the Day: Hauling Firewood

Old Picture of the Day: Hauling Firewood: Today's picture shows a man gathering a wagonload of logs for firewood. I would imagine he has about a cord of wood, which would p...

Old Picture of the Day: Gathering Firewood

Old Picture of the Day: Gathering Firewood: Welcome to Firewood Week here at OPOD. The temperatures are starting to cool off and we are getting near the time we can start up the ...

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - World War One French Dragoon's Room Presevered

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - World War One French Dragoon's Room Presevered

Monday, October 26, 1914. Wars within wars.

Wars within wars, a feature of World War One and World War Two, commenced with a battle between the Austro Hungarian backed Polish Legion and the Imperial Russian Army.  The Russians prevaled in the action at at the villages of Laski and Anielin.

Both the Austro Hungarians and the Russians would back different bands of Polish nationalists.

British and French colonial troops captured Edéa in German Cameroon.

The Norwegian schooner Endurance, carrying members of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition arrived at the South Georgia Islands.

In another expedition, this one much further north, Captain Robert Bartlett and eight survivors of Karluk arrived in Victoria, British Columbia on USS Bear.

HMS Liverpool and HMS Fury with RMS Olympic, try to take the sinking HMS Audacious in tow. October 26, 1914.

Last edition:

Sunday, October 25, 1914. Change of command.

Labels: 1910s, 1914, German Army, World War One

Sunday Morning Scene: St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Casper Wyoming

Churches of the West: St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Casper Wyoming:

 

 St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Casper Wyoming, one of three large churches in Casper just off of the downtown area which were built right around World War One.

Random Snippets: Close calls.

Note to self: Don't leave glasses of water on the computer desk while watching the San Francisco Giants stage a rally against the Kansas City Royals in the World Series. That was a close one.

Advertisments In History: Official Dodge Brothers Commercial ft. the 2015 Challenger | Ballroom

Another neat Dodge commercial. This one is probably accurate in the Dodge brothers' interests, although they weren't really accepted by Detroit society, as they were regarded as crude.

Advertisments in History: Official Dodge Brothers Commercial ft. the 2015 Charger and Challenger |...

Neat advertisement. . . . but in reality the Dodge brothers died in 1920 of the dread Spanish Flu.

Sunday, October 25, 1914. Change of command.

Erich von Falkenhayn replaced Helmuth von Moltke as German Chief of Staff in a war that clearly wasn't developing to plan.

Last edition:

Saturday, October 24, 1914. Woodrow Wilson spoke at the YMCA in PIttsburgh.

Labels: 1910s, 1914, 1930s, 1940, 1940s, Christianity, First Battle of Ypres, Maritz Rebellion, Muscular Christianity, Protestant, religion, South Africa

Movies In History: Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Fury

From the shorter version of this review, at Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Fury

Fury. 2014, directed by David Ayer.

M'eh.

This movie is touring now and has been subject to a lot of anticipation by fans of history and war films. We'll admit here to being a fan of both, with the latter genera being a subset of the former.  It'll probably have quite a few fans, but for those who watch movies closely for detail with an eye towards actual events I suspect it will be a disappointment.  It was with us.

Character development in the film is very poor and U.S. troops are portrayed in a fashion that might be more accurate for the Soviet army of the same period.  The film takes the Gritty Old Guys mixed in with New Guy they don't want to know theme about five notches higher than the norm.  This theme is a stock item in just about every war movie made since 1950 and has been ramped up just about ever time it's been done since Fuller's The Steel Helmet.  Interestingly, its generally absent from films prior to that, and it seems that the entire plot device might have been lifted from S. L. A. Marshall's now discredited study of World War Two infantrymen.  According to later studies of World War Two combat troops, such as The Deadly Brotherhood, this portrayal is false in general, but this film takes this cliche as one of the essential plot devices of the entire film. It isn't as if anyone who hasn't watched a war film hasn't seen this done before, and done better (Big Red One, Platoon, Saving Private Ryan). For a cinematic portrayal of U.S. troops in action, Battleground or Band of Brothers would be a much better option.

In terms of combat scenes, the film would have actually made more sense if it depicted the Red Army in the closing days of the war, rather than the U.S. Army. There was, of course, fighting right up until the last day of the war, but if this film was taken to be accurate it would have us believe that the entire German military was fighting tooth and nail right to the bitter end, when in fact by the stage of the war portrayed the German forces were collapsing in the west with a large number of prisoners being taken. Dealing with floods of German troops attempting to surrender was a major movement and logistical problem for the western allies by that time of the war and the problem became so acute that some units simply took up waiving surrendering Germans towards their rear and German soldiers who were attempting to surrender by that point in the war might end up behind Allied lines for a day or more simply attempting to find a unit that would actually take their surrender.

This movie is yet another one that has built upon the recent trend of showing American soldiers killing POWs.  Studies on this topic show that that outright murder of German POWs was quite rare, although it was the case in any army that the first few minutes of a POW's capture was always very risky.  If a soldier lived through his attempt to surrender and made it for a few minutes, he generally would come out okay.  Wholesale killing of regular German POWs generally did not occur, although you can find the rare example of the contrary.  Refusing to take the surrender of SS troops did occur in some units post June 1944, but even that was pretty rare and tended to be concentrated in units which had direct experience with SS troops killing Allied POWs.  Just as an example of how rare this was, late war a U.S. unit overran an SS unit that had just massacred a group of Jewish prisoners it was moving from one location to another, by burning them alive in a barn, and even in that instance the U.S. troops didn't kill the SS troops, although they hotly debated doing so.

Where this cinematic myth really got launched is difficult to tell, but it is depicted in context in The Longest Day, although in that historically accurate version of Cornelius Ryan's book, its shown in the context of close combat with the U.S. soldier not knowing what the German soldier was attempting, and not understanding what he was saying.  This scene was almost identically taken for Saving Private Ryan, but converted in what is otherwise a very fine film into one in which U.S. Rangers purposely shoot German soldiers trying to surrender, after taunting them.  It's picked up again in Band of Brothers, but in that case the murder is suggested rather than depicted, and it is in fact based upon what was a real event in that instance, although an extraordinary event.  In Fury, however, its shown as routine and even in an unusually sadistic episode in one scene.  Almost no soldier in this movie, even those depicted as highly religious, object, which would be quite unlikely.  Of note, the murder suggested in Band of Brothers was controversial amongst members of that unit, all of whom were elite troops.

German troops in Fury are portrayed as stunningly well equipped and uniformed, when period photographs show a lot of them to pretty worn by that stage of the war. This film takes place over a few days starting in April 1945 (we don't know exactly when it ends, but it would be in April or May 1945).  By April 1945 the German army was using a mix of everything it had and exhibiting a decline in equipment quality in everything.  They were, of course, still quite capable of fighting well, but they were not the same in terms of equipment that they'd been even a few months prior.  Even Hitler Youth units are shown as well equipped and uniformed when period photos show them looking mostly like a bunch of ill equipped scared children.

On the depiction of children as combatants, the film is sympathetic for the most part to the plight of impressed German children, and it doesn't seek to be generally harsh toward them. One scene does depict German girls as being impressed into service, and I generally do not think that happened.  The Nazi regime never was able to accommodate itself to a really full mobilization of women, and indeed it generally viewed their place as being at home, with some exceptions, even late war.  Mobilized German women tended to work in select industries, or in work details, and I know of no instances of them being mobilized as combatants.

Scenes early in the film depicting an armored attack against German troops supported by anti tank guns were well well done. A scene depicting Sherman's in action against a Tiger tank is interesting, but probably overdone. Still, it is interesting.  The Tiger used in the film is the sole working example of that type of tank. The depiction of munitions bouncing off armor is scary and probably pretty realistic. Also realistic is the portray of a penetrating shot as fatal to a tank and its crew even without an explosion, which is rarely shown in regards to armor.

The film is extremely violent, as one would of course expect for a war film, as war is violent.  Nonetheless, without trying to spoil to much of it for folks who might be inclined to view it, at least to some degree, particularly in later stages of the film, a person has the strong sense that they were lifted wholly out of The Wild Bunch, but not in a way that's as novel as they were in that earlier film, and even parts of that film begin to strain a viewers suspension of reality.  Indeed, the film might be somewhat described as Peckinpahesque, except that Sam Peckinpah had a much more developed talent for being able to use violence as a vehicle to bring up troubling moral issues and contradictions in his characters, particularly those depicted in The Wild Bunch, which was specifically filmed to expose Peckinpah's feelings about the type of character that had only recently been portrayed when that film was made in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.  In this film there seems to have been a similar attempt to portray some similar moral contradictions in regards to the crew, but it doesn't come off very well.  By the films end the director was resorting to the fairly free use of Biblical quotes to try to get this across.

I will note that the film did portray the subject of religion fairly frequently, and in a less cynical manner than had tended to be the case in films of the 60s and 70s.  This seems to be a bit of an evolving trend.  Shia LeBeouf's character; Boyd "Bible" Swan is probably the best acted character in the move and he is shown as devoutly observant in some unspecified Protestant denomination.  It's hard to imagine a similar portrayal, for example, in another "team" movie Kelly's Heroes and in the famed The Dirty Dozen the only religious character is a bad guy.  The main protagonist of the film, Norman Ellison, is a quietly observant Episcopalian who refuses to compromise his conscience.  Although its not apparent until the very end, even the not very likable Sgt Don Collier, played by Brad Pitt, has an extensive enough religious knowledge to be able to quote the Bible, showing the degree to which he's morally conflicted perhaps.

One minor, and it is minor, plus of the film is that its pretty decent in material details, which those with an eye for history always look for, and which has tended to be a high expectation for this moving going set since Saving Private Ryan really raised the bar in this area. The Shermans are real Shermans (although I don't know what model, there's at least two different models). The Tiger tank is a real Tiger tank. The Germans are armed correctly with the correct small arms as are the U.S. troops, although the use of a Stg44 as a captured tank small arm is unlikely.  Crew use of the M3 submachinegun, however, is absolutely correct.

And, and this is unusual, the use of horses by the Germans is very frequently shown and even shows up as a routine item in the dialog. Indeed, that part is quite surprising.  German officers are shown as mounted, correctly, in more than one scene. The large scale use of horses is noted in dialog including a query by one soldier about whether a lot of men or horses had been noted in a certain area, indicative of German activity.

Some small material details are intriguing but unexplained. Brad Pitt's character Sgt. Collier has an English last name but speaks perfect German with that never being explained. German speaking American solders were not uncommon at that time, but that's almost always because they had grown up in a German speaking family.  A little explanation on that  character trait would have been nice, even if only in terms of a vague suggestion as to the answer.  Sgt. Collier carries a double action revolver and wears three strap cavalry boots, sort of suggesting pre war service in the cavalry, which his character would have been old enough to easily have had.  Boots of that type were almost always associated with mounted service and continued to be manufactured until just after World War Two.  Photographs of tankers wearing them do exist, but such photographs are always associated with units which had at one time been horse cavalry.  To simply find a tanker wearing them, even a NCO, would have been unlikely otherwise.  Double action revolvers had remained common in U.S. Cavalry well into the war as they were thought safer for mounted men than the M1911 automatic pistol, although most cavalrymen carried the M1911.  Some tankers were issued double action revolvers early in the war, however.

Having said that, the movie is otherwise a disappointment and I'd skip it if I hadn't already seen it.

The "They Were" Farmers, Soliders or Lawyers threads now pages.

The "They Were" farmers, lawyers or soldiers posts, which were amongst the most read here, have been made into separate pages should anyone be looking for them.

They just grew too big for posts.  They'll still be updated as before.

Other threads on hunters, teachers, and clerics are still posts, for the time being.

Saturday, October 24, 1914. Woodrow Wilson spoke at the YMCA in PIttsburgh.

The Germans attacked Allied positions at Gheluvelt, Belgium and attempted to overrun French defenses on the main canal leading to the Lys at Armentières.

Rebel Boers were defeated in the Maritz Rebellion causing General Manie Maritz to flee to Germany.  He returned to South Africa and was convicted of treason in 1923, but freed by a Boer administration in 1924.  He became a Nazi sympathizer in the 1930.  He was killed in a car wreck in 1940 at age 64.

Woodrow Wilson spoke at the YMCA in Pittsburgh.

Mr. President, Mr. Porter, Ladies and Gentlemen:

I feel almost as if I were a truant, being away from Washington to-day, but I thought that perhaps if I were absent the Congress would have the more leisure to adjourn. I do not ordinarily open my office at Washington on Saturday. Being a schoolmaster, I am accustomed to a Saturday holiday, and I thought I could not better spend a holiday than by showing at least something of the true direction of my affections; for by long association with the men who have worked for this organization I can say that it has enlisted my deep affection.

I am interested in it for various reasons. First of all, because it is an association of young men. I have had a good deal to do with young men in my time, and I have formed an impression of them which I believe to be contrary to the general impression. They are generally thought to be arch radicals. As a matter of fact, they are the most conservative people I have ever dealt with. Go to a college community and try to change the least custom of that little world and find how the conservatives will rush at you. Moreover, young men are embarrassed by having inherited their fathers' opinions. I have often said that the use of a university is to make young gentlemen as unlike their fathers as possible. I do not say that with the least disrespect for the fathers; but every man who is old enough to have a son in college is old enough to have become very seriously immersed in some particular business and is almost certain to have caught the point of view of that particular business. And it is very useful to his son to be taken out of that narrow circle, conducted to some high place where he may see the general map of the world and of the interests of mankind, and there shown how big the world is and how much of it his father may happen to have forgotten. It would be worth while for men, middle-aged and old, to detach themselves more frequently from the things that command their daily attention and to think of the sweeping tides of humanity.

Therefore I am interested in this association, because it is intended to bring young men together before any crust has formed over them, before they have been hardened to any particular occupation, before they have caught an inveterate point of view; while they still have a searchlight that they can swing and see what it reveals of all the circumstances of the hidden world.

I am the more interested in it because it is an association of young men who are Christians. I wonder if we attach sufficient importance to Christianity as a mere instrumentality in the life of mankind. For one, I am not fond of thinking of Christianity as the means of saving individual souls. I have always been very impatient of processes and institutions which said that their purpose was to put every man in the way of developing his character. My advice is: Do not think about your character. If you will think about what you ought to do for other people, your character will take care of itself. Character is a by-product, and any man who devotes himself to its cultivation in his own case will become a selfish prig. The only way your powers can become great is by exerting them outside the circle of your own narrow, special, selfish interests. And that is the reason of Christianity. Christ came into the world to save others, not to save himself; and no man is a true Christian who does not think constantly of how he can lift his brother, how he can assist his friend, how he can enlighten mankind, how he can make virtue the rule of conduct in the circle in which he lives. An association merely of young men might be an association that had its energies put forth in every direction, but an association of Christian young men is an association meant to put its shoulders under the world and lift it, so that other men may feel that they have companions in bearing the weight and heat of the day; that other men may know that there are those who care for them, who would go into places of difficulty and danger to rescue them, who regard themselves as their brother's keeper.

And, then, I am glad that it is an association. Every word of its title means an element of strength. Young men are strong. Christian young men are the strongest kind of young men, and when they associate themselves together they have the incomparable strength of organization. The Young Men's Christian Association once excited, perhaps it is not too much to say, the hostility of the organized churches of the Christian world, because the movement looked as if it were so non-sectarian, as if it were so outside the ecclesiastical field, that perhaps it was an effort to draw young men away from the churches and to substitute this organization for the great bodies of Christian people who joined themselves in the Christian denominations. But after a while it appeared that it was a great instrumentality that belonged to all the churches; that it was a common instrument for sending the light of Christianity out into the world in its most practical form, drawing young men who were strangers into places where they could have companionship that stimulated them and suggestions that kept them straight and occupations that amused them without vicious practice; and then, by surrounding themselves with an atmosphere of purity and of simplicity of life, catch something of a glimpse of the great ideal which Christ lifted when He was elevated upon the cross.

I remember hearing a very wise man say once, a man grown old in the service of a great church, that he had never taught his son religion dogmatically at any time; that he and the boy's mother had agreed that if the atmosphere of that home did not make a Christian of the boy, nothing that they could say would make a Christian of him. They knew that Christianity was catching, and if they did not have it, it would not be communicated. If they did have it, it would penetrate while the boy slept, almost; while he was unconscious of the sweet influences that were about him, while he reckoned nothing of instruction, but merely breathed into his lungs the wholesome air of a Christian home. That is the principle of the Young Men's Christian Association—to make a place where the atmosphere makes great ideals contagious. That is the reason that I said, though I had forgotten that I said it, what is quoted on the outer page of the program—that you can test a modern community by the degree of its interest in its Young Men's Christian Association. You can test whether it knows what road it wants to travel or not. You can test whether it is deeply interested in the spiritual and essential prosperity of its rising generation. I know of no test that can be more conclusively put to a community than that.

I want to suggest to the young men of this association that it is the duty of young men not only to combine for the things that are good, but to combine in a militant spirit. There is a fine passage in one of Milton's prose writings which I am sorry to say I cannot quote, but the meaning of which I can give you, and it is worth hearing. He says that he has no patience with a cloistered virtue that does not go out and seek its adversary. Ah, how tired I am of the men who are merely on the defensive, who hedge themselves in, who perhaps enlarge the hedge enough to include their little family circle and ward off all the evil influences of the world from that loved and hallowed group. How tired I am of the men whose virtue is selfish because it is merely self-protective! And how much I wish that men by the hundred thousand might volunteer to go out and seek an adversary and subdue him!

I have had the fortune to take part in affairs of a considerable variety of sorts, and I have tried to hate as few persons as possible, but there is an exquisite combination of contempt and hate that I have for a particular kind of person, and that is the moral coward. I wish we could give all our cowards a perpetual vacation. Let them go off and sit on the side lines and see us play the game; and put them off the field if they interfere with the game. They do nothing but harm, and they do it by that most subtle and fatal thing of all, that of taking the momentum and the spirit and the forward dash out of things. A man who is virtuous and a coward has no marketable virtue about him. The virtue, I repeat, which is merely self-defensive is not serviceable even, I suspect, to himself. For how a man can swallow and not taste bad when he is a coward and thinking only of himself I cannot imagine.

Be militant! Be an organization that is going to do things! If you can find older men who will give you countenance and acceptable leadership, follow them; but if you cannot, organize separately and dispense with them. There are only two sorts of men worth associating with when something is to be done. Those are young men and men who never grow old. Now, if you find men who have grown old, about whom the crust has hardened, whose hinges are stiff, whose minds always have their eye over the shoulder thinking of things as they were done, do not have anything to do with them. It would not be Christian to exclude them from your organization, but merely use them to pad the roll. If you can find older men who will lead you acceptably and keep you in countenance, I am bound as an older man to advise you to follow them. But suit yourselves. Do not follow people that stand still. Just remind them that this is not a statical proposition; it is a movement, and if they cannot get a move on them they are not serviceable.

Life, gentlemen—the life of society, the life of the world—has constantly to be fed from the bottom. It has to be fed by those great sources of strength which are constantly rising in new generations. Red blood has to be pumped into it. New fiber has to be supplied. That is the reason I have always said that I believed in popular institutions. If you can guess beforehand whom your rulers are going to be, you can guess with a very great certainty that most of them will not be fit to rule. The beauty of popular institutions is that you do not know where the man is going to come from, and you do not care so he is the right man. You do not know whether he will come from the avenue or from the alley. You do not know whether he will come from the city or the farm. You do not know whether you will ever have heard that name before or not. Therefore you do not limit at any point your supply of new strength. You do not say it has got to come through the blood of a particular family or through the processes of a particular training, or by anything except the native impulse and genius of the man himself. The humblest hovel, therefore, may produce you your greatest man. A very humble hovel did produce you one of your greatest men. That is the process of life, this constant surging up of the new strength of unnamed, unrecognized, uncatalogued men who are just getting into the running, who are just coming up from the masses of the unrecognized multitude. You do not know when you will see above the level masses of the crowd some great stature lifted head and shoulders above the rest, shouldering its way, not violently but gently, to the front and saying, "Here am I; follow me." And his voice will be your voice, his thought will be your thought, and you will follow him as if you were following the best things in yourselves.

When I think of an association of Christian young men I wonder that it has not already turned the world upside down. I wonder, not that it has done so much, for it has done a great deal, but that it has done so little; and I can only conjecture that it does not realize its own strength. I can only imagine that it has not yet got its pace. I wish I could believe, and I do believe, that at seventy it is just reaching its majority, and that from this time on a dream greater even than George Williams ever dreamed will be realized in the great accumulating momentum of Christian men throughout the world. For, gentlemen, this is an age in which the principles of men who utter public opinion dominate the world. It makes no difference what is done for the time being. After the struggle is over the jury will sit, and nobody can corrupt that jury.

At one time I tried to write history. I did not know enough to write it, but I knew from experience how hard it was to find an historian out, and I trusted I would not be found out. I used to have this comfortable thought as I saw men struggling in the public arena. I used to think to myself, "This is all very well and very interesting. You probably assess yourself in such and such a way. Those who are your partisans assess you thus and so. Those who are your opponents urge a different verdict. But it does not make very much difference, because after you are dead and gone some quiet historian will sit in a secluded room and tell mankind for the rest of time just what to think about you, and his verdict, not the verdict of your partisans and not the verdict of your opponents, will be the verdict of posterity." I say that I used to say that to myself. It very largely was not so. And yet it was true in this sense: If the historian really speaks the judgment of the succeeding generation, then he really speaks the judgment also of the generations that succeed it, and his assessment, made without the passion of the time, made without partisan feeling in the matter—in other circumstances, when the air is cool—is the judgment of mankind upon your actions.

Now, is it not very important that we who shall constitute a portion of the jury should get our best judgments to work and base them upon Christian forbearance and Christian principles, upon the idea that it is impossible by sophistication to establish that a thing that is wrong is right? And yet, while we are going to judge with the absolute standard of righteousness, we are going to judge with Christian feeling, being men of a like sort ourselves, suffering the same temptations, having the same weaknesses, knowing the same passions; and while we do not condemn, we are going to seek to say and to live the truth. What I am hoping for is that these seventy years have just been a running start, and that now there will be a great rush of Christian principle upon the strongholds of evil and of wrong in the world. Those strongholds are not as strong as they look. Almost every vicious man is afraid of society, and if you once open the door where he is, he will run. All you have to do is to fight, not with cannon but with light.

May I illustrate it in this way? The Government of the United States has just succeeded in concluding a large number of treaties with the leading nations of the world, the sum and substance of which is this, that whenever any trouble arises the light shall shine on it for a year before anything is done; and my prediction is that after the light has shone on it for a year it will not be necessary to do anything; that after we know what happened, then we will know who was right and who was wrong. I believe that light is the greatest sanitary influence in the world. That, I suppose, is scientific commonplace, because if you want to make a place wholesome the best instrument you can use is the sun; to let his rays in, let him search out all the miasma that may lurk there. So with moral light: It is the most wholesome and rectifying, as well as the most revealing, thing in the world, provided it be genuine moral light; not the light of inquisitiveness, not the light of the man who likes to turn up ugly things, not the light of the man who disturbs what is corrupt for the mere sake of the sensation that he creates by disturbing it, but the moral light, the light of the man who discloses it in order that all the sweet influences of the world may go in and make it better.

That, in my judgment, is what the Young Men's Christian Association can do. It can point out to its members the things that are wrong. It can guide the feet of those who are going astray; and when its members have realized the power of the Christian principle, then they will not be men if they do not unite to see that the rest of the world experiences the same emancipation and reaches the same happiness of release.

I believe in the Young Men's Christian Association because I believe in the progress of moral ideas in the world; and I do not know that I am sure of anything else. When you are after something and have formulated it and have done the very best thing you know how to do you have got to be sure for the time being that that is the thing to do. But you are a fool if in the back of your head you do not know it is possible that you are mistaken. All that you can claim is that that is the thing as you see it now and that you cannot stand still; that you must push forward the things that are right. It may turn out that you made mistakes, but what you do know is your direction, and you are sure you are moving in that way. I was once a college reformer, until discouraged, and I remember a classmate of mine saying, "Why, man, can't you let anything alone?" I said, "I let everything alone that you can show me is not itself moving in the wrong direction, but I am not going to let those things alone that I see are going downhill"; and I borrowed this illustration from an ingenious writer. He says, "If you have a post that is painted white and want to keep it white, you cannot let it alone; and if anybody says to you, 'Why don't you let that post alone,' you will say, 'Because I want it to stay white, and therefore I have got to paint it at least every second year.'" There isn't anything in this world that will not change if you absolutely let it alone, and therefore you have constantly to be attending to it to see that it is being taken care of in the right way and that, if it is part of the motive force of the world, it is moving in the right direction.

That means that eternal vigilance is the price, not only of liberty, but of a great many other things. It is the price of everything that is good. It is the price of one's own soul. It is the price of the souls of the people you love; and when it comes down to the final reckoning you have a standard that is immutable. What shall a man give in exchange for his own soul? Will he sell that? Will he consent to see another man sell his soul? Will he consent to see the conditions of his community such that men's souls are debauched and trodden underfoot in the mire? What shall he give in exchange for his own soul, or any other man's soul? And since the world, the world of affairs, the world of society, is nothing less and nothing more than all of us put together, it is a great enterprise for the salvation of the soul in this world as well as in the next. There is a text in Scripture that has always interested me profoundly. It says godliness is profitable in this life as well as in the life that is to come; and if you do not start it in this life, it will not reach the life that is to come. Your measurements, your directions, your whole momentum, have to be established before you reach the next world. This world is intended as the place in which we shall show that we know how to grow in the stature of manliness and of righteousness.

I have come here to bid Godspeed to the great work of the Young Men's Christian Association. I love to think of the gathering force of such things as this in the generations to come. If a man had to measure the accomplishments of society, the progress of reform, the speed of the world's betterment, by the few little things that happened in his own life, by the trifling things that he can contribute to accomplish, he would indeed feel that the cost was much greater than the result. But no man can look at the past of the history of this world without seeing a vision of the future of the history of this world; and when you think of the accumulated moral forces that have made one age better than another age in the progress of mankind, then you can open your eyes to the vision. You can see that age by age, though with a blind struggle in the dust of the road, though often mistaking the path and losing its way in the mire, mankind is yet—sometimes with bloody hands and battered knees—nevertheless struggling step after step up the slow stages to the day when he shall live in the full light which shines upon the uplands, where all the light that illumines mankind shines direct from the face of God.

 Last edition:

Thursday, October 22, 1914. Battle of La Bassée and First Battle of Ypres, German advances.

Labels: 1910s, 1914, Battle of La Bassée, British Army, First Battle of Ypres, German Army, Kansas, Motorcycles, World War One

Friday Farming: Sheep

ATVs. Boo. Hiss.

I'm going to finally admit it, I'm sick of ATVs and I'm pretty darned sick of people who make excuses for using ATVs on wildlands.

 ATV tracks, off road, at over 8,000 feet in the Big Horns.

This frankly has more to do with my status of being a hunter, than anything else, and I'll admit that I'm somewhat hypocritical about this topic, for reasons that I'll mention below. But I really, truly, have had enough of them.

The reason I don't like ATVs is that I value wildlands.  I value them as a livestock owner, I value them as a hunter, I value them as a fisherman, and I just value them as somebody who loves nature.  ATVs are the antithesis of everything in nature.

Now, in terms of being hypocritical, I freely note here that I grew up with vehicles and have had 4x4 vehicles my entire life.

 

 My first car, before I was old enough to drive. A 1958 M38A1 Jeep.  I didn't put the big dent in the fender.

I grew up with vehicles and have always used vehicles to access nature. And as an owner of a large number of 4x4 vehicles over the years, I've never been without a vehicle that could take me way out back.  This admittedly is contrary to the natural state, and I've written about that here before.  One of the things that I think its most difficult for us, as modern people, to appreciate is the revolution in access to wildlands that automobiles brought about.   Not only was it revolutionary, but it frankly changed our relationship with it, making it impossible for many to appreciate the expanse, time and distance, and also making it so we tend to travel insulated from nature, rather than in it.

 

Me, in another context.  Nothing makes you appreciate the vastness of an area more than traveling it at, in essence, nature's pace.

But even with that, at least vehicles essentially basically stopped somewhere.  People drove distances, often distances that would have taken days to cover in prior eras, but they did get out and start walking (or riding on a horse/mule).  

ATVs have changed that.  

Now I constantly see people who have 3/4 ton or 1 ton trucks who are hauling them up to the back country. The ATVs have grown larger and now often take up the entire bed of the truck.  Once they get to the end of the road, they unload the ATV and then drive over the prairie, making little roads like the one depicted above on it. They basically never dismount.

I really question the effectiveness of this for hunting, as ATVs are noisy and a man on foot, or on horseback, can usually hear them miles and miles away.  I've taken game animals in areas where the ATV drivers had passed them by, the animals taking cover well before the ATV drove on by.  But that they have an impact on wildlands, making them less wild, cannot be denied.

That ATV owners know this is pretty plain. Almost every ATV owner I know, save for a few honest ones, who use them for hunting will claim "I only use them to haul things out."  Well, bull.  The "I only" claim is the classic claim made by people who know they are doing things wrong, and want to claim some legitimate reason to excuse it.  Like people who only claim to buy certain magazines for the articles, the overwhelming owners of ATVs in hunting and fishing country are using them for the very thing they claim they are not.

In recent years around here there's been an increasing number of areas where signs stating "No ATVs" have sprung up.  Quite a few of these are walk in access areas, and the ranchers don't want the ATVs in there wrecking the land and scaring cattle.  Indeed, around here, ATVs reached their zenith and began to decline in livestock work quite some time ago, and the most common use of ATVs I see now amongst ranchers is in the form of very small trucks that they use for fencing or to travel from one cow camp to another.  Herding cattle with them is mostly out now.

About the only use of ATVs I don't object to is that by people who just flat out like ATVs and drive them on back roads to drive them.  Most of those people are honest about that.  I see them on the roads in the summer, with an increasing number thankfully wearing helmets now.  But generally those people  aren't driving over grasslands with them or hoping sagebrush with them, and then later claiming that "I only" use them for this or that.  Indeed, if a person "is only" using an ATV to haul game out, it's a pretty expensive way to do that.  It'd be cheaper to hire a rancher to haul one out with a horse.  But the evidence is that the "only" class doesn't "only" do what they claim.

And I'd like to see the use of ATVs on the prairie and in the mountains go.  I know that I'll never live to see that, but I wish I would see that. At some point people who love the wildlands have to say enough is enough, and keep them out.  And, frankly, at some point as a people we have to admit that all humans have a natural inclination towards laziness and if we want to really live, we have to resist it.  Getting out and walking would be a good way to start.