The forgotten scandal of the Soviet ape-man

The British magazine, New Scientist, has a section, Histories, which is always full of intriguing off-beat stories about the wanderings and progress of scientific endeavor. The August 23, 2008 edition of New Scientist has an article on the early efforts at the hybridization of animals, The forgotten scandal of the Soviet ape-man.

Single-Handed by C.S. Forester

C.S. Forester is famous for his Hornblower series (eleven books in the series starting with Mr. Midshipman Hornblower) and The African Queen. He wrote much else though, fiction and non-fiction.

Sometime ago, I came across Single-Handed, originally published in 1929. The copy I found was a used paperback printed in 1953 and has fragile yellow pages and a brittle spine. Because of its condition, I set it aside for reading at home, it not being robust enough to be carried around in a briefcase.

Finally got to it yesterday. It is, like much of Forester's writing, a good solid read, a naval adventure story. It would be appropriate for an eighth grader on up.

It is an interestingly constructed story in that it is written in the third person and does not so much have a human but rather the British Navy and Duty as the protagonist. It is quite an interesting and unusual structure, and despite misgivings as I was reading it, I think it actually works pretty well.

Bad faith and critical ingenuity often go hunting together

Frederic Raphael in a review in Literary Review, January 2010.

In our own time . . . bad faith and critical ingenuity often go hunting together.

Living messages

Neil Postman in The Disappearance of Childhood.

Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see.

The Fleet the Gods Forgot

I came across this Naval Institue Press book by W.G. Winlsow, The Fleet the Gods Forgot: The U.S. Asiatic Fleet in World War II, a few months ago at the Eagle Eye bookstore. The Asiatic Fleet (distinct from the Pacific Fleet based in Hawaii) was formed in 1902 and dissolved at the end of 1942 and was tasked with looking after America's interests in the western Pacific. It was storied in its time and always had an air of the romance of the east, in part because of its being based at Subic Bay, near Manilla in the Philippines as well as with a river boat squadron at Shanghai in China.

At the commencement of US involvement in World War II with Japan's surprise attack on December 7th, 1941, the Asiatic Fleet was ill-prepared in terms of the modernization of its ships. While there were a couple of ships built in the late 1920's, the majority of the fleet dated to the first world war or earlier. What is often overlooked in the quick world history classes of our children is that simultaneous with the attack on Pearl Harbor, the empire of Japan also launched invasions of many of the countries of Southeast Asia, including the Philippines. Even in hindsight it was an act not only of military hubris but of astonishing logistic coordination.

Winslow tells the tale of this long neglected far-off corner of the war. Half of the Asiatic Fleet's surface units were sunk within the first three months of the war. They were ill-equipped, poorly supplied, ill-used (often as part of a joint allied effort between the US, the British and the Dutch) and almost always on the defensive but made up of often tactically brilliant commanders and resolute seamen. They bore the brunt of all the initial reverses, holding the line at tremendous odds and horrendous cost in those first few months.

The book is oddly constructed in that the first eighty pages summarize the general movements and uses of the different branches of the fleet (submarines, cruisers, destroyers, etc.). I almost didn't make it through this section and you might wish to skip it. The real stories are in Part II, which Winslow calls Battle Reports. In each of these chapters he follows a unit (a particluar ship, plane, submarine, etc.) through its experiences. Since half of them fought to the point of sinking and almost all of them were in numerous battles, these are pretty exciting stories.

And some of them are simply amazing. Take the tiny and barely armed USS Isabel, a yacht of virtually no military value (sometimes referred to as the "relief flagship"). Her adventures in the first few months of WWII were actually quite astonishing. Because she was regarded as of little value, half the time she was being given impossibly dangerous jobs to do and half the time she was being forgotten about and left to her own devices. She eventually made it safely to Fremantle, Australia.

And then there is the story of Lieutenant Commander Morrill in command of the USS Quail, a minesweeper. She was the last Asiatic Fleet unit remaining in the Philippines at the fall of Corregidor. Morrill was ordered on May 5th, 1942 to scuttle the Quail just as the surrender was being announced. Doing as he was ordered, Morrill still was reluctant to submit to capture. He and seventeen others comandeered a small tug, the Ranger and determined to make their way to the southern Philippines where they understood surviving forces to be continuing the fight. Eventually, they found that this was not feasible and they ultimately made their way to Australia.

Thus, the eighteen navy men happily concluded their incredible 2,000 mile odyssey. They had managed safely to traverse enemy-infested, unfamiliar seas in their little 36-foot motor launch at an average speed of 5 knots, using a jury-rigged sextant to plot their way on inadequate navigational charts. This daring, seemingly impossible escape from Corregidor to Darwin, Australia, by Lieutenant Commander John H. Morrill and his men must surely stand tall among the all-time great achievements attributed to men of the United States Navy.

This story on its own warrants the book. It is right up there with Bligh and his navigating the loyal crew of eighteen from the HMS Bounty 2,000 miles across the Pacific to Timor in 1789 in a 23 foot launch. Whereas Bligh had the disadvantage of sailing without a motorized and slightly larger tug, on the other hand Morrill had literally hundreds of enemy ships and planes trying to intercept him the whole journey. Both are remarkable tales of seamanship.

An excellent book (the second half) for a YA reader with an interest in World War II, the Navy and the Sea, military action, adventure, history, courage, duty and heroism.

Orwell and Huxley

From Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.

A disconcerting picture

Portrait of a Young Boy Holding a Child's Drawing by Giovanni Francesco Caroto painted circa 1515

The National Gallery in London had an exhibition a year or so ago, Renaissance Faces. In reading a review of the show I came across this quite startling painting, Portrait of a Young Boy Holding a Child's Drawing by Giovanni Francesco Caroto painted circa 1515.

I find it startling for three reasons. Most arrestingly is the simple expression of manic mischievousness on the boy's face. A little hard to decipher.

The second reason is the context. Children were still in this period of history regarded as smaller versions of adults and were often painted as such. There was no particular accord granted to their differences. This is one of the earliest paintings I have seen which looks as if the artist was attempting to capture an expression characteristic of, if not unique to, children.

But what really grabs me is the drawing which the child is holding. Walk into any kindergarten across the country today and you will see this picture or something very proximate to it tacked up on the wall. Across half a millennia, between two continents, across almost inconceivable changes in social structure, national culture, etc., this picture cries out the fundamental sameness of children, their delights, the changes they go through and the skills they acquire. I find it fascinating.

Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour

Edna St. Vincent Millay
from Huntsman, What Quarry?, 1939

Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour
falls from the sky a meteoric shower of facts;
They lie unquestioned, uncombined.
Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill
is daily spun,
But there exists no loom
to weave it into fabric.

Exasperation balanced by perspective

Occassionally I become exasperated by some commentator, activist, or politician harping on about some age-old issue of discrimination or unfairness or slight. Usually it is an issue that used to be valid but statistically is no longer extant and yet these old policy warriors wage on like some Don Quixote tilting at their imagined windmills. Noble, but no longer relevant. But then I come across something like this obituary from the Economist a couple of years ago, (Mildred Loving, The Economist, May 17th, 2008 unfortunately inaccessible except to subscribers or as premium content). While this is in some ways ancient history, it is disconcerting how recent that ancient history is.

They loved each other. That must have been why they decided to get their marriage certificate framed and to hang it up in the bedroom of their house. There was little else in the bedroom, save the bed. Certainly nothing worth locking the front door for on a warm July night in 1958 in Central Point, Virginia. No one came this way, ten miles off the Richmond Turnpike into the dipping hills and the small, poor, scattered farmhouses, unless they had to. But Mildred Loving was suddenly woken to the crash of a door and a torch levelled in her eyes.

It was the law.

Mrs Loving had said the wrong thing. Had they just been going together, black and white, no one would have cared much. But they had formalised their love, and had the paperwork. This meant that under Virginia law they were cohabiting "against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth". It was a felony for blacks and whites to marry, and another felony to leave Virginia to do so. Fifteen other states had similar laws. The Lovings had to get up and go to jail. "The Lord made sparrows and robins, not to mix with one another," as Sheriff Brooks said later.

Reluctantly, they moved to Washington, D.C., and later initiated a court case with the assistance of the ACLU.

By 1967 they had obtained a unanimous ruling from Earl Warren's Supreme Court that marriage was "one of the basic civil rights of man", which "cannot be infringed by the state". The Lovings were free to go home and live together, in a new cinder-block house Richard built himself.

The constitutional arguments had meant nothing to them. Their chief lawyer, Bernard Cohen, had based his case in the end on the equal-rights clause of the 14th amendment, and was keen that the Lovings should listen to him speak. But they did not attend the hearings or read the decision. Richard merely urged Mr Cohen, "Tell the court I love my wife." For Mildred, all that mattered was being able to walk down the street, in view of everyone, with her husband's arm around her. It was very simple. If she had helped many others do the same, so much the better.

And should anyone think this is just a further example of the benighted status of the US and an unending shadow of history, every country does have its unique journeys down the wrong path. Two examples come to mind from countries in which I have lived and hold in high regard. They are offered not as condemnation of those particular countries but as examples that it happens everywhere and in the least expected places.

The practice of eugenics continued in Sweden of all places until 1975.
Australia did not extend the vote to aborigines until the 1960's. Not protection in voting but being able to vote at all.

We have travelled a long distance in a short time but there are clear memories of how it used to be just such a short time ago. It is good to move on and confront the new problems we reliably create for ourselves in our journeys: at least for me though, I find myself and my impatience reproached by stories like Mildred Loving's when I come across them.

And there you have it . . .

From a sermon by Reverend J.D'E.E. Firth originally delivered on May 11, 1955 and printed in the December 19, 2009, edition of The Spectator.

This intuition was once well expressed in its most generalised form, by Sir Edward Grey, when he was asked how, as foreign secretary, he could see his way through the maze of a particularly difficult international negotiation. 'I see my way clear,' he replied, 'because I have always believed that to do the right thing is the right thing to do."