Saturday, March 16, 2024

Alantropa

My eldest son, What’s-His-Name, was helping me install a security camera in the backyard.  Hidden behind a mass of English Ivy climbing the back wall, it was so camouflaged than if either of us turned to pick up a tool, it took us a few seconds to relocate where in the mass of dense green leaves we had hidden the camera.

Finished, the two of us sat down at the patio table to enjoy a couple of beers, (respectively, root and Tecate), as a reward for our work just as my younger son, The-Other-One, came home from school.  

“Hey,” he said, “When did we get a security camera?”

The-Other-One is red/green colorblind, and this was another example of how most forms of camouflage simply didn’t work on him.  There were a lot of things he couldn’t see—like the large piece of red cellophane he hit with the lawn mower, that scattered red confetti all over the front yard—and evidently, things he could see that we couldn’t.  I’ve often wished I could briefly see through his eyes, to see the world differently.

Fresh viewpoints challenge our assumptions and offer new ways of looking at the world.  They can spark creativity and innovation by breaking us out of conventional thinking.

Sometimes, the most important discoveries come from those who see things differently.  Eccentric thinkers might notice patterns or connections that others miss, leading to breakthroughs in science, art, or problem-solving.

Or to put it succinctly, the nut point of view is frequently valuable.  People who see the world differently and come up with new ideas are the essential yeast that keeps society rising.

Herman Sörgel, a German architect in the 1920s, was an entire cake of such yeast.  He came up with a brilliant plan on for preventing another cataclysmic world war by providing so much wealth and resources to Europe that such a war would never again be necessary.  His plan was to provide sufficient Lebensraum by damming up the Straits of Gibraltar and substantially draining the Mediterranean Sea.

Sörgel forsaw a future world that was dominated by the Americas and by an inevitable Pan-Asian Union.  For Europe to compete in such a world, it would be necessary for Europe to acquire more land and resources.  By damming up certain key points around the Mediterranean, and allowing evaporation to lower the water level, there would be  substantially more land in both Europe and North Africa available to colonize.  Sörgel’s plan called for the creation of three large freshwater lakes in the Sahara with canals linking the new farmland to the now smaller Mediterranean Sea.  

At right is an artist’s drawing of what the area would look right after the sea had dropped sufficiently.  If you have a little trouble orienting yourself, slightly to the left of the center is an enlarged Sicily connected to what is now the boot-turned-galosh of Italy.  Greece, upper right, is substantially bigger.

A little over 5.3 million years ago, the sea first crashed through the Straits of Gibraltar, creating a tidal wave that roared across the Mediterranean area in what geologists call the Zanclean Flood.  What Sörgel had in mind was to reverse most of that flood.

The plan had five major components.  A massive hydroelectric dam across the Straits of Gibraltar that would, over the course of the next century, allow the sea level east of the dam to drop by more than 600 feet.  Three additional dams, one located at the Dardanelles to hold back the Black Sea, a second on the Congo River creating the freshwater lakes in the Sahara, and the last between Sicily and Tunisia creating a highway between Italy and North Africa and lowering the water level even more to the east.  Lastly, the Suez Canal would have to be deepened and extended northward through the new area uncovered by the receding water.  The Suez Canal would cease to be a sea level canal, but one requiring a series of massive locks to lower the ships down to the level of the Mediterranean.

Not only would there be new land, prompting new settlements along the newly created coast, there would be expanded canals linking the newly created arable farmland in the Sahara to ports along the sea.  Highways and railroads that crossed the dams at Gibraltar and Sicily would promote trade between the two continents.  Imagine bullet trains connecting Paris with the Congo or Berlin with Kenya.

For Sörgel, the project, which he named Alantropa, had almost endless benefits.  The new land would help alleviate overpopulation, the construction would provide jobs, and the expansion of European political culture into Africa would promote stability and peace.  How could it miss?—after all, since as we all know, Europe has a history almost free from warfare.

Though Sörgel first introduced his plan shortly after the first World War, it was later supported by Adolf Hitler, who firmly believed in acquiring new territory and frequently justified the war by Germany’s need for lebensraum.

Okay, it is a great and ambitious project, but there are a few small problems.  First, it just assumes that all of Africa would go on cheerfully content to be the colonial possession of European powers.   Nor is it likely that every coastal town along the Mediterranean Sea would have been happy to find themselves miles inland.

The scope of the project is enormous, perhaps impossibly so.  When Sörgel first proposed his series of massive dams, there was not enough concrete in the world to complete the project.  Even today, a century later, it would be a massive project, one that would dwarf even the American undertaking of landing a man on the moon.

There are also a few other problems.  It would, of course, be an ecological nightmare, destroying vast numbers of ecosystems.  It would alter enough land that it would change worldwide climate patterns and probably alter the Gulf Stream.

Sörgel passed away in 1952, and with his death the popularity of the project slowly vanished.  Today, the only place where Alantropa is mentioned is in a few Science Fiction books, particularly those that deal with alternative realities.  If such a book interests you, I suggest  “The Atlantropa Articles” by Cody Franklin and Joseph Pisenti.  In their book, the second World War never occurs, and after Hitler creates Alantropa, the protagonist travels through a Europe united under the swastika

There is, of course, one last problem with the plan.  Sörgel was not entirely correct in his belief that most wars are fought over resources, such as land, oil, or (as becomes increasing likely for the near future), water.  Sörgel believed that if he created more resources, this would end the need for conflict, but he failed to realize that what nations really fight over is not the resources, but the control of those resources.

Saturday, March 9, 2024

Blacker than Black

Let’s talk pigments, the substances added to other objects to give our world a little color.  And then, we’ll talk about how some artists are engaging in a pigment war.

Shortly after the discovery of fire in prehistoric times, someone discovered that you could use charcoal to make dark marks on rocks and wood.  This was almost immediately followed by the discovery that mixing crushed charcoal with a watery clay paste produced a paint that could be used for cave paintings and rock art.   It probably didn’t take very long before a variety of pigments were sourced from minerals, plants, and animal sources.

Ancient civilizations such as the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans extensively used pigments in their art and architecture.  They developed techniques for extracting pigments from various natural sources, including minerals like malachite and lapis lazuli, plants like madder and saffron, and insects like cochineal.

During the Middle Ages, the production and trade of pigments became more organized, with centers of pigment production emerging in regions known for their natural resources.  Medieval artists used pigments like vermilion, ultramarine, and lead white in illuminated manuscripts, frescoes, and religious art.

The Renaissance and Baroque periods saw advancements in pigment technology, with artists experimenting with new pigments and techniques.  During this time, the availability of pigments expanded as trade routes opened, bringing exotic materials like Indian yellow and Brazilian green to Europe.

The Industrial Revolution brought rapid and significant changes to the pigment industry.  Synthetic pigments, produced from coal tar derivatives and other chemical compounds, were developed, leading to a wider range of colors and more affordable pigments.  Aniline dyes revolutionized the textile dyeing industry in the 19th century because they were less expensive to produce and offered a much wider range of colors than natural dyes.  Synthetic pigments like cadmium red and phthalo blue became popular among artists.  

In the 20th and 21st centuries, the pigment industry continued to innovate, with advancements in organic and inorganic pigment synthesis.  Today, artists have access to a vast array of pigments in various forms, including traditional powdered pigments, oil paints, watercolors, acrylics, and digital pigments used in digital art.  Some of the newer pigments are formulated by scientists who create compounds designed specifically for the way they either absorb or reflect certain wavelengths of light.

In 2014, Surrey NanoSystems announced the development of Vantablack, the black blackest black of anything black.  (If you say that out loud several times in a row, you’ll end up doing a bad impersonation of Dracula.)  According to its creators, this pigment is the "world's darkest material" absorbing up to 99.965% of visible light.  

If you will allow a very non-scientific explanation, Vantablack is a layer of almost perfectly hemispherical rods.  When light hits the surface of the material, the light is “trapped” by reflecting off the mesh of carbon nanotubes with almost none escaping as reflected light.  How big are these nanotubes?  About a millionth of a millimeter each, or roughly about one thousandth of a spider web.

Perhaps this is a case of a picture being worth a thousand words.  The photo at the right shows a crumpled piece of aluminum foil with part of the foil coated with Vantablack.  The coated area is just as crumpled as the rest of the foil. 

As you can imagine, there are a lot of people thinking about military applications for this product.  And there are a lot of artists who would like to experiment with it—but they can’t.

In 2014, Anish Kapoor, a British contemporary artist and sculptor, purchased the exclusive rights to the pigment from Surrey NanoSystems for an undisclosed price.  In the last decade, Kapoor has produced a whole series of works using the super pigment.  I’d show you a couple of pictures of them, but they are too black to make out any details.  (I do like the large round hole in the floor with both the bottom and the sides of the hole are painted with Vantablack—I’ll bet standing on the edge is frightening.)

Kapoor is not the first artist to hog a new pigment, and so far, he has resisted all efforts to allow other artists to even experiment with it.  While other artists had not shared a pigment that produced a tint or color, Kapoor was Bogarting the blackest black.  This was particularly upsetting to Stuart Semple, another British artist, and the founder of Culture Hustle, a London based online art store that specializes in exotic pigments.  Semple publicly denounced Kapoor for not allowing the rest of the art world to use the new pigment.

Semple had previously marketed pigments that claimed to the be the pinkest pink in the world or the greenest green.  I’m not really sure what those terms mean, since while we can easily define black as the absence of light, I’m not sure how to define the essence of pink.  Is it the presence of Barbie? 

Semple’s online store, available here, will gladly sell you a bottle of the ultimate pink or the greenest green, and they even have a new pigment, Black 4.0, that they claim—without proof—is even darker than Vantablack.  There is only one small condition, you have to check a little box next to this notice:

*Note: By adding this product to your cart you confirm that you are not Anish Kapoor, you are in no way affiliated to Anish Kapoor, you are not purchasing this item on behalf of Anish Kapoor or an associate of Anish Kapoor. To the best of your knowledge, information and belief this material will not make it's way into the hands of Anish Kapoor.

Semple may be willing to stop the feud, however:  Culture Hustle also markets a line of luminescent pigments.  The website contains a notice that they will gladly ship Anish Kapoor those pigments free of charge.  As the notice claims:  “We want you to know how lovely it feels to #shareTheLight.”

Saturday, March 2, 2024

Lost But Not Forgotten

The French frigate Reine de France pulled up to the docks in Philadelphia and offloaded three large wooden crates. Loaded onto a freight wagon, they were taken to the home of the French Minister, Anne-Cesar de la Cuzerne. There, the first two crates were carefully opened to reveal full-sized portraits, one of King Louis XVI and the other of his spouse, Marie Antoinette. The third crate contained elaborate frames for the paintings.

During the Revolutionary War, Ben Franklin, in his capacity as Ambassador to France, had asked the King for the favor of Royal Portraits to be given to the new nation. At the time, the United States was desperate for French assistance in fighting the British. While the King didn’t particularly like the idea of a independent democracy, he loved the idea of any country fighting the British, so he generously gifted the revolution with muskets, black powder, and a small loan (at 5% interest), and sent a French fleet to patrol off the American coast. Without this French assistance, it is doubtful that the American Revolution would have been successful.

A gift of Royal Portraits was a big deal: it was considered an important diplomatic symbol, and while the revolutionary war was being fought, the King didn’t think the United States was important enough to rate such a gift. On the other hand, several years after the war had ended with the signing of the Treaty of Paris, the King decided it was the time to honor the request because, by sending the paintings, the King was not so subtly reminding the new nation about the promises made to the French people (including that 5% loan).

It was obvious that what Louis wanted was a tiny, little, weak United States, hemmed in by the British to the North, French Louisiana to the West, and Spanish Florida to the South—in other words, a country just big enough to make payments on that loan while staying a thorn in the side of the British.

In the United States, a large number of people no longer wanted either the paintings or to be reminded of their obligations to a French monarch. For two years, the paintings remained in the French Minister’s house and became something of a tourist attraction, as a steady stream of people came to gawk at them. Finally, the two portraits were hung in the government’s offices, first in New York, then in Philadelphia, and then (finally), in the capitol in Washington, in 1800.

The two paintings were actually copies of existing paintings. The original of the King’s portrait was done by Antoine-Francoise Collet and the portrait of Marie Antoinette was done by her close friend, Élizabeth Louise Viegée le Brun. Similar copies of the portrait of the Queen had been given to other countries, but only the original remains today.

By 1812, the United States was at war with the British again, in perhaps one of the dumbest wars ever fought. We were mad that both the British and the French—continually at war with each other—had each forbidden us to trade with their opposite—effectively eliminating all trade with Europe. Going to war with Britain over it was stupid, but we were a young country and had to learn all our lessons the hard way.

The hardest of these lessons occurred August 24, 1814, when the British marched into Washington, and started setting fire to all the government buildings…including the capitol and the White House. We all know the story of Dolly Madison and her slave, Paul Jennings, saving the Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington (the image that appears on the one-dollar bill). What is not as widely known is that the residents of Washington, realizing that the American troops had abandoned the city, seized the opportunity to loot the government buildings. Perhaps they reasoned that it was better that the national booty be grabbed by Americans instead of the British.

Or, maybe, the British stole the portraits, since we know for a fact that the Redcoats did their own share of looting. After setting the town on fire, the Royal Navy sailed to Bermuda with their spoils, included four paintings of King George III and Queen Charlotte, a grandfather clock and President James Madison's personal government receipt book. Today, the paintings hang in the Bermuda government buildings, while the grandfather clock is still held by the descendants of one of the naval officers.

Officially, the last time the two French royal portraits were seen was just before the British troops arrived. By the time they left, the capitol building was destroyed, along with anything that was left inside it. What happened to the two portraits?

Officially, the government decided that the portraits had been destroyed in the fire. Unofficially, rumors started circulating almost immediately that the paintings had been removed before the British arrived. Over the years, several items the locals had stolen found their way back into the newly rebuilt capitol.

In 1850, a Southern newspaper reported that an unnamed plantation owner had purchased the two paintings for his home. Two decades later, a New York newspaper revealed that the paintings were being sold privately by a dealer in town. Similar rumors continued to circulate well into the Twentieth Century.

The portraits probably were destroyed. But, if you are ever in a garage sale and someone is selling a painting of a woman with a widescreen television under her dress, pick it up for me!

Saturday, February 24, 2024

Fifty Years!

It’s turned into an epic tale lasting more than half a century, so I guess I have to start at the beginning.  As Mal said, “You can’t open the book of my life and jump in the middle.”

It was spring in 1972 and I was working the graveyard shift at the Plaza Hotel in Houston.  Working at night was great for a college student:  if you finished your work early, there was ample time to study.  And it taught you that sleep was a luxury reserved for weekends.

One night, the night auditor’s girlfriend brought him a pizza and the two of them shared it while I was wasting time with paperwork.  I was more than a little pissed that neither of them offered me a slice of pizza.  That was the first time I saw The Doc.

A month or two later, the lease was up on my prison-cell-sized apartment and I agreed to share an even smaller apartment with the night auditor.  It was a garage apartment, built over a three-car garage, in a run-down section of Houston, far too close to the ship channel—a real dump but the price was right.  Since I saw my roommate’s girlfriend frequently, I eventually forgave her for not sharing that pizza and I even dated her sister a couple of times.  (We saw The Godfather and after the movie, she wouldn’t get into my car until I checked the backseat.)

When summer came, both my roommate and I had some time off, and The Doc suggested that we go to Florida…No particular reason why, since we lived 40 miles from the beach in Galveston, but what the hell?  We jumped in my car and drove to Daytona, Florida.  After enjoying the beach for a few days, we turned around and drove straight back.  Somewhere around Alabama, I realized that I had stopped thinking about The Doc as my roommate’s girlfriend.  Driving all night while the other two slept gave me ample time to think over the situation.

It was very simple.  I had fallen in love with the smartest woman I had ever met.  Now all I had to do was convince her to go out with me.

When we got back to Houston, I announced that I intended to marry The Doc.  Privately, I told her that we were going to get married and have a son named What’s-His-Name.  No one believed me about any of this—there was some discussion of my sanity.

Naturally, my roommate was a little pissed.  There was an apartment for rent across the street, so I moved out.  It took several weeks to convince The Doc to go out on a date with me.  She, too, lived in a truly rotten part of town (on our first date, I killed a rat on her front porch with my pocketknife).  I don’t suppose that is part of modern dating practices.

The first date was followed by more—thankfully rodent-free—and eventually The Doc agreed to marry me.  I think the deciding factor was that Alice, her cat, obviously loved me more than her.  If you can’t depend on a cat’s judgement, then this world is doomed.

The wedding was a monument to how to get married on the cheap.  There were handwritten invitations mailed out to the twenty-odd guests.  The ceremony was in my parents’ living room.  The bride wore a beautiful blue dress purchased from Foley’s for $14 and her bouquet was Bank’s roses and English Ivy from the front yard.  I splurged—at my brother’s insistence—and spent $30 on a brown sport coat.  

Though The Doc disputes the veracity of this part of the story, it was almost an incredibly short marriage.  The ceremony was performed in my parents’ living room, directly in front of the fireplace.  When the preacher (the same one who had married my parents twenty-seven years earlier) pronounced “You may kiss the bride….” The Doc’s eyes rolled up in her head and she started to fall backward towards the open fireplace.  I caught her—and we’ve been catching each other for decades now.

It was a nice reception (also in my parents’ living room).  The wedding cake was from the local H.E.B grocery store.  I remember my mother being a little wistful after the ceremony and she confided to my new spouse that she thought that I would never finish college.  She was right: starting this Spring, I’m a graduate student pursuing a master’s degree in Art History, which will be my seventh degree (I think).  I’ve decided to homestead the university.

We honeymooned at the Menger Hotel in downtown San Antonio—a distance of almost 15 whole miles from where we were married.  With our extravagant entertainment budget, we watched the Wizard of Oz on television and went to the zoo the next day.  If I remember right, we walked by the Alamo a couple of times.  We are, after all, native-born Texans.

Shortly after the honeymoon was over, The Doc was accepted into medical school.  I was shocked because I had known lots of people who claimed they were going to medical school, The Doc was the first person I knew who actually did it.  

Medical School was expensive and we had to cut more than a few corners to financially survive the next four years.  We still lived in slums, there were no vacations, and we lived about as frugally as possible.  The local grocery store kept a loaded cart in the back of the store, where badly dented cans or cans that had lost their labels were offered for sale for a dime each.  Until I started earning a better wage, most of our meals came out of that cart, periodically supplemented with something I shot.

We waited years, until The Doc was a senior surgical resident, to start a family, and yes…we named our first son What’s-His-Name.  A couple of years later, The-Other-One was born.  Though it has been decades since either has lived at home, I occasionally still wake up in the middle of the night thinking I should go check to see if they are sleeping okay.  How fast those years went by and how much I would pay to experience just one more day of their childhood.

As I’m writing this, it has been 50 years and a couple of hours since that wedding ceremony.  And two children, and a half-dozen grand kids, several moves, and two careers.  I’ve lost a kidney and had a heart attack—neither of which I would have survived if my wife hadn’t been there with me.  I fell in love with The Doc because she was the smartest woman I ever met.  She still is and I still am.  I still wonder why she ever said yes to my absurd proposal!

And marrying her is the smartest thing I’ve ever done.  

P.S.  She says that she married the smartest man she’s ever met, but she's just being kind.  I might believe stubborn.

Saturday, February 17, 2024

A Window to Another Time

Kaiser Wilhelm II certainly didn’t cause The Great War—at least not single-handedly—but he didn’t do a whole lot to prevent it, either.  Listing all the reasons for the first of the two world wars of the 20th century would take a complex discussion of rising nationalism and empires scrambling to acquire colonies like children grabbing candy after busting a pinata.

Note.  I’m a little astonished at the cartoon to the right.  I fed that first paragraph into an AI program and asked for a cartoon.  There was a ten-second pause, then it spit out the cartoon.  Don’t bother trying to decipher the caption, it’s either gibberish or the text of another meaningless email from Enema U’s Vice-President of Research.

That’s not to say that the Kaiser was exactly blameless, either.  As he grew up, he was fed a steady diet of tales of Prussian military glory, and once he became Kaiser, he wanted to lead Germany to a victorious future.  By definition, that meant he needed a war.

And there was, however, that small difficulty with the Kaiser’s ship complex.  Great Britain had ruled the seas from long before the days of Napoleon, and since being a great naval power was de rigueur for maintaining an overseas empire, the Kaiser wanted his own great navy.  The fact that both of his cousins, the King of England and the Tsar of Russia, had great navies really rankled Wilhelm, so he started building one of his own, touching off an international arms race that greatly added to the spirit of militarism across Europe and even resonated in the United States.

If you doubt that the Kaiser was envious of the British Navy, look at the photo at left, in which the Kaiser is seen wearing the uniform of a British Admiral of the Fleet while attending the funeral of his grandmother, Queen Victoria.

Early on in the war, Germany did very well…for a while.   The Kaiser’s army successfully pushed into France and his navy fought the British Navy to a draw at the Battle of Jutland, but then the war bogged down into a stalemate.  Two years into the war, there was a power shift within Germany when Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and General Erich Ludendorff seized control, leaving the Kaiser with only a purely ceremonial role and no actual control over conduct of the war.

When the war ended, one of the provisions of the Versailles Treaty required that the Kaiser—who had recently abdicated—be handed over to the Allies to face prosecution “for a supreme offense against international morality and the sanctity of treaties”.  Considering the low opinions both the French and the English had of the Kaiser, it was likely that he would have been found guilty and executed.  Desperate, the Kaiser wrote to another cousin, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, asking for asylum.

The Netherlands had remained neutral during the war, and while public opinion of the Dutch people was divided on the fate of the Kaiser, Queen Wilhelmina resisted the demands of the Allies and granted amnesty to the abdicated Kaiser.  Since both were direct descendants of Queen Victoria, and Wilhelmina’s grandfather had married the Kaiser’s sister, the queen no doubt wanted to keep peace in the family.

The Kaiser moved to the Netherlands late in 1918 and began house hunting.  Since he was not exactly traveling light—he moved 59 freight cars of antiques, paintings, silver, and memorabilia with him—it took him two years to find the perfect little house.  

Doorn House had started as a 14th century castle and had been steadily improved in the intervening five centuries.  Covering over eighty acres, the estate sports a functioning moat, an elaborate gate house, and extensive English-style gardens.  The former Kaiser was free to live at the estate but was required to stay within ten kilometers of home.  Despite frequent invitations, Queen Wilhelmina never visited her cousin.

In all, Wilhelm lived a comfortable, but somewhat lonely, life. At Doorn house, he frequently spent his time working in the gardens, chopping wood, and futilely dreaming of the day when the German people would demand his return to the throne.  In the 1930’s, Wilhelm had several meetings with Hermann Goering, who wanted the Kaiser to support the Nazi Party.  Disgusted by Kristallnacht, the former Kaiser refused to have anything to do with Hitler or his party, saying:

Of Germany, which was a nation of poets and musicians, of artists and soldiers, Hitler has made a nation of hysterics and hermits, engulfed in a mob and led by a thousand liars or fanatics.

When World War II started, Winston Churchill offered asylum to the former Kaiser in England, but Wilhelm refused to leave his home.  When the Netherlands were invaded by the Germans in 1940, German troops guarded Doorn House but were not allowed inside the gate.  Wilhelm died of a pulmonary embolism in 1942, and his wishes to have no swastikas present at his funeral were not honored.  His remains were placed in a mausoleum in the garden, there to await the day when the Prussian monarchy returns to Germany.  

Today, Doorn House is a museum, remaining largely as the former Kaiser knew it, with his books and papers still on display along with the more than 30,000 objects he brought with him from Germany.  Of special interest to probably no one is his extensive collection of ornate snuff boxes.  The estate has become a shrine to a group of German monarchists, who still gather at the house once a year in support of the current claimant to the throne, Georg Friedrich, Prince of Prussia.  His 2014 claim to recover the estate was rejected by the Dutch government.

One last note about Doorn House:  When Wilhelm found the estate, he bought it for 500,000 guilders from the family of the Baron van Heemstra.  Among the Baron’s children who were raised in the old castle was Baroness van Heemstra, who later became a British citizen and a well-known author of children’s book under the penname of Ellaline Vere.  She is better known as the mother of Aubrey Hepburn.

Saturday, February 10, 2024

Three Great Letters

In the The House of the Spirits by Isabelle Allende, the author says that “Letters are a gift reserved for the living, denied to those in heaven.”  I think the author is close to the mark, for letters, at least good letters, are immortal and last long after both the writer and the recipient have left this world.

I like letters.  I like to plan letters in advance, then I enjoy writing them—after selecting the right paper and ink—then I like to mail them.  I would probably like to receive them, but that rarely happens any more.  For most people, letters have evidently been replaced by email, which is a sorry substitute.

There are multiple websites that list the ten greatest letters of all time, the five letters that changed history, or the dozen or so most important letters in politics—there are so many that I have no intention of competing with them.  For the last week or so, I have been thinking about three letters in particular—letters that aren’t important in most people’s minds, but letters that I thought were memorable.  They might not exactly be historic letters, but they are interesting.

After winning the election in November 1960, President John F. Kennedy began putting together his government and the newly appointed Ambassador to India was his former Harvard professor, John Kenneth Galbraith.  Galbraith, his wife, and their three sons would all be moving to India, much to the consternation of Peter Galbraith, the ambassador’s second son.

Ten-year-old Peter didn’t want to leave his friends and his school and he didn’t like the idea of leaving his home and moving thousands of miles away for a period of several years.  When the President heard about Peter’s unhappiness, he could understand how the boy felt, since his own father had been appointed Ambassador to the Court of St. James (England) more than twenty years earlier.

Though Kennedy hadn’t been in office for even three months, he took the time to write a personal letter to young Peter, telling the boy about his own experiences in leaving home and friends and moving to a new country.  

“More than twenty years ago, our family was similarly uprooted when we went to London where my father was Ambassador.  My younger brothers and sisters were about your age.  They, like you had to exchange new friends for old.”

Kennedy went on to tell young Peter to look forward to the exotic animals he would see in India, particularly the elephants.  After warning the boy to avoid the cobras, the president said that he considered the children of his ambassadors to be the junior members of the Peace Corps.

By all accounts the boy took the message to heart and felt easier about the move.  The New York Times reported about the letter on April 2, 1961 and the story has made into several books, including one by the ambassador.  What has never made the books, as far as I can tell, is that there was a second letter.

Peter Galbraith had a nine-year-old brother, James, who felt a little left out by the presidential attention that his brother was receiving.  After all, he, too, had moved to India, leaving behind his friends, his school, and his home.  When President Kennedy learned of the boy’s unhappiness, he wrote a second letter, this time to James, thanking the boy for his sacrifice and urging the boy to grow up to be a good Democrat like his father, but perhaps one not so inconveniently sized.  The president was making a small joke about the ambassador being 6’ 8”.

In 1945, a young agent for the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency, ran agents in Germany tasked with tracking, and in a few cases, killing high ranking officers in the German Army.  As Germany collapsed at the end of the war, the young agent made his way to the Bavarian mountaintop retreat of Adolf Hitler, helping himself to some of the Fuehrer’s personal stationary.

On May 8, 1945, VE Day, the young agent took the time to write his three-year-old son a letter commemorating the end of the war.

“Dear Dennis, The man who might have written on this card once controlled Europe—three short years ago when you were born.  Today he is dead, his memory despised, his country in ruins.  He had a thirst for power, a low opinion of man as an individual, and a fear of intellectual honesty.  He was a force for evil in the world.  His passing, his defeat—a boon to mankind.”

The young agent, Richard Helms went on to become the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 1966 to 1973.  The letter still exists and is on display in the OSS Wing of the CIA Museum, a facility that is not open to the public.

The last letter is my personal favorite, you’ll have to forgive me for being a little biased.  My father was born in West Texas, the son of a poor farmer with eleven children, in an area hit hard by the Great Depression.  To survive, my father left home to join the Civilian Conservation Corps, working to build highways and parks near Fort Worth.

After Pearl Harbor, those young boys, already outfitted with khaki uniforms, were more or less just marched into the nearest recruiting office and enlisted into the Army.  My father ended up as an engineer on a B-25 bomber—something that still astounds me, since my father was many wonderful things, but he was absolutely incapable of doing anything mechanical.  At any given time, there was a large collection of inoperable lawn mowers behind our garage, because my father had no idea how to change a spark plug or clean an air filter.  I still have his maintenance manuals for his plane and have no idea how he managed to do any of the routine tasks the book describes.

While stationed for training in Fort Worth, my father met my mother at a skating rink after she managed to fall down in front of him enough times to catch his attention.  They fell in love and planned a wedding after the war.  Shortly after becoming engaged, my father was sent to the Pacific Theater for the duration of the war.  Surprisingly, for a poor ol’ country boy with hardly any formal education, he was a prolific letter writer, writing whenever he could—but at least once a week—and those letters are now in my possession.  

Reading the letters is an emotional roller coaster and often requires a little research to understand the cultural references.  The letters were censored, too, so at times, it is impossible to determine where my father was stationed when he wrote a letter.  My father was very young, and this was the first time in his life that he had left Texas, so the letters reveal almost constant amazement at the new, wider world he was experiencing.  The most common topics of the letters are returning to my mother, his hopes for a life after the war, his hatred of traveling by ship, and a general loathing of everything the Army gave him to eat.  

“Oh, darling, I can’t wait to get back to you.  When I get back to Fort Worth, we can celebrate.  I want to take you to a really nice restaurant, you know, the kind where they bring the food right out to your car.”

I can’t be absolutely certain, but I don’t think my father was joking.  My biggest question is who he was going to borrow the car from.  

Saturday, February 3, 2024

Secret Agent Tolstoy

In the early days of the Pacific Theater in World War II, the Allies had a difficult problem in the mountainous country between India and China.  The Chinese armies of Chiang Kai-Shek were fighting the Japanese but were desperate for supplies.  Early in the war, Japan had captured Shanghai from the British, then advanced and cut off the vital Burma Road that brought supplies from India to China over land.

The Allies began ferrying supplies by air over the Himalayas—doing what pilots called “flying the hump”—a dangerous mission that cost the lives of many pilots.  If you are interested in reading more about the pilots who took on such missions, I would suggest reading God is My Co-Pilot by General Robert L. Scott.  Actually, I would recommend reading anything written by General Scott. 

There was talk about finding a land route through Tibet, but the State Department strenuously objected.  Keeping China as an ally was an important war goal and China had territorial disputes with Tibet.  The Army sided with the State Department, so the matter was closed—there would be no official overtures made to Tibet.

Luckily, there was an unofficial agency that could handle the job.  The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the war time spy shop, run by Colonel ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan, that answered only to the President of the United States (much to the annoyance of both the State Department and J. Edgar Hoover).  Hoover thought that his FBI could handle all the covert needs of the country and the State Department didn’t believe in spies.  

It appears that President Roosevelt didn’t really trust Hoover, so he set up his own covert shop.  After the war, Hoover got revenge by convincing President Truman to shut down the OSS.  By 1947, Truman realized that some form of intelligence gathering agency was needed and most of the former OSS agents would run the new Central Intelligence Agency.

The OSS sent two special agents on a secret mission to Tibet to try and survey a new overland route to China.  At the time, Tibet was so remote that few Westerners had any experience there, and the United States had no direct contact with the government.  So the two special agents had to be skilled diplomats, explorers, surveyors, and military leaders.  Accordingly, the OSS sent Major Count Ilya Tolstoy, the grandson of Leo Tolstoy, and Captain Brook Dolan.

Both men had other qualifications beyond their OSS training.  Tolstoy (right) had served in the Russian Army during World War I, was a trained ichthyologist, had helped develop McKinley National Park in Alaska and, just a few years before the war, had set up a movie studio that specialized in underwater photography, particularly with dolphins.  Today, we call that place Marineland.

Brooke Dolan (second from left) had already completed two expeditions to Eastern Tibet and Western China, collecting animal and bird specimens.  He was the first Westerner to bring a panda out of China.

Since no passport or visa into the country was available, the only official authorization the two men could carry was a personal letter from President Franklin D. Roosevelt to the new Dalai Lama, the leader of the Buddhist faith and the head of the Tibetan government.  When the two agents arrived in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, they were to ask permission to cross Tibet into China.  

The two men left India in September 1942 and began the climb up the rugged mountainous trail up to Lhasa.  The caravan consisted of 33 mules and 15 native guides and took three days to complete.  Luckily, they were welcomed into the capitol, and presented not only the president’s letter, but a $2,800 Phillipe Patek gold pocket watch to the Dalai Lama.  I’m not sure how much the Dalai Lama appreciated the watch, even if it did tell the day of the week and the phases of the moon, since the spiritual leader was only seven years old at the time.

The Tibetan leaders were only too happy to grant permission, knowing that such recognition from the United States added credence to their territorial claims.  All that was asked of the United States was for the gift of long-range radio equipment.  When the request was forwarded back to the US Army, it was shocked to learn of the expedition.

After the war, there was some confusion about whether or not the US government had promised to support the cause of Tibetan independence.  The Tibetans were hardly alone in this regard:  several countries seemed to gotten the impression during the war that America had traded support in the war against Japan for America’s future support for their independence.  The people of Vietnam certainly believed that we had promised to help end French colonialism.  After the war, President Truman evidently decided that French assistance against the Russians was more important than a free Vietnam.  Truman was probably wrong about that, since as General Norman Schwarzkopf supposedly said (but probably didn’t), “Going to war without the French is like going deer hunting without your accordion.”

For three months, the two explorers surveyed mountain passes and followed rugged trails, mapping a route to China.  It was so cold in the highest mountains that they drank 40-50 cups of hot tea daily to keep warm.  The two OSS agents traveled along the same ancient trails that have been used for centuries to transport tea, silk, musk, and jade.

Their secret mission completed, the two men submitted their maps to the Allies…who quickly decided that the trail was so rugged, so long, and at such a high altitude that it was better simply to keep flying those cargo planes over the mountains.

When the Dalai Lama visited President Obama in Washington, in 2016, he was carrying that gift pocket watch.

Saturday, January 27, 2024

Please Provide Provenance

Following World War I, and the collapse Austro-Hungarian Empire, the country of Hungary went through a couple of years of chaos as the Hungarian people searched for a stable form of government.  Since the Empire had been on the losing side of World War I, this is not really surprising.

What is surprising is that an Empire ruled over by the Hapsburgs—a royal family far more noted for its enthusiastic inbreeding than for any exhibition of brains—lasted so long.  While Austria exiled the Hapsburgs, Hungary didn’t have to as even Charles I of Hungary realized he had become redundant and needed to leave.. 

Note.  To be fair, Charles I of Hungary (also known as Charles IV in Austria) was not nearly as inbred as his relative, Charles II of Spain.  The inbreeding coefficient of Chuck I/IV was only 0.03125 (3%)—a level definitely high enough to significantly increase the risk of certain conditions like congenital anomalies, developmental problems, and even medical vulnerabilities.  The population on non-royal people generally have a coefficient around .02 or 1% Charles II, on the other hand, had an inbreeding coefficient of 0.254 or 25%, meaning he was more inbred than if his parents had only been brother and sister.  That level of inbreeding produces congressmen, university administrators, and TSA agents.

Hungary struggled to set up a stable government—establishing a brief republic that fell after only a few months to an equally brief communist regime that was so radical that Romanian troops crossed the border and set up a rather strange monarchy.  For a little over a year, there was a monarchy that lacked a king, but had an authoritarian regent.  By November 1920, the regent, Admiral Miklós Horthy, dropped all pretense and just ruled as a dictator, remaining in power until the Soviet occupation at the end of World War II.

Naturally, all the political upheaval had a profound effect on the established art world of Hungary.  Royal patronage was dead and even the national identity was in question.  Societal upheaval and disillusionment with pre-war ideals fueled the rise of avant-garde movements like Expressionism and Activism in Hungary.  These artists challenged traditional aesthetics and embraced social commentary in their works, often criticizing the post-war political and economic situation.

One group of Hungarian artists is of particular interest:  The Eight, who were a group of avant-garde artists whose inspiration was derived primarily from French painters and art movements, including Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, and Fauvism.  (To oversimplify, the Fauvists were impressionists who used strong, bright color.  Matisse’s Woman With a Hat, at right, is a perfect example.)

The members of The Eight, Róbert Berény, Dezső Czigány, Béla Czóbel, Károly Kernstok, Ödön Márffy, Dezső Orbán, Bertalan Pór and Lajos Tihanyi, were (besides being desperately in need of buying a few vowels) all going to suffer during the next twenty years leading up to second world war.  Of the eight, all but one had to flee Hungary sometime between 1918 and 1939 for political reasons.  The one artist who didn’t emigrate, Dezső Czigány, suffered severe depression that eventually led to a psychotic break and the artist’s committing suicide after murdering his family.

Róbert Berény was actually part of the government during the brief Hungarian Democratic Republic, so he naturally had to flee the country as the communists took over.  Settling in Berlin, Berény continued to work and achieved international recognition.  In 1926, just as the Nazi Party was becoming increasingly visible in Germany, Berény and his wife returned to Budapest.

By this time, Berény was painting in the Cubist style and experimenting with the Art Deco.  In 1927-28, he produced a painting of his wife, Eta.  She was wearing a blue dress and reclining next to a table upon which was set a black vase.  Generally considered to be one of his best works, the painting, Sleeping Lady with Black Vase, was sold to a Jewish patron.  

With the start of the war, exactly what happened to the Jewish patron and the painting are unknown.  It is possible that the buyer fled the country taking the painting with him, that he sold the painting to raise funds for the trip, or that the painting was seized by the Nazis when they occupied Hungary.  Since Berény’s studio was destroyed during the war, it was even considered possible that Berény had reacquired the painting and had stored it in his studio.  Whatever the circumstances, it vanished.  The last time the painting was seen in public was at an art show in 1928.

Berény remained in Hungary for the rest of his life.  Under the communist regime that took over Hungary after the war, he was an art teacher at the Hungarian University of Fine Art and passed away in 1953.

Fifty-six years after his death, Gergely Barki, an art historian at the Hungarian National Gallery, was forced by his three-year-old daughter to watch the 1999 Sony movie, Stuart Little.  If you are unfamiliar with this work, in the tale, a successful urban family, the Littles (played by Hugh Laurie and Geena Davis), go to an orphanage to adopt a child and for reasons that are never quite explained, adopt a talking mouse named Stuart.  

Several scenes in the movie take place in the living room of the Little home.  Barki thought he recognized the painting hanging over the Littles’ fireplace.  Now, since the Berény painting had been relatively unknown, it was unlikely that this was a copy or a print.  In fact, in Barki’s opinion, it had to be the original, long-lost painting.  Barki had no method of pausing the movie or of obtaining a print from it, so he sent an email to the production company.

Actually, over a period of two years, Barki sent off dozens of emails to the production company and various cast members hoping that someone would pay attention to him.  Finally, after years of effort, a set designer met with Barki in a Washington DC park to examine the painting.  Using a screwdriver borrowed from a hotdog vendor to remove the frame, Barki was able to verify that the painting was indeed the long-lost Berény original.

Trying to piece together the provenance of the painting during the missing years has proven a little difficult.  The painting sold at a charity auction for $40 to an art collector in the mid 1990’s.  He, in turn, sold it to an antique store for $400, who then sold it to a Sony set designer for $500 who thought it would look perfect in a house where a mouse lived.  When the movie was over, she bought the painting back from Sony for $500 and hung it in her bedroom.

The painting was eventually returned to Hungary, where it was sold at auction in 2014 to an unnamed Hungarian collector for $285,700.  

Saturday, January 20, 2024

Baldwin is Lying

A grand jury in Northern New Mexico has decided to indict Alec Baldwin for the death two years ago of a co-worker, cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins.  The death was a result of the careless handling of a firearm on the Rust movie set.  Despite the vociferous claims of Baldwin that he was not responsible (specifically, that he never pulled the trigger”), Baldwin will likely stand trial for involuntary manslaughter.

 

I have a few thoughts Id like to share about what has incorrectly been called an “accident”.

 

Baldwin has long been publicly contemptuous of gun owners and the organizations that support gun safety.  Accordingly, the people on the set charged with ensuring the safety of the actors and crew had relatively little experience and the customary safety protocols on movie sets were largely ignored.  Even after several members of the crew quit after complaining about the lax attitude about gun safety on the set, no action was taken.  Baldwin, in his capacity as the films producer, was negligent for failing to take action.

 

According to the testimony of some of the crew, the firearms used on the set were also used for occasional target practice by the actors and crew.  No movie set should allow live ammunition to be present on the movie set for any reason.  If the actors need training in the proper use of a firearm, that training should take place at a supervised range—never on the movie set.

 

Whenever possible, rubber guns should be used instead of real firearms.  When real firearms are needed for action sequences or closeup shots, those firearms should never be aimed at another person.  In addition, an actor should never touch the trigger until that actor intends the weapon to fire.  

 

On the day of the shooting, several horrendous mistakes were made sequentially.  Inexcusably, someone loaded live ammunition into the firearm.  There are commonly three types of ammunition on movie sets.  First, there are blanks, a type of ammunition that, while it has no projectile, is still so dangerous that the safe handling of blank ammunition would take more space than this blog allows.  Sadly, while blanks were not responsible for the death on the Rust set, actors are still frequently injured or killed by the improper use of blank ammunition. 

 

When filming scenes in which actors load or unload a firearm, special dummy rounds are used that contain no powder or primer necessary to fire.  Some movie sets even take the extra precaution of using non-firing replica guns for such scenes.  There are also dummy cartridges that have holes drilled through the side of the cartridge to indicate they are non-firing.  Such cartridges occasionally are filled with large metal balls so that they rattle when handled.

 

The person charged with insuring firearm safety on the Rust set was inexperienced and she failed to ensure that the firearm used that day was unloaded.  When the pistol was handed to Baldwin, he failed to check that the gun was unloaded, as well.  Both failures are enough to justify each being charged with criminal negligence criminal or manslaughter.  Then, Baldwin aimed the gun at a coworker and cocked the hammer…And the firearm fired.

 

Baldwin maintains that he “never touched the trigger”.  Not that it matters, but lets look at that claim in detail.

 

The pistol used by Baldwin was a single action revolver, meaning that the hammer must be manually cocked before every shot.  Using your thumb to pull the hammer fully to the rear rotates the cylinder, bringing a cartridge in line with the revolver.  The hammer is held back by the sear portion of the trigger until the trigger is pulled, disengaging the sear and allowing the hammer to fall, firing the cartridge.


Can the hammer fall without the trigger being pulled?  Yes, there are three situations in which the gun can fire without the trigger being pulled.  First, if the hammer is down, with the firing pin resting on the primer of a loaded cartridge—a condition that is inherently unsafe in that model Colt revolver—a sharp blow to the back of the hammer (such as might happen if the pistol were dropped) can fire the cartridge.  That did not happen on the Rust set.

 

Secondly, the hammer has been wired back so that the sear cannot engage, so that releasing the hammer causes the gun to fire immediately.  Though very rare, there are a few slip shooters” who prefer to fire that pistol that way.  Unless you are a very experienced marksman, this is almost a guaranteed way to miss your target.  I had an uncle who preferred to shoot in this bizarre manner, and even he didnt recommend the method.  The Italian replica of the Colt revolver that Baldwin held when the shooting took place had not been modified.

 

The only other way for the pistol to fire without the trigger being pulled is for the sear to be defective or worn down and fail to hold the hammer in the rearmost position.  This is probably what Baldwin is trying to claim happened to the pistol he was handed.  The problem with this defense is that it requires the sear to be badly and visibly damaged.  Baldwins gun has been analyzed by experts, including the experts at the FBI laboratory, and the sear was documented to be not damaged.

 

Baldwin is criminally negligent because he hired an incompetent and inexperienced “expert” (whose hiring was a combination of nepotism and equity hiring) to oversee safety on the set.  Baldwin is criminally negligent because, even after experienced crew members complained about the lack of safety protocols on the set, he failed to establish appropriate safety protocols.  (Some crew members felt so strongly about this that they resigned rather than continue working in what they considered unsafe conditions.).  Baldwin is criminally negligent because, when handed a deadly weapon, he did not personally check to see if the pistol was loaded.  Baldwin is criminally negligent because he pointed a deadly weapon at a person and cocked it.  And lastly, Baldwin is criminally negligent because he absolutely pulled the trigger, shooting that poor woman.  There is absolutely, positively no other possible, credible explanation for the gun’s firing.

 

Baldwin is lying.

Saturday, January 13, 2024

Everything Has a Precedent If You Search For It

Recently we had an extraordinary lapse of national security.  Our Secretary of Defense went into the hospital, evidently without notifying anyone either above or below him in the chain of command of his planned absence.   If what we read in the papers is to be believed (admittedly a rather large caveat), neither the White House nor the Secretary of State noticed his absence for several days.

Secretary of Defense Austin is a retired 4-star general, so there is no doubt that he is an expert on the chain of command, so I’m inclined to believe this was an inadvertent accident like the numerous times previous presidents have misplaced the launch codes or accidentally driven off without the military officer carrying the nuclear football.  Every administration is made up of people and we all know how unreliable people are.

Naturally, there was only one possible reaction to the news:  Has something like this ever happened before?  Of course, it has.

In 1897, after being elected president, William McKinley started assembling his cabinet.  The Republican Party had two competing factions, a group led by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge—who favored more military expansion and American involvement in world affairs—and a rival group, led by Governor John Davis Long, that pushed for a more modest, slower military expansion, believing that large militaries encourage countries to engage in war (and in the process bankrupt their economies).  Each of the two rival factions had its own favorite candidate for the position of Secretary of the Navy.

Few Americans can name the Secretary of the Navy today, but at the end of the 19th century, the civilian head of the American Navy was much more important than it is today.  The ever so much politically correctly named Department of Defense was not created until 1949, so the military was divided into two main branches.  The army was led by the Secretary of War and the navy was headed by the Secretary of the Navy.  

Since President McKinley was a close friend of John Davis Long, Long became the new Secretary of the Navy while Lodge’s choice, a young Theodore Roosevelt was picked to be the Assistant Secretary of the Navy.  Since Roosevelt was the number two man, in a much less glamorous position, he should have become a minor footnote in history.

While Long wanted to modernize the navy, he wanted a small scale program of gradual growth and slow replacement of the aging ships.  His deputy, Roosevelt, wanted….well, everything and wanted it done yesterday.  Long let most of the established departments run themselves, Teddy on the other hand stuck his nose into everything and everywhere, constantly asking questions and making suggestions.  Think of it this way, an elderly Mother Superior was in charge and her deputy was Miley Cyrus on crack.

Luckily for future historians, both men were compulsive writers, and each wrote numerous letters, kept journals, and would later wrote conflicting books on the history of the US Navy.  In Long’s book, The New American Navy, he described his energetic subordinate.

He worked indefatigably, frequently incorporating his views in memoranda which he would place every morning on my desk.  Most of his suggestions had, however, so far as applicable, been already adopted by the various bureaus, the chiefs of which were straining every nerve and leaving nothing not done. . . . He was heart and soul in his work.  His typewriters had no rest.  

Roosevelt, on the other hand wrote about how only a strong navy could uphold the honor of a country, that a strong navy was the best possible guarantee of safety for a nation and that if you didn’t understand that, you probably had to sit down to pee.  (That’s loosely paraphrased.)  All of Roosevelt’s plans probably would have come to naught if Henry Long had not been absent from the office so often.

Whether Long was truly sick or was just a raging hypochondriac is a matter of debate among naval historians.  What we are sure about is that  Long was frequently absent from the office, traveling for his or his daughter’s health to distant health spas, thus leaving the Navy in the hands of Roosevelt (and his rabid typewriter).  

As war with Spain over the independence of Cuba grew closer, Roosevelt began to make frantic plans.  Wanting to strengthen the US fleet on the east coast, Roosevelt took advantage of Long’s absence to order the USS Oregon to sail from San Francisco to Florida around the tip of South America—a journey of 14,000 nautical miles.  The entire nation eagerly read newspaper accounts of the perilous 66-day voyage.  Years later, Roosevelt would use that long delay as a reason for seizing Panama and building the Panama Canal.

While the Oregon sailed, Roosevelt continued to make plans.  He ordered Admiral Dewey to resupply his fleet in the far East and move closer to the Spanish-held Philippines.  Having prepared the navy for war, Roosevelt then resigned his post and began organizing a volunteer force, commonly called the Rough Riders.  

Secretary of the Navy Long thought this last move was foolish.  As Long recorded in his daily journal:

He has lost his head to this unutterable folly of deserting the post where he is of most service and running off to ride a horse and, probably, brush mosquitoes from his neck on the Florida sands.  His heart is right, and he means well, but it is one of those cases of aberration-desertion-vain-glory; of which he is utterly unaware.... Everyone of his friends advises him, he is acting like a fool. And, yet, how absurd all this will sound if, by some turn of fortune, he should accomplish some great thing and strike a very high mark. 

Well, as we all know, Roosevelt led his men up Kettle Hill, across the connecting saddle to San Juan Hill—site of the last land battle for Cuba—and became a public hero, eventually being honored with the Medal of Honor.  His success in battle had one other memorable result.

In 1899, Vice-President Garrett Hobart died of a heart attack, leaving the country without a vice-president until the next election.  Once again, each of the two camps of Republican leadership had a candidate they urged President McKinley to select.  The traditional Republicans wanted John Davis Long, while Senator Lodge urged McKinley to pick the newly-elected governor of New York, Theodore Roosevelt.  Obviously, McKinley chose Roosevelt as his new vice-president and after just a few months in office, Roosevelt became our 26th president when McKinley was assassinated.  

Long, somewhat bitter, resigned his post as the Secretary of the Navy and Roosevelt replaced him with someone more to his liking, sending the new secretary a letter of warning about the men in the department.

You will have to struggle against the men who believe in the old system of quiet and rest; of ships that never wear out by work but only by rust, and of respectable men who live long and never do anything wrong because they never do anything at all.  

Once retired, Long wrote his history of the Modern Navy, carefully explaining that Roosevelt had been wrong about everything and anything good in the navy was due to his careful leadership.  Roosevelt, as Commander in Chief, ordered that no copy of Long’s book be allowed aboard any ship of the navy.

Actually, Roosevelt never found the right man to head the Navy during his time as President:  by the time he left office, four different men had attempted to run the Navy to his standards.  (One of those short-term appointees was Charles Bonaparte, the grandnephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, but I promised not to mention the Corsican anymore.)

It is interesting to think what might have happened if Long had stayed in the office more instead of running to various mountains and springs for his health.  Would we have even fought in the Spanish American War?  Would the Panama Canal ever have been built?  Would the United States have had a large enough navy during World War I?  Would Theodore’s cousin have followed in his footsteps and served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy and eventually become our 32nd President?

One last point.  The USS Oregon did arrive in Florida in time to fight in the war.  The last and culminating battle of the war occurred on July 3, 1898 when the Spanish fleet attempted to break the American blockade outside the harbor of Santiago de Cuba.  The Spanish Fleet was old and was no match for the American Navy, led by the USS Oregon.  One by one, the Spanish ships were either destroyed or forced to beach themselves to avoid the larger American ships.  The last ship to run aground and be scuttled by its Spanish crew was the Cristobal Colon.

The Spanish Empire in the New World began with Christopher Columbus and ended 406 years later with the scuttling of a ship named after Columbus.  There’s a pleasing symmetry in that.