Infinite Wisdom

"General, if you will plan it, I am ready to storm Hell."

La Triviata

• During the first week of Hitler’s war (September 1-7, 1939), Polish Air Force fighters downed 105 of their German counterparts, while losing only 63.
• Shortly after becoming president, in 1901, Theodore Roosevelt ordered government arsenals to dispose of obsolete firearms, resulting in thousands of old weapons being sold for a song: Civil War-era Burnside rifles, for example, which in poor condition today fetch $1,500 – and when in fine shape ten times that – went for eight cents each.
• By 1941 the “China Incident” was costing Japan $5 million a day.
• Among the Zulu, the punishment for cowardice in battle was death, inflicted with a spear, wielded by a woman, who would run it downwards into the victim’s shoulder, and push it very slowly through his body until it came out at the lower end of his abdomen.
• In 1910, out of a population of some 50 million people, the Imperial-and-Royal Austro-Hungarian Armed Forces drafted only 125,000 men a year, a figure that, although it did increase to over 180,000 by 1912, remained low by contemporary standards, so that upon mobilization, the Empire could field only about as many divisions as Italy, which had but 60 percent of the population.
• By the mid-eighteenth century, about 80 percent of Britain’s annual budget went to provide for the armed forces or to pay off debt incurred during previous wars.
• In June of 1940, even as France collapsed under the Nazi onslaught and the British Expeditionary Force was being plucked from the beaches at Dunkirk, the United States dispatched $43 million in arms and supplies to Britain -- easily the equivalent of $28 billion today.
• So successful was SecNav Josephus Daniels’ efforts to provide continuing education to the men of the fleet, that by 1915 half of all enlisted sailors were taking courses either by mail or aboard their ships or stations.

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