The Open Christmas Letter

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In December 1914, as the first Christmas of World War I approached, 101 British women suffragists sent a holiday message “To the Women of Germany and Austria.”

“Some of us wish to send you a word at this sad Christmastide,” it ran. “The Christmas message sounds like mockery to a world at war, but those of us who wished, and still wish, for peace may surely offer a solemn greeting to such of you who feel as we do.”

Though our sons are sent to slay each other, and our hearts are torn by the cruelty of this fate, yet through pain supreme we will be true to our common womanhood. We will let not bitterness enter into this tragedy, made sacred by the life-blood of our best, nor mar with hate the heroism of their sacrifice. Though much has been done on all sides you will, as deeply as ourselves, deplore — shall we not steadily refuse to give credence to those false tales so free told us, each of the other?

We hope it may lessen your anxiety to learn we are doing our utmost to soften the lot of your civilians and war prisoners within our shores, even as we rely on your goodness of heart to do the same for ours in Germany and Austria.

The following spring they received a reply:

If English women alleviated misery and distress at this time, relieved anxiety, and gave help irrespective of nationality, let them accept the warmest thanks of German women and the true assurance that they are and were prepared to do likewise. In war time we are united by the same unspeakable suffering of all nations taking part in the war. Women of all nations have the same love of justice, civilization and beauty, which are all destroyed by war. Women of all nations have the same hatred for barbarity, cruelty and destruction, which accompany every war.

Women, creators and guardians of life, must loathe war, which destroys life. Through the smoke of battle and thunder of cannon of hostile peoples, through death, terror, destruction, and unending pain and anxiety, there glows like the dawn of a coming better day the deep community of feeling of many women of all nations.

It was signed by 155 women of Germany and Austria.

| History · Society

The Green Cathedral

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In 1987 Marinus Boezem planted 178 Lombardy poplars on a knoll near Almere in the Dutch province of Flevoland.

Now grown to maturity, the trees form a living replica of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Reims, France, 150 meters long, 75 meters wide, and 30 meters tall.

The current “Groene Kathedraal” hosts weddings, funerals, and religious services, but Boezem is already planning for the future — a second clearing is being prepared nearby so that as the poplars decline a cathedral of beeches will take its place, and the two will alternate in an endless cycle thereafter.

| Art

A for Effort

During World War I, an anonymous American businessman who felt that “moral education of children is the fundamental need of the nation” offered $5,000 for “a children’s morality code that can be accepted as official — something prepared by the best brains of the educational profession.”

The contest ran for a year, from 1916 to 1917, and the winner was announced in American Magazine: William J. Hutchins had formulated 10 “laws of right living”:

  1. The welfare of our country depends upon those who try to be physically fit for their daily work.
  2. Those who best control themselves can best serve their country.
  3. Self-conceit is silly, but self-reliance is necessary to boys and girls who would be strong and useful.
  4. Our country grows great and good as her citizens are able more fully to trust each other.
  5. Clean play increases and trains one’s strength, and helps one to be more useful to one’s country.
  6. The shirker or the willing idler lives upon the labor of others, burdens others with the work which he ought to do himself. He harms his fellow citizens, and so harms his country.
  7. The welfare of our country depends upon those who have learned to do in the right way the things that ought to be done.
  8. One man alone could not build a city or a great railroad. One man alone would find it hard to build a house or a bridge. That I may have bread, men have sowed and reaped, men have made plows and threshers, men have built mills and mined coal, men have made stoves and kept stores. As we learn better how to work together, the welfare of our country is advanced.
  9. In America those who are of different races, colors and conditions must live together. We are of many different sorts, but we are one great people. Every unkindness hurts the common life, every kindness helps the common life.
  10. If our America is to become ever greater and better, her citizens must be loyal, devotedly faithful, in every relation of life.

I don’t know how widely this was actually used. The anonymous “Donor” followed up by offering a $20,000 prize for the best method of character instruction in American public schools, but I can’t tell whether that was ever awarded.

| Society

Second Strike

The Paradox of the Court is a logic problem from ancient Greece. Protogoras took on a pupil, Euathlus, on the understanding that Euathlus would pay him after he won his first court case. After Protogoras taught him the law, Euathlus decided not to practice, and Protogoras sued him for the amount owed.

Protagoras argued that if he won this lawsuit, he’d be paid the money he was owed, and if Euathlus won the suit, then he’d have won his first case and would owe Protagoras the money anyway under the terms of their contract. So he ought to be paid either way.

Euathlus argued that if he won the suit then by the court’s decision he owed nothing, and if he lost the suit then he still would not have won his first case, and thus owed Protagoras nothing under the contract.

One lawyer suggested that the court should decide in favor of the student and declare that he doesn’t have to pay for his education. Then Protagoras should sue him a second time — since then, incontrovertibly, the student will have won his first case!

| Science & Math

See You Around

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Italian Futurist Renato Bertelli produced this “Continuous Profile of Mussolini” in 1933, eight years after its subject became dictator of Italy. Surprisingly, Mussolini approved it as an official portrait. Not only did it present him as a cultural pioneer, he thought, but it appealed to his respect for Roman traditions: Where Janus had two faces, to look into the past and the future, Il Duce’s had an infinite number, to see in all directions.

| Art

Lodging a Complaint

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Among the most compelling anecdotes suggesting that dolphins have concepts of ‘wrong’ behavior is Thomas White’s description of how a human snorkeler observing Atlantic spotted dolphins off the Bahamas went outside the bounds of the norms of behavior expected by the dolphins of human observers at that site. The swimmer approached a calf engaged in learning to fish with its mother, a no-no in the rules of engagement between swimmers and these dolphins built up over years. When this happened, the mother then swam not to the hapless trespasser but to the leader of the group of swimmers, whom she could identify, and tail-slapped, her displeasure apparently directed at the leader who had not controlled the behavior of those being led.

— Hal Whitehead and Luke Rendell, The Cultural Lives of Whales and Dolphins, 2015

| Science & Math · Society

Misdemeanor

English wit Charles Stuart Calverley was “the hero of a hundred tales” at Cambridge. One Sunday, for no very good reason, he unhooked the inn sign from the Green Man at Trumpington and sprinted off with it toward the university. The innkeeper and several customers went after him, but Calverley gained ground and managed to escape to Christ’s College, where he ordered the porter to bar the gate and carried his prize to his rooms.

When the dean asked the meaning of the disturbance, he said, “Sir, an evil and adulterous generation seek after a sign, but no sign shall be given.”

| Humor

Podcast Episode 364: Sidney Cotton’s Aerial Reconnaissance

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One of the most remarkable pilots of World War II never fired a shot or dropped a bomb. With his pioneering aerial reconnaissance, Sidney Cotton made a vital contribution to Allied planning. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll describe his daring adventures in the war’s early months.

We’ll also revisit our very first story and puzzle over an unknown Olympian.

See full show notes …

| History · Podcast · Technology