THE TROLL GARDEN

Willa Cather

They advise that a writer should write what she knows. Willa Cather followed that advice. She began her career of words in journalism. Part of her assignments was reviewing art, music and literature. In her first published work (of short stories), The Troll Garden presents Cather’s relaying performances, artists, fans and art to the reader. She write each story with a proper amount of skepticism toward characters (artists and fans) and what they are doing. Troll has pejorative inference, and thereby, Cather has described the process and results of art. It is a trolly world of being.

For example,
FEMALE FANS: “What he had was that, in his mere personality, he quickened and in a measure gratified that something without which – to women – life is no better than sawdust, and to the desire for which most of their mistakes and tragedies and the astonishingly poor bargains are due.” The Garden Lodge.

MALE FANS: Man re-meets singer after singer is retired and dying.
“It was the silence of admiration,” protested Everett, “very crude and boyish, but very sincere and not a little painful. Perhaps you suspected something of the sort? I remember you saw fit to be very grown-up and worldly.”
“I believe I suspected a pose; then that college boys usually affect with singers – ‘an earthen vessel in love with a star,’ you know. But it rather surprised me in you, for you must have seen a good deal of your brother’s pupils. Or had you an omnivorous capacity, and elasticity that always met the occasion.” A Death in the Desert.

TRAGEDY: “He used to write only the tragedies of passion; but this is tragedy of the soul, the shadow coexistent with the soul. This is the tragedy of effort and failure, the thing Keats calls hell. This is my tragedy; as I lie here spent by the racehorse…”

“I wanted to be with you….I have never cared about other women since I met you in New York when I was a lad. You are part of my destiny, and I could not leave you if I would.

She put her hands on his shoulders and shook her head. “No, no; don’t tell me that. I have seen enough of tragedy, God knows. Don’t show me any more just as the curtain is going down. No, no, it was only a boy’s fancy, and your divine pity and my utter pitiableness have recalled it for a moment. One does not love the dying, dear friend. If some fancy of that sort had been left over from boyhood, this would rid you of it, and that were well. Now go, and you will come again tomorrow….” A Death In The Desert.

MARRYING AN ARTIST
“…She has remained in much the same condition she sank to before his death. He trampled over pretty much whatever there was in her, I fancy. Women don’t recover from wounds of that sort – at least not women of Ellen’s grain. They go on bleeding inwardly.”…

“The marriage,” Lady Mary continued with a shrug, “was made on the basis of a mutual understanding. Ellen, in the nature of the case, believed that she was doing something quite out of the ordinary in accepting him, and expected concessions which, apparently, it never occurred to him to make. After his marriage he relapsed into his old habits of incessant work, broken by violent and often brutal relaxations. He insulted her friends and foisted his own upon her – a homeless vagrant, whose conversation was impossible. I don’t say, mind you, that he had not grievances on his side. He had probably overrated the girl’s possibilities, and he let her see he was disappointed in her. Only a large and generous nature could have borne that, and Ellen’s not that. She could not at all understand that odious strain of plebeian pride which plumes itself upon having not risen above its sources.” The Marriage of Phaedra.

{Observe a similar sentiment at the end of the movie, My Brilliant Career where Sybilla declines to marry Harry. She wants to become a writer, an artist, and she tells him, I will destroy you. He does not understand.]

WANT-TO-BE PERSON CRAVING ARTIST’S LIFESTYLE

“Several of Paul’s teachers had a theory that his imagination had been perverted by garish fiction, but the truth was that he scarcely read at all. The books at home were not such as would either tempt or corrupt a youthful mind, and as for reading the novels that some of his friends urged upon him, — well, he got what he wanted much more quickly from music; any sort of music from an orchestra to a barrel organ. He needed only the spark, the indescribable thrill that made his imagination master of his senses, and he could make plots and pictures enough of his own. It was equally true that he was not stage struck – not, at any rate, in the usual acceptation of that expression. He had no desire to become an actor, any more than he had to become a musician. He felt no necessity to do any of those things; what he wanted was to see, to be in the atmosphere, float on the wave of it, to be carried out, blue league after blue league, away from everything.” Paul’s Case.

Undoubtedly, Willa Cather had witnessed and cringed about much she saw in the artistic world. She is plain, honest and open, letting the world witness what is frequently worshiped – not only the art, but also the artist. She is not judgmental except in Paul’s Case, the boy who seeks to attach himself to the material benefits of art. Obviously, what applied to women also was true for men. Have there not been a long trail of “poor bargains” arising from love, worship or fantasy?The Garden Lodge. Does any artist want to be revered, adorned and fawned over at death, or does the artist, using human common sense, understand for any person to cling to a drying artist is tragedy. A Death In The Desert.

[That point in A Death is reminiscent of William Shatner’s advice supposedly given during a Star Trek convention: “Get a life.”]

Willa Cather does not disapprove of artistic behaviors. Some artists act well, and others poorly. She cannot reform human behaviors, but she can bring light to common behaviors to give a perspective and to make situations common and understandable.

Observe in The Marriage of Phaedra Willa Cather describes where the painting has gone (Australia) as “entombed in a vague continent in the Pacific, somewhere on the other side of the world.”

FLAWS. REALLY?

If someone is ill, is injured or has a health problem, there is a flaw – to accept? Or should that person go to a doctor?

If someone talks and is full of ignorance because news is being repeated or sentiments from a witless bloke with an interesting accept is being relayed, there is a flaw. Should persons be educated with books or pursue further investigation to remove the flaws of ignorance?

If someone has an art and does not work or improve skills and talents, is it a flaw because the artist is quitting and is relying on laurels?

The question of art is the greatest flaw because at whichever age, not thinking, not trying, not improving, not adding skills, not doing, goes to the essence of that human being. In the mind that person has quit, and been typecast. For a writer if is a flaw to repeat everything again and again – no new settings, no true change of characters, similar elements in the stories (perhaps rearranged) and no new bad guys. It’s FORMULA producing flaws where points of everything can be outlined, almost to the exact line on which pages each should appear.

WE ARE LINCOLN MEN

David Herbert Donald

Every man who was a friend or had exposure to Abraham Lincoln wanted history to know that each of them was Lincoln’s best friend. They were all wrong. WE ARE LINCOLN MEN tells why.

This book is about friendship among human beings. It uses Abraham Lincoln as the person everyone wanted friendship with, not always during his lifetime. Over those fifty-six years, in society and work, Lincoln was a pleasant, resourceful fellow to have around with an inexhaustible supply of stories and antedotes, and hiding his imagination and intelligence. Lincoln liked persons like himself: Story tellers and persons who were fountains of tales – clean, dirty and engaging.

But what is friendship? The book does not answer the question directly. Communication is key, and talking is the primary means to convey what one person or another is thinking, is doing, might do, and how reactions come out; discretion of friends is necessary. Some stuff might never be repeated, and some might be repeated only long after the telling. And acceptance and going forward is always a goal – life goes on in the company of friends.

Each of these elements is present in WE ARE LINCOLN MEN, but none of Lincoln’s friendships had a chance to come to fruition: Interrupted by time and travel – Illinois, Washington; position – country lawyer, President; issues and thinking differently about the Constitution and solutions, concerns about slaves, the union and state’s rights.

Of course, Lincoln was a master of politics and law but handled as best he could issues before him, until his assassination. There is a tendency to make Lincoln prescient, a master and in control. No, he sometimes was making it up as he came to him – using his intelligence, collecting all information and opinions and ingenuity to make the best decisions. David Herbert Donald wrote an excellent biography of Abraham Lincoln and next, this book. Many of those decisions are in these books.

If there is a shortcoming in either book was defining Lincoln’s imagination and originality. In many ways he thought originally, and how that manifested itself to the American public was in speeches and amongst men, with humor, and sometimes gallows humor. This part of the story is difficult to tell because the assassination cut short Lincoln’s life at War’s end.

Humor – what delighted Lincoln, what amused him, what intrigued him – tells much about the man. There are collections of stories and antedotes but no systematic analyses connected to the President’s life and actions. Many human beings finding entertainment in the mind – concepts, organizing ideas and facts, storing it in the memory and using it when appropriate – is exercising the imagination. This process makes human beings different from all other animals. Getting

within a brain and learning how a biographical subject works, thinks, responds – sometimes on impulse, greatly aids the work of the writer. Whether a subject can recall something from memory quickly (being bright) or it rolls in after a few hours, makes the subject likable, engaging and social.

One trait coming from Lincoln is explaining his thinking to others. He told stories, and they were sometimes metaphors. Metaphors are not always understood, e.g. the British ambassador, but using that means to communicate suggests that Lincoln sought the polite way to urge persons to do what he wanted: Metaphors are by nature indirect.

On the friendship premise alone, I recommend We Are Lincoln Men.

FLIGHT 192

Dina Meyer

AVOID

Agent Dina Meyer works for the FBI and has a corner office, which suggests she’s high up in the FBI hierarchy. The crime involved is committed during the day and is public.

While Agent Dina is on a transcontinental flight, her seat mate is unusually chatty. That doesn’t raise alarm bells for FBI Agent Dina. Talk and chats draft to a shoe dropping: Agent Dina’s family has been kidnapped in their Los Angeles home and obviously Agent-Dina is supposed to supply, delete or deliver the goods so her family will be released. I assume Agent Dina is familiar with FBI procedures during a kidnapping and when they are public; they can end tragically.

What’s Agent Dina do in the movie? She goes along with the kidnapping plot, following all instructions of the chatty seat mate. It’s a big drama about Agent-Dina’s predicament and the fate of her family. In the end Agent-Dina gets a gun and shoots bad guys for another sappy movie where characters are witless until a gun can be drawn.

Imagine the same movie based on reality. Agent-Dina hears of her family’s kidnapping and immediately silences the chatty seat mate. Agent Dina calls the stewardess while she restrains and secures the chatty seat mate. Agent-Dina identifies herself, FBI Agent, and issues commands: All communications between the jet and the ground cease; the plane has a mechanical problem and is returning to LA; using the plane’s radio Agent-Dina calls the FBI; on alert, the Bureau send out swat-teams to Agent-Dina’s house which is not far from the FBI offices in the radiator building in Westwood. [Agent-Dina’s house is an upscale westside landmark with an expansive million dollar kitchen – one wall of big matching stainless steel appliances useful when holding a party for hundreds].

The remainder of the real story is how the FBI unravels the plot which extends to Agent Dina’s work at the FBI. Bad guys are killed or arrested.

The end of the film is a party in Agent-Dina’s kitchen which substitutes for the movie’s wrap party.

L.A. NOIR

John Buntin

Written in a journalistic style, this history supports the notion of Los Angeles becoming a city by accident. Primarily, there was no law enforcement. Crime rates were high. For a long time Los Angeles Police were paid off by various sorts of law breakers: Gamblers, smugglers, white slavers; and white collar criminals – rule breakers, favor-for-favor enthusiasts, and rich or influential persons taking advantage. Los Angeles seemed a city (and county) which was unmanageable and unpoliced. Counting the population growth was a feat, let alone policing with an undermanned police department.

Robert Parker became a Los Angeles policeman in the 1920s. He was thoroughly incorruptible. His primary focus was overcoming organized crime coming from eastern cities: Mickey Cohen. Cohen was elusive and laws were not enforced, like paying taxes to the IRS. Cohen died owning the federal government more than $500,000, yet he was in and out of prison (mostly out), living the high life (people gave him gifts). His attributable income for a year exceeded the amount of taxes he ever paid in taxes for a decade. He never ratted. He was smilingly approachable to the press but vague with answers to committees and to courts. During a Congressional hearing Cohen was accused of threatening a man “to put his lights out.” Cohen’s response: “Look it, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not an electrician.”

Parker like many crusaders was blind to the changing population and to social forces. 1950s Los Angeles was not white as it was during the 1920s when Parker joined the force. World War Two brought in hundreds of thousands of African-Americans; the Mexican-American population grew as rapidly. Parker did not change his views of either minority and their criminal ways. NOTE the book only mentions organizational shifts in the Police Department from 1930 to 1970. So Parker’s management abilities are difficult to evaluate.

From 1910 to 1960 the book gives enough detail to tell the foregoing story (pages 1 – 300). But three events – Watts Riots 1965 – Kennedy Assassination 1968 and Rodney King and those riots (1991) are presented in 46 pages. The point the author tries to make is Parker’s ordinances and regulations isolating the Police Chief from the whims of the Los Angeles City Council were changed in 1992. Thereafter, Daryl Gates (presented as incompetent but scored well on texts) was removed.

NO HISTORY

The American Civil War in Missouri, 1864-1865, did not end in 1865. Violence spread across the center of the country and west, and ended later. Most of the behaviors held by Americans in 1865, resulted in quick resorts to violence, arising from unsettled conditions.

An explanation of why this occurred is told in The Collapse of Price’s Raid, Mark Lause. Along with a prequel, that book tells of battles in Missouri during the Civil War. Every word is as accurate as can be stated. The biggest drawbacks are (1) the numbers of players – who led these men in each skirmish or raid, (2) what they were thinking or what they believed, and (3) where each encounter happened and (4) the sense of the battle. Specifically, there are no maps and no diagrams indicating where attackers and defenders were. From the words of the book alone, the Confederate forces were wastefully expended; captured Union fighters might be executed. Of course, the Union prevailed.

The most telling statement about Missouri of those years and afterward was in the last paragraph of the book:

…the peace that settled over the western border also required peace among the Confederates and peace among the Unionists as well. And that mandated was, for most whites, a blessed forgetfulness about the real issues and experiences of the Civil War. (emphasis supplied, p.194)

There was NO HISTORY. If men who did the fighting kept everything untold for 40 or 50 years and died with those experiences, without challenging, discussing and coming to some sense of what actually happened, little was learned and nothing was gained from the Civil War. What passed to succeeding generations were made up stories and fantasies about feats, deeds, glorious times and burdensome oppressions and phantoms that the fighting men generated and reenforced years after the fighting, and told to succeeding generations. The Collapse of Price’s Raid is a book which explains why the Confederacy did not succeed. Divisions among Confederate soldiers and raiders were as deep and rank, as those with the enemy, or between the rich and poor today.

Today, on the Left in America made up facts and stuff from LBJ’s Great Society plus the Vietnam War (largely forgotten) form the basis for what proponents envisioned that America should be today. These people are satisfied with benign neglect. Anyone proposing change like Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton are villains. (Clinton less so.) Their moves to get people away from comfort zones, and country going forward were significant during the 1980s and 1990s.

On the Right appears a more ludicrous set of facts and thoughts. Some of the proposals want to take America back one hundred years, to the years of jazz, partner dancing and snappy band music and movies, but no pensions and no social programs. Those years left Americans distrustful and suspicious of their neighbors. Americans were identified by the country where

their parents or grandparents came from, e.g. Irish, Italian, Swedish, German, Greek, Pole. Minorities were a smaller part of the population and marginalized. Today minority populations, put all together, constitute a sizable minority.

Who wants to wonder today about a person’s country of origin, if living here and being productive is the outcome? Returning to the thinking of the 1920s ain’t going to help America go forward.

For the United States having its population thinking diverse things about supposedly accepted facts and incidences makes governing more difficult. Americans seem to chose the course of the Missouri soldiers after the Civil War – not at peace with one another and forgetful of the facts in the past, and facts going forward. It is the role of politicians to rectify and smooth differences about facts, not trumpet and promote every erroneous interpretation of facts or documents. Wrong facts are not so cherished when they become principle and can never be changed – and ideas can never be changed? – and nothing can ever be changed?

The value of books like The Collapse of Price’s Raid is to set out facts, so everything can be changed and considered. Learning and collection of facts present circumstances, plus time alone forces thoughts and attitudes of human beings to change.

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H.L. Mencken

MY LIFE AS AUTHOR AND EDITOR

Salient in the life of this journalist with a name is asking what type of American he was. Mencken came from Germany and during World War One and World War Two he was pro- German and pro-Hitler. He lost his newspaper job with the Baltimore papers in 1941. Apparent German actions again other peoples were dismissed because they were not Germans. Carrying on with that antiquated thinking (feudalism or before) into the Twentienth Century makes Mencken an unexplained throwback, and given the quality of writing in the book, a throw away.

The book presents an autobiography of part of Mencken’s life. I have no idea how much he drank, womanized, or contributed to established art and literary politics. The book describes some of this editorial activities, but does not set human beings in business except to say this happened that happened and the reasons for any disagreements – the other person was Jewish, or was a woman, or would not do what Mencken advised. Mencken dismissed film and California completely without realizing it dramatized American short stories many times better than the writer could put it on a page.

The book was Mencken’s final writing effort with time qualities reflected in the writing. It tells its story sloppily, if at all. It appears Mencken chained himself to a typewriter and merrily typed. There is no sense a wordsmith was at work, edited or believed the manuscript needed further work. The book’s editor, Jonathan Yardley did his best, but elementary flaws flow throughout the writing.

A few observations early in the book should be noted:

“…I am convinced that writing verse is the best of all preparations for writing prose.
I makes the neophyte look sharply to his words, and improves the sense of rhythm and tone-color – in brief, that she of music which is at the bottom of all sound prose…” Page 5-6)

“Under the influence of my father…I emerged into sentience with an almost instinctive distrust of all schemes of revolution and reform. They were…only signs and symptoms of a fundamental hallucinations…the hallucination that human nature could be changed by passing statutes, and preaching gospels – that natural law could be repealed by taking thought.” (page 34)

“…my interest in Roosevelt 1 was always born of delight in the mountebank, not of belief in the prophet.” (page 34)

Work at home: “We … wondered why none of our colleagues had hit on the device of staying way for their offices…we escaped the burden of listening to countless visitors who infest such places – mainly authors trying to sell their manuscripts, not on the merits

thereof but by selling talk. Virtually all our business was done by mail, and it was thus possible for us to do it at our own convenience, and with expedition. On my trips to and from New York I read more manuscripts than the average editor could get through in ten times the time in his office. It was not until long afterward that I discovered that a number of English magazine editors had practiced keeping clear of their offices before we thought of it.”(Page 50)

Paying writers: The Saturday Evening Post’s “…editor…not only paid much higher prices for manuscripts…but he also paid off once a week. As a result [he] got first whack at virtually all the better fiction of the time…” (page 51)

Personal responsibility/memory: “After [Zoe Atkin’s] removal to New York, she let it be known that [Reedy] had not only discovered her but also seduced her, and in the course of time she pushed back this catastrophe back in time until in the end he was depicted as her undoing when she was but sixteen years old. This, if true, put it in 1902, when Reedy himself was forty.”(Page 68)

1920’s Greenwich Village: “…the Village, like the Paris Left Bank, was much less literary artistic than sexual, and most of its male denizens lived on women. The typical menage consisted of a widow or spinster from some small-town in the Middle West, come east to spend her dead husband’s or father’s money and see life, and a bogus painter or pulp- magazine fictioneer who let her feed, clothe and love him.”(page 95)

Any sort of writer putting together an autobiography would have given thought to organization. Little does Mencken’s story at the typewriter evince such expansive thinking – just put together antedotes loosely. What lacks is the potential for an authoritative description of the literary artistic scene on the East Coast i.e. the market Mencken was involved with. Mencken should have stepped back to write the Big Picture. But he could not escape his profession, journalism and its need to advance facts (and Mencken’s opinions) in detail without describing the setting, or telling any reasons. Influences (other than getting drunk), the environment (Mencken did not believe important) and competition (society) – did not writers know one another? As an editor did he not know writers talked and exchanged ideas, concepts and reactions?

So this book falls short in its organization and in its writing.

TO THE BOYS AND GIRLS OF THE SUPREME COURT

Sammy Alito’s draft opinion to overrule Roe vs. Wade argues, “The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision including the one on which defenders of Roe…now chiefly rely – the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

God help us! And God Bless the Founding Fathers! The 1788 Constitutional Conventions of the states reveal the legislative intent and legislative history about enumerated and unenumerated rights and freedoms, according to James Madison. Madison was a complete, recognizable authority of the Constitution in 1788. In 1789 Madison wrote what became the Bill of Rights.

The Virginia Constitutional Convention is the most complete record. A Bill of Rights came up in June 1788. Opponents of the Constitution used every argument to block the paper: Should there be a constitutional ratification conditioned on a Bill of Rights being adopted? Or should there be ratification plus recommended supplementary amendments? Madison did not like either proposal. He disengaged ratification from conditions, and he diminished the value of the subsequent amendments.

Enumerated and unenumerated rights were hot topics, cooled by the best judge/justice in America and in the English speaking world. Edmund Pendleton knew the American people were the sovereign and that every freedom and right could not be enumerated – too many situations, too many people living over a expanded land of liberty. Pendleton recommended the negative: “Declare the principle as more safe than the Enumeration.”

James Madison did so in the Ninth Amendment: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

Rights and freedoms enumerated in the Constitution stay with Americans, the sovereign. No Congress and not the Executive, and no Supreme Court justice can “deny or disparage” unenumerated rights “retained by the people.”

So boys and girls, study the 1788 Constitutional Conventions. Americans have enumerated and unenumerated rights. References follow:

10 Doc His of the Rat of the Constitution, Virginia, vol. 3, St His Soc of Wisconsin, Madison, 1993, June 24, 1788, p. 1520, Madison at ratifying convention: “If an enumeration be made of our rights, will it not be implied that everything omitted,
is given to the General Government? Has not the Honorable Gentleman [Patrick Henry] himself, admitted, that an imperfect enumeration is dangerous?” David John Mays, Ed., The Letters and Papers of Edmund Pendleton, Uni. Press of Virginia, Char., 1967, vol. 2, p. 533, Pendleton to Richard Henry Lee; Oliver Ellsworth, Landholder VI, 3 Doc His of the Rat of the Const, Connecticut, St His Soc of Ws, Madison, 1978, December 10, 1787, p. 481; PJM, vol. 10, Uni. Chi, Chicago, 1977, p. 315, 317, George Lee Tuberville to JM, December 11, 1787, make sure enumerated rights not listed not “surrendered.” House Annals, August 17, 1789, p. 783-784.

Next write another draft opinion and submit it to the sovereign, the American people, for their ratification.

BEGAT

DAVID CRYSTAL – RECOMMENDED

This book attempts to tell how various editions of the Bible influenced the evolution of English. It is incomplete; the text could be longer, much longer.

The text introduces the reader to the subject, succinctly refreshing readers/writers to the subject matter and its sensitizes writers to the contents. The book is organized by idioms, phrases and verses, like it is a guide explaining business or management practices. [Robert Townsend, Up the Organization was one of the first types of this book.] Hence Begat becomes a valuable quick resource for references to Biblical idioms, phrases and verses, sometimes from the original usage to the present.

There are omissions. Before 1559 the English Bible was in prose and paragraphs. Thereafter, the Bible was in verse. Its style was greatly influenced by poetry and the playwrights of Elizabethan England. Prose and poetry obviously differ. Modern prose stresses the verb; poetry has always been about using and associating nouns and sometimes using specific forms and linguistic devices. Prose seems much more accepting to change of grammar, use of words, shifting words and odd word order.

The original language of the Volgate Bible, in the fourth century from the Greek, was Latin, with its five declensions. Modern day English has three declensions – subjective, possessive and objective. Most modern English speakers nail the subjective declension but botch or ignore the other two. Miss declensions in Latin, German, Russian or languages stressing nouns and get the word order wrong, and the student fails!

In Begat there is nothing about the prose/poetry shifts in English, when the Bible was being translated and through time to today.

WARLORD

Carlo D’Este

This excellent history/biography uses Winston Churchill as a model to show British ways of war, the British mindset during war and British systems of making war. This biography is enlightening yet unsympathetic to Churchill and British diverting methods as World War II dragged on. The book overall tells the World War II perspective of the British.

For a long time before D-Day Churchill was against any landings in Northern Europe. He proposed and applauded Anzio in Italy which was greatly pared down (five divisions to one and reduced logistics and supply). {Politicians have long been deceived by U.S. Grant’s amphibious landing south of Vicksburg in May 1863 and eventually surrounding and obtaining the surrounding of that river town.] Churchill devised and held to the idea that taking over Greek islands in 1944 in the Aegean Sea was the masterstroke that would end the War in Europe. He insisted Rome be taken in June 1944 rather than attack and weaken the German army. Churchill opposed the American invasion of Marseilles in August 1944, opening a second supply route for American armies: Forty (40) percent of the supplies for those armies came through Marseilles.

Meanwhile, the British used Montgomery (seemingly the best general the British could produce). Churchill did not like other generals and summarily dismissed them. Between August 1944 and November 1944, Montgomery lengthened the war by losing opportunities to destroy German armies at Falaise Gap in Normandy; he did a risky, men-wasting incursion of Belgium and Holland called Market Garden – supplies had to go up one long road; he failed to open the Scheldt Estuary, depriving the allies of using the port of Antwerp for three months.

So the British fought World War II using men expensively, and Winston Churchill was a Warlord, not a cabinet position of the British government, but akin to Warlords of yore commanding armies, promoting strategies, wanting to join the fight, always in political control, urging actions leading to non-profitable military measures, sanctioning incompetence from military underlines, and craving compliance from the British people and every person in government for each of his decisions.