Quote of the Day (Dag Hammarskjold, on the Surface “Life of Simplicity”)

“In the point of rest at the center of our being, we encounter a world where all things are at rest in the same way. Then a tree becomes a mystery, a cloud a revelation, each man a cosmos of whose riches we can only catch glimpses. The life of simplicity is simple, but it opens to us a book in which we never get beyond the first syllable."-- Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Dag Hammarskjold, Markings

This Day in WWI History (Germany Declares War on France as WWI Readies to Explode)

August 3, 1914—World War I, the conflict that all the major nations of Europe planned for but that none actually believed would ever occur, assumed irresistible momentum, as Germany declared war on France and rebuffed attempts to assure the neutrality of Belgium.

Late on that long day’s journey into war, watching the street lamps below his Whitehall office being illuminated on what would otherwise have been a serene banker's holiday, British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey (in the image accompanying this post) made a remark that would forever sum up an entire era coming to an end: “The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime."

The June 28, 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was typical of the unexpected nature of the war to come, including the ironies cascading upon ironies. In school, the man who killed him, 20-year-old Gavrilo Princip, had been ridiculed as a horrible shot.

Had Princip attempted the killing on the archduke’s own estate, he might have found himself prey rather than predator: The Archduke, a handy man with a gun, had, by his own estimate, bagged more than 5,000 animals, many of which now were hanging stuffed on the walls of his house. More important, when unexpected intruders ventured onto his estate, Franz Ferdinand was not reluctant to fire shots in their direction.

On the day Franz Ferdinand was murdered, Princip and two co-conspirators had already missed one opportunity—the grenade they throw at the archduke’s slow-moving car bounced off and hit the one behind it—when a second chance practically fell into Princip’s lap.

The archduke’s entourage had just left City Hall in Sarajevo, but his driver didn’t learn about the change away from the city center. As the driver maneuvered the royal vehicle, Princip, incredibly enough, had a second appointment with destiny. This time he didn’t miss.

The world exploded by the shots that killed the archduke and his wife was not merely one filled with monarchs, but one in which these royals were cousins who could remonstrate with each other in a cajoling, familial fashion, addressing each other as “Nicky” (Czar Nicholas II of Russia) and “Willy” (Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany).

In the end, these two monarchs helped precipitate a war in which they lost their thrones—and wrecked the lives of millions of their countrymen, both in the conflict itself and in the totalitarian regimes that succeeded the royals.

“History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors and issues,” T.S. Eliot wrote in his poem “Gerontion.” What the poet probably had in mind were the secret alliances that put the entire continent on the brink of war after the assassination—even though most of the countries had no strategic interest in the quarrel between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Serbia.

When Woodrow Wilson proposed his “Fourteen Points” for concluding “the Great War,” its first diplomatic reform called for “Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at…diplomacy shall proceed along frankly and in the public view.” The President hoped to eliminate the system of alliances that split the continent in two opposing camps for two generations following the Franco-Russian War that ended in 1870. France and Russia stood on one side; Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy on the other. (In the end, Italy found an escape clause in its treaty obligations that enabled it not to join in the conflict in August 1914; it would not become involved in the war--and then would do so on the side of France, Russia and Great Britain--until a year later.)

The diplomats of Europe had such a tightly interlocking defensive machine that, once set in motion, nobody seemed able to halt it. Dwight D. Eisenhower could have applied the phrase “domino theory” more properly to the precarious state of affairs in Europe in early summer 1914 than he did to Southeast Asia in 1954.

The prewar crisis began within a week after Sarajevo, behind closed doors, only to burst out on a surprised continent nearly a month later. The key move belonged to Germany, which replied affirmatively to an inquiry from its junior partner in the Triple Alliance, Austria-Hungary, if the Kaiser would support eliminating Serbia “as a political factor in the Balkans.”

The Kaiser’s assurance emboldened the Hapsburg monarchy to present an ultimatum to Serbia on July 23 that amounted to total cession of the smaller country’s sovereignty. News of the crisis found numerous heads of state and diplomats off on holiday, scrambling to get up to speed (and often unable to do so) on events getting out of control:

* July 25—Austria-Hungary severs relations with Serbia after the republic accepts all its demands but two: a) the empire would be empowered to interfere with the assassination investigation, and b) it could interfere with Serbian affairs.

* Jul 26-28: Great Britain proposes conference to settle the Serbian crisis; Germany refuses, and Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia.

* July 29—Russia tries to induce Germany to curb Austria-Hungary’s demands on Serbia, and orders partial mobilization.

* July 30-31—Germany warns Russia to stop mobilization; instead, Russian proceeds to general mobilization.

* August 1—With Germany refusing to offer a non-invasion pledge about crossing Belgium’s border on its way to France, Belgium mobilizes; Germany declares war on Russia; with Russia threatened, its ally France orders general mobilization.

* August 2—Germany not only demands the right to pass through Belgium unimpeded, and actually does invade Luxembourg.

This chronology only hints at one of the aspects of the war that distinguished it from earlier ones: the fear that a nation not only had to act, but act now, before a rival could fully mobilize and transport troops to the front by train.

Forty years ago, historian A.J.P. Taylor argued in War by Timetable that railroad schedules played a crucial role in hastening the pace of events. In his view, putting an entire nation on battle alert in the modern era was so hideously complicated that it took months to be ready.

One event in particular illustrates his thesis pretty well. Early on August 1, his communications with “Cousin Nicky” had evidently caused the normally impulsive Kaiser Wilhelm to have cold feet about invading Russia. He asked his generals about simply halting. They said no—10,000 trains were already on the move.

Britain now had the choice about joining the larger conflict. Grey indicated to the House of Commons that day that the nation had no vital interest at play in the Balkans, nor was it obligated by secret codicils to any treaties.

However, Prime Minister Herbert Asquith's government was following with special interest what was happening in Belgium. National opinion, the Prime Minister and his Cabinet concluded, would not support intervening solely on the side of France.

The violation of Belgian neutrality, on the other hand, portended a decisive change in the balance of power on the Continent toward Germany. Even in this instance, six Cabinet officials agreed on August 2 that it would require a wholesale invasion of Belgium to precipitate a British intervention.

That is what Germany ended up doing. When the British ambassador told the German Chancellor, Bethman-Hellweg, about his government's decision to honor Belgian neutrality, the German minister--who'd been on the nerve of a nervous breakdown for the past few days over the escalating tensions--sputtered that he couldn't believe Britain would risk war over "a scrap of paper."

That phrase, along with another--"the Rape of Belgium"--provided British propagandists handy recruiting tools in the early days of the conflict.

The next day, Britain declared war on Germany.

An entire generation—the best men of the major countries on the continent—would lose their lives in the war to come.

Quote of the Day (Will Bill Hickok, Remembered and Reinterred by Pal, Charlie Utter)

"Wild Bill J.B. Hickok killed by the assassin Jack McCall in Deadwood Black Hills, August 2nd 1876. Pard, we will meet again in the happy hunting ground to part no more. Good Bye, Colorado Charlie, C.H. Utter."—Inscription on the original wood grave marker for legendary Western gunfighter Wild Bill Hickok

Three years and one day after Hickok (in the image accompanying this post) was shot in the back by Jack McCall, his buddy Charlie Utter, acting at the behest of their mutual friend Martha “Calamity Jane” Cannary, supervised the transfer of the sheriff/gambler's remains from Ingleside, the town cemetery in Whitewood Gulch, to Mount Mariah Cemetery. (Since new homes were needed for goldminers coming into the area, it was decided to move those buried in Ingleside to Mount Mariah.)

Thinking about the long stretches of desolate South Dakota territory, sometimes I ask myself: “Why on earth would anyone want to live there?” I still have that question, but at least I don’t wonder why people vacation there. For film and history fans, the area is a must.

After a year and a half of writing this blog, I’m surprised that I have written so little about the Wild West. The unbelievable number of myths that have accrued to its settlement obscures the fact that many unusual people did live there, acting in even more unusual ways.

I first came across the story of Wild Bill and Calamity Jane in the 1936 Western, The Plainsman. I remember at the time, when I was watching it as a youngster one Saturday afternoon on Channel 5 in the New York area in the early 1970s, that I was really taken with it.

Nowadays, knowing that it was directed by Cecil B. DeMille, one of cinema's great peddlers of unadultered hooey, I’d have severe reservations about the flick’s historical accuracy. And, in fact, while Abe Lincoln makes an appearance, Utter is nowhere to be found in the cast of characters.

(I’m surprised that when it came to The Ten Commandments, DeMille didn’t come up with an alternative title that might have better suited himself and others in Tinseltown with a strong yen for adultery: The Ten Helpful Hints.)

But if there’s one rule about Golden Age Hollywood that you can take to the bank, it’s this: any film with Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur can’t be all bad.

A year or so ago, I tried to watch an episode of the HBO series Deadwood before giving up. I’m sure as I’m sitting here that the West featured spectacularly obscene characters, but I couldn’t help thinking that a little colorful language in this case would have gone a long way toward suggesting the whole. Delete only every other profanity and you still would have had an additional 10 minutes that could have been better spent on plot and character development.

Now, however, after researching this post and becoming more familiar with some of the real-life characters associated with the wild and woolly Western town, I wonder if it might be worth my time to go back and reassess the series. Comparing fact and fiction can be incredibly instructive.

Consider the following facts about one of the show’s characters, Utter, nicknamed “Colorado Charlie” for his trapping and prospecting days in the state:

* Talking about dandies—this guy was dressed to kill: long blond hair, luxuriously groomed moustache, hand-tailored fringed buckskins, fine linen shirts, beaded moccasins, a big silver belt buckle, and a pair of revolvers mounted in gold, silver and pearl. (When playwright George S. Kaufman saw friend Moss Hart attired similarly nearly sixty years later, he remarked: “Hi-yo, Silver!”)

* After reading Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove, my friend Ann was prompted to remark about the powerfully bad smell emitted by Gus McCrae, Woodrow Call and their company. Utter would have been distinctly out of place among them. Highly unusual for the time, he actually bathed every single day. God help you if you ventured into his tent during his hygienic process. Even Wild Bill—who, as we know, was a pretty fair hand with a pistol—knew better than to try it. I think Utter actually expected women to be attracted by this! (If so, it worked—in the 1860s he caught the eye--or, in this case, perhaps atisfactorily stimulated the olfactory senses--of a teenager named Tilly Nash, subsequently marrying her.)

* Utter demonstrated how commerce was as much the business of the West as shooting. In fact, in one instance—his mail-express service from Deadwood to Cheyenne—he dealt in both, since he and his fellow employees had to cross mile upon mile of plains—filled with Native Americans who knew that he represented encroachingwhites, and weren’t too thrilled about it—on their appointed rounds. In fact, the 38-year-old Utter wasn’t around to steer Hickok away from trouble the day of his shooting because he had to take care of the business.

* Utter was brought back to Deadwood in 1879 because of legal difficulties with another business. He got tripped up for selling liquor without a license and was forced to watch the saloon he’d purchased earlier in the year close because of accusations that it was a nuisance dance hall.

A legend from the moment he was murdered, Hickok benefited from the care that not only Utter but Deadwood took to look after his grave. Twelve years after his removal to Mount Mariah, a bust was erected by Hickok's grave; in 1893, Capt. Jack Crawford engaged in a most ungunslinger-like activity—a poetry reading—to raise funds for stone work and an iron fence around the grave.

In the next decade, a life-size statue of “The Plainsman” was placed on the site, followed by wire fences around it to protect against vandalism. (The head of the bust had been knocked off—with as much concern for Wild Bill as Jack McCall had shown—by vandals.)

And Utter? He gradually slipped into the mists of history. Legend says that, after operating another saloon and gambling den, he journeyed down to Panama, where he became a doctor and druggist. A friend maintained that he’d seen him outside his pharmacy down there as late as 1910.

One hopes that “Colorado Charlie” made it to the “happy hunting ground” eventually with Wild Bill—who at least now can be content to have Calamity Jane lying by his side in Mount Mariah. (She had asked to be buried there when she passed on in 1903.)

This Day in Yankee History (Thurman Munson Dies in Plane Crash)

August 2, 1979—When New York Yankee captain Thurman Munson died a little after 4 pm in a plane crash, the motive behind the fatal flight surprised sportswriters, fans and opponents who knew him principally as the prickly sparkplug of the crew who returned the sports world’s greatest franchise to glory.

Munson, homesick for his family, had only recently purchased a plane so he could fly home more often to Ohio. He was practicing a run at the Akron-Canton Airport when his Cessna-Citation began to lose altitude. 

Two friends were able to extricate themselves but unable to save Munson. A later inquiry found the accident to be a result of pilot error.

Before his death, the 32-year-old Munson had hoped for a few more years to play, not only so that his four-year-old son would have the opportunity to see him in action but to improve his chances of making the Baseball Hall of Fame. His tragic accident certainly eliminated the first opportunity and, at least at this juncture, the second.

This is unfortunate, as is the pigheadedness poormouthing of his qualifications for Cooperstown. I lost much respect for baseball historian Bill James, for instance, after learning that he’d ranked Munson as only the 14th–best catcher in baseball history, preceded by, among others, Ivan Rodriguez and Ted Simmons.

(The latter came close to being the best catcher offensively of his generation, but he was, by virtually all accounts, subpar behind the plate; as for I-Rod, his qualifications should be looked at far more closely now in the wake of the Ortiz-Ramirez steroids revelations. Asked whether his name was among the now-infamous list of 104 positive-testing juicers, I-Rod’s pathetic response was: “God only knows.”)

In the 1950s, New York fans argued about who was the best centerfielder: Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, and Duke Snider. Nowadays, few question whether all three belong in the Hall of Fame. No such certainty exists about Munson, however, even though he rightly belongs with Johnny Bench and Carlton Fisk among the great triumvirate of catchers of their generation.

To some extent, politics obtains in the Hall of Fame balloting by the sportswriters, much as they might deny it. True, they don’t make themselves silly by failing to vote for someone who, over a long career, notches the accomplishments deemed worthy of Cooperstown admission: 3,000 hits, 500 hits, 300 victories, and the like. (Except, of course, if the individual was involved with steroids or gambling.)

But for the vast majority of other cases, such as Munson’s—those who either didn’t enjoy a long career or fell just short of the above magic numbers—other factors come into play. In Munson’s case, the Yankee catcher’s sometimes rough-around-the-edges personality didn’t help.

I mean, just look at pictures of Munson and his Red Sox rival (in every sense of the word) Fisk. If he’d been able to act a lick, I don’t see why Rod Shelton might not have wanted to cast him as the catcher in his great comedy Bull Durham.

Now Munson, on the other hand—well, check out that moustache. 

Remember, as often as not when a scribe was around in the Yankee clubhouse during the early Steinbrenner era, asking if he felt dissed about Reggie Jackson surpassing his salary, that facial hair would be twisted in a scowl. 

It reminds you of some western where a cowpoke, at the end of a long, hot day in the saddle, swishing flies and smelling cowdung, has just entered a bar, only to be insulted. That’s the kind of look Munson leveled at guys with notebooks and pens.

Sure, Munson aficionados have summoned awards and statistics to bolster their case (Rookie of the Year, 1970; MVP, 1976; seven All-Star appearances; three straight .300 batting average, 100-RBI seasons). 

But his detractors are ready to compare him with others using statistics—which, in the modern era, can not only be wrenched out of context by steroids, but even by ballpark disparities.

The unfairness of this is compounded by the fact that only offensive statistics are used—otherwise, how in the world could Bill James rank Ted Simmons ahead of Munson?

It’s harder to measure defense but it can be just as important—particularly in the case of a catcher, a position player who not merely catches the ball but must also throw out runners attempting to steal (actions that, more often than not, occur because pitchers don’t know how to keep them close to the base) and call a game in which near-encyclopedic knowledge of opposing batters' strengths and weaknesses is required.

In the case of the latter function, think of Yankee pitchers who had some of their best seasons with Munson behind the plate: Mel Stottlemyre, Fritz Peterson, Catfish Hunter, Ed Figueroa, Ron Guidry, Sparky Lyle, and Goose Gossage.

How about some different ways of looking at the Yankee legend?

Just as it’s inconceivable to think about the Yankee championship teams from the Twenties through the Sixties without invoking Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Berra, and Mantle, so it is impossible to imagine the team that survived an insane owner and a ravenous press in the Seventies without calling to mind the tough leader who always found a way—a clutch hit, a goading challenge to a struggling pitcher (the tough-love treatment Munson delivered to Goose Gossage in May ’78), or a block of the plate that prevented a run—to win games.

The other night, one of the Yankee announcers (I believe Ken Singleton), in discussing Cooperstown, said it should be reserved for those that you as a player hated to face. I can think of nobody who better fulfilled that criterion than Munson.

Take, for instance, October 6, 1978—the same night that George Brett clubbed three homers against the Yankees—when the Bronx captain belted a Doug Bird fastball over the fence to clinch a 6-5 victory over the Kansas City Royals, putting them in the driver’s seat as they won another of their hard-fought playoff series against their Western Division rivals.

No greater tribute to his importance to the team could have been rendered than when the Yankees made him the first Bomber captain since Lou Gehrig. Years ago, he was recognized with a plaque in Monument Park, but he should also be honored in Cooperstown.

Quote of the Day (John C. Bennett, on God and Man’s Freedom)

“All teaching about God that by implication denies the freedom of man or downgrades him, and especially all teaching about God that downgrades some men, leaving them a less than human role, must be renounced. Often in the past, God has been seen as the great preserver of the status quo, which was organized for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many. But today, God is with the revolutionary efforts to raise the many to a position of human dignity and hope.”—John C. Bennett, “In Defense of God,” Look, April 19, 1966

This Day in Jazz History (Glenn Miller Puts America “In the Mood”)

August 1, 1939—In RCA Victor Studios in New York City, Glenn Miller recorded “In the Mood,” a jazz-influenced pop tune that made the Greatest Generation forget about the Depression and war clouds abroad through delirious dance fever.

All that fun came from musicians melded, through fear and discipline, into a unit as tight as the best regiment. Five years later, the taskmaster who oversaw this process—now Major Glenn Miller—would lose his life while flying abroad, entertaining American troops.

Had you seen him as a high-school student in Iowa in the early 1920s, you could be forgiven for not guessing he’d grow into such a grimly determined professional. The tales of people uninspired by the American educational system who go on to spectacular success are legion, because so many youths have found nothing in the school routine to fire their imaginations.

So it was in high school for Miller, who loved football (even being voted “the best left end of Colorado”) but was indifferent to academics. It was no surprise, then, that shortly before graduation, he was so taken by the dance music then making inroads into the white world that he didn’t bother attending his commencement ceremony.

Instead, he traveled to Laramie, Wyoming for a gig. When his mother was left to pick up his diploma in absentia, the principal consoled her: “Maybe you’re the one who should get it anyway; you probably worked harder on it than he did!”

Success might have seemed so important because it took him so long to achieve it. For more than a decade, he did apprentice work as an arranger in a variety of bands (including the Dorsey Brothers') before starting his own, in 1937. This first attempt failed, but he renewed his effort the following year, with different musicians and a different cultural environment (Goodman had pushed big-band music into the mainstream with his triumph at the Carnegie)—and this time succeeded.

A trombonist, Miller might not have been the equal of Big Band rivals Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw on his instrument, but his was the most successful of the groups. Moreover, in at least one respect he might have bested Shaw: as a canny editor of material.

“In the Mood” featured lyrics by Andy Razaf (a Fats Waller collaborator) and music by Joe Garland. Shaw gave up on the song when Garland presented it to him because it was longer than eight minutes. One of Miller’s great talents, however, was in editing material, knowing how to cut just enough to make it onto one side of a 78. He snipped just enough from his arrangements to put his song out there before the public.

Ironically, Miller’s contract did not allow for royalties, so he only made $175 from the sale of this huge hit. After his death, however, the deal was renegotiated and his estate began to receive royalties from it.

Big band music played a huge part in spreading American culture around the world, but its heyday was comparatively short—only about a half-dozen years. Ironically, the same session in which “In the Mood” was recorded also witnessed a song sometimes thought of as the forerunner of the style that would replace the big bands: "Wham (Re-bop, Boom-Bam),” foreshadowing the rise of bebop.

As his band began to establish itself as a commercial force, Miller made his home in a New York suburb, Tenafly, N.J. (only a five-minute drive from my house) at Cotswold, a mansion and carriage house that had been converted to apartments only a few years before. Miller’s wife was still staying here in December 1944 when the sad news was broken to her that her husband’s plane had disappeared over the English Channel.

A half century later, Tenafly approved the designation of this as a local historic site. Around the same time, halfway across the country, a movement began in Miller’s hometown of Clarinda, Iowa, to build a museum at his birthplace.

As musicologist Gary Giddins has pointed out, during Miller's lifetime, jazz critics tended to dismiss the bandleader's work as sentimental and vanilla. His popularity remained stubbornly high, however, until, in recent years, critical opinion became more positive.

"In the Mood," along with "Moonlight Serenade" and "Chattanooga Cho-Cho," could readily be placed in a time capsule--perhaps more so than any other Big Band songs -- to identify the culture of the age. As a new generation of young men went off to war--and as their loved ones stayed behind, dreading calls that might inform them of their deaths--this tune lightened their hearts, in USOs all over, in the face of terror. It is a powerful talisman of the zeitgeist, or spirit of the age.

Quote of the Day (Ian Hamilton, on Gratitude for the Day)

“For one more day
Let’s listen to our shadows and be glad
That this much light has managed to get through.”—Ian Hamilton (1938-2001), “The Garden,” in Collected Poems, edited by Alan Jenkins