WWI

Past pupils from the Jesuit-run Clongowes Wood College in Co Kildare, Ireland, paid an extraordinary contribution to World War One, with over 600 Old Clongownians serving with various armies in the war. Some 95  OCs died in the war, among their number  Irish nationalist politicians Willie Redmond and Tom Kettle. In September, 2014, a group from the school community visited Flanders and the Somme to remember their contribution.  This is my account of the trip.

Документы (отчеты, официальные и рабочие записки) Бюро по прикладной ботанике Ученого комитета Главного управления землеустройства и земледелия (Министерства земледелия) за годы Первой мировой войны. В том числе приводится черновик отчета Бюро за период с 27 октября 1914 до 1 июля 1917 г., до последнего времени считавшегося утерянным. Материалы, характеризующие деятельность Бюро и взгляды на необходимые преобразования в организации проводимых на средства казны агроботанических исследований, принадлежат перу заведующего Бюро Р.Э. Регеля — одной из важнейших фигур, определявших государственную политику в этой области в 1910-е гг. Документы отражают структуру Бюро (предшественника Института прикладной ботаники и новых культур, в 1930 г. реорганизованного во Всесоюзный институт растениеводства), организацию в нем исследований и сбора образцов семян, заложивших основу богатейшей коллекции, некоторые моменты бытовой жизни и попытки эвакуации Бюро и его кол- лекций из прифронтового Петрограда в 1917 г. Несмотря на то что аналитическая работа еще только предстоит, подборка представляет несомненный интерес для историков науки и сельского хозяйства, историков Первой мировой войны, а также для биологического и аграрного сообщества.

“Life has got out of its rails, everybody has forgotten his insignificant business, everything became confused and was seized by just one goal, by one idea, the idea of war”, so Ivan Kliun described his first impressions as the 1914 war broke out. Still, Russian avant-garde artists and poets treated the new subject not only according to their personal aesthetical attitude (which would not be surprising), but, what is more significant, saw in the Great War a confirmation of their own creative strategies. On the one hand, Futurists claimed that their assault on philistine decency anticipated the military conflict, undermining the predominant conventions of beauty and measure (“Even before the war Futurists lived out of war and at war” the manifesto of the last Futurist exhibition “0.10” affirmed). On the other hand, pacifist writers such as the Symbolist poet Maximilian Voloshin perceived the outbreak of World War I as a tragic fulfillment of their apocaliptycal fears. Drawing on a number of examples, I will argue that the literary response to the Great War in Russian avant-garde circles was largely affected by the crisis that in 1914 both Futurists and Symbolists were confronted with; consequently, the war period, rather than being an opportunity for further evolution, represented a short phase of self-reassessment before the radical changes brought by the October Revolution.

La visita ai monumenti/sacrari del cimitero della Certosa di Bologna in apparenza è cosa da poco, vista l'esiguità numerica degli stessi: si tratta infatti di solo tre complessi monumentali. Il sacrario dei caduti della Prima guerra mondiale, quello dei Martiri fascisti e quello dei Partigiani.
Ma in realtà non è così, perché nella loro apparente semplicità architettonica nascondono una serie molto complessa di temi che coinvolgono in modo dettagliato molteplici aspetti della storia del Novecento.
La loro elaborazione è frutto di vaste riflessioni che oggi ad una prima superficiale lettura, visita, ci sfuggono, sommerse da cambiamenti che non è esagerato definire epocali.
Vedremo pertanto in queste note alcune linee guida per meglio comprendere i tre sacrari e verificare come si legano alla nostra storia contemporanea.
Note, queste, che sono ancora provvisorie, riflessioni di lavoro, per un lavoro in progress, in gran parte da compiere.

In this episode I trace the history of the Inter-Allied games, an international athletic competition that took place in France from June 22 – July 6, 1919. I focus on the participation of the U.S. team in the event’s soccer tournament and examine some of the effects the games had on the growth of the sport in the United States during the 1920s. Written and Audio Sources available at:  http://digital.history.umass.edu/soccer/?p=1512