Reading the Constitution: Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism

    This really good book feels like a strong response to Scalia and Garner's Reading the Law, which I started and now feel that I have to finish. As Breyer sees it, the traditional way that judges have interpreted the law over the course of U.S. history is by first looking at the text, but then by looking at the legislative purpose of the law, the context in which it was passed, social realities, and several other factors that could influence their ruling. His problem is that textualism seeks to eliminate many of these important factors in order to focus solely on the text of the law. Breyer focuses most on the legislature's purpose in passing a law without ignoring the text. What is interesting is that Breyer couches his argument in the basis that his way of interpreting the law is actually the traditional way, which is an interesting viewpoint. After all, was Marbury v. Madison a textualist, or originalist, decision?

    Breyer summarizes his issues with originalism by criticizing exclusive focus on the text for requiring judges to be historians, leaving no room for judges to consider the practical consequences of the rules they create, and for not taking into account the ways that a society's values evolve over time. I found him to be very persuasive. For example, one issue Breyer takes with textualists is that they seek to form hard rules with broad applications, contrary to the traditional common-law practice of setting up looser standards by which judges can rule narrowly on issues that come before them. Breyer's preferred analysis gives less power to the Supreme Court, and more power to the trial judge. Additionally, Breyer makes a good point when he writes that, "We do not automatically turn to dictionaries alone to resolve uncertainties about just what, for instance, the televangelist Kenneth Copeland meant when he uttered his sermon about how to behave during a global pandemic. When we learn from the minister that he is dispelling coronavirus by 'blowing the wind of God,' we do better to uncover his meaning by looking at his reasons for articulating his sermon in the way that he did than by consulting dictionaries for definitions of 'blow' and 'wind.'" However, I think originalists would consider the speaker's purpose in a situation like this as a means to understand how readers/listeners would understand it.

    All in all, this was a very interesting book. At times, it feels a little bitter since Breyer is relitigating old cases, many of which left him in dissent. It feels like a sort of ideological rearguard against an age of originalism that is upon us. But like many legal eras, Breyer believes that originalism will fade after a few decades. He quotes twice from Paul Freund, who said that the Supreme Court "should never be influenced by the weather of the day but inevitably ... will be influenced by the climate of the era." I think textualism/originalism can have a strong appeal in a time when people want certainty out of the Supreme Court, but it seems unlikely to provide any more certainty than past systems of interpretation. I come away more convinced that there are no "right" answers, but that some ways of interpreting the law are better for particular times. I feel like we need more interpretations that promote workability, since our government has become so dysfunctional. The Supreme Court doesn't do us any favors by ignoring the consequences of its rulings. But then again, it can't go beyond what the law says. It's a hard job.

Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-1945 by Barbara Tuchman

 Life has gotten in the way! No post for this one.

The Armed Forces Officer by Richard M. Swain and Albert C. Pierce

    I'll keep this one short, but this was a pretty dry but intellectually engaging book that analyzed some of the big picture of being an officer in the US military. Not gonna do a full post.

America's First Cuisines by Sophie D. Coe

    This was one of the best books I've read all year. It is a really interesting read covering the food of the Aztecs, the Maya, and the Inca. Coe uses written sources from around the times of the European encounter, archaeological evidence, and modern botany to discuss the various foods eaten in pre-Columbian America, as well as the time immediately after contact. Foods like chocolate, maize (corn), and potatoes feature heavily. I think that learning food is an amazing way to learn history. It's just an amazing, intimate lens into the real life of people, immediately relatable to any reader. It even works for things that aren't so relatable:

Making chicha cups out of the skulls of defeated rivals must have been a regular and expected practice if one is to take this story of Atahualpa during his captivity seriously.

He was laughing one day, and looking at him the Governor Pizarro asked him what he was laughing about, and he said, “I will tell you, sir, that my brother Huascar said he was going to drink out of my skull. They have brought me his skull to drink out of and I have done so, you will drink out of his skull and out of mine. I thought there were not enough people in the whole world to conquer me, but you with one hundred Spaniards have captured me, and put to death a large part of my people.” (Molina 1943: 46)

A self-righteous shudder by Europe-centered readers is out of place here.

Nicephorus [Emperor of Byzantium] set out for Bulgaria [in A.D. 811] with a formidable array of troops . . . As soon as he saw them Krum [the Bulgarian Khan] sued for peace, but Nicephorus ignored Krum’s offer, easily took possession of Pliska and the Bulgarian palace, and again refused to discuss terms. This time, however, the Bulgarians sealed off the passes leading out of the mountain defile in which the Byzantine army had carelessly encamped . . . They then swooped down upon the trapped Byzantines and butchered the entire force, including the Emperor and many of his chief officers. Krum cut off the Emperor’s head, and after exhibiting it on a stake for several days, had the skull covered with silver and used it as a drinking bowl. (Anastos 1966: 94)

No matter what type of container held the brew, drinking it appears to have been as tightly regulated as everything else was in the Inca empire.

That they be moderate and temperate in their eating, and more so in their drinking, and if somebody gets so drunk that they lose their judgment, if it is the first time they are punished as the judge shall decide, for the second offense exiled, and for the third deprived of their offices if they are magistrates, and sent to the mines. In the beginning this law was rigorously observed, but later it was so relaxed that the ministers of justice were those who drank the most, and got drunk, and there was no punishment. The amautas, who were their scholars and wisemen, interpreted the law as making a distinction between cenca, which is to become heated, and hatun machan, which is to drink until you have lost your judgment. The latter was what usually happened, but they ignored the follies of the madmen, and little or nothing happened to them. (Anon. 1968: 178)

The last word on Inca drinking should be given to Miguel de Estete, who was one of the 168 Spaniards who captured Atahualpa in 1532. His words, those of his companions Pedro Sancho and Francisco de Xerez, Pedro Pizarro and Cristóbal de Molina of Santiago (both of whom wrote many years later), letters written for the illiterate Francisco Pizarro, and a few letters from the religious on the expedition, Vincente de Valverde, are the only eyewitness reports we have.

Everybody placed according to their rank, from eight in the morning until nightfall, they were there without leaving the feast, there they ate and drank . . . because even though what they drank was of roots and maize and like beer, it was enough to make them drunk, because they were people of small capacity. There were so many people, and such good drinkers, both men and women, and they poured so much into their skins, because they are good at drinking rather than eating, that it is certain, without any doubt, that two broad channels, more than half a vara [vara = .84 m] wide, which went under the paving to the river, which must have been made for cleanliness and to drain the rain which fell in the plaza; or possibly for this same purpose, ran all day with urine, from those who urinated in it; in such abundance as if there were fountains playing there; certainly matching the quantity that was drunk. Considering the number of people drinking it was not to be marveled at, but to see it was a thing unique and amazing. (Estete 1924: 55)

I come away from this book more interested in social history than ever. Coe tells an amazing story and stories stewed together in a broth of culinary culture.  

The Staple Foods

    Domestication is the slow process that is the foundation of all the food discussed in this book. When Europeans arrived, they often called the plants and animals delicious wild foods. But almost nothing they ate, except for hunted game, was wild. It had all been domesticated over thousands of years. Domesticated plants and animals have more visible variety than wild versions, since humans breed them for different flavors, durability, time to grow, etc. However, the wild species can still have hidden genetic reserves that make those variations possible. One way to distinguish domesticated from wild species is to notice which portions are of greatest interest to domesticators--the edible portions--are most increased in size and quantity. 

    Maize was the most important domesticated crop of all. But the achievement of Native Americans was not just to domesticate maize, but to discover nixtimalization, the process of soaking ripe maize kernels in and cooking them with lime or wood ashes. This allows the pericarp (the transparent skin of the kernel) to slide off and makes the grain easier to grind. It also significantly enhances the protein value for humans. It is still unknown (at least as of 1994) when nixtimalization came about, but evidence of making nixtamal out of maize exists as far back as 1500 B.C. in Guatemala. 

    Among the tubers, manioc/cassava was another popular staple food, a ground-up tuber made into cakes for dipping in chile sauce, broth, or water. It was later brought to Africa and became very popular there. Potatoes were also popular tubers originating in Peru and Bolivia. The earliest domesticated potato, Solanum tuberosum, dates back to 8000 B.C. and potatoes were well established on the Peruvian highlands by 3800 B.C. and on the coast around 2000 B.C. They varied in taste, color, hardiness, use, and anything else imaginable.

    Staple foods were critical to pre-modern life in a way that is hard to appreciate now. Until the 19th century at the earliest, everywhere in the world relied on some staple, like wheat, maize, or rice, which was eaten every single day, if not at every meal. When archaeologists look at the food people ate and left in trash heaps, variety is the marker of wealth, and it is very rare. What is much more common is for people to mostly eat one thing, day in and day out, with other foods as adornments to the staple carbohydrate, of which there were only one or two. When that staple food didn't grow one year, famine was the result.

Customs

    According to Coe, we know more about the day-to-day culinary life of the Aztecs than we do about the Maya or the Inca (and maybe even the Romans) because of the intellectual curiosity of the Fransiscan friar Bernardino de Sahagun. Luckily, even though King Philip II of Spain ordered Sahagun's writings destroyed, for fear that they did too good a job memorializing pagan practices, they survive to reach us today. Another great historian of the place and time is Bernal Diaz del Castillo, who wrote the True History of New Spain. One fascinating passage describes a banquet at Motecuhzoma's table, which is actually just a daily meal while he was not in a period of fasting:

He sat on a low, richly worked soft seat, and the table was also low, and made in the same manner as the seat, and there they put the tablecloths of white fabric, and some rather large handkerchiefs of the same, and four very beautiful and clean women gave him water for his hands out of a kind of deep acquamanile, which they call jicales, and to catch the water they put down a kind of plate, and gave him the towels, and two other women brought him the tortillas; and when he began to eat they put in front of him a thing like a door of wood all painted up with gold so that he could not be seen eating; and the four women stood aside, and there came to his side four great lords and elders, who stood, and from time to time Motecuhzoma chatted with them and asked them questions, and as a great favor gave each of those old men a dish of what he had been eating; and they said that those old men were his near relations and councilors and judges, and the plates of food that Motecuhzoma gave them they ate standing, with much reverence, and without looking him in the face....

He sat on a low, richly worked soft seat, and the table was also low, and made in the same manner as the seat, and there they put the tablecloths of white fabric, and some rather large handkerchiefs of the same, and four very beautiful and clean women gave him water for his hands out of a kind of deep acquamanile, which they call jicales, and to catch the water they put down a kind of plate, and gave him the towels, and two other women brought him the tortillas; and when he began to eat they put in front of him a thing like a door of wood all painted up with gold so that he could not be seen eating; and the four women stood aside, and there came to his side four great lords and elders, who stood, and from time to time Motecuhzoma chatted with them and asked them questions, and as a great favor gave each of those old men a dish of what he had been eating; and they said that those old men were his near relations and councilors and judges, and the plates of food that Motecuhzoma gave them they ate standing, with much reverence, and without looking him in the face....

 

They also put on the table three highly painted and gilt pipes, which contained liquidamber [Liquidambar styraciflua?] mixed with some plants which are called tobacco [Nicotiana sp.], and when he had finished eating, after they had sung and danced for him, and cleared the table, he took the smoke of one of those pipes, just a little, and with this he fell asleep.

Sahagun also gives us examples of some of the rules for table manners at the Aztec court in Tenochtitlan:

You are not to eat excessively of the required food. And when you do something, when you perspire, when you work, it is necessary that you are to break your fast. Furthermore, the courtesy, the prudence [you should show] are in this way: when you are eating, you are not to be hasty, not to be impetuous; you are not to take excessively nor to break up your tortillas. You are not to put a large amount in your mouth; you are not to swallow it unchewed. You are not to gulp like a dog, when you are eating food. . . .

And when you are about to eat, you are to wash your hands, to wash your face, to wash your mouth. And if somewhere you are eating with others, do not quickly seat yourself at the eating place with others. Quickly you will seize the wash water, the washbowl; you will wash another’s hands. And when the eating is over, you are quickly to seize the washbowl, the wash water; you are to wash another’s mouth, another’s hands. And you are to pick up [fallen scraps], you are to sweep the place where there has been eating. And you, when you have eaten, once again you are to wash your hands, to wash your mouth, to clean your teeth.

The Aztecs, Generally

    The Aztecs domesticated five animals: the turkey, the Muscovy duck, the dog, the bee, and the cochineal insect. They ate the first three, used honey and other wax products from the bee, and made dye from the little insect (which was used as the dye that made the red coats of the Redcoats red). The Aztecs also ate of human flesh, but not as a daily meal. Sahagun tells us that after the ritual in which a captured victim of the Flower War had his still-beating heart ripped out, was thrown from the top of a pyramid, and chopped up by old men, the limbs were divided up for eating by the warriors who caught the captive. The recipe for tlacatlaolli, human stew, is to first cook the maize, then put a little bit of meat (the best was from the calf) on the maize, and then add salt. The portion of flesh per person was very small, and was something more like a communion than a meal.

    The Aztecs were huge lovers of chocolate, something modern people relate too. The Aztec empire received a yearly tribute of 980 loads of cacao, each of which contained 24,000 beans and weighed about fifty pounds. The cacao beans also served as money. Chocolate was not usually consumed in any solid form, but as a drink, mixed with chiles, water, and honey, among other things. But, also like us, they felt guilty about consuming so much chocolate. They came from northern deserts, not knowing about chocolate, and felt a sort of nostalgia for tougher times, when they didn't know the fattening joys of sweets. Indeed, a story was told that some Aztecs made a journey back to their homeland, where they found very old people who were immortal, and had known their recent ancestors who had left Aztlan, their homeland. These old people could change their age at will. But when one of the old men led some Aztec warriors up a hill to meet their goddess, the Aztec warriors sank into the sand and were scolded that they had eaten too much chocolate and become heavy, that it would be difficult to reach the place of their ancestors. But the guilt certainly didn't stop them from consuming more and more chocolate.

The Maya, Generally

    Unlike the Aztecs, the Mayans that the Europeans encountered were not united in a centralized empire. They had possessed a great empire centuries earlier, but by 1500, that was long gone. Instead, they were politically organized in city-states, which actually made them more difficult to conquer, since it wasn't as easy as just killing or kidnapping a leader. Indeed, the last independent chief of the Maya, Kanek' of Tayasal, remained independent until 1697.

    The Mayans were "expert orchardists," and had a large variety of fruit-bearing trees as well as cacao. Cacao was not really suited to Mayan climates, but the Mayans were able to get the right soil and moisture conditions by planting cacao trees in limestone sinkholes. Unfortunately, the Europeans destroyed basically all of these orchards. The Mayans were also excellent apiarists, and Europeans describe thousands of beehives being cultivated.

    Something interesting is that in Mayan language, there are several verbs used to mean "to eat." One is used only for questions, like, "what are you eating?" Another is used for things that are chewed and spit out, like sugar cane and maize stalks. There is another used for bread/staple carbohydrates, and another for consumption of meat, mushrooms, and chile. Then, there are two more categories: one that is mostly used for mushy things, although some mushy things also use the verb that is for discrete, firm objects, like young maize, or beans. Both the Mayans and the Aztecs enjoyed mushrooms, both as a daily food, but also for hallucinogenic properties added to sacred drinks.

The Inca

    The Inca made highly systematic conquests and centralized their empire more than the Aztecs. They demanded that those they conquered learn Quechua, accept Inca gods and laws in addition to their own, and send their local gods (idols) to Cuzco. The Inca eliminated pre-existing practices of eating dogs and people. The Inca also had two large domesticated land mammals: the llama and the alpaca, along with two wild large mammals: the vicuña and the guanaco. These are all camelids, and all delicious. The Inca managed the population of llamas, which was especially important when they became diseased. After the fall of the Incan Empire, the culling of llamas infected with caracha ended, and the infection spread unchecked, killing two-thirds of llamas in the 1540s. Incans also ate guinea pigs, known as cuy, which were good eating since they reproduced rapidly. The potato was also critical, however it appears that it was not for the Inca, but for other people who were conquered by the Inca. The Inca forced them off of their potato-growing heights to grow maize in the valleys, which was used to make chicha, the popular Incan beer.

Miscellaneous Facts:

• Avocado comes from the Nahuatl word ahuacatl, meaning testicle.
• Tomatoes were sort of a "sleeper" food. They were unpopular because they are related to poisonous plants and their plants give off a bad odor (but not the fruit). It took centuries for the tomato to reach its modern popularity. Tomato comes from the Nahuatl word tomatl, which makes it difficult to determine what ancient people were actually eating, since tomatl technically just means "round and plump" and was used for many different fruits.
• The troops of Charles V sacked three major capitals: Tenochtitlan in 1521, Rome in 1527, and Cuzco in 1534.
• Apparently people think that peanuts originate in West Africa, but Coe corrects this misperception by pointing out that no wild species of peanuts grow outside South America, and the 15 wild species of peanut all grow in and around lowland Bolivia.
• The first printed recipe for spaghetti with tomato sauce was published in a Neapolitan cookbook in 1837.
• The pineapple originates in Brazil and Paraguay, and was spread over South America by Tupi-Guarani tribes.
• When a vanilla bean is picked, it does not smell like vanilla. That only comes after a process of curing, and different curing processes can develop different tastes.
• Traditional fasting all the way from Mexico down to Peru consisted of eating only chile and salt, with many variations. But the base level fast was to eat just chile and salt.
• The Aztecs were originally a nomadic or semi-nomadic tribe from the deserts of northern Mexico who wandered to the valley of Mexico at some time in the fourteenth century.
• Turkeys originate near Rio Balsas in Mexico. Coe calls turkeys "a paradoxical creature, being at the same time wild and tame, wary and stupid." lol
• Passionfruit is named like that because the complex flowers appeared to early explorers to contain the symbols of the passion of Christ, like the crown of thorns, the five wounds, the three nails, etc.

The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt

    While I thought The Swerve was going to be all about Poggio Bracciolini, who discovered Lucretius' De Rerum Natura, it is actually much more about De Rerum Natura. Lucretius' book, published in the first century BC, is a scientific/philosophical text derived from the Epicurean field of philosophy. It asserts that everything is made of particles "atoms" from Greek, and that these elementary particles are eternal, infinite in number, but limited in shape and size. These particles move about in an infinite void, in a universe with no creator. But critically, their movements are not predetermined, but swerve. This swerve, or clinamen (or declinatio or inclinatio), is responsible for all life and creation, as the random, unpredictable movements of the atoms creates the capacity for all objects and living things. It is the source of free will as nature experiments with movements, sort of foreshadowing the theory of evolution. Lucretius asserted that the universe was not created for humans and that there was no soul outside of the body that could outlive the body, and no afterlife. He also included some Hobbesian ideas about human origins. Religions, for Lucretius, were cruel delusions, and superstitions at best. Rather than prayer, the better use of a person's time would be to seek pleasure and avoid delusion, as well as to try to learn the truth of the universe.

    What is ironic is that despite these ideas being so heretical to the Catholic Church, they were brought back into the world by Poggio, an apostolic secretary who worked personally for several Popes, discovering a ninth century copy of Lucretius in a monastery, likely in Fulda, Germany. The book gives you a real appreciation for how important book copying was and how difficult it was. Monks had to spend hours every day concentrating on writing on animal skin, vellum, and mistakes were costly. They even had a term, acediosus, which was a sort of illness in monastic communities in which a monk would find it impossible or difficult to read, and would try to distract himself with gossip, feeling that life was better somewhere else. Many students have dealt with this since. They enforced absolute silence, and when scribes wanted to ask for something they needed to use gestures. The scribes used twenty-six tiny pinholes on the ends of each sheet to fix the vellum steady for writing, and used score marks to form straight lines. Apparently Christian monks still copied classical works for centuries, but that copying declined between the sixth and eighth centuries, starting as an active campaign to attack pagan ideas, and then transforming into a true forgetting of those works.

    Reading this book was also significant for me since I think of it primarily as a book given to me by my grandmother many years ago, before she passed away in 2017. I read it way back when, but it was nice to re-read the book, and it brought back memories of her. She was intensely interested in the classics and read in Latin and Greek, and I think I got a lot of my love of history from her. I miss her.

Miscellaneous Facts:

• Out of Aeschylus' 80 or 90 plays and Sophocles' 100, only seven of each have survived. Of those of Euripides and Aristophanes, the numbers are 18 out of 92 and 11 out of 43, respectively.
• "At the end of the fifth century CE, an ambitious literary editor known as Stobaeus compiled an anthology of prose and poetry by the ancient world's best authors: out of 1,430 quotations, 1,115 are from works that are now lost."

The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman

     The Guns of August was a fantastic book. Tuchman does an amazing job of laying out the dramatic first month of World War One, starting with the invasion of Belgium and the Battle of the Frontiers and ending with the First Battle of the Marne, leaving the Race to the Sea and the rest of the war in epilogue, as a sort of anticlimax. This is a great book because it seamlessly travels from the generals in their headquarters to the politicians and diplomats in the European capitals, and then to the troops on the ground. There are diversions to the Eastern Front, but this book is mainly about the Western Front. Tuchman is a real master of her craft. My only complaint is that reading the details about all the generals can get a little tedious, but I think that is just because I'm not as interested. That's what Tuchman wanted to write about, and she did so very successfully.

    Early in the book, Tuchman explains in detail the significance of Belgium, which she writes was a creation of England as a neutral and independent country. It was on those plains that became Belgium that Wellington defeated Napoleon, and then England was determined, as the predominant power in the world, to create a neutral zone there that would prevent its use as a launching point for cross-channel invasions. But the original plan was to attach Belgium to the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The Catholic Belgians resisted this in a revolt in 1830, succeeding in becoming independent, recognized as such in Europe in 1839.

    The Germans and the French had sharply contrasting plans, but with one similar goal. Each country wanted to swing hard with their right hook, concentrating forces on a flank. For the French, this was to cross the Rhine at Mainz, northwest of Nancy, on the actual Franco-German border. This was known as Plan 17. The Germans, through the Schlieffen Plan, were determined to violate Belgium's neutrality and take the French at an area on the French left that would be less defended, although a longer route for the Germans. The French plan was very flexible, but maybe not in a good way. It contained no overall objective and no explicit timetables. Its intention was to attack, remain on the attack, and get back on the attack if temporarily pushed back. The German plan was much more rigid. It required hitting France hard and fast to eliminate France as a threat on their Western Front before Russia could mobilize in the east.

    The war was triggered by the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, on June 28, 1914. The Serbian nationalists who killed him wanted Austria out of Serbia. The result was an Austrian occupation of Serbia, and a German pledge on July 5 to give Austria its "faithful support." Austria delivered an ultimatum to Serbia on July 23, and then rejected the Serbian reply on July 26 (even though Serbia met almost all Austrian demands) and declared war on Serbia on July 28. On July 29, Austria began bombarding Belgrade, and the Russians began mobilizing on their Austrian border to defend Serbia on July 30. On July 31, Germany issued an ultimatum to Russia to demobilize within twelve hours. At the same time, Germany made the same ultimatum to France, also demanding surrender of French forts at Toul and Verdun, a ridiculous proposition. Many have criticized this since Germany should have just induced France to remain neutral, but it seems clear that Germany had no trust in France to do that, as France would have much to gain by attacking Germany while its forces were in the east. When Germany went to war with France, Britain joined France as an ally, seeing Germany as the bigger threat. Most thought the war would be quick and decisive, with few, like Lord Kitchener, predicting a multi-year war ("We must be prepared to put armies of millions in the field and maintain them for several years.").

    Admiral Wilhelm Souchon was commanding the German fleet in the Mediterranean at 6pm on August 3 when he learned war was declared. He commanded the Goeben and the Breslau and immediately set sail for the Western Mediterranean to try to escape from the Adriatic Sea. Initially, he sought to intercept three French ships on their way south to Algeria, and continued despite receiving an order from Admiral Tirpitz to turn around and make for Constantinople. He steamed ahead at full speed until he saw the Algerian coast, where he ran up a Russian flag and opened fire. According the Kriegsbrauch, the manual issued by German General Staff, "The putting on of enemy uniforms and the use of enemy or neutral flags or insignia with the aim of deception are declared permissible," even though this was directly contrary to the German-signed Hague convention. After that shelling of at least one French ship and the city of Philippeville, Souchon turned back to Messina in Sicily to coal there from German steamers before setting coarse for Constantinople 1,200 miles away. Below is the route taken.

By MartinD - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3683178

On the morning of August 4, the British ships Indomitable and Indefatigable encountered the Goeben and Breslau heading east back to Messina. But because of the timing of the ultimatums going back and forth, Britain and Germany weren't yet at war. If the British ultimatum was sent to Germany one night before, they would have been at war. But instead, the ships passed within 8,000 yards of each other in silence. See below.

By Bundesarchiv, Bild 134-C2320 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5337867

    Souchon made it to Messina where two messages reached him. One told him to actually not go to Constantinople, due to divided counsel in the Ottoman capital. Passage of the German ships would violate Turkish neutrality. The second informed Souchon that the Austrians could give him no naval help in the Mediterranean, and that Souchon was essentially on his own. Knowing he didn't have the speed to make a run through Gibraltar, and "rebell[ing] against holing himself up in Pola, dependent on the Austrians," Souchon decided to make for Constantinople anyway, with a political instead of a military goal: to bring the Ottomans into the war. The Germans were surrounded on either side of the Strait of Messina, with the stronger British ships protecting the western side, anticipating a breakout in that direction. But after recoaling, the Germans moved east, chased by a smaller ship, the Gloucester, that wouldn't get in range because the Germans would blow it out of the water. Captain Kelly telegraphed Admiral Milne and Troubridge, and the British ships gave chase. Some shots were exchanged, with no damage taken on either side, and the British ships withdrew, expecting the Germans to turn West, which they never did. At that time, a small Italian ship happened to pass by, which happened to have a two-year-old Barbara Tuchman on it, and she and her family witnessed the action.

    Upon reaching Constantinople, the plan transformed into "selling" the ships to the Ottomans, transforming them into the Jawus and the Midilli, flying the Turkish flag. By the end of October, Souchon, still commanding the now-Ottoman ships, entered the Black Sea and shelled Odessa, Sevastopol, and Feodosia, killing civilians and sinking a Russian gunboat, bringing Russia into the war on November 4.

    On land, Germany entered Belgium first, and on August 4, with German columns marching on Liege, the King of Belgium pleaded for help from France, Britain, or anyone. No one was ready to oppose the Germans in Belgium, as the British wanted to be the last ones in (so they wouldn't lose their entire army immediately), and the French were planning to attack in a totally different direction. The Germans were shocked (although they shouldn't have been) that the British chose to side with the French. The Germans conquered the country by August 15. Although the world celebrated Belgium's heroism at delaying the invader, the Germans had already planned some time to be delayed in Belgium, so the delay was only two days, not two weeks as many thought. In Belgium, the Germans had taken severe measures against civilians, taking leaders hostage (and sometimes killing them), burning towns and cities (including a major library), and killing civilians to punish cities for resisting. The German thinker Clausewitz had prescribed terror as the proper method to shorten war, since it would force the population to submit. But the opposite effect occurred, building resentment and resistance against the German occupation.

    Critically, Germany's commander, Moltke, changed the inflexible Schlieffen plan to make it something it was not. The plan called for total commitment on the right side to sweep through Belgium and hit France. But Moltke was tempted by successes on Germany's left, on the actual French border. Initially, the plan was to make a strategic retreat, to capture the French in a sack in the east. But in the face of real war, the Germans advanced in the east too. It turns out that the French were unprepared on all fronts, even the east, where they planned their attack. It couldn't have helped that they wore red trousers, and it couldn't have helped that French Field Regulations calculated that in 20 seconds the infantry could cover 50 meters before the enemy could fire, but that with machine guns it only took the Germans 8 seconds. By August 23, it was clear that the French had broken against the smaller portion of the German forces in the east and the center, not to mention the massive force coming from the north/west. But the one thing that could be said of the French is that they were learning and started a strategic retreat to catch the Germans in a "sack" of their own. This fooled the Germans into a sense of complacency, although some were attuned enough to ask that, if the French were routed, why have we taken no prisoners? But the German advances already decided that the Germans could not be defeated easily. By taking Belgium and northern France, the Germans were in control of the industrial power of both countries, massive coal fields, iron mines, rivers, railroads, and agriculture. This would feed the German war machine for the rest of the war. Luckily for the French, the Germans were forced to send two corps east. The Russians had mobilized far faster than expected in support of their French allies. But they were also defeated far faster than expected at the Battle of Tannenberg. But in this defeat, the Russians bought the French valuable time.

    In those early days of the war, German war aims included control of the European continent, which would require abolition of neutral states at Germany's borders, the end of England's hegemony in world affairs, and the breaking up of Russia. The nations Germany defeated would have to pay massive reparations for direct war costs, veterans funds, public housing, gifts for generals and statesmen, and all of Germany's national debt.  These aims ironically foreshadowed the reparations that would go in the other direction at the end of the war.

    Meanwhile in the North Sea and Baltic, Germany kept its fleet in a defensive posture. The fleet, which had so threatened Britain enough to create permanent enmity between the two countries and drive Britain into France's arms, was now useless in an actual fight. Instead, the Kaiser wanted to keep the fleet for bargaining purposes after the war, plus, it was still weaker than the British fleet it would need to fight to break out of the North Sea. Britain was therefore able to blockade Germany throughout the war, which helped bring America in on the Allies' side, as US trade with the Central Powers diminished from $169 million in 1914 to $1 million in 1916, while trade with the Allies in the same period rose from $824 million to $3 billion. The German fleet was to remain a "fleet-in-being," as the Germans hoped for an early victory on land that never came.

    In the final days of August, Joffre, who had mismanaged the first weeks of the war, became focused on his counter-attack. Tuchman praises him in this period and writes that

What went on behind that opaque exterior he never showed. If he owed his composure to a failure of imagination, that was fortunate for France. Ordinary men, Clausewitz wrote, become depressed by a sense of danger and responsibility; if these conditions are to "lend wings to strengthen the judgment, there must be present unusual greatness of soul." If danger did not strengthen Joffre's judgment in any way, it did call forth a certain strength of character. When ruin was all around him, he maintained an even tenor, a solid control, what Foch, who saw him on August 29, called a "wonderful calm" which held the French Army together in an hour when it most needed the cement of confidence.

On the eve of battle, he heard the news that the Russians had been crushed at Tannenberg, but with the consolation that the two German corps had been diverted to the east (and had been diverted unnecessarily, as they arrived after the battle). And the French, with Paris blacked out and the government fleeing to Bordeaux, caught a lucky break. Instead of going to Paris, the Germans swung east of the city, presenting their flank to the French army garrisoned in the city. The Germans were flanked at the First Battle of the Marne just outside Paris, and were forced to retreat, both sides racing to the sea to try to (unsuccessfully) outflank the other. The Germans had been exhausted from forced marches on the way to Paris, and many were captured sleeping or unable to take another step in the early September heat. The German general Alexander von Kluck gave the reason for the German failure at the Marne:

The reason that transcends all others was the extraordinary and peculiar aptitude of the French soldier to recover quickly. That men will let themselves be killed where they stand, that is a well-known thing and counted on in every plan of battle. But that men who have retreated for ten days, sleeping on the ground and half dead with fatigue, should be able to take up their rifles and attack when the bugle sounds, is a thing upon which we never counted. It was a possibility not studied in our war academy.

Had the Germans not withdrawn two corps to face the Russians, there might not have been a hole in the line to Kluck's left, and there might have been no space to flank on his right.

    All in all, this was a great book and totally a classic of its genre. Very heavy on politicking among the generals, but that's the point.

Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=188665

Miscellaneous Facts:

• A good quote from Tuchman: "nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great general."
• There was a whole issue years before the war in France when it was proposed that France get rid of the red trousers in its uniform, because they were so visible. But conservatives protested it, and succeeded in keeping the "iconic" red trousers, which caused more casualties in the early days of WWI, when it became obvious that a change was needed.
• The French Commander-In-Chief Joffre was driven around in a car by Georges Bouillot, the three time winner of the Grand Prix.
• The Russian state, worried about drunkenness, banned the sale of vodka during the war, which had the negative effect of diminishing state finances, since the Russian government had a monopoly over vodka sales, which made up a third of government income.

The Necessity of Exile: Essays from a Distance by Shaul Magid

     This is an interesting book that deals with Zionism, post-Zionism, counter-Zionism, exile, diaspora, postmodernism, and everything in between. At some points it was very esoteric and sort of beyond my comprehension, but it was still thought provoking when I was able to understand it. It reads like a literature review, since Magid basically structures each chapter as a response to other authors or an analysis/synthesis of other thinkers. 

    Magid identifies a crisis in liberal Zionism in that the desire for Jews to own or control the land of Israel conflicts with the rights of Palestinians to live there, as well as with the desire for a plural democracy. Magid essentially says that Israel should dispose with Zionism and accept victory in the Jews having arrived, and now implement a true democracy, the only legitimate way forward. But I remain unconvinced after reading the book that this idea is any better than Israelis throwing themselves at the mercy of more numerous Palestinians/Arabs who would outvote Jews in elections. And since the two communities have no trust between each other, this doesn't seem like a very functional state.