User:Inge Hoonte/the Shock of the Old

• Regarding WWII, H.G. Wells wrote how in warfare, the Zeppelin and bombing aeroplane carried war straight over the civilians on the front line. War was no longer about populations, a group of people, fighting one-on-one against each other. There were now ways to bypass the middle man, who used to be the main player in this game.

• George Orwell noted on H.G. Wells: "On the one side science, order, progress, internationalism, aeroplanes, steel, concrete, hygiene; on the other side war, nationalism, religion, monarchy, peasants, Greek professors, poets, horses."

• Basil Liddell Hart, military intellectual, 1932: "the progress of weapons has outstripped the progress of the mind"

• Is the romanticism, or the reluctance to embrace new technologies in warfare, merely human, not necessarily emblematic of soldiers or the military in general? Is it the military that's reluctant to evolve, or politics and its governing country? Also, in order to use new technology, you need to educate the people using it. It might just be cheaper to keep with the old? Or lazy? Does this have more to do with the military being old fashioned, or fighting with bare knuckles being considered more macho? Fighting as pure, down to earth, eye to eye as possible has since long been a favorite.

   submarines are ungentlemanly,
   cold steel and horses preferred over machine guns.
   sailors look down on aviation,
   down, from below the ocean's surface,
   and cling tenaciously to the sails of their ships.
 
   ships, ships, ships, and battleships,
   and battleships and rifles, and tanks and guns,
   and tanks and rifles, and rockets and ships.
   those are missiles,
   that is warfare.