Nixon’s ‘no’ to nuking China
QUESTION Did Richard Nixon stop a war between Russia and China?
HE DID in the sense that he probably refused to sanction a Soviet attack on China.
The Sino-Soviet split refers to a gradual deterioration of relations between the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Tensions came to a head in March 1969, along the Ussuri River, the debated border between the USSR and northeast China.
The world had been amused by reports of Chinese border guards ‘mooning’ their Soviet counterparts, who would in turn ‘defend’ themselves by holding up portraits of Chairman Mao.
But it was no laughing matter when the border harassment escalated into a shooting that March, resulting in heavy casualties. A massive military build-up ensued in the region, with the communist superpowers on the brink of all-out war.
According to Nixon’s biographer John A. Farrell, the Soviets approached the US, asking: ‘If we take out the Chinese atomic bomb factories, will you support us in a war on China?’
Nixon said ‘No’. Instead, he saw an opportunity to befriend China and weaken the USSR, with Romania, Pakistan and India working as go-betweens for the US president. Despite repeated, humiliating rejections, Nixon finally coerced Mao into talks, resulting in the American leader’s 1972 trip to Beijing.
J. B. Brown, Hereford.
QUESTION Has a dog ever saved the life of a famous person, according to the history books?
IT IS said that Alexander the Great (356-323BC) was saved by his dog Peritas.
According to one account, Peritas was killed by a war elephant that he’d attacked as it bore down on his master. Another claims the dog saved him from Mallian attackers when isolated in battle in the Punjab, India. Peritas was a giant Pugnaces Britanniae, perhaps a Mastiff-type of dog or bulldog, known to the later Romans as a Molossian dog.
Alexander Pope (1688-1744) was a great poet and satirist who gave us phrases such as ‘damning with faint praise’ and ‘to err is human; to forgive, divine’. He was a dog lover, whose pets gave him a sense of protection as he had a habit of annoying people and was diminutive in stature, standing just 4ft 6in tall. In The Dunciad, Pope offended the entire literary community when he pilloried various ‘hacks’, ‘scribblers’ and ‘dunces’. On walks, he took to carrying loaded pistols. His favourite dog was a female Great Dane called Bounce.
This dog is said to have set upon an assassin who attacked Pope in his bed. Bounce died while being looked after by John Boyle, the 5th Earl of Orrery. Heartbroken, Pope himself died less than two months later, on May 30, 1744.
Mary Abberley, Burton-On-Trent, Staffordshire.
QUESTION Is there still a UK
law against ‘riotous assembly’? When was the Riot Act last read there? THE early 1700s was a time of unrest in Britain with several major riots across the country. Parliament responded with the Riot Act, which came into force on August 1, 1715.
The act was harsh; a magistrate or other official could order a crowd of 12 or more to disperse, and ‘if they did not do so within an hour’, then force could be used to scatter them.
After one hour, anyone remaining was guilty of a felony without the benefit of clergy, punishable by death.
The act had to be proclaimed in full and was notoriously read before the Peterloo Massacre in 1819. When crowds demonstrated, calling for parliamentary reform, the 15th Hussars charged. Up to 18 people were killed and more than 400 injured.
The last time the Riot Act was read was in Cheshire, England, on August 3, 1919, during a police strike, when large numbers of officers from around the UK joined the industrial action.
The Riot Act wasn’t officially repealed until 1973 but it lives on in popular idiom, meaning ‘to reprimand severely’. It is now replaced by Sections 12 and 14 of the 1986 Public Order Act.
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