Leaders on the frontline
QUESTION Like Boris Johnson in Ukraine, have other prime ministers, presidents or royalty visited war zones?
MeMbers of the royal Family have famously been deployed in war zones. As heir apparent, edward VIII was prevented from fighting in World War I by the Government. Instead, he made regular trips to the trenches to boost morale.
Following a visit, he described the battle of the somme as ‘the nearest approach to hell imaginable’.
He spoke of how ‘terribly depressed’ he was at not being allowed to fight and was embarrassed to be awarded the Military Cross in 1916. ‘I can’t say I feel I have earned the MC at all, but that’s nothing to do with me!’ he wrote.
His brother, the future George VI and father of elizabeth II, saw active combat duty in World War I.
As Prince of York, he was on board HMs Collingwood during the battle of Jutland in 1916. He had a terrifying vantage point from which to observe the battle.
‘I was sitting on the top of a turret and had a very good view of the proceedings,’ he later wrote.
‘I was up there during a lull, when a German ship started firing at us, and one salvo straddled us. We at once returned the fire. I was distinctly startled and jumped down the hole in the top of the turret like a shot rabbit! I didn’t try the experience again.’
Prince Andrew saw active service during the Falklands War, deployed on board HMs Invincible. He famously described the experience as ‘99 per cent boredom and 1 per cent terror’.
Prince Harry served in the Army for ten years, rising to the rank of captain and undertaking two tours of Afghanistan, in 2008 and 2012, as a helicopter co-pilot and gunner.
J. B. Nuthall, Saffron Walden, Essex.
In DeCeMber 2009, Gordon brown bedded down with forces in Afghanistan, becoming the first prime minister since Winston Churchill during World War II to spend the night in a war zone.
His visit included an overnight stay at Kandahar airfield, the coalition headquarters, in a pre-fabricated, corrugated shed surrounded by concrete blast walls.
U.s. presidents have a long history of visiting troops in war zones. In 1862,
President Lincoln went to Antietam battlefield at sharpsburg, Maryland, which a few weeks earlier had been the scene of the bloodiest single day of fighting in the Civil War.
There is a famous photograph of him sitting with General McClellan, commander of the Army of the Potomac.
In early December 1952, Presidentelect Ike eisenhower made a surprise three-day visit to south Korea during the Korean War.
Lyndon b. Johnson made two visits to Vietnam, in 1966 and 1967.
George W. bush made four trips to Iraq and two to Afghanistan, barack Obama visited Iraq in 2009 and 2014, and Donald Trump visited Iraq in 2018.
Dan Kerr, Corby, Northants.
QUESTION Did China ban Alice In Wonderland?
THe Lewis Carroll novel was banned in Hunan Province, but was generally well received in China.
General Ho Chien was the antiCommunist Chinese nationalist general who governed Hunan from 1929 to 1937. In 1931, he banned anthropomorphic depictions of animals in books such as Alice In Wonderland and Little red riding Hood, stating such portrayals were ‘disastrous’ for children and an ‘insult’ to humans.
elsewhere in China, critics praised Alice In Wonderland for offering satirical and political insights into Chinese life. The book had been translated into Chinese vernacular by Zhao Yuanren in 1922.
In 1928, shen Congwen created the spin-off Alice’s Adventures In China.
Alice and the White rabbit travel around the country exposing old-fashioned values and superstitions.
In one chapter, Alice meets a pair of talking waterwheels. The new waterwheel is young, full of energy and curious about world. The old waterwheel is miserable and pessimistic.
Chen bochui, a pioneer of Communist children’s literature in China, wrote Ms Alice in 1931, in which the heroine was converted from an ‘everyday girl’ into a ‘fearless little soldier’, a member of the working class resisting exploitation.
Si Bowdler, Birmingham.
QUESTION What is the most misspelled word in the English language?
THe question presumes there is a permanent spelling, but there is no such thing. Misuse or varied use can become adopted as the standard. One prominent sheep can lead many others, and eventually a whole herd.
My 1970s OeD states ‘miss-spelled’, but other prominent dictionaries had already differed, preferring misspelled, which has since been adopted.
by 1947, the OeD had taught me the following: renegue (now renege), straightway (now straight away) and connexion (rather that connection). A century earlier, ‘show’ was spelt ‘shew’.
The word I find commonly missspelled is ‘benefited’. benefitted is the british spelling.
Language is the tool of communication; its accuracy and elegance are secondary to this purpose.
Peter Lack, London N10.
OxFOrD english Corpus — an electronic collection of more than two billion english words, the raw material used by the Oxford english Dictionary — has identified the 100 most misspelled words in the english language.
A poll taken from these identified ‘definately’ as definitely the most commonly misspelt word in the english language.
The rest of the top ten are ‘publically’ instead of publicly, ‘goverment’ for government, ‘seperate’ for separate, ‘occured’ for occurred, ‘untill’ for until, ‘recieve’ for receive, ‘wich’ for which and ‘accomodate’ for accommodate.
Maxine Bonner, Southsea, Hants.
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