Somebody Goofed

The Ungathering Storm

From "Great Contemporaries," by Winston Churchill, 1937:

"It is not possible to form a just judgment of a public figure who has attained the enormous dimensions of Adolf Hitler until his life work as a whole is before us.... History is replete with examples of men who have risen to power by employing stern, grim and even frightful methods, but who, nevertheless, when their life is revealed as a whole, have been regarded as great figures whose lives have enriched the story of mankind. So may it be with Hitler.

"... The story of that struggle [for the German chancellorship] cannot be read without admiration for the courage, the perseverance and the vital force which enabled him to challenge, defy, conciliate or overcome all the authorities or resistances which barred his path....

"... Those who have met Herr Hitler face to face in public business or on social terms have found a highly competent, cool, well-informed functionary with an agreeable manner, a disarming smile, and few have been unaffected by a subtle personal magnetism.... We may yet live to see Hitler a gentler figure in a happier age."

Destiny and Daniel Webster

From a speech in the Senate, March 23, 1848:

"I have never heard of anything, and I cannot conceive of anything, more ridiculous, more absurd and more affrontive to all sober judgment than the cry that we are [profiting] by the acquisition of New Mexico and California. I hold that they are not worth a dollar!"

Historical Glimpse of Possibly the first inmate to help run the asylum

From "Notes of Conversations with the Duke of Wellington: 1831--1851":

"The effect of the eye upon insane persons is very singular and very certain. I have tried it many times. I always look them full in the face, and they cannot stand it."

Reviewing the Reviewers

From a 1959 memo from William Randolph Hearst, Jr., to all book, drama and movie re-viewers:

"I don't believe our readers are interested in reading the personal likes and dislikes of our critics and I don't intend to waste our valuable space printing them."

What hath God wrought--that then went and got itself elected to Congress?

From "Public Men and Events," by Nathan Sargent, 1875:

"On the opening of the third session of the 27th Congress,' Mr. Morse [Samuel F. B. Morse], of telegraphic celebrity ... asked for an appropriation of $30,000 ... to make an experiment, by erecting a line of telegraph ... from Washington to Baltimore....

"The bill came up, and was considered.... [Congressman] Cave Johnson ... moved that one half the appropriation be expended in experiments in mesmerism, which was sustained by 20 votes. Another member moved that [the money be spent] in trying an experiment to construct a railroad to the moon. [Similar] propositions were made ... creating much merriment and pleasant badinage among the members.

"Mr. Pettit, of Indiana, opposed it and [said that he] 'looked upon all magnetic telegraphs as miserable [and] fit for nothing.' "

Victor Hugo's Marvelous Flying Millennium ...

From an 1864 letter to the French balloonist Nadar:

"[The invention of the airplane would mean] the immediate, absolute, instantaneous, universal and perpetual abolition of frontiers. Armies would vanish, and with them the whole business of war, exploitation and subjugation. It would be an immense peaceful revolution. It would mean the liberation of mankind."

... Is test-piloted by H. G. Wells, who can't seem to get it off the ground,

From "Anticipations," by H. G. Wells, 1902:

"I do not think it at all probable that aeronautics will ever come into play as a serious modification of transport and communication.... Man is not an albatross."

And by France's Marshal Foch, in a heavy fog

Foch, in 1910, after watching an air display:

"All very fine for sport, you know. But the airplane's no use to the army."

The Captain of the Titanic meets the Press

From The New York Times, April 16, 1912:

"Captain Smith [E. J. Smith of the Titanic] maintained that shipbuilding was such a perfect art nowadays that absolute disaster involving the passengers on a great modern liner was quite unthinkable....

" 'I will go a bit further,' he said. 'I will say that I cannot imagine any condition which could cause [this] ship to founder. I cannot conceive of any vital disaster happening to this vessel. Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that.' "

World War One and England's Missing Generation

From a 1915 memo from General Sir Douglas Haig, Commander in Chief, British Expeditionary Force, France, to the British War Council:

"The machine gun is a much overrated weapon."

The Russian Revolution--as viewed from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

From President Woodrow Wilson's message to a special session of Congress, April 2, 1917:

"Does not every American feel that assurance has been added to our hope for the future peace of the world by the wonderful and heartening things that have been happening within the last few weeks in Russia?"

It's a wise father ...

From The New York Times, 1926, quoting Thomas Edison:

" 'Americans require a restful quiet in the moving-picture theater, and for them talking ... on the screen destroys the illusion. Devices for projecting the film actor's speech can be perfected, but the idea is not practical.' "

... Unless, of course, Saturn is in its third phase and intersecting orion

From The New York Times, October 9, 1957:

"[Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson] discounted the military significance of the Soviet [Sputnik I] satellite. He said it could not be used to drop bombs 'while you are sleeping,' because the heat generated by re-entry into the earth's atmosphere would destroy any such weapon."

Forget Pearl Harbor

From Look magazine, November 18, 1941:

"The Japanese fleet will have to stay in home waters, to guard the Empire against naval raids. Our own fleet will cruise somewhere west of Hawaii, with scout planes far over the seas day and night to prevent surprise raids on the Pearl Harbor naval base."

The day they gave Germany's most troublesome politician enough rope to hang himself--and very nearly everybody else

From The New York Times, 1933:

Berlin, January 29: "While any cabinet headed by Herr Hitler suggests a highly precarious undertaking, the experiment to make him chancellor ... might be tried out to curb Nazi truculence."

Berlin, January 30: "Some liberals welcome the new cabinet. They reason that Herr Hitler has been removed from the street and saddled with the responsibilities of office in a setting which will severely circumscribe his liberty of action."

Warsaw, January 30: "Adolf Hitler's access to power is rather welcomed here as a sound development in German politics. Political circles here hold that undiluted German nationalism should take full responsibility for the Reich's decisions and that Germany's true face should be shown to the world. Europe will soon know the German danger, it is believed, and the sooner the better it will be for Poland."

The World and Walter Lippmann--1943 Division

From "U. S. Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic":

"The conditions which ... have made the integrity and security of China a vital interest of the United States will, as China becomes a great power, make the security of the United States a vital interest of China....

"It is as impossible for the Allied great powers [United States, Russia, China, etc.] to divide up the world and then rule it as it is for them to combine in order to dominate the world. The inexorable logic of their alliance demands that they recognize the liberties of the peoples outside the alliance."

A couple of progress reports from Henry Luce's Asia

From Time magazine, February 11,1957:

"President Diem, slowly and almost unnoticed ... has brought to South Vietnam a peace and stability few would have dared predict when his country was dismembered at Geneva three years ago. Last week a traveler could journey from one end of the country to the other, by day or night, with never a worry about Viet Minh bandits.... In Saigon, the exquisite bordellos ... were gone."

From "The Tough Miracle Man of Vietnam," Life magazine, May 13, 1957:

"Ngo Dinh Diem is respected in Vietnam today for the miracles he has wrought. Order has replaced chaos. Communism is being defeated.... Diem's [greatest] hurdle was the famous 'Geneva elections,' the plebiscite which, according to the 1954 Geneva Agreement, should have been held last July 20. It was supposed to let the people of North and South Vietnam decide whether a reunited country should be governed by anti-Communist Diem or Communist Ho Chi Minh.... [Diem] knew that it was not a question of who could win the projected plebiscite: It was a question of who the people would expect to win, and all too many of them would have hedged by voting on the assumption that the Viet Minh might win. Diem saved his people from this agonizing prospect simply by refusing to permit the plebiscite."

The ruin and reconstruction of Charles De Gaulle--as told by Tweedledum and Tweedledee

From Newsweek magazine, May 26, 1958:

"De Gaulle's ability to hold France together is doubted, except possibly for a short time on a wave of popular enthusiasm."

From Time magazine, May 19, 1958:

"The time has not yet come when most Frenchmen are prepared to throw France's democracy overboard and give a free hand to De Gaulle."

From Newsweek magazine, June 9, 1958 (eight days after De Gaulle had become Premier of France):

"The U. S. and Britain are convinced that, far from scrapping NATO, De Gaulle would like to see it strengthened into a solid front capable of exerting decisive influence in Europe's political and economic affairs.... His awareness of the need for American good will ... rule[s] out dangerous foreign-policy adventures."

From Time magazine, June 16, 1958: (concluded on page 186)Somebody Goofed(continued from page 128)

"In his first seven days in power, Charles de Gaulle ... displayed precisely the two qualities his critics insisted that he lacked--a talent for conciliation and a mastery of political maneuver worthy of a Talleyrand."

The view from City Hall, seven-months-before-watts division

From "Los Angeles Police Department 1964 Annual Report":

"[In 1964] the detractors of law enforcement stepped up their pervading ... attempt to create an atmosphere of apprehension, predicting that the streets of this city would also become an arena in which the civil rights movement would be settled.

"... The forecast was an erroneous one. These false prophets failed to consider that many conditions that contributed to chaos in other cities did not exist in Los Angeles. The Negro population in this city, the great majority of which are law abiding and respectful of authority, refused to give support to those who would foster a state of anarchy."

Another example of Orson Welles' inability to reach the masses

From "The Thirties: A Time to Remember," edited by Don Congdon, Simon & Schuster, 1962:

"... Howard Koch [the program's scriptwriter] telephoned. He was in deep distress. After three days of slaving on H. G. Wells' scientific fantasy [The War of the Worlds], he was ready to give up. Under no circumstances, he declared, could it be made interesting or in any way credible to modern American ears....

"[After a rehearsal] Orson ... was told ... that it was not one of our better shows.... It just didn't come off...."

All the News That's Fit to print and a little advice on the side

From The New York Times, Dec. 10, 1903:

One week before the Wright brothers' flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the Times had this to say about a rival experimenter: "We hope that Professor Langley will not put his substantial greatness as a scientist in further peril by continuing to waste his time, and the money involved, in further airship experiments. Life is short, and he is capable of services to humanity incomparably greater than can be expected to result from trying to fly.... For students and investigators of the Langley type there are more useful employments."

Ford has a better idea, Edison is not impressed

From "My Life and Work," by Henry Ford, Doubleday, 1922:

"The Edison Company offered me the general superintendency of the company, but only on condition that I would give up my gas engine and devote myself to something really useful."

The lone eagle lays an egg on Goddard's rocket experiments

From a letter Charles Lindbergh sent to Harry Guggenheim in 1936:

"I would much prefer to have Goddard interested in real scientific development than to have him primarily interested in more spectacular achievements which are of less real value."

... And we haven't even mentioned the serpents

From a committee report to Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand on Columbus' plans to sail west to find a shorter route to the Indies:

The committee, headed by Fray Hernando de Talavera, reported in 1490 that the contemplated voyage was impossible because:

"(1) A voyage to Asia would require three years. (2) The Western Ocean is infinite and perhaps unnavigable. (3) If he reached the Antipodes [the land on the other side of the earth from Europe], he could not get back. (4) There are no Antipodes because the greater part of the earth is covered with water, and because Saint Augustine says so.... (5) Of the five zones, only three are habitable. (6) So many centuries after the Creation, it is unlikely that anyone could find hitherto-unknown lands of any value."

The Navy is ready

From a Library of Congress Report on Erroneous Predictions:

"In 1939 U.S. Rear Admiral Clark Woodward declared, 'As far as sinking a ship with a bomb is concerned, you just can't do it.' "