Country Cause Research Articles

Church and the War. The Vision of the Orthodox Monk Nicola Velimirović about World War I

Using documents, books and articles written by Nicola Velimirović during World War I, this article investigates his attitude towards this conflagration and shows how his Christian views influence his outlook on this topic. Shared during his visits to the USA and England and via lectures given in venues like Westminster Abbey or Oxford University, his ideas make him a militant for peace and, at the same time, a man who defends his country's cause in front of the Austro-Hungarian abuses. Investigating his writings from this point of view is important because he manages to show a different face of the future Serbian bishop and brings to the fore his concerns regarding his contemporary society.

HARRIET MARTINEAU'S MATERIAL REBIRTH

In 1840, thePhrenological Journalpublished an anonymous personal testimony of phrenological salvation titled “Remarkable Case of Change of Character and Pursuits.” The article appears in the “Cases and Facts” section of the periodical, commonly reserved for correspondents who provided personal accounts of the truth of phrenology. The correspondent in this “Case” makes use of the conventional structure of the conversion narrative: youthful deviance, a moment of illumination, and rebirth into a new life of virtue, peace, and joy. Beginning with a description of his former life, he explains that being “Born in the lap of luxury – bred in the tainted atmosphere of opinion” led to the “best years of [his] existence [being] passed in idle, if not in sinful pursuits.” After becoming a military officer, his dissolute behavior increases until he finally decides to correct his character, and “the great instrument employed was phrenology” (342). After adopting a disciplined regimen of moral and intellectual mental exercises, he triumphantly emerges as a man who better knows himself and his capabilities. With his “new” character comes a new life more suited to his cultivated faculties: realizing that a soldier's advancement depends on the “number of victims” sacrificed for the country's cause, he “selected the more humble profession of the Civil Engineer, for which [he] believed, phrenologically, nature had made a fair provision.” He concludes by noting that his life has since been prosperous, and that he hopes now to “aid the cause of that science” through the phrenological education of his own children and his public confession in the journal (343).

Literature as interaction: Readers and “non-readers” in first world war propagandist poetry

First World War propagandist poetry serves as a useful example of interaction between writer and reader and between text and context. Two kinds of propagandist poetry were current in the war, the one attempting to generate support for the country's cause, the other inviting condemnation of the fighting. Patriotic poetry, the intensely homogeneous work of a very large number of writers, was published widely and in great quantities. The populist nature of its composition and reception is echoed in many textual devices and in the almost invariable “we” persona. Protest poetry, attacking the perpetrators of the “lies” which promote war, appeared mostly in small-circulation newspapers and magazines, and textual features support this empirical evidence that it was intended for a small and exclusive group. These two kinds of propagandist poetry have in common a spokesman persona (though protest poets usually speak as “I” rather than “we”), a rhetorical style, and a strong sense of animosity towards the enemy, the excluded “non-reader”.

Das Grdener-, Fassa- und Enneberggebiet in den Södtiroler Dolomiten: Geologische Beschreibung mit besonderer Beröcksichtigung der œberschiebungserscheinungen

THE work under review is one exceptional for its comprehensiveness, and one that marks the conclusion of an enormous amount of labour, both physical and mental, on the part of the author, Dr. Maria Ogilvie Gordon. Begun in youth, under the aegis of two great students, Ferdinand von Richthofen and August Rothpletz, both long since dead, it was completed after she had borne with fortitude the bitter blow that fate had dealt her as a wife, and after she had devoted her energies to her country's cause during the War. By reason of the length of the period over which the work was spread, and the magnitude of the events that encompassed us all during the years of interruption, her earliest work must appear now as objective to her as to the reviewer. It must almost seem not to be her own work, but that of some stranger of a past generation. Yet underlying all her work, from those early days of 1893 up to the present time, one motive may be traced—the endeavour to unravel the tectonic structure of the Dolomites, enormously complicated in reality, albeit described as simple by some; and, on the basis of this work, to solve certain other problems, one of the most important of which is the question, first raised by von Richthofen, and since repeatedly denied or affirmed, as to the coral-reef origin of the gigantic masses of limestone and dolomite. It must, moreover, be mentioned with approbation that the author, in spite of the keenness and originality of her own perception, has adhered to the principle laid down by von Richthofen so to present her observations that they remain available for other interpretations. This remark is especially applicable to the work now under review. Das Grdener-, Fassa- und Enneberggebiet in den Sodtiroler Dolomiten: Geologische Beschreibung mit besonderer Berocksichtigung der œberschiebungserscheinungen. Von Dr. Maria M. Ogilvie Gordon. 1 und 2 Teil: Stratigraphie-Tektonik. (Abhandlungen der Geologischen Bundesanstalt, Band 24, Heft 1.) Pp. xxiii + 376 + 26 Tafeln. 90s. 3 Teil: Paloontologie. Mit einem Atlas von 13 Tafeln. (Abhandlungen der Geologischen Bundesanstalt, Band 24, Heft 2.) Pp. 89. 30s. (Wien: Geologische Bundesanstalt, 1927.)

RECONSTRUCTION AND REHABILITATION OF THE TUBERCULOUS SOLDIER

Much has been said and done in this great war concerning the reconstruction and reeducation of the crippled soldier, but it must be remembered that reconstruction, in perhaps a less spectacular way, applies to medical cases as well. We should not forget, in our zeal to assist the wounded soldier in returning to useful employment, that his less fortunate comrade who becomes stricken with disease may need the same helping hand. The one that presents the most difficult problem is the ill-fated consumptive. No tokens of bravery or emblems of the hero are pinned on him, although the fact that he has broken down with tuberculosis means he has given every ounce of resistance to his country's cause. It is well known among sanatorium physicians today that the ultimately bad result in the treatment of tuberculosis is usually due to the perfunctory way in which patients are discharged from institutions.