When The Initial Meaning Gets Lost - An Anecdote

Today, we shall travel to France, in the second half of the 19th century...

We see General Boulanger, a dashing military and political man with a well-maintained red beard, pass in front of a dark hallway inside the War Ministry's buildings. Thinking to have found a shortcut, he decides to take it, when a senior officer stationed there stops him.

"I'm sorry, General, but you may not enter here."

Confused, the general asks, "Whyever not?"

The senior officer shifts uncomfortably from one polished boot to the other. "I do not know, General. But it has been the case for as long as I remember. And the order is clear: we cannot let anyone through under any condition."

Intrigued, General Boulanger had the War Ministry's archives searched for the reason for that order. And, finally, after days of search, they found it.

The order had been given in 1839; forty-seven years prior, to not let anyone into the passage as it had just been repainted. They simply forgot to issue new orders once the paint had dried...

***

Interesting tidbit, to me, about General Boulanger, is that he died here in Brussels! Wonder if I can find his tomb at the Ixelles cemetery...

All's Fair In Love & War...The Realities - Belgium 1914

"It is true, as Sartre once wrote, referring to French army atrocities in Algeria, that the real tragedy in our time is that any of us can be, interchangeably, victim or torturer." ~ Gore Vidal

How true those words, considering the French (and many others) had suffered terribly themselves at the hand of the enemy less than 20 years prior during WWII, and not 50 years after WWI opened the world to the extreme brutality of modern warfare.

Yet how can one be swayed to commit such terrible, inhumane acts, sometimes easily too?

It is the subject of this week's article over on The Flat Land That Is Mine: From False Accusations During WWI to Real Atrocities.