The Turkish Irritant

Author(s):  
Nicholas A. Lambert

The world war that began in the summer of 1914 confirmed widespread prewar expectations that a third war in the Balkans could drag in the superpowers. In the weeks that followed, Turkey, still neutral, became increasingly belligerent. British government policy was to appease Turkey in order to avoid conflict. Churchill disagreed with this policy, believing that war with Turkey was unavoidable and that the sooner it came, the better. At his instigation, the government reviewed contingency war plans to capture the Gallipoli but found that Britain lacked the resources to implement them. After Turkey joined the Central Powers in November 1914, Britain had no strategy for prosecuting the war against Turkey. But the British government was not much concerned, incorrectly believing that Turkey was incapable of hurting any vital British interests.

1917 ◽  
Vol 85 (17) ◽  
pp. 455-456

The following is the text of the resolutions which officially entered the United States into the world war:— “Whereas the imperial German government has committed repeated acts of war against the government and the people of the United States of America; therefore be it “Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in congress assembled, that the state of war between the United States and the imperial German government, which has thus been thrust upon the United States, is hereby formally declared; and that the President be and he is hereby authorized and directed to employ the entire naval and military forces of the United States and the resources of the government to carry on war against the imperial German government; and to bring the conflict to a successful termination all of the resources of the country are hereby pledged by the Congress of the United States.”


2018 ◽  
pp. 130-138
Author(s):  
Volodymyr Chornyi

The article analyses one of the most grievous chapters in the history of Ukrainian nation – the Great Famine (Holodomor) of 1932–1933. It is referred to the massive famine that was deliberately organized by the Soviet authorities, which led to many millions hu-man losses in the rural area in the territory of the Ukrainian SSR and Kuban. Planned confiscation of grain crops and other food products from villagers by the representatives of the Soviet authorities led to a multimillion hunger massacre of people in rural area. At the same time, the Soviet government had significant reserves of grain in warehouses and exported it abroad, since without collectivization and Ukrainian bread it was impossible to launch the industrialization that demanded Ukrainian grain to be contributed to foreigners in return for their assistance. Ukrainian grain turned into currency. The authorities of that time refused to accept foreign assistance for starving people and simultaneously banned and blocked their leaving outside the Ukrainian SSR. The so-called “barrier troops” were organized in order to prevent hungry people from flee to the freedom and not let anyone enter the starving area. The situation is characterized by the fact that the idea and practice of barrier troops tested on Ukrainians were lately used on the battlefields of the World War II. Among three Holodomors, the government did not conceal only the first one (1921–1922), as it could be blamed on the tsarist regime that brought the villagers to the poverty, and post-war devastation. The famine of 1946–1947 was silenced, but the population generally perceived it as a clear consequence of two horrendous misfortunes – the World War II and dreadful drought. Especially rigid was position of the government regarding the very fact of genocide in 1933–1933 not only its scale. The author emphasizes that the Great Famine is refused to be admitted not because it was unreal but to avoid the assessment of its special direction against Ukraine and Ukrainian nation, saying instead that it affected the fate of all nations. The article describes the renovation of internal passports system and the obligatory registration at a certain address that took place in the USSR in 1932. Decree of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR stipulated the fact that people living in rural areas should not obtain passports. Therefore, collective farmers of the Ukrainian SSR actually did not obtain passports. The villagers were forbidden to leave collective farms without signed agreement with the employer, that deprived them of the right to free movement. Even after the introduction of labour books the collective farmers did not obtain them either. The author describes the destruction of the collective farms system that his parents dedicated their entire labour life to. Instead of preserving productive forces, material and technical base and introducing new forms of agrarian sector management and the whole society to the development path, this system has been thoughtlessly destroying and plundering. Keywords: Holodomor, Ukrainian villagers, collectivization, genocide, confiscation, barrier troops.


Author(s):  
Adrina Esther Liaw ◽  
Jihan Natra Shafira ◽  
Muhammad Aziz ◽  
Iche Andriyani Liberty

Each country around the world has taken several approaches in order to stop the spreading of the virus. This study was conducted to correlate the mobility trend and the situation of COVID-19 by country, territory, and area. This research paper adopts an observational analytic study with a cross-sectional approach for 115 countries from February 17th to August 27th, 2020. Tajikistan (r=0,956) and Italy (r=0,931) has the highest positive correlation for retail and recreations. For grocery,the highest degree of positive correlation is Mongolia (r=0,945) and Tajikistan (r=0,933). Bostwana and Italy showed highest significant positive correlation among countries (r=0,985 and r=0,902, respectively) for transit stations and residential  (r=0,994 and r=0,984). Bostwana also has the highest significant positive correlation for the park (r=0.980). Meanwhile, for the workplace, Mauritius (r=0,863) and Dominica (r=0,785) are countries with the highest degree of positive correlation with a cumulative case of COVID-19. Society's behavior plays an important role by following the government policy in order to slow down the spread of the virus. Retail and recreations, groceries and pharmacy stores, transit stations, parks, and workplaces found to have a significant positive correlation while residential have a significant negative correlation with cumulative cases of COVID-19 in most countries.  


2016 ◽  
Vol 40 (158) ◽  
pp. 230-246
Author(s):  
William Butler

AbstractThis article explores the problems encountered in the formation of the Ulster Home Guard, supposedly a direct equivalent to its well-known British counterpart, as part of the paramilitary Ulster Special Constabulary in Northern Ireland, during the Second World War. Predictably, the Ulster Home Guard became an almost exclusively Protestant organisation which led to many accusations of sectarianism from a variety of different national and international voices. This became a real concern for the British government, as well as the army, which understandably wished to avoid any such controversy. Though assumptions had previously been made about the numbers of Catholics in the force, this article explores just how few joined the organisation throughout the war. Additionally, the article investigates the rather awkward constitutional position in which the Ulster Home Guard was placed. Under the Government of Ireland Act, the Stormont administration had no authority on matters of home defence. It did, however, have the power to raise a police force as a way to maintain law and order. Still, the Ulster Home Guard, although formed as part of the Ulster Special Constabulary, was entrusted solely with home defence and this had wider implications for British policy towards Northern Ireland throughout the Second World War.


1928 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 390-401
Author(s):  
Joseph R. Starr

No one of the many changes in the English constitution during the World War is more interesting than the establishment of the cabinet secretariat. The device came into being under the stress of war-time conditions, as a result of the complexity of the problems to be dealt with, and of the need for centralizing the activities of the government. Its retention after many other features of the war administration have proved only transitory is an example of the permanence that war-time institutions sometimes acquire.Before the war no minutes of cabinet meetings were kept. The only record of cabinet decisions was contained in the letter which the prime minister wrote with his own hand to the sovereign, reporting only those decisions which he thought should be brought to the sovereign's attention. A copy of each letter was kept for reference by the prime minister. Since it was considered bad form to take notes in cabinet meetings, individual members had to depend upon memory when proceeding to apply cabinet decisions in their own departments. Such procedure was unbusinesslike, and was one of the factors that rendered the cabinet system cumbrous and inefficient in the conduct of a great war. The War Cabinet needed an agency to prepare information for its consideration, to keep an accurate record of the many and vitally important decisions it made, and to transmit those decisions to the departments charged with ultimately carrying them into effect. Under such circumstances, the cabinet secretariat came into existence.


The Associated Electrical Industries Ltd. comprises a group of independent companies concerned with the manufacture of prime movers, generators, power-transmission equipment and practically every kind of electricity-consuming device. The two largest of the group of companies are the Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Co. Ltd. at Trafford Park, Manchester, and the British Thomson-Houston Co. Ltd. at Rugby. While there are research facilities in each of the companies of the group, research has until recently been concentrated very largely in the laboratories of the two main companies, the laboratories being separate autonomous bodies independently directed. Both these laboratories have been developed since World War I and both played no insignificant part in the last war. Accounts of each are being presented by Mr Churcher and Mr Davies. I should like to make brief mention of one matter about which there is frequent misunderstanding. It is often said that industry takes the best men from the universities, but my experience has shown that this traffic is in fact two-way. It is true that our companies take hundreds of young graduate engineers from universities all over the world, and of these a good selection is recruited to the research departments; but from our laboratories have also gone very many trained scientists into a large number of university positions, over a score into professorial chairs and senior positions throughout the government scientific services. It is my profound conviction that this flow in both directions is most desirable and should be encouraged as much as possible.


2008 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 1-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Daunton

ABSTRACTDuring the Second World War, attention turned to reconstructing the world economy by moving away from competitive devaluations, protectionism and economic nationalism that had marred the 1930s. The Americans had considerable economic and political power, and they wished to restore multilateral trade, fixed exchanges and convertibility of currencies. The British government was in a difficult position, for it faced a serious balance of payments deficit and large accumulations of sterling in the Commonwealth and other countries. Multilateralism and convertibility posed serious difficulties. This address considers whether the American government had economic and financial hegemony after the war, or whether it was constrained; and asks how the British government was able to manoeuvre between America, Europe and the sterling area. The result was a new trade-off between international monetary policy, free trade, capital controls and domestic economic policy that was somewhat different from the ambitions of the American government and from British commitments made during and at the end of the war.


1938 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 467-487 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert B. Stewart

The British Dominions prior to the World War had already achieved practically unrestricted freedom with respect to technical and commercial treaties. They had not attained any comparable freedom with respect to “political” treaties. They were, with rare exceptions, excluded from participation in the conclusion of such treaties but were, nevertheless, bound automatically by the obligations undertaken by the mother country. The Government of the United Kingdom, subject to its responsibility to the Imperial Parliament at Westminster, exercised sole authority in all matters relating to the conduct of foreign policy, the maintenance of peace, and the declaration of war. That authority, Prime Minister Asquith declared at the Imperial Conference of 1911, could not be shared with the Dominions. Yet at the close of the War the Dominions were given separate representation at the Paris Peace Conference.


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