Dawson's Plenty : penicillin rebukes the plenticidal war

Henry Dawson's call of "wartime penicillin for all" is sort of hard sayings version of the famous Atlantic Charter , if you recall the striking title of that popular series of bible study books.

By contrast, FDR and Churchill's actual Atlantic Charter (the public war aims of the Allies) also promised human rights for all - but only set at some faraway time in an indefinite future.

So their wartime promise was really a variant of a very familiar sort of soft sayings : high flowing but empty political rhetoric that you never intent to fulfill.

Churchill and FDR defended their stance by the specious claim that universal human rights was far too costly luxury in the total war against Hitler.

Dawson's Atlantic Charter : penicillin for ALL

The most ringing and the most important word in the famous Atlantic Charter (the avowed war aims under which the Allies fought WWII and the document both the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were based upon) is surprisingly small .

That word is "all"  - a modest , homey stand-in for the big word Universal that is more normally found in such documents.

Atlantic Canada : harmlessly old-fashioned to Americans and Britons alike

Atlantic Canada has always seemed harmlessly old fashionedly American to Americans and harmlessly old fashionedly British to the British.

Useful that , in times of war : because as a result, Atlantic Canadians have always been trusted as go-between liaisons linking these two often-sparring partners.

Dawson vs Florey : Plentifier vs Plenticidalist : postmodernity vs modernity

Modernity hated ambiguity and mystery : there always had to be only one correct "clearcut" answer --- not a diversity or variety of maybes, sometimes and sort-ofs.

A clearcut binary division between the right answer or the wrong answer, the right method or the wrong method, the normal individual and family or the deviant individual and family.

Not unexpectedly then, Modernity also wanted a small, clean, clear, pure, gene pool.

And Modernity's eugenic-dominated Science was glad to help.

Pax Penicillia and Martin Henry Dawson's "Neo-Plenitude"

The ever increasing use of the term "Neo-" since 1945 suggests that today we differ greatly from our grandparents in no longer holding fast to their Faith ---- a faith in ever-onward progress.

Today we often prefer a self-conscious circling back to older ideas (usually meaning "anything other than modernist" ideas) , rather than constantly seeking out ever newer ideas.

But because of our awareness that those older ideas have been very heavily modified by the weight of history upon them since they were first articulated, we prefer to prefix them with Neo- .

After Britain sues for an Armistice , France, standing alone against Hitler, seals its "special relationship" with America at St Pierre et Miquelon

In May 1940, Germany , reverting to its original invasion route,  has totally failed to break through the French lines and has subsequently suffered heavy losses.

A relatively unknown French general is now effectively in charge of the country,  after he so successfully rallied the badly commanded French troops, in heat of battle, to conduct a fiery take-no-prisoner defence of every inch of French soil.

In June, Germany successfully invades and occupied most of the English Home Counties , from Portsmouth to Watford to Clacton on Sea and now the Lord Halifax led Conservative government has sued for peace.

The price of that peace is that Britain has agreed to become Neutral .

If only GOD was a book acquisitions editor in London or New York ....

...HE probably say "we seem to have plenty of books on enacted war crimes but what about the even bigger war crimes that were crimes of intention , not of fully carried out action ?"

Because Christians - along with a lot of other religions and even some non-religious people - believe that it is mental intentions , even more than as actual actions, that makes something a crime and a mortal sin.

August 1943 to August 1945 : when Pax Americana was soft penicillin power, not hard atomic bomb power

Why exactly does Penicillin remain the best known and best loved medication of all time ?

Consider these points in its disfavour.

Its amazing life-saving qualities were not truly unique - not before or after it first became famous in late 1943.

The then still new Sulfa drugs, first popularized in the late 1930s , were also miracle life savers.

But , unlike 1943 penicillin , they were also inexpensive, abundant in supply and could be taken as infrequent pills.

Penicillin was in extremely short supply and was very, very expensive . It also required refrigeration and had to be given by needle.

In fact, in some ways, the original Penicillin was one of the worse ever drugs for a patient to receive.

Pre-1945 modernity sought to reduce the human gene pool...

.... while post-1945 postmodernity seeks to preserve the human gene pool.

The elderly Congressmen of 1946 (who had been teenagers in the 1880s) who thought that there could only be one "atomic secret" and that America had it - that was quintessentially Modern.

 Similarly the fact that middle aged voters today (who were teenagers in the 1980s) show a wide tolerance for racial, sexual, physical and cultural variety is quintessentially Postmodern.

Like assigning royalties from SCHINDLER'S LIST to the SS Oldtimers Association

When people ask how my Dawson book project is going,  I have to answer , 'not well'.

People still are not getting it at all.

They all wonder why I don't copyright the book  and get it published by a 'regular' publisher (shades of "when are you going to get a real job ?").

Postmodern open "Soft Power" vs Modern secret "Hard Power"

The old - "Modern" - world was organized around hard power's secrecy and monopoly .

In this world, one person only - the American President - had his finger on the red button that simply said "Bombs Away !"

Our new world - "Postmodern" - is organized around the public openness of soft power.

Now seven billion fingers hover above a nation's "Friend Me" button and collectively we all decide its cultural and moral status and hence its soft power.

1940 : Annus Mirabilis for Nova Scotia Science : Dawson, Laurence, Avery , MacLeod ...

If you are a young Nova Scotian , determinedly outbound to greener (oil-stained) pastures in Alberta , you may not believe the following post - it was , after all , published on April 1st.

You may not believe it because it involves Nova Scotians at the forefront of scientific issues so important that even you - grasshopper - have heard of them once or twice.

And you definitely won't believe that these Nova Scotians did it all on their own nickel - without any government grants - working after hours : evenings, weekends and holidays.

Google the names of these Nova Scotian scientists , grasshopper , they really do exist :

Yellowmagic diplomacy : Walter Mitty for real

The journalistic prose in the late summer of 1943 couldn't have gotten much purpler, short of entering into the fictional world of Walter Mitty as created by James Thurber.

A heavy bomber pounds though the southern night, a rare and dangerous night flight in those years , on a cross country mission of mercy to save a winsome young girl with only hours to live.

Eight thousand pounds of death dealing high explosives, the normal cargo of the B-24 bomber, had been abruptly jettisoned for just eight grams of precious lifesaving penicillin.

The Liberator bomber (The Liberator ! : you didn't think the B-24 Liberator was picked over the B-17 Flying Fortress by accident did you ?) was met at the airport at Macon Georgia by Klieg Lights, reporters' flash bulbs, screaming sirens and a police motorcycle escort.

The attractive teenage girl's progress and her every comment was breathlessly reported.

What red blooded teenage boy won't wanted to have been that handsomely uniformed rakish young pilot jockeying that magnificent steed of the air to win the heart of fair maiden ?

Walter Mitty lives in the breast of most of us.

Combining lifesaving penicillin, a 'just hours to live' race against time , and "The Gospel of the Air" was a heady and astute mix for the US Army PR staff to whip up.

Though they were to get only a minority of the long promised but never quite delivered penicillin , the US Army was getting 110% of the blame for penicillin shortages and it didn't like that.

Not one bit.

The US Army Air Force, and not the US Navy and certainly not the OSRD (stick-handing off the blame to others, as always) , figured in most of these air-penicillin rescues that somehow never failed to make it into the papers.

Bogged down in Italy, the US Army that summer certainly won all the really key battles - in Washington DC and in the women's pages of every hometown newspaper ....