They made a course for this country, steering the ship toward land, and sailed into a harbor where they dropped anchor. Once on terra firma, they very soon saw an extremely fine city surrounded by an impressive wall, finely decorated with the most beautiful shining yellow and green marble, with black, red, and white insets making up striking checkered patterns, as well as a great many images of things both strange and familiar, some known to them only by hearsay, and all as clear as glass. The whole was surrounded by a deep defensive ditch full of water so that the whole city was surrounded by a moat. The battlements were also built and decorated magnificently, gilded, and decorated with all kinds of artistically arranged precious stones. This magnificent citadel had nothing to fear from any attackers. The towers, defensive parapets, and firing-ports were carefully planned and arranged—so we are told in the books in which the city is described. We must be grateful to the person who passed this story on to us for giving us such a clear picture. Amazing people, too, lived in the shining city.

When our brave warriors reached land, then, they took in the sails, dropped anchor at once, and put out the boat. Duke Ernst said to his friends and companions: “It seems that things have turned out well, now that God has sent us to this beautiful country and fine-looking city. We had very few provisions left, and we can replenish our supplies here so that we do not starve. We have had to suffer a lot since we took to the seas and had no sight of any land, but now that we have found this amazing-looking city, I am confident that there will be people in charge there, and we shall find out today whether they are Christians or pagans. We shall have to approach them diplomatically so that they will sell us the provisions we need. If they are not Christians they will not let us live, but it is just as well if we lose our lives here—we set out to fight for God, and we should not complain if we fall in battle rather than starving to death on the ship.”

Some important concert dates

When the King gave me the land in Madrid, I asked for a large sum from Edmond de Rothschild. He told me, “No! Whatever interest in Spanish art there is for us, it's far from equaling that of the relations existing between England and us. Without the English fleet, we were lost in 1914, and also without the French alliance after the Battle of Cassel. We must therefore unite with Great Britain by all possible means, and reaffirm the endless chain between the two youths!”

May 26–30, 1919, I went to London with Rothschild to find a house that he wanted to donate to the Institute. We were shown the house of Sir Thomas [More] that had to be pulled down in order to cut a street through; it was then transported stone by stone to the banks of the Thames. The house was very interesting, but it was impossible to transform for the use we wanted to make of it. Its name was Crosby Hall.

Faced with the impossibility of finding what we wanted, I had the idea of contacting a correspondent member of the Institute, an architect whom we had just nominated: Sir John Simpson, president of the Royal Society of Architects. He hastened over the next morning and told us, “I know everything around here. Go back to Paris. You can rely entirely on me. As soon as I find something suitable, I’ll let you know.”

[July 19, 1919:] Attending the great parade of troops in London, five days after the one in Paris, we met Ferdinand Foch who was the guest of Buckingham Palace, and General Debeney who commanded the French troops. In the morning, I was awakened by the bugle calls of the French troops who were camping in Hyde Park. We saw the parade from the balcony of Edmond de Rothschild's cousin, Lady Rothschild. And I still have in my ears the cheers of the people as the sailors of the Battle of Jutland and Admirals David Beatty and John Rushworth Jellicoe passed by.

The next day, Sir Simpson took us to Queensgate to visit the house he intended for us; we were surprised by its fine condition and its French furniture. Corneille and Racine were represented in its library, as well as a number of engravings from our calligraphy, and models or reductions of statues from our French school.

Brussels Ducal Palace organ specification, 1861

INTRODUCTION

This part revolves around Rear-Admiral Sims, as indeed did Anglo-American naval relations in general throughout 1917–18. Despatched originally simply to channel information on Allied naval plans and requirements back to the Navy Department, Sims became by stages a fully-fledged and essentially independent theatre commander. The first six American destroyers for service in European waters left for Queenstown on 24 April 1917 and Sims was given over all responsibility for them. By increments the force under his command grew until by Armistice Day his writ ran to 45 bases and he commanded 375 naval vessels, 5000 officers and 75000 men. Naval air forces in Europe alone comprised 570 aircraft, 50 kite balloons and three airships manned and maintained by 1300 officers and 15000 men on 27 stations. Sims never received a set of orders outlining his authority and responsibilities but ultimately he was designated Force Commander, US Naval Forces in European Waters. He never felt secure – Franklin Roosevelt and Admiral Mayo both aspired to supplant him or at least to become his overlord; fortunately for Sims, Daniels and Benson, though both thought him far too subservient to the British, retained enough faith in his ability and utility to veto such designs. After the war, Sims told the story of his London-based command, though as Frederic Paxson remarked: ‘His powers and mission were somewhat less impressive than he described them in The Victory at Sea but they were real.’ Sims gradually established his autonomy but the Navy Department retained control over the key strategic decisions (such as devoting the greater part of its limited destroyer force to the protection of US troopships rather than, as Sims wished, to cargo vessels supplying Britain). The high command in Washington did not consult him over other flag appointments within his bailiwick and Sims experienced friction with some of them (notably Rear-Admiral Wilson at Brest). He was often unable to exercise effective authority over them, partly because they related more properly to local Allied commands and partly because they were determined to enjoy their prerogatives as flag officers. Only at Queenstown did Sims have his way, persuading the Navy Department that appointing a flag officer there would disturb the smooth but delicately poised integrated command structure headed by the British Admiral Bayly, whose Chief of Staff was Captain Joel Pringle, US Navy.

Widor’s certificate for Chevalier de l’Ordre du Christ, 1866

The day approached on which the duke and his men intended to set out to go across the sea. A great number of warriors from different places who knew him rallied to him with their followers and begged him in the name of God and his own nobility that he should grant them the favor of letting them come with him, because they knew that he would protect them against any dangers that might face them. They wanted him to accept them into his service and to go with him to Jerusalem, to support him in anything he undertook and never abandon him whatever the dangers. They wished to be his men, devoting their lives and their property to him in any perilous situation, even in the face of death. “That,” they said, “is our one desire above all else.” “I understand,” replied the valiant duke, “and I welcome you, my dear friends, in God's name. You may be assured that I shall never let you down as long as I live. You will be rewarded, and all things shall be shared with you—anything large or small that God grants me shall be yours as well as mine. For as long as I live you shall not regret making cause with, and placing your trust in, me. I will gladly take you on as companions and brothers, showing special favors to none—you shall all be equals on this journey, and you may be assured that I shall do my utmost to protect you day and night.” The knights thanked him, and the duke was delighted that he now had acquired so many fine men for his retinue. His company now contained a good thousand experienced warriors who would now travel abroad with him, and they had all sworn oaths of loyal allegiance to him as their captain and leader.

Duke Ernst was ready to set out on the journey in princely fashion, and once he had taken formal leave and departed, all his relatives and feudal dependents were extremely sad to see him go—all those who held him dear were desperately unhappy, since their noble lord had always cared for and protected them faithfully while he ruled over them.

This volume derives from a long-term study, FDR’s Navy: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the United States Navy, 1913–1945. The Anglo-American naval relationship naturally forms a substantial part of this work, though it went through stormy waters quite as much as calm seas. The present collection traces only a small part of that developing relationship, though it is hoped ultimately to carry the story down to 1945.

The present harmonious and well integrated association between the Royal Navy and the US Navy is taken so much for granted that it is instructive to see how it all began, in such tentative and stuttering fashion, in the dark days of 1917. Several objects have governed the selection of documents. I have sought to show the nature and development of the relationship at both the policy-making and the operational levels and to illuminate both the harmonies and the disharmonies. The accent in 1917–18 was naturally on the means of defeating the U-boats and there was considerable disagreement over anti-submarine policies. An attempt has been made to illustrate cooperation in each of the major theatres – the North Sea, the Western Approaches, the Mediterranean and the Western Hemisphere. The documents reveal the often uncomplimentary thoughts of one service about the other and demonstrate something of the naval thinking on strategic and material issues of the day. Although a close and successful partnership at sea was established by the end of 1917, a spirit of suspicion and rivalry underlay the whole relationship and this surfaced quickly once the guns fell silent. Although the collection ends on a relatively happy note, there was in fact an uneasy truce from 1919 to the Washington Conference of 1921–22. The issue of parity was in large part resolved there, but the relationship was a generally hostile one throughout the 1920s and warmed up again only after the appearance of threats to world peace from the dictators.

The collection breaks new ground for the Society in that about half of the sources, inevitably, are American. Extensive use has been made of the Navy Department records at the National Archives and of the Papers of the Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, Admirals W. S. Benson and W. S. Sims (Library of Congress) and Admiral W. V. Pratt (Naval Historical Center), all in Washington, DC. Further material has come from the Papers of President Franklin D.

Straightaway the lion gave orders for a formal assembly, and envoys were sent to the farthest parts of the empire. It was fixed to take place in a certain meadow, six weeks from then. There could be no refusal. Seating for the participants was duly erected, at a cost of more than a thousand silver pieces.

Let me tell you who attended the court. From what I heard, the first to come were the panther and the elephant, the ostrich and the famous bison. The assembly was a very large one. There was the sable and the pine marten, the swift leopard in his headdress, the stag and the bear, the mouse and the mole, the rabbit and the stoat, the lynx and the deer, the billy goat and the ram. The ibex hurried down from the mountains, and the hare and the boar came from the forest with the otter and the marmot. The camel came, too, and a crowd of beavers and hedgehogs, the stoat and the squirrel—none of these wanted to miss the assembly. The aurochs came, as well as Kunin the goblin, the stallion, Baldwin the ass, the hound Reize, and the bull seal from the sea, Grimbard the badger, and a great many more animals that I cannot list because I never heard all the details of them. Isengrim, Lady Hersint, and their sons were there as well. The king took his place at the throne of judgment. Reynard was not at court, but he still managed to cause harm to some of his enemies.

The king gave orders that they should all quiet down. Isengrim then demanded justice for himself. He asked for an advocate, to which the king agreed, and it was to be Bruin the bear. Bruin said, “My lord, Isengrim requests by rights of law and by your grace that if I defend him badly, I may be relieved and replaced.” “Granted,” replied the king.

“Most mighty and magnificent king, the lord Isengrim wishes to make before you a complaint regarding his shame and harm. That he stands before you today without a tail is because of Reynard. This shames Isengrim terribly.

Allegations and Denials: The First Hundred Years

Since the first examples of the polemical use of the term nihilism in reference to Stirner following the publication of Der Einzige—namely by Karl Rosenkranz in late 1844 or early 1845, and by an anonymous journalist in 1847—the echoing voices have been both numerous and at times venomous, at least once the hiatus of almost half a century of Stirner's near total obscurity had passed. From the time of the first Stirner renaissance in the 1890s until the present day, the accusations of nihilism have been relentless, to the point where the alleged connection has arguably become a self-perpetuating truism. In this period, there have been at least half a dozen published examples in German alone per decade of Stirner and his ideas being linked to nihilism, and sometimes more than double that. It is not only the prevalence of the accusations of nihilism against Stirner that is remarkable but also the changing usage of the term over time in the relevant books, dissertations, and articles.

That Stirner did not disappear entirely from intellectual memory in the aftermath of the 1848 revolutions is evidenced by his brief appearance in two important philosophical works of the 1860s, Lange's Geschichte des Materialismus and Hartmann's Philosophie des Unbewussten. However, as Laska remarks, the few references to Stirner in this period are terse and evasive. One such mention can be found in Karl Grün's 1874 edition of Feuerbach's correspondence and posthumous writings. In his introduction, Grün puts the word nihilism into Feuerbach's mouth: “Thus Max Stirner called him a ‘pious atheist’ and claimed: ‘Feuerbach fled from faith into love.’ … Feuerbach's initial response to Stirner was that his nihilism was also dogmatic.” Feuerbach does use the word Nihilismus in 1860 to describe the ideas of Schopenhauer, but neither in the essay by Feuerbach to which Grün is alluding, which was written fifteen years earlier in 1845, nor elsewhere in his published writings does Feuerbach connect Stirner with nihilism. One can only assume that Grün (1817–1887), who was a Young Hegelian journalist, political theorist, and socialist politician, was applying the increasingly popular term with a combination of poetic license and the benefits of hindsight.

Visitations

This volume contains the returns from Bedfordshire parishes to interrogatories circulated to the parish clergy of the diocese of Lincoln by Bishops William Wake and Edmund Gibson on their triennial visitations. Wake was Bishop of Lincoln from 1705 to 1716 (in which year he became Archbishop of Canterbury), and Gibson succeeded him at Lincoln from 1716 to 1723.

Bishops of the established church were bound to follow the medieval practice and every three years go round their diocese to investigate the state of the parishes and clergy, so as to discover and correct any disorders. Between visitations, the archdeacons had the major role in investigating wrongdoing.

Some of the early evidence for the visitation system in Lincoln Diocese is described in The State of the Church, which mentions an episcopal visitation of the Bedford archdeaconry in 1571, and the volume contains also one or two extracts for Bedfordshire from the returns of the episcopal visitation of 1607. At Tempsford, Clement Hales and his wife did not attend church; and at Woburn Henry Bell, the parish clerk, churched a woman in William Astry’s house without leave of the incumbent. This is of particular interest, because by 1706 Woburn is the only Bedfordshire parish omitted from all visitation returns. Through the efforts of the Russell family, Woburn had successfully claimed to be exempt from the bishop’s jurisdiction.

The Toleration Act of 1689 gave the established church a new problem - how freedom of worship had affected the attendance at parish churches. The Compton return of 1676 gave the approximate number of dissenters, papists, and supporters of the established church in each parish in the province of Canterbury in that year, but a considerable time had passed since 1676. Bishop William Wake decided on a new style of episcopal visitation, and in 1706, 1709 and 1712 circulated a questionnaire to his clergy.

The questionnaire of 1706 asked about the patron and the living, and whether it was a rectory or a vicarage; how many families lived in the parish; the number of dissenters and meeting houses; the value of the living; if there were endowed schools or almshouses; the names of local gentry; and (curiously enough) whether there were any antiquities of note in church or parish.