On May 27, 4:14 pm, wrote:
On May 27, 1:30 pm, "J.D. Walker" wrote:



Ah! Excellent. I would much rather read about WWI and possibly how it
impacted leading players of the day than say GetClub. Did we lose any
very promising talents in combat?


I am not aware of any really prominent or promising chess masters of
that time who died in combat, though likely some did.

The Berlin champion, Erich Cohn, was killed late in the war. He
was probably not destined for GM status because of ill
health (though why he would be in the army in that case
I don't know, but he enlisted in 1914 according to Marshall)
but he won some strong short events.

There was another Cohn playing about this time, but he
died in 1913.

German master Siegbert Tarrasch lost a son in the war.

Worse, I believe he lost three sons during the war. Only one
was killed in combat (if I can believe internet sources).
One killed himself, and another died accidentally.

Rudolf
Spielmann served in the Austro-Hungarian Army.

As did Tartakower, who also served with the free French
in WW II.

Once when I had far too much time on my hands I did a plot
of chess player death dates. There was quite an obvious
peak in the early 1940s, but nothing that significant from
1914-1918, though my data source was not comprehensive.

William Hyde

On May 27, 1:30 pm, "J.D. Walker" wrote:

Ah! Excellent. I would much rather read about WWI and possibly how it
impacted leading players of the day than say GetClub.

This is a false dilemma; you can have both (or neither).


Did we lose any very promising talents in combat?

If by "talents" Mr. Walker means chess talents, I have
yet to see any chess-related discussion between the
two hypothetical-Great War commentators. Instead,
the focus, unsurprisingly, seems to be on Nazis,
Commies, and such.


Were any celebrated military minds also good chess players?

Napolean Bonaparte perhaps, although both I and
Sanny could likely have beaten him like carrots at
chess.

In one of the many newsletters I receive regularly,
there was some discussion about the number of
deaths in various wars which involved the USA
(yes, really). I was a bit surprised at how few men
were killed in some wars, but mainly by the fact
that the Civil War entailed the greatest losses of
them all, and by a wide margin. But alas, there
were no Nazis or Commies in that one, so the
pundits will quite naturally be left speechless as
to the hypothetical possibilities of other outcomes.


-- help bot

On May 27, 4:45 pm, "J.D. Walker" wrote:

Thanks for the information. I realize other things are going to be
discussed, but I thought perhaps I could nudge the discussion just a bit
towards some of the chess aspects also.

Alright, I will sit back down in the peanut gallery now. I never had
the time to study WWI in the past.

You have no idea just how lucky you are. Those of
us who lived through the Great War -- like Larry Parr
and myself -- are still haunted by images of trench
warfare (you're better off not knowing much about
that) and machine-gun fire "mowing down" men like
so much overgrown grass. Trust me when I say that
the modern methods of killing and maiming people
are much superior, apart from a few minor
exceptions like, say, agent orange.

Oh well, back to the hypothetical outcomes and
how the world might look. You do realize that even
today, with powerful computer models, the experts
cannot reliably predict the weather; obviously, the
potential outcomes of different scenarios in the
Great War are far more complex than that... .


-- help bot

SPONTANEOUS REPAIR?

I wrote incorrectly that my computer email had
been repaired. So far as I can determine, it repaired
itself. Is there such a thing as spontaneous computer
tissue repair?

Several of you are computer mavens. Let me
describe what happened.

A couple of weeks back or so, the texts on my
computer screen were wiped out for both incoming
messages and everything in the various boxes. The
address headers remained, so I knew who was sending
me messages.

I could also send out messages, though not
easily. I could not make attachments, and I could not
send return messages or forward anything. I could
only hit the compose button and send out a message.

Then, yesterday, everything was okay. The

fellow who was going to fix the computer never showed
up (death in the family) over the last several days.
So nothing by way of repair was done.

Any idea what happened?

Yours, Larry Parr




J.D. Walker wrote:
wrote:
On May 27, 1:30 pm, "J.D. Walker" wrote:
Ah! Excellent. I would much rather read about WWI and possibly how it
impacted leading players of the day than say GetClub. Did we lose any
very promising talents in combat? Were any celebrated military minds
also good chess players?

The discussion Parr and I were having about WW I does not deal with
such questions, but I'll be happy to give a few answers to your
questions.
I am not aware of any really prominent or promising chess masters of
that time who died in combat, though likely some did. Of those I know
about, Friedrich S?misch came closest to death, when he was seriously
wounded at the Battle of Verdun while serving in the German Army in
1916. He might have died had not a chess-playing surgeon recognized
him and seen to his immediate care. He was left with a crippled hand
and scars on his body.
I don't think Alekhine formally enlisted in the Russian Army. He was
interned by the Germans in August 1914, when the outbreak of
hostilities terminated the Mannheim tournament. In September, though,
he was released because he was considered medically unfit for military
service. But he did serve with a Red Cross hospital unit in Russia in
1916. This was near the front, and Alekhine twice was incapacitated by
shell shock.
One of the best players of the time was an indirect casualty of the
war: Carl Schlechter died of starvation in Budapest in 1918, wartime
disruption having made food scarce.
Two prominent masters were strongly affected by the war. It
intensified Akiba Rubinstein's psychological problems, and he was not
quite the same player as before the war. Post-war hardship and
psychological depression were at least partially responsible for
Lasker's poor showing in his 1921 match with Capablanca, but he did
recover by 1923.
The Czech master Karel Treybal had an interesting adventure during
the war. I do not recall the details well, but IIRC his outfit ended
up deep in Russia, and for some reason it was decided not to return
the way they came, but to march all the way to Vladivostock on the
Pacific coast, and sail back to Europe.
German master Siegbert Tarrasch lost a son in the war. Rudolf
Spielmann served in the Austro-Hungarian Army.
That's about all the WWI-related chess stuff I know off the top of
my head.

Taylor,

Thanks for the information. I realize other things are going to be
discussed, but I thought perhaps I could nudge the discussion just a bit
towards some of the chess aspects also.

Alright, I will sit back down in the peanut gallery now. I never had
the time to study WWI in the past.
--

"Do that which is right..."

Rev. J.D. Walker

On May 28, 12:16 am, " wrote:

SPONTANEOUS REPAIR?

I wrote incorrectly that my computer email had
been repaired. So far as I can determine, it repaired
itself. Is there such a thing as spontaneous computer
tissue repair?

Several of you are computer mavens. Let me
describe what happened.

A couple of weeks back or so, the texts on my
computer screen were wiped out for both incoming
messages and everything in the various boxes. The
address headers remained, so I knew who was sending
me messages.

I could also send out messages, though not
easily. I could not make attachments, and I could not
send return messages or forward anything. I could
only hit the compose button and send out a message.

Then, yesterday, everything was okay. The
fellow who was going to fix the computer never showed
up (death in the family) over the last several days.
So nothing by way of repair was done.

Any idea what happened?

It sounds like LP might have a problem known
as "Microsoft Windows".


On my computer, sometimes I cannot type an
apostrophe without the browser commandeering
my machine, opening a pop-up box into which I
am presumably to type something. But I never
selected this option, nor had any opportunity to
un-select it. The next day the problem might go
away on its own, but it always returns, sooner
or later. There are also occasional bog-downs
where my machine gets really slow for no
apparent reason-- quite unresponsive for a time
only to, once again, apparently fix itself.

Maybe Bill Gates was right after all; maybe
there really is no advantage to a graphical
user interface... .


-- help bot

schrieb im Newsbeitrag
...
SPONTANEOUS REPAIR?

I wrote incorrectly that my computer email had
been repaired. So far as I can determine, it repaired
itself. Is there such a thing as spontaneous computer
tissue repair?

Several of you are computer mavens. Let me
describe what happened.

If you want anybody to help you, you should,
at minimum, reveal which OS you are running, which
email program, which news reader etc.
The problem is not a hardware malfunction.


A couple of weeks back or so, the texts on my
computer screen were wiped out for both incoming
messages and everything in the various boxes. The
address headers remained, so I knew who was sending
me messages.

Most likely the traffic coming and going from your machine
is being monitored and the tap was done
amateurishly.


I could also send out messages, though not
easily. I could not make attachments, and I could not
send return messages or forward anything. I could
only hit the compose button and send out a message.

Then, yesterday, everything was okay. The

I would guess that, having read your messages complaining
about the problems, your supervisors realized that the tap
had to be fixed and they now took care of that.

It is also possible that there is a global policy on filtering
information in Malaysia and they had some problems
setting this up; i.e. it isn't your correspondence
that is being targeted specifically.


fellow who was going to fix the computer never showed
up (death in the family) over the last several days.
So nothing by way of repair was done.

Any idea what happened?

Yours, Larry Parr

I AM DEEPLY WOUNDED

Alright, I will sit back down in the peanut gallery now.
I never had the time to study WWI in the past. -- (JDW)

You have no idea just how lucky you are. Those of
us who lived through the Great War -- like Larry
Parr and myself... -- Greg Kennedy (help bot)

As Greg Kennedy put the matter, "like Larry Parr
and myself." The man has finally drawn blood. I am
deeply wounded.

And, to be sure, there is no "Alright."

Concerning the rest of the idiotic chatter,
General Haig, if he had been concerned about the
Marxists and the like, would have favored stopping the
war as did Lord Lansdowne. Leftish writers such as
H.G. Wells screamed that Lansdowne was more
concerned about social revolution than the Huns.

Yours, Larry Parr



help bot wrote:
On May 27, 4:45 pm, "J.D. Walker" wrote:

Thanks for the information. I realize other things are going to be
discussed, but I thought perhaps I could nudge the discussion just a bit
towards some of the chess aspects also.

Alright, I will sit back down in the peanut gallery now. I never had
the time to study WWI in the past.

You have no idea just how lucky you are. Those of
us who lived through the Great War -- like Larry Parr
and myself -- are still haunted by images of trench
warfare (you're better off not knowing much about
that) and machine-gun fire "mowing down" men like
so much overgrown grass. Trust me when I say that
the modern methods of killing and maiming people
are much superior, apart from a few minor
exceptions like, say, agent orange.

Oh well, back to the hypothetical outcomes and
how the world might look. You do realize that even
today, with powerful computer models, the experts
cannot reliably predict the weather; obviously, the
potential outcomes of different scenarios in the
Great War are far more complex than that... .


-- help bot

wrote:

DELIBERATELY OBTUSE?..

Concerning the rest of the idiotic chatter,
General Haig, if he had been concerned about the
Marxists and the like, would have favored stopping the
war as did Lord Lansdowne. Leftish writers such as
H.G. Wells screamed that Lansdowne was more
concerned about social revolution than the Huns. (L. Parr)

Dear Mr. Parr,

Are you being deliberately obtuse or is my point so profound, shocking &
unthinkable as not to have occurred to you? Namely, why should Haig seek
to curtail what effectively was the culling of a generation of those
young males most likely influenced by international political upheaval
to the detriment of the class he represented (ie the ruling class)? Or,
are you so naive you consider Gen. Haig some sort of benign, cuddly,
Baden-Powellish, father figure?..

GENERAL HAIG

Are you being deliberately obtuse or is my point so profound, shocking &
unthinkable as not to have occurred to you? Namely, why should Haig seek
to curtail what effectively was the culling of a generation of those
young males most likely influenced by international political upheaval
to the detriment of the class he represented (ie the ruling class)? Or,
are you so naive you consider Gen. Haig some sort of benign, cuddly,
Baden-Powellish, father figure?.. -- Nobody

WWI wiped out entire colleges of the Oxbridge
crowd, which at the start and far into the war were
absolutely loyal. The percentage rate of attrition for
those upper class types was higher than for the lower
classes. Once again, a great memoir to read for what
happened to higher society is Vera Brittain's
"Testament of Youth."

For our anonymouse, you might try C. S.
Forrester's "The General" for an understanding of
Douglas Haig. Yes, by the author of the Hornblower
books -- and a serious novel by any standards. For a
defense of the hideous Haig, you won't do better than
John Buchan's four volume history of WWI (not his
Nelson's War series of about 26 volumes, if memory
serves). It hurts to bring up Buchan, whom one cannot
help to admire in many ways for his 190 or so IQ and
ceaseless Presbyterian industry. But he had the class
solidarity with his level of society when the going
was toughest.

There is an essay on Buchan in The New
Criterion. It is very well done and can be found
somewhere on the Internet. His student career at
Oxford defies explanation for its sheer brilliance.
He was possibly the greatest of the late Victorian and
Edwardian geniuses. He died in 1940, while serving as
Governor General of Canada.

Readers of this forum may remember him as the author
of The 39 Steps, which Alfred Hitchcock made into a
famous film. It is about the least of his novels. For aspiring
minds, I recommend Greenmantle as a starting point. A bio
he wrote of Montrose is very good.

Yours, Larry Parr


nobody wrote:
wrote:

DELIBERATELY OBTUSE?..

Concerning the rest of the idiotic chatter,
General Haig, if he had been concerned about the
Marxists and the like, would have favored stopping the
war as did Lord Lansdowne. Leftish writers such as
H.G. Wells screamed that Lansdowne was more
concerned about social revolution than the Huns. (L. Parr)

Dear Mr. Parr,

Are you being deliberately obtuse or is my point so profound, shocking &
unthinkable as not to have occurred to you? Namely, why should Haig seek
to curtail what effectively was the culling of a generation of those
young males most likely influenced by international political upheaval
to the detriment of the class he represented (ie the ruling class)? Or,
are you so naive you consider Gen. Haig some sort of benign, cuddly,
Baden-Powellish, father figure?..

On May 28, 12:16 am, " wrote:
SPONTANEOUS REPAIR?

I wrote incorrectly that my computer email had
been repaired. So far as I can determine, it repaired
itself. Is there such a thing as spontaneous computer
tissue repair?

Several of you are computer mavens. Let me
describe what happened.

No maven here, but if you have "automatic update" on your
windows system enabled, Microsoft will be continually
sending you new features, which once in a while will
mess something up. Particularly if you have any non-monopoly
software on your system.

A few weeks later, a new update may fix the problem.

Such at any rate was my experience during my first months of using a
windows machine.

William Hyde