Buffer

Buffer (pronounced buhf-er)

(1) A static apparatus at the end of a railroad car, railroad track etc, for absorbing shock during coupling, collisions etc with the contact section made usually from spring-loaded steel pads or (in areas of low-speed activity such as shunting yards) timber.

(2) Any device, material, or apparatus used as a shield, cushion, or bumper, especially on machinery.

(3) Any intermediate or intervening shield or device reducing the danger of interaction between two machines, chemicals, electronic components etc.

(4) A person or thing that shields and protects against annoyance, harm, hostile forces etc, or that lessens the impact of a shock or reversal.

(5) Any reserve moneys, negotiable securities, legal procedures, etc., that protect a person, organization, or country against financial ruin.

(6) In ecology, as buffer state, an animal population that becomes the prey of a predator that usually feeds on a different species.

(7) In computing, a storage device for temporarily holding data until the device is ready to receive or process the data, as when a receiving unit has an operating speed lower (eg a printer) than that of the unit (eg a computer) feeding data to it.

(8) In electronics, a circuit with a single output activated by one or more of several inputs.

(9) In chemistry, any substance or mixture of compounds that, added to a solution, is capable of neutralizing both acids and bases without appreciably changing the original acidity or alkalinity of the solution; also called a buffer solution; any solution containing such a substance.

(10) To treat with a buffer.

(11) To cushion, shield, or protect; to lessen the adverse effect of; ease:

(12) In computing, temporarily to save data before actively accessing it so it may be loaded at a rapid or uniform rate.

(13) A device for polishing or buffing, as a buff stick or buff wheel, often in the form “floor buffer” for polishing floors; a worker who uses such a device.

(14) In admiralty slang, the senior non-commissioned officer serving on a ship or boat.

(15) In (mostly UK) colloquial use, a good-humored, slow-witted fellow, usually an elderly man, thus often as “old buffer” (archaic).

(16) In medicine, a preparation designed to decrease acidity in the stomach.

(17) In geopolitics, as buffer state, a country the land mass of which physically separates two opposing potentially powers and the existence of which is intended to prevent conflict or permit an attacked state a greater time to organize its defense.

(18) In geopolitics as buffer zone, a region separating two areas, often demilitarized, to segregate antagonistic populations: based usually on regional, ethnic or religious lines.

1835: The noun buffer in the sense of "something that absorbs a blow, apparatus for deadening the concussion between a moving body and that against which it strikes" was an agent noun from the obsolete verb buff (make a dull sound when struck), from the mid-sixteenth century Old French buffe & bufe (a blow, slap, punch).  The figurative sense of "anything that prevents impact or neutralizes the shock of impact of opposing forces" is from 1858 and was adopted universally by the railroad industry.  The sense of “one who or that which polishes by buffing” dates from 1854, an agent noun from the verb.  The verb use extended to “lessen the impact of” by 1886.  The use in chemistry began in the mid-nineteenth century, borrowed by analogy from the railroads although the meaning in science was soon extended and was adopted in electrical engineering.  In geopolitics the term wasn’t used until the mid-nineteenth century, the word again picked up from the general use inspired by railroads.  However, the concept had been well-understood for centuries.  The Congress of Vienna (1814-1815) created the United Kingdom of the Netherlands (modern day Belgium & the Netherlands) to remove the means of conflict between the UK, France & Prussia and although it lasted only until the separation of Belgian in 1830, the defined land-mass continued to fulfil the same function.

The derived forms include buffering, buffered & bufferize; the noun plural is buffers.  In the nineteenth century, a number of languages picked up buffer directly from English, including Danish, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese & Romansch, spread apparently by the international growth in railroad construction.

Europe 1945-1989.

The deployment of ten-odd Russian army divisions on the border with Ukraine’s revived interest in the old squabble about whether, in the last days of the USSR, politicians from the West made promises or at least provided assurances to Moscow that NATO would not expand eastwards.  The archivists have for decades been looking for any document which might clarify at least what was at the time discussed but nothing emerged until some material was declassified in 2017.  The conclusion is that the USSR was never offered any formal guarantee about NATO membership but the interpretations of what happened after 1990 vary, the view from the West that the enlargement of NATO was undertaken honorably and in accordance with the rights international law accords to sovereign states whereas Moscow’s narrative is one of Western deception and duplicity. 

Most scholars of the Cold War seem to agree the story begins in February 1990 when James Baker (b 1930; US secretary of state 1989-1992), secretary of state under George HW Bush (1924–2018; US president 1989-1993 (George XLI)) met with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev (b 1931; leader of the USSR 1985-1991) in Moscow.  Only three months after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the matter of immediate interest was whether Germany, divided since 1945 into east and west, would be reunified, something that was most feared, though for different reasons, in the Kremlin and Downing Street.  London’s concern was its traditional fear to the emergence of an overwhelmingly strong Germany; Moscow feared the specter of NATO’s missiles being stationed in the GDR (East Germany). 

What both Russian and US transcripts of the meeting reveal was that the US position was it was in everyone’s interest that a unified Germany existed within NATO's political and military structure but at no point did either side discuss any of the nations aligned with the Warsaw Pact joining NATO.  That was not on the agenda because the thought of the imminent collapse of the USSR had not then occurred to many, none of whom were prominent in the US administration.  Orthodox political thought in the US, across most of the political spectrum, was that the Soviet empire probably was doomed but it’s life was expected to extend for at least decades.  A similar spirit animated the discussion Gorbachev had the next day with the FRG’s (West Germany) Chancellor Helmut Kohl (1930–2017; Chancellor of FRG or Germany 1982 to 1998), most taken up with the matter of German unification, NATO enlargement not even mentioned.  What was agreed was that the US, France, the UK and Germany, agreed not to deploy non-German NATO forces in the former East Germany.

However, in the great geopolitical event of the second half of the twentieth century, the USSR did in 1991 collapse, ending the perhaps unhappy but essentially stable post-war arrangement whereby east and west were separated by an array of buffer states, the cordon sanitaire which was built by Comrade Stalin (1878–1953; leader of the USSR, 1924-1953), which constituted the line of the Iron Curtain from “…Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic…”.  They were difficult years for the post-Soviet buffer states but, in 1999, NATO welcomed as members, three nations of the former Warsaw Pact: Hungary, Poland & the Czech Republic.  That sounds now like an event of great significance and of course it was but with all the social and economic disruption happening in Russia, it evoked surprisingly few complaints, the political faction in Moscow which tilted towards Europe and saw their country’s future there, much more influential than today.  Some did however dwell on things.  A decade after the first NATO expansion, Gorbachev complained that the West had tricked Moscow, claiming he’d been assured NATO would not be moving “one centimeter further east."

Gorbachev later retreated from that, in 2014 admitting that in all the discussions which followed the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification Germany, the topic of “NATO expansion” was never raised by either side, adding that not a single Eastern European country brought up the issue, not even after the Warsaw Pact had been dissolved 1991.  Equally sanguine seems to have been the first Russian president, Boris Yeltsin (1931–2007; president of the Russian Federation 1991-1999).  Although hardly enthusiastic about NATO expansion, he raised no objection but did urge caution on the West, warning it was important to take into account public opinion in Russia.  In that he may have had some misplaced faith in realism of those he viewed as his new Western partners, writing later that "the spirit of the treaty on the final settlement...precludes the option of expanding the NATO zone into the East."  None of that was in writing of course, the generous interpretation being inferences were drawn where no implications were intended.  Either that or, in Washington, views changed in the post Cold-War world.

Still, for a time, tensions seemed not great and cooperative structures were created including NATO-Russia Founding Act, a kind of statement of peaceful co-existence and in 2002, a joint consultative council was established as a framework in which differences could be resolved; rather wishy-washy in detail, it was regarded by most as ineffectual but at least harmless.  The real crossing of the Rubicon came in 2004 when NATO undertook its largest expansion, admitting seven more Eastern European countries including, critically, the Baltic states Latvia, Lithuania & Estonia, Latvia, all of which had been republics, unhappily, of the USSR.  It was the closest NATO’s divisions & missiles had ever been to Moscow.

By 2007 with the oil price high and the Russian economy thus buoyant, if rather distorted by its reliance on energy exports, the new Russian president, Vladimir Putin (b 1952; Russian president or prime-minister since 1999) made the official Russian position explicit, accusing NATO (ie the US) of duplicity and threatening Russia:  “I think it is obvious that NATO expansion has no relation with the modernization of the alliance itself or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust.”  “What happened to the assurances our Western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today?"  There being no documents, it seems Mr Putin might be relying on Mr Yeltsin’s evocation of the “spirit” of the discussions which both he and Mr Gorbachev had earlier confirmed contained no discussion of NATO expansion.  Still, some sense of realism was on display at a summit in Bucharest in 2008 when NATO declined to offer Georgia and Ukraine a fast-track path to membership but assured both they would eventually join the alliance.  No date was mentioned and it seemed a quiet triumph of Realpolitik for the Kremlin.

However, four months later, Russia invaded Georgia, crushing its armed forces and occupying two regions that had already had near complete autonomy.  Then, in 2014, after seizing and then annexing the Ukraine's Crimea Peninsula, Moscow equipped, financed, and provided military support to separatist fighters in eastern Ukraine, stoking the war that continues to this day, the death toll some fourteen-thousand.  NATO and the Kremlin no longer have active anything but emergency channels of communications.

Mr Putin is quite emphatic that assurances were provided NATO would never expand beyond what was necessitated by the unification of Germany and the last US ambassador to the USSR did insist, in his testimony to a congressional enquiry, that Mr Gorbachev had received assurances that if Germany united and remained in NATO, the borders of NATO would not move eastward and declassified documents released in 2017 do suggest Mr Baker may well have said “not one inch eastward” (source or Mr Gorbachev’s “one centimetre”) but that this was subsequently vetoed by Mr Bush who had a different vision of a “new world order”.  In the West, over the years, many seemed to treat all this as hearsay evidence and prefer to cite the 1990 treaty (the 2+4 Treaty) which created the framework by which German unification would be achieved.  There was no mention of NATO enlargement.  Beyond that, also invoked in the West is an argument apparently based on the doctrine of “acceptance by acquiescence” from contract law: Russia accepted enlargement, with detailed conditions, and in writing, when the NATO-Russia Founding Act was agreed.  One can see what they’re getting at but to use an analogy with domestic contract law seems a bit of a stretch but NATO expansion anyway didn’t happen in isolation.  The first expansion, in 1999, came around the time of the NATO’s bombing campaigns in the Balkans, a traditional Russian sphere of influence and aimed at their traditional allies the Serbs.  While sympathetic to the US operation in Afghanistan, the 2003 invasion of Iraq raised Moscow's ire.

Mr Putin’s position has since hardened.  The massing of infantry and cavalry divisions on the border has a nineteenth century feel but the economic and cyber warfare is already being waged and what’s already being called the Ukrainian crisis has attracted speculation from military and political theorists.  All agree (1) Mr Putin wants his buffer states back, (2) this is the first time in history the timing of military action must await the end of the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics and (3), the Kremlin learned certain lessons about the nature of the Biden administration from the scuttle from Afghanistan.  There the consensus seems to end but Mr Putin's ambition, no less than a re-configuration of the architecture of European security arrangements back to the 1992 lines on the map, is breathtaking.  This is not however 1941 and the world isn't (yet) quite holding it's breath.  Mr Putin has gambled before and won and if he can emerge from this round with something tangible, like a land bridge to the Crimea, he'd take it.  He plans anyway to still be Tsar when all the Western leaders facing him are gone and believes Russia's position in the future will only strengthen.     

Interstice

Interstice (pronounced in-tur-stis)

(1) An intervening space.

(2) An interval of time.

(3) A small or narrow space or interval between things or parts, especially when one of a series of alternating uniform spaces and parts.

(4) In Roman Catholic canon law, the interval of time that must elapse before promotion to a higher degree of orders.

(5) In physics, the space between adjacent atoms in a crystal lattice.

(6) In medicine or pathology, a small area, space, or hole in the substance of an organ or tissue.

(7) In geology, an opening or space, especially a small or narrow one between mineral grains in a rock or within sediments or soil.

1595-1605:  From the Old French interstice (interval), from the Latin interstitium (interval (literally "space between")) from intersistere, the construct being inter (between) + sistere (to stand, place), the stem of stare (to stand) from the primitive Indo-European root sta- (to stand, make or be firm).  The adjective was interstitial (pertaining to or situated in an interstice), noted since the 1640s; the noun plural was interstices.

St Augustine, Benedict and canon law

In Roman Catholic canon law, an interstice is a defined waiting period; the interval of time required between the attainment of different degrees of an order, the best-known and most widely applied being the three months between an appointment to a diaconate and ordination to the priesthood.  While ninety-odd days is the minimum, interstices tend to be longer though a bishop may shorten the length, should some extraordinary circumstance arise.

Codifications of these rules of progression of candidates for church office were published during the fourth & fifth centuries and reflected regional differences in the early church.  While there were those who never varied from the minimum stipulation, there were bishops who imposed a waiting period of four years as acolyte and five as a deacon.  Even during the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II, 1962-1965), there was no attempt to modify canon law organizationally by removing from it stuff which would better constitute a book of advisory guidelines.

Structurally interesting itself is canon law and its interpretation in an absolute theocracy.  The way it works is that canon law is not always interpreted by judges because, with the advice of the bishops, a pope is the Magisterium and his interpretations are binding.  Pope Benedict XVI (b 1927; pope 2005-2013, pope emeritus since) discussed this in a 2012 address to the judges of the Roman Rota, the Holy See’s highest court of appeal.  He explained canonical law can be interpreted and understood “only” within the Church and "…the work of the interpreter must not be deprived of vital contact with ecclesial reality.”  Arguing for a more flexible position than had often been heard from Rome, Benedict said the need existed always to consider “…the proper meaning of the words considered in their text and context", commending the “inner process of St Augustine in biblical [teaching] the transcending of the letter has rendered the letter itself credible".

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI with Bavarian Prime Minister Horst Seehofer (b 1949) and Archbishop Georg Ganswein (b 1956; Prefect of the Papal household & personal secretary to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI), having a couple of beers during the retired pontiff’s ninetieth birthday celebration at the Vatican.  Following Bavarian tradition, there was no interstice between rounds.

Florin

Florin (pronounced flawr-in or flor-in)

(1) A cupronickel coin of Great Britain, formerly equal to two shillings or a tenth part of a pound and retained in circulation (equal to 10 new pence) after decimalization in 1971; first issued in 1849 as a silver coin.

(2) An alternative name for the guilder (the standard unit in the former (pre-Euro) currency of the Netherlands).

(3) A former gold coin of Florence, first issued in 1252 and widely imitated.

(4) A former gold coin of England, first issued under Edward III (1312–1377; King of England 1327-1377).

(5) A former gold coin of Austria, first issued in the mid-fourteenth century.

(6) As the Aruban Florin, the standard monetary unit of Aruba (A Caribbean island and a constituent country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands), divided into 100 cents

(7) In Australia, a coin minted between 1910-1963 and the ancestor of the 20c coin (two bob in the vernacular)  The New Zealand equivalent was issued between 1933-1965.

(8) A style of women's dress, in a flowing (originally wrap-around) style, dating from the mid-nineteenth century.

1275–1325: From Middle English florin & floren, from the Middle French floren, from the Old Italian fiorino (little flower), from fiore (flower), from the Latin flōrem (accusative of flōs (flower)).  Florin was the name of an English gold coin from the late fifteenth century, reprising an earlier use and a fiorino was the monetary unit of Tuscany between 1826-1859, subdivided into 100 quatrini; a florin.   The Florentine coin was stamped on the obverse with a lily, the symbol of the city.  Florin is a noun; the noun plural is florins.

Florentine gold florins (left) and pre-war Australian florins.

The florin pattern (the term "wrap" a little misleading and a historic relic of the style's origin.

The term florin dress refers to a style which became popular in the late Victorian era, attaining its classic form during the early twentieth century Edwardian era.  It was characterized by a fitted bodice and a full skirt, the fabric of which tended to “flow” as the wearer moved.  During the inter-war years (1919-1939), the bodices became tighter and the necklines lower but the “swish” of the flowing lines remained the dominant motif.  The volume of fabric mean it was a style which could be adapted to the formality suggested by dark solid colours, the bright floral patterns which emerged in the late nineteenth century as the mass-production of dyes by industrial chemistry or the embellishment with lace and ribbons which some found attractive.

Lindsay Lohan in Florin dress.

Although conservative, there was a timelessness about the style which ensured its survival into the twenty-first century and most mainstream fashion houses (at whatever price-points they target) have florin dresses in their lines, the cut so adaptable the “wrap-around-look” (even if not always literal) able to be implemented with hemlines extending from knee to ankle, some with sleeves, some not.  The name “florin dress” has nothing to do with coinage but was a tribute to the many statutes of women depicted clothed in such a manner which were found in Florence and historians of fashion note the original name was “Florentine Dress” but for whatever reason, quickly this was clipped.

Statua dell'Abbondanza (The Abundance; 1637), in white marble with wheat bouquet of bronze by Pietro Tacca (1577–1640), an Italian sculptor associated with both the school of mannerism and the later baroque, Boboli Gardens, Florence.

It was the representation of clothing in this flowing style which inspired the Victorians to dub the dresses the “Florin”, many of the the finest sculptures of the (clothed) female form found in the parks and museums of Florence.

Cordon

Cordon (pronounced kawr-dn)

(1)  A line of police, sentinels, military posts, warships, etc., enclosing or guarding an area.

(2) A cord or braid worn for ornament or as a fastening.

(3) A ribbon worn usually diagonally across the breast as a badge of a knightly or honorary order.

(4) A projecting course of stones at the base of a parapet.

(5) The coping of a scarp.

(6) In architecture, a stringcourse, especially one having little or no projection.

(7) A cut-stone riser on a stepped ramp or the like.  Also called a string course or belt course, an ornamental projecting band or continuous moulding along a wall.

(8) In horticulture, a fruit tree or shrub trained to grow along a support or a series of such supports.  Tree consists of a single stem bearing fruiting spurs, produced by cutting back all lateral branches

(9) To surround or blockade with or as with a cordon (usually followed by off).

(10) In cricket, the arc of fielders on the off side, behind the batsman; the slips and gully (but not the more distant third man).

1400–1450: Borrowed by Middle English from Middle French cordon (ribbon), diminutive of the Old French corde (string), derived from the Classical Latin chorda (gut) and Ancient Greek (Doric) χορδή or khordḗ (string of gut, cord, string of a lyre).

The meaning "cord or ribbon worn as an ornament” dates from the 1560s.  Sense of "a line of people or things guarding something" is from 1758.  The form cordon sanitaire (sanitary cordon), first noted in 1857, was a public health measure in the French Second Empire (Napoleon III), a guarded line between infected and uninfected districts during outbreaks of infectious disease.

The Cordon Sanitaire in Geopolitics

Originally a public health measure to contain the spread of infectious diseases, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929; Prime Minister of France 1906-1909 & 1917-1920) conjured the phrase as a geopolitical metaphor in March 1919.  He urged the newly independent border-states, stretching from Finland to the Balkans (also called limitrophe states) that had seceded from the Russian Empire (and its successor the USSR) to form a defensive union and thus quarantine Western Europe from the spread of communism.

The concept evolved and was in its most politically and geographically defined form during the cold war when buffer states gave shape to the so-called iron curtain between east and west.  Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK Prime Minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) didn’t invent the phrase but made it famous in his address at Fulton, Missouri in March 1946 when he noted that “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.”  This was the opposite of Clemenceau’s vision of protecting west from east; instead the buffer-states existed to protect the USSR from any prospect of another invasion from a resurgent Germany, a dominant theme in early post-war Soviet foreign policy.

Comrade Stalin's Cordon Sanitaire: the Cold-War Buffer States

The buffer states were a construct of Comrade Stalin (1878–1953; leader of the USSR, 1924-1953), his words backed first by four-hundred divisions and later the Soviet nuclear arsenal.  They lasted more than forty years, the system beginning to fracture only in the mid-1980s when USSR Communist Party General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev (b 1931; leader of the USSR, 1985-1991) retreated from adherence to the Brezhnev (Leonid Brezhnev; 1906–1982; leader of the USSR, 1964–1982) Doctrine which held that if socialism was threatened in any state, other socialist governments had an obligation to intervene to preserve it.  Gorbachev initiated the policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (economic restructuring), both of which exposed the contradictions inherent in the Soviet system.  By 1989, long an economic failure, the eastern bloc began politically to crumble and a wave of revolutions began.  In 1991, the USSR was dissolved.

Crowd control cordon creation: Metal outside & the velvet rope within, Mean Girls Premiere, Los Angeles, April 2004.

Temporary cordons are often not sufficiently robust physically to act as an effective barrier against a breach induced even by mild force and rely on their symbolic value in the same way the red, amber & green traffic signals controlling intersections usually achieve the desired effect even though pieces of illuminated colored plastic inherently can't stop a car.  Respect for them (coupled with a fear of the consequences if flouted) is what makes them effective.  The cordoning of crowds at events often works the same way.  While facilities such as stadiums or race tracks usually have permanent fences or other structures difficult to cross, ad-hoc events in spaces intended for other purposes use relatively flimsy temporary barriers which wouldn't withstand much pressure and rely on the cooperation (and again, fear of consequences) of those cordoned off.  Outside, cordons typically are created with movable metal or plastic modular fencing while inside, the favored form is the "velvet rope", strung between stanchions (although lengths of plastic chain are sometimes seen).  These have the advantage of being able to re-configure a cordon at short notice and when not in use, demand little space to store.         

Mausoleum

Mausoleum (pronounced maw-suh-lee-uhm or maw-zuh-lee-uhm)

(1) A stately and magnificent tomb or a building containing tombs (a burial place for the bodies or remains of many individuals, often of a single family, usually in the form of a small building).

(2) In casual use, a large, gloomy, depressing building, room, or the like.

(3) As one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the tomb erected at Halicarnassus in Asia Minor in circa 353 BC.

1375–1425: From the late Middle English mausoleum, from the Latin mausōlēum, from the Ancient Greek Μαυσωλεῖον (Mausōleîon), from Μαύσωλος (Maúsōlos) (the tomb of satrap of the Persian empire and ruler of Caria, built at Halicarnassus in Asia Minor in circa 353 BC and one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World).  The general use to describe "any stately burial-place" (now usually one designed to contain a number of tombs) is from circa 1600.  Synonyms include burial vault, cemetery, coffin, monument, crypt, sepulcher, catacomb & grave.  Mausoleum is a noun and mausolean is the adjective; the noun plural forms are mausoleums or mausolea, the former now most prevalent.  Although “tomb” is now more common, mausoleum has long been used to refer to any large, above-ground tomb.

Mausoleum at Halicarnassus (1886), engraving by Frederick Knab (1865-1918).

The Μαυσωλεῖον τῆς Ἁλικαρνασσοῦ (Mausoleum at Halicarnassus) was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.  Built between 353-350 BC in Halicarnassus on the coast of Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey), it was destroyed by a number of earthquakes from the twelfth to fifteenth century; when finally if fell, of the seven wonders from Antiquity, only the pyramids at Giza remained.  The name Mausolus  translates as “much blessed” and his wife Artemisia II of Caria was also his sister, something far from unknown at the time.  Nominally a satrap of the Achaemenid Empire, Mausolus was the ruler of Caria between 377–353 BC) having inherited the throne from his father Hecatomnus who became king after assassinating the previous Satrap Tissaphernes, something also far from unknown at the time and since.

The Valle de los Caídos (Valley of the Fallen) is a Roman Catholic basilica and mausoleum which lies in the Cuelgamuros Valley near Madrid.  When built, Generalissimo Francisco Franco (1892-1975; Caudillo of Spain 1939-1975) proclaimed the structure to be a "national act of atonement" and reconciliation.  On a monumental scale, the grounds are 5.25 square miles (13.6 km²) of Mediterranean woodlands and granite and towering over all is a 500 foot (150 m) high Christian cross, still the tallest on Earth and visible 20 miles (32 km) away.  Construction began in 1940, almost as soon as Franco took control of the state and it took some eighteen years to built, the inauguration ceremony held in 1959.  It was partly built by political prisoners of the regime but, in a nice touch, it was noted that in exchange for their labour, they received some remission of their sentences.

Something of a Valhalla of the south, for decades, of the forty-thousand-odd interred dead from both sides in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), the most controversial corpse in the place was that of Franco himself, the Caudillo laid to rest there upon his death in November 1975 although, in a political irony, he was the only one there who didn’t actually die during the civil war.  There were objections to that but, because the mausoleum is also a basilica, under the rules of the Church, he’s anyway entitled to a place because of his role in “building the church”, a double irony being Franco himself specified he be buried elsewhere.  It was the government’s decision to place his body in the Valley of the Fallen and that ensured the structure would both become a shrine for those who venerate his memory and an ongoing controversy.  Although slowly fading from living memory into history, the civil war and the subsequent Franco years remain a fault-line in Spanish politics.  Successive governments have had their own plans variously to resolve or gloss-over the issues from those decades but it wasn’t until 2019 that Franco’s body was exhumed and taken to Madrid for re-burial.

Adolf Hitler visiting Napoleon's sarcophagus in Les Invalides, Paris, June 1940.

Hitler made only one visit to Paris, less as a victorious warlord and more as a tourist looking at the architectural highlights.  From years of somewhat haphazard study, Hitler was well acquainted with the buildings of the city and genuinely knowledgeable about details such as the interior fittings of the Paris Opera House but told his architect: “The moment in Paris where I saluted Napoleon's tomb was one of the proudest of my life.”  Hitler had always intended a mausoleum for himself in Linz, the centrepiece of which would be a Napoleonic sarcophagus in the centre of a Pantheon-like structure with an oculus directly above, exposed to the elements and thus “directly linked to the universe."  He made a number of sketches, all predictably in the classical style and distinguished mostly by their massive dimensions.

There is an urban myth that the chamber in which Napoleon's sarcophagus is placed was designed in such as way that if seen from the lower lever, the viewer must look-up as if in awe and if seen from above, one must bow.  However, Les Invalides was completed in 1706 and the two levels of the chapel were included so King might attend Mass with his soldiers; the lower level for soldiers & patients, the upper for the royal court.  Only in 1861 was the chapel converted to a mausoleum after Napoleon’s body was returned by the British, almost half a century after his death.

Pragmatic

Pragmatic (pronounced prag-mat-ik)

(1) Of or relating to a practical point of view or practical considerations.

(2) Advocating behavior that is dictated more by practical consequences than by theory or dogma

(3) In philosophy, of or relating to pragmatism.

(4) Of or relating to pragmatics.

(5) In historiography, treating historical phenomena with special reference to their causes, antecedent conditions, and results.

(6) Of or relating to the affairs of state or community (archaic).

(7) An officious or meddlesome person, especially a priest (archaic).

(8) In logic, the branch of semiotics dealing with the causal and other relations between words, expressions, or symbols and their users.

(9) In linguistics, a sub-field in which the analysis of language in terms of the situational context within which utterances are made, including the knowledge and beliefs of the speaker and the relation between speaker and listener.

1580-1590:  From the Late Latin prāgmaticus, (practical), from the Ancient Greek prāgmatikós (practical) equivalent to prāgmat, stem of prâgma (act) from prā́ssein (to do).  Related forms are the nouns pragmaticality & pragmaticalness and the more common adverb pragmatically.

In the sense of the meddlesome priest, use dates from circa 1610 in the sense of “meddling; impertinently busy" and was either short for earlier pragmatical, or from the fifteenth century French pragmatique, from the Latin pragmaticus (skilled in business or law) from the Ancient Greek pragmatikos (fit for business, active, business-like; systematic) from pragma (genitive pragmatos) (a deed, act; that which has been done; a thing, matter, affair," especially an important one; also a euphemism for something bad or disgraceful; in plural, "circumstances, affairs" (public or private, often in a bad sense, "trouble"), literally "a thing done") from the stem of prassein & prattein (to do, act, perform), related to the modern practical.

From the 1640s, pragmatic came to be used in the sense of "relating to the affairs of a state or community" and the modern sense of "matter-of-fact, treating facts systematically and practically" is from 1853; influenced by the use in nineteenth century German philosophy of pragmatisch.

The noun pragmaticism, which as late as 1865 could be used to mean "officiousness", by 1905 had been adopted by American philosopher CS Peirce (1839-1914) to refer to the doctrine that abstract concepts must be understood in terms of their practical implications; he coined the use to distinguish his philosophy from pragmatism.

The 1540s adjective pragmatical (pertaining to material interests of a state or community) by the 1590s had extended to "concerned with practical results", the formation from the Latin pragmaticus.  It was, during the 1600s & 1700s often applied in the negative (unduly busy over the affairs of others) which is how pragmaticism same to be associated with “intrusive officiousness” and meddling from the 1610s, the layer of "busy over trifles” or “self-important" noted in 1704.

The noun pragmatism had by 1825 assumed something like its modern sense, then meaning “matter-of-fact treatment" borrowed from the Greek pragmat- (stem of pragma) as "that which has been done".  As a philosophical doctrine, it was used in the English language by 1898 and generally accepted as a borrowing from the 1870s German Pragmatismus.  Despite that, it wasn’t accepted as the name a political theory until 1951 although the historical record can be misleading, a pragmatist being a "busybody" from circa 1630 yet by 1892, noted as an "adherent of a pragmatic philosophy”.

Pragmatics in Theoretical Linguistics

Pragmatics exists in what practitioners in the field call the symbiosis of linguistics and semiotics; essentially the study of the ways in which context either is or can be vital to understanding the meaning(s) of text.  Highly technical, it has built a number of models (sometimes called codes) which, if (sometimes cumulatively, sometimes lineally) applied, can determine meaning(s) which may not be obvious or confused by ambiguity.  Pragmatics studies how the transmission of meaning depends not only on the structural and linguistic knowledge of both speaker and listener, but also on the context in which the words are used, all pre-existing knowledge of those involved, and matters of implication and inference.  Properly applied, the ability to understand another intended meaning is called pragmatic competence.

Basically the product of squabbles between academics anxious to become dominant in some aspect of the surprisingly sexy discipline of linguistics, pragmatics was created in reaction to the structuralist linguistics models of the 1960s.  Pragmatics both borrows from structuralism and builds its own critique, especially from the way structuralism tended towards finding all meaning at least can come purely from the abstract space language creates.  It probably was a useful discussion to have but it’s never been entirely clear where semantics ends and pragmatics begins or if that’s even a helpful way to think about meaning.

The discipline seemed never to move in the direction of making pragmatics a toolbox of use to those beyond the field.  Instead, there emerged mysterious forks such as indexicals, intuitionistic semantics and computational pragmatics, all of which appear weird beyond immediate understanding.

The Pragmatic Sanction of 1713

Archduchess Maria Theresia (1727) by Andreas Møller (1684–circa 1762), oil on canvas, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

There have been quite a few pragmatic sanctions, the first known to be that issued in Constantinople in 554 by Justinian I (Justinian the Great, 482-565; Byzantine emperor 527-565).  Nearly twelve centuries later, the Sanctio Pragmatica (Pragmatic Sanction) was an edict issued in 1713 by Charles VI (1685-1740; Holy Roman Emperor 1711-1740); it was a device to ensure the Habsburg hereditary possessions, could be inherited by his eldest daughter, the sanction necessitated by the lack of a male heir and a law which precluded female inheritance.  However, for Charles to promulgate the sanction was one thing, having it respected by others was another and, immediately upon the accession to the throne in 1740 of his daughter Maria Theresa (1717-1780), the expected War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748) began.

Had the pretext of female succession not existed, the desire of other European states, notably France, Bavaria and Prussia, anxious to gain territorial and commercial advantage over the Habsburgs, conflict would likely soon anyway have arisen.  The British became involved because of their geopolitical interests and the Dutch because they wished to rid themselves of French hegemony; as the war widened, Spain, Sardinia, Saxony, Sweden and Russia became involved in what was soon a multi-theatre affair on land and at sea.  It was a textbook case of mission-creep.

Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor (circa 1707) by Francesco Solimen (1657–1747), oil on canvas, in a private collection.

The war was concluded by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748.  Maria Theresa was recongised as Archduchess of Austria and Queen of Hungary but, regardless of the impressive but isolated tactical victories which typified European wars of the era, so inconclusive had been the battlefield that, except for the Royal Navy’s notable success in the blockade of French ports, things ended in such a series of stalemates that most of the treaty’s signatories were hardly content with the terms.  Even Maria Theresa, whose throne had been the ostensible reason for the spilling of so much blood, resented having to cede what she did though was mollified by the horse-trading of the Treaty of Füssen (1745) which permitted her husband to be elected Holy Roman Emperor as Francis I (1708-1765).  The British, although satisfied with the commercial rights gained, would spend years glumly counting the cost.

In geopolitical terms however, the consequences were profound.  In what came to be known as the Diplomatic Revolution of 1756, the central dynamics in European affairs became the alliances between Austria and France and between Prussia and Great Britain, creating a template for the shifting military and political relationships which would be maintained, adjusted and sundered all through the eighteenth century in an attempt to maintain the balance of power.  The newly built coalitions, with Russia augmenting the Austro-Franco alliance, would fight the Seven Years War (1756-1763) in which Britain and Prussia would prevail, only because of something of a Prussian miracle and the Royal Navy’s control of the seas.

Under Germanic linguistic influence, word assumed a handy role as a kind of political shorthand; article seven of the 1712 Croatian Constitution being remembered to this day as the Pragmatic Sanction.  The clause permitted a Habsburg princess to become hereditary Queen of Croatia despite, in a typical Balkan squabble, opposition from both the Hungarian parliament and royal court.  Considered ever since a symbol of Croatian independence, the Pragmatic Sanction is included still in the preamble of the Constitution of Croatia.

Perfidious

Perfidious (pronounced per-fid-e-us)

Deliberately faithless; treacherous; deceitful.

1590-1600: From the Latin perfidiōsus (faithless, dishonest, treacherous), the construct being perfidia + -ōsus.  The source of perfidia was perfidus (faithless), the construct being per (through) + fidēs (trust), from the primitive Indo-European per + the Proto-Italic feiðos from the root bheydh.  The English suffix –ious (full of, overly, prone to), used to form adjectives from nouns, was from the Latin –ōsus, from the Proto-Italic -owonssos from -o-wont-to-s, the last form a combination of two primitive Indo-European suffixes, (1) -went- (also -wont-) and (2) -to-.  The Latin was related to the Ancient Greek -εις (-eis).  Perfidious is an adjective, perfidiously is an adverb and perfidiousness is a noun; the noun plural is perfidiousnesses.

UK prime-minister Anthony Eden (1897-1977; UK prime-minister 1955-1957, later Lord Avon) with his French counterpart, Guy Mollet (1905–1975; French prime-minister 1956-1957), March 1956.

Used memorably in the phrase perfidious Albion (Albion is a poetic name for Britain), the adjective perfidious is an Anglophobic pejorative phrase used in histories of international relations to refer to diplomatic slights or acts of treachery and infidelity by the British (and especially the English).  There being many from which to choose, complaints about British foreign policy have not been without foundation but duplicity is the lingua franca of diplomacy and the UK Foreign Office probably tended just to be better at it than many.  In the Foreign Office, a word like "faithless" is thought "charming but not a great deal of help" and if they're thought manipulative or duplicitous in their dealings with others, it's because that's just the way business is done.  It's not known if terms like "faithless" or "perfidious Albion" were on Lindsay Lohan's mind while she was tweeting in support of the #remain cause on the day of the Brexit referendum. 

Although the sentiment exists in documents from the thirteenth century, origin of the phrase in its current form, is usually attributed to Augustin Louis de Ximénès (1728-1817), a French playwright who included the line "Attaquons dans ses eaux la perfide Albion" (Let us attack perfidious Albion in her waters) in his poem L'Ère des Français (1793), written at the start of the French Revolutionary wars.  In the Second Reich, das perfide Albion became frequently used especially during the reign of Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859–1941; German Emperor & King of Prussia 1888-1918) and later the Duce (Benito Mussolini (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & prime-minister of Italy 1922-1943) liked it; Mussolini complaining in his fluent French of perfida Albione whenever British foreign policy didn’t suit, which was often.  Even the English aren’t averse to its use.  Anthony Eden, answering some criticism from the Quai d'Orsay over Britain’s conduct during the 1956 Suez crisis, answered simply “perfidious Albion”.

Before Broken English:  Marianne Faithful, Faithless (1978 NEMS Cat: NEL 6012), repackaged re-release of Dreamin' My Dreams (1976).