Voices in Time
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1944 / New York City
E. E. Cummings Told Him
plato told
him:he couldn’t
believe it(jesus
told him;he
wouldn’t believe
it)lao
tsze
certainly told
him,and general
(yes
mam)
sherman;
and even
(believe it
or
not)you
told him:i told
him;we told him
(he didn’t believe it,no
sir)it took
a nipponized bit of
the old sixth
avenue
el;in the top of his head:to tell
him
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States of War
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The final lines of e. e. cummings' poem refer to Manhattan's dismantled Sixth Avenue elevated tracks, which were bought as scrap metal by Imperial Japan three years before the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
The nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards, and its fighting done by fools.
—Thucydides, 5th century BC
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Superior technology doesn’t always make for a successful empire explains historian Daniel R. Headrick in his book Power Over Peoples: Technology, Environments, and Western Imperialism, 1400 to the Present.
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