Open Peer Review reports Background Perinatal mental health problems affect up to one in five women worldwide [1, 2]. Stress, anxiety and depression in pregnancy affect not only the mother but can also have long-term adverse effects on her child via biological mechanisms in utero [3]. Along with the impact on the mother and her developing infant, antenatal depression and anxiety are the most common predictors of postnatal depression [4, 5]. Postnatal depression can reduce her ability to provide sensitive and responsive caregiving that can potentially impair child development [6]. Mental health problems in the perinatal period are a particular challenge in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) where they can be at least twice as frequent as in higher-income countries [1]. Our geographical context for this work will be The Gambia, in West Africa, where mental health services are minimal, services for perinatal mental health are non-existent and high levels of stigma associated with mental health issues, as well as specific local attitudes and beliefs, impede recognition and prevent help-seeking behaviour. It is thus of high priority to develop new low-cost, low-resource, non-stigmatising and culturally appropriate approaches to reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression perinatally, for the benefit of both the mother and child. The current project will test the hypothesis that the creative arts—in particular group-singing—will show special promise in alleviating perinatal mental distress in The Gambia. In high-income countries, such as the UK and the USA, singing in groups has been shown to be a powerful modulator of mood and emotion, evoking positive effects on mental health, well-being and social affiliation [7] via mechanisms involving synchrony and entrainment [8], the saliency of relational communicative features in musical interaction [9] and significant effects on the endocrine system [10]. In addition, the mother's voice is a key channel through which meaningful, sensitive and contingent interactions between the caregiver and infant can take place [11]. Recent studies have found that music and its use specifically during the perinatal period can reduce women's stress levels and depressive symptoms and increase women's attachment to their infant [12,13,14,15]. Music-centred approaches may be particularly fruitful in The Gambia as there are already a range of musical practices that specifically engage pregnant women and new mothers [16]. For instance, infant naming ceremonies occur 7 days after birth and are musical celebrations to recognise the new mother and her family [16]. Performances by Kanyeleng groups are closely associated with pregnancy and motherhood and are important in health communication [17]. These pre-existing cultural and creative practices provide an excellent context from which to explore, co-design and ultimately evaluate culturally situated, music-centred interventions that aim to reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression perinatally and facilitate mother-infant caregiving. Study aims This is a feasibility study which aims to inform the design of a larger trial to investigate a Community Health Intervention through Musical Engagement (CHIME) to help reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression in pregnant women compared to standard care. This article describes the trial protocol (version 1.0, 11/11/18). The protocol was prepared in accordance with the Standard Protocol Items: Recommendations for Interventional Trials (SPIRIT) guidance. The trial SPIRIT checklist can be viewed in Additional file 1. Objectives Our primary objective is to test (a) the feasibility of delivering a group-singing intervention to a sample of pregnant women in The Gambia using a stepped wedge design and (b) the feasibility of using standardised tools to measure the impact of this intervention on anxiety and depression symptoms, before and after the intervention. This objective can be broken down into five specific feasibility objectives: 1) To obtain demographic information on the eligible population 2) To determine if our measurement tools, the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) and the Self-Reporting Questionnaire (SRQ-20), are useable 3) To determine if the intervention is deliverable 4) To determine if the stepped wedge trial design is deliverable and obtain information that will inform the definitive study. Specifically to: a. Assess recruitment and acceptability of randomising clinics b. Assess the recruitment rate of women to control and intervention groups c. Assess participants' adherence to the intervention group and follow-up in both arms d. Test the feasibility of data collection 5) To determine if this type of intervention is culturally appropriate and well received by the community and health workers. Methods/design We will be testing the feasibility of a stepped wedge cluster design, which differs from a parallel arm cluster design in that all clinics involved in the study receive the intervention [18]. Advantages over a parallel arm cluster trial include the requirement of a smaller sample size due to the availability of a within group comparison and prevention of potential disappointment for health clinics who are not randomised into the intervention. Study setting This multi-site study will recruit from four antenatal clinics in western Gambia. Study population All participants will be Mandinka or Wolof Gambian women who are pregnant. Inclusion criteria Pregnant (14–24 weeks gestation) Speak Wolof or Mandinka fluently Exclusion criteria At least one previous late term miscarriage Current psychosis or history of psychosis Withdrawal criteria If the participant develops any serious medical condition or the participant's mental health significantly declines (as assessed by the care team), and the care team deem it necessary, then she may be withdrawn from the study. Intervention The intervention will be delivered on the community level, meaning that it will include women with a range of anxiety and depression symptoms. Our primary aim is to reduce symptoms in those experiencing them (whether these are at a high level or a medium or low level). We anticipate this may also help to reduce their symptoms into the postnatal period. By including those with low and high levels of symptoms, rather than screening and including only those with high levels of symptoms, we will aim to avoid stigma and increase acceptability. The intervention has been developed following focus groups with various stakeholders including health professionals (midwives and community birth companions), pregnant women and musicians (griots and Kanyeleng groups). Four groups of 20 women between 14 and 24 weeks gestation will attend six 60-min group-singing sessions at their local antenatal clinic. This will take place in the morning as this is the time deemed to best suit the majority of women and clinics. Local Kanyeleng groups who specialise in musical practices to support women's health will lead the sessions. The content of the six sessions will be co-designed with the Kanyeleng groups via two extended workshops with the research team. All sessions will begin with a welcome song and end with a closing song. Some of the songs used during the main body of the session will cover topics including the (a) importance of the singing group in supporting each other, (b) importance of other positive relationships in their lives, (c) resilience to challenges and empowerment and (d) importance of being open, removing stigma to discuss challenges. One lullaby will be introduced at each session. Kanyeleng leaders will also be encouraged to ensure that all the women feel comfortable and are participating when they can. The nature of the intervention will necessarily vary somewhat across the four settings, especially as Wolof speaking groups and Mandinka groups have different and distinct cultural beliefs, practices and language. By using the Kanyeleng groups local to each of the four clinics involved, the sessions will be contextually appropriate, while the workshop with all four Kanyeleng groups before the intervention begins will ensure that the overarching goals, content and approach to session delivery are broadly standardised. Over the course of the 6-week intervention period, a research assistant will observe and video and audio record two singing sessions (the first and the fourth sessions) from each of the four clinics to ascertain, using a checklist, the extent to which the sessions conform to our articulated goals. A community health nurse at each clinic will be engaged to take attendance data and report any issues of concern to the research team. The control group will consist of four groups of 20 women between 14 and 24 weeks gestation from the same four clinics. These women will receive only standard care without any additional intervention. Randomisation and blinding As we will be testing the feasibility of delivering a stepped wedge cluster design, the four different antenatal clinics will be randomised with two sites starting first (creating the first sequence) and two starting 6 weeks later (the second sequence). Randomisation will be performed by the study statistician who will generate a randomisation list using software and apply it to the pre-concealed list of clinics. The researchers and participants will not be blinded to whether they are in the intervention or the control cohort. Outcome measurements Two local research assistants (RAs) will collect all measures orally as there is a high rate of illiteracy among the target population. All scales have been translated into Mandinka and Wolof. The translation method used was based on suggestions by the World Health Organisation, Hanlon et al. [19] and Cox, Holden and Henshaw [20]. First, the scales were translated into Mandinka and Wolof. An expert panel discussion then refined the translation before back translating it into English. The expert panel came together once more to resolve any remaining issues before finalising the translation. Two questionnaires will measure antenatal anxiety and depression symptoms. The Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) [21] is a ten-item scale that was developed to screen for postnatal depression. It has subsequently been validated to be used during pregnancy [22]. This measurement tool has been used and validated in other African contexts; however, there is no avaliable validated version of the EPDS in Mandinka or Wolof even though it has been used in The Gambia before [23]. The Self-report Questionnaire (SRQ-20) [24] is a 20-item scale developed by the World Health Organization to measure anxiety and depression symptoms in a variety of cultural contexts. It has been used in many different African contexts such as Ethiopia [19], South Africa [25] and Rwanda [26] and as a way to measure perinatal mental health [23]. However, the SRQ-20 has never been used in the Gambian context nor has it been translated into Wolof or Mandinka. Demographic outcomes We will collect demographic information about all participants. The data we will collect is as follows: date of birth, gestational age, time taken to get to the health centre, parity, gravida, place of birth, current place of residence, ethnic group, history of serious illness, occupation, husband's occupation, marital status, educational background and amount of regular musical engagement. Feasibility outcomes The feasibility outcomes are as follows: Recruitment rate Retention and attrition rates of participants Clinics' adherence to stepped wedge schedule Completeness of data by site and over time Video and audio recording of sessions to determine fidelity of the intervention at each site, i.e. whether key content emphasised in training workshops was being delivered at each site. Qualitative interviews with participants after the intervention to capture enjoyment and perceived benefit. Recruitment Four antenatal clinics will be chosen to take part in the study based on three criteria: (1) availability of a local Kanyeleng group to deliver the intervention, (2) the language group predominantly spoken in the area (with at least one clinic being in a predominantly Wolof speaking area) and (3) the type of community the clinic serves (with at least one within an urban area). The health professionals working at the health centre will first approach participants for the study. If they meet the criteria, they will be given information about the study and asked if they would like to be referred to the RAs. They will then be put in contact with one of the RAs who will meet them privately face to face. The information sheet will be read out in their native language verbatim to ensure participants' ability to give informed consent. Consent will be taken orally by the RAs and recorded by signature or thumbprint. If participants do not choose to take part we will record their reason, if it is given, to help understand why women might not want or be able to participate. Incentive and participant retention Participants in both groups will be offered a total of 600 Dalasi (about 12 USD) for their time, 200 Dalasi for each of the three data collection time points (baseline, post, follow-up). All participants will be reminded of the data collection and the group-singing sessions by phone call. Calls will be made by the RAs 3 days and 1 day before as well as on the day of these appointments. Where possible, a record will be kept of the reasons women give for failing to join the intervention or data collection session. Sample size As this is a feasibility study, it is not designed to assess the efficacy of the intervention, although pilot data on this will be collected. We will evaluate the feasibility of study design, data collection and whether the intervention is deliverable and acceptable to the participants. In the study, we will gather information to be used in the design of the future definitive study including an estimate of the standard deviation of potential primary outcomes to inform the sample size. We aim to collect data from a total of 120 pregnant women, 60 in the control condition and 60 in the intervention condition [27]. This number will be sufficient to provide estimates of binary feasibility outcomes with precision of at least ± 9 percentage points for the 95% confidence interval. Trial schedule This trial design involves a sequential crossover of clusters whereby each cluster (antenatal clinic) receives the control condition followed by the intervention condition. The four chosen clinics will be randomised to two sequences of a 12-week phase. A separate cohort of participants will be recruited to the control group and the intervention (singing) group. Each cohort will be recruited around 4–6 months into their pregnancy. The 12-week phase for both the control and intervention cohort will include data collection at week 1 ("baseline") and week 7 ("post") after either group-singing (intervention) or standard care (control) as well as at week 11 ("follow-up"), 4 weeks after the intervention finished. Contamination will be avoided by having data for the control group collected before the intervention groups start at each clinic. See Fig. 1 for a schematic for the study. Fig. 1 figure1 Schematic of the study Full size image Assessment and management of risk There are no high risks within our study compared to standard care. We have identified three areas of ethical concern and have outlined how each of these issues will be managed. 1. Mothers may experience an adverse effect such as a miscarriage, difficult birth, still birth, a sudden drastic change in physical or mental health, infant health problems or even a serious adverse effect such as death during the intervention. It is possible that a participant experiencing such an adverse event may attribute a causal link between the adverse event and their involvement in the study. We will mitigate this association being made, firstly, by clearly explaining the nature of the intervention and any possible risks to the women when they are recruited into the study. If, despite this, an association of this nature was still made, we would enlist the help of the Ministry of Health & Social Welfare (our partner on the project) to disseminate information to the women and the community concerning the incidence of such events occurring in the general population in an attempt to reassure those concerned that such adverse events should not be attributed to involvement in the study. 2. It is possible that some of the themes involved in questionnaires could lead to the women revealing episodes of self-harm. If this is the case, the woman will receive in the moment front-line counselling to talk through these issues with the RAs who are trained psychiatric nurses. Then, if needed, she will be referred on to the community mental health team (CMHT) for further management. If the CMHT deems it appropriate, they may then refer her on to the psychiatric team. 3. It is possible that some of the themes involved in questionnaires may also lead the women to reveal domestic abuse. If this is the case, the woman will receive in the moment front-line counselling to talk through these issues with the RAs. For emergencies and cases that require immediate intervention, the RAs will connect with the Gender-Based Violence focal person. For other cases, the RAs will refer the woman to the One Stop Center at Serekunda General Hospital or Edward Francis Small Teaching Hospital. 4. Women throughout the study will be monitored by the RAs, both trained psychiatric nurses. If the RAs feel that at any point a woman's score indicates a high level of symptoms and/or the women reveal that they are particularly struggling, the RAs will refer the woman on to the Community Mental Health Team (CMHT) for further management. If the CMHT deems it appropriate, they may then refer her on to the psychiatric team. Data management All consent forms will be stored in a master file, which will be kept in a locked drawer where only members of the research team have access. All case report forms will not be linked to names, just a participant number, and kept in a separate locked cabinet where only the research team has access. All data, including video and audio recordings, will be held on an encrypted hard drive only members of the research team can access. Data will be stored for 5 years after the study and will then be deleted or destroyed. Analysis All data will be entered into a database by an RA and verified by the second RA using double data entry to ensure data quality. As this is a feasibility study, we will examine missing data as an outcome. Descriptive statistics will be summarised to understand the demographic variables relating to the recruited population. Descriptive statistics and plots will be used to assess the distribution of the measurement tools, repeated at baseline and follow-up and by each arm. We will also examine the distributions of scores in the different language groups to see to what extent item scores and overall distributions differ or are similar. Correlations between our two measurement tools will be calculated. To determine if the intervention is deliverable, we will record the number of sessions that the Kanyeleng groups delivered, aiming to deliver two thirds of the sessions, and the duration of each session, aiming to last between 45 and 75 min. We will also perform a qualitative evaluation, using the video and audio recordings, to determine intervention fidelity at the four sites. Both RAs will watch the video and audio recordings of the first and fourth group-singing sessions at each clinic and complete a checklist to determine if all the necessary elements—as outlined in the training workshops—were included in the intervention. Reliability of the fidelity measure will be ascertained by measuring inter-rater consistency. We will also calculate the proportion of clinics approached that consented, aiming to reach over 50% recruitment rate, and record any scheduling problems in keeping with the stepped wedge timeline. Recruitment, adherence and completeness of data will be calculated for both groups. We aim to achieve a 60% recruitment rate and no more than 30% attrition in both arms. To determine if the intervention was culturally appropriate and well received by the community and health workers, we will collect qualitative data from post-intervention interviews and perform a thematic analysis. Discussion The absence of mental health services in The Gambia, coupled with the stigma associated with mental illness in general, results in high levels of unmet need for pregnant women dealing with mental distress in The Gambia. The development of a low-cost, low-resource intervention, which is rooted in local health and cultural practices, is of high priority, and the feasibility study we intend to carry out will inform a full-scale trial to investigate efficacy of such an approach. By employing local research assistants and creating a partnership with governmental agencies, such as The Ministry of Health & Social Welfare and The National Centre for Arts and Culture, this study brings the understanding of existing health services and access to a network of primary healthcare workers throughout the country as well as the diversity of local musical practices and the meanings attached to them. This valuable knowledge will help us cope with the practical and operational issues that may arise. We hope to disseminate our findings within various scientific publications, during field days in various areas in The Gambia, and during a meeting in London which will bring together the researchers as well community members, academic colleagues and health professionals interested in hearing about this work. Trial status This article describes the protocol for a Community Health Intervention through Musical Engagement (CHIME) for perinatal mental health in The Gambia (version 1.0, 11/11/18). The sponsor for this trial is Goldsmiths, University of London. The project is funded by the MRC and the AHRC. Ethical approval was obtained from the Goldsmiths University Ethics Committee, the Research and Publication Committee (RePubliC) from the University of The Gambia and the Australian National University ethics committee. 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Funding The funders (MRC and AHRC) and sponsor (Goldsmiths) have no roles or responsibilities in the design, conduct, data analysis and interpretation, manuscript writing and dissemination of results. Author information Author notes Katie Rose M. Sanfilippo and Bonnie McConnell are joint first authors. Affiliations Goldsmiths, University of London, London, UK Katie Rose M. Sanfilippo & Lauren Stewart The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia Bonnie McConnell Imperial College London, London, UK Victoria Cornelius & Vivette Glover The Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, Banjul, The Gambia Buba Darboe, Hajara B. Huma & Malick Gaye The National Centre for Arts and Culture, Banjul, The Gambia Hajara B. Huma, Malick Gaye & Hassoum Ceesay University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK Paul Ramchandani & Ian Cross Contributions LS is the principal investigator and obtained grant funding and conceived of the study. KRMS wrote the first draft of this publication manuscript, helped with the ethics and grant application, the intervention design, and the data monitoring and data collection plan. BM helped with the ethics and grant applications, translations of questionnaires, administration of focus groups and design of the intervention. VC obtained study funding, designed the study and statistical analysis plan, contributed to writing the manuscript. BD helped with the grant and ethics application, translations of questionnaires, administration of focus groups and design of the intervention. HBH and MG helped with the translation of the questionnaires, administration of the focus groups and design of the intervention. HC helped with planning the logistics for running the study as well as with the translation of the questionnaires. IC, VG and PR all helped with the grant application and advised on research and intervention design. All authors reviewed and had input into the final submission. All authors read and approved the final manuscript. Corresponding author Correspondence to Katie Rose M. Sanfilippo. Ethics declarations Ethics approval and consent to participate Ethical approval was obtained from the Goldsmiths University Ethics Committee, the Research and Publication Committee (RePubliC) from the University of The Gambia and the Australian National University ethics committee. Members of the research team will carry out the consenting and conduct of this study orally. It will be emphasised that any participant is able to withdraw from the study at any point without any consequences. Consent for publication Not applicable. Competing interests The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Additional information Publisher's Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Supplementary information Additional file 1. SPIRIT Checklist. Rights and permissions Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. Reprints and Permissions About this article Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark Cite this article Sanfilippo, K.R.M., McConnell, B., Cornelius, V. et al. A study protocol for testing the feasibility of a randomised stepped wedge cluster design to investigate a Community Health Intervention through Musical Engagement (CHIME) for perinatal mental health in The Gambia. Pilot Feasibility Stud 5, 124 (2019) doi:10.1186/s40814-019-0515-5 Download citation Received 22 February 2019 Accepted 15 October 2019 Published 07 November 2019 DOI https://doi.org/10.1186/s40814-019-0515-5 Share this article Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content: Get shareable link Keywords Perinatal mental health Feasibility trial The Gambia Music Singing group Kanyeleng Comments By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate. Please note that comments may be removed without notice if they are flagged by another user or do not comply with our community guidelines.
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Draft Translation: Not for CitationWhat follows is another attempt at a translation of an important text by André Tosel on the Marx/Spinoza relation. It is not a finished, or polished translation, but a rough sketch put forward to help people get a sense of this overlooked articulation of the relation between Marx and Spinoza.For a Systematic Study of the Relation of Marx to Spinoza: Remarks and Hypotheses
André Tosel Published in 2008 in the book Spinoza au XIXe Siècle The question of relation of the thought of Marx to that of Spinoza has up until now been the subject of more of a hermeneutic investigation than a philology. It is easier to construct a history of the different interpretations of Spinoza at the center of different Marxisms then to have determined the precise function of the reference to Spinoza in the work of Marx and to define the use Marx made of the spinozist problematic and the elaboration of his thought. More or less the Marxists that were first developed a relation to Spinoza were an important milestone on the way to developing what could be called a historical and materialist dialectic. The relation begins in the midst of the Second International. The singularity of Spinoza's thought has often been reduced to a stepping stone on the way to "monist" immanentism, which is supposed to be its philosophical structure at least in the reception of two thinkers, as Plekhanov has asserted in some preliminary texts working from some notes of Engels in manuscripts published in the USSR under the title of the Dialectic of Nature. In the dogmatic frame of the struggle between idealism and materialism, Spinoza anticipates materialism by his thesis of the unity of nature and by his doctrine of the equal dignity of the attribute of extension in relation to the attribute of thought. The doctrine of mode and substance causality, coupled with the critique of final causality and the illusions of superstition, signifies at the same time an overcoming of mechanistic thinking and the first form of the dialectic. Rare were those who, like Antonio Labriola, were careful not to oppose two conceptions of the world head-on and maintained a certain distance with polemical opposition, preferring instead to indicate that Marx did for mode of production what Spinoza had done for the world of the passions—a geometry of their production. In the Soviet Union before the Stalinist freeze, this interpretive tension is reproduced: Spinoza becomes the terrain through which the clarification of the dialectic takes place opposing mechanists and anti-mechanists, and original articulation of the thesis of liberty as the comprehension of necessity. These problems have been clarified somewhat. (Zapata, 1983; Seidel, 1984; Tosel, 1995)One would have to wait for the deconstructive enterprise of Louis Althusser for this movement to be reversed. Spinoza is no longer a moment in the teleology which is integrated and surpassed on the way to Marxism-Leninism. His work is the means of theoretical production for reformulating the philosophical and scientific revolution of Marx without recourse to only the Hegelian dialectic. Spinoza is the first to have elaborated a model of structural causality that makes it possible to think the efficacy of the structure as an absent cause over its effects. The theory of knowledge is not one that authorizes absolute knowledge, but it announces this infinite exigency of a break with ideology without the hope of arriving at transparent knowledge. It obliges one to renounce any idea of communism as a state of a final reconciliation in social relations which would be deprived of any contradictions. "We have always been spinozists,' Althusser announces in the Elements of Self-Criticism, and then proceed to the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect from the Hegelian dialectic. It is then only an epistemological obstacle which prevents Marx from realizing the full power of his critique of political economy and to explore the continent of history that he discovered. Spinoza for clarifying Marx himself. Everything has been clarified. (Cotten 1992; Raymond, Moreau, 1997). In terms of historical research, the spinozist studies that have been made after the end of the nineteen sixties in France and Italy have often been made by researchers who have rubbed shoulders with Marxism. We find the same oscillation between a tendency to read Spinoza according to a pre-marxist perspective, in the sense of a dialectic of emancipation, or liberation from a theological political complex and disalienation, even constituent power, and another tendency insisting on the infinity of the struggle against all illusions, even those of total liberation, affirming the unsurpassable dimension of the imagination in the constitution of the conatus and in the production of the power of the multitude. This oscillation is manifest often in the same commentators, often itself a function of the change of the historical conjuncture. However, up until now, there has never been an attempt to study from Marx's works themselves the structural function of the spinozist reference in the constitution of Marxist theory, one which would permit us to better understand the understanding that Marx made of Spinozist work. The interpretations have anyway have developed from a certain exteriority to the letter of Marxists texts. Several years ago, a German researcher, Fred E. Schrader, in a short text dedicated to the thematic of "substance and concept" chez Marx (Substanz und Funktion: zur Marxsrezeption Spinoza's) drew attention to this situation (1984). He rightly noted that it was necessary to distinguish two moments in the research to avoid any merely external confrontation: a) first, obviously, document the explicit and implicit mentions of Spinoza in Marx's text; 1) then, reconstruct the position of the reference to Spinoza in the process of the constitution of the critique of political economy which is the central Marxist work, alongside of the references to "Hegel" which one knows were constitutive in the years of 1857-1858. Only this philological and philosophical work can permit us to renew the state of the question. Schrader's study must be considered. We propose to develop it and comment on it because up until now it has not received the attention that it merits. Before everything else, it is necessary to be precise. The work envisioned must be considerable, it includes taking into account the texts published by Marx, those published posthumously by Engels and by Kautsky, and all of those—collections of notes and thematic notebooks—which make up the incomplete nature of Capital, including Marx's correspondence. The MEGA 2, Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe, still incomplete, has not finished being scrutinized. This work could begin from the hypothesis that we can conceptualize two periods in Marx's work from which it is possible to reassemble occurrences that conceptualize the reference to Spinoza in order to determine their structural function. The first period corresponds to the years of his formation and the interlinking of the critique of politics and the early critique of political economy, it begins with the concept of history underlying the German Ideology and culminates in the Poverty of Philosophy and the Communist Manifesto. The second period begins with the research operating under the title of the critique of political economy beginning in 1857, interrupted provisionally in January of 1859 and beginning again in 1861. The reference to Spinoza is more explicit in the first period where it is a matter of an specifically political practice, articulating a materialism of practice. It is less explicit in the second period, it functions nonetheless as a fundamental operator in the essential theory of the substance of value in capital. The Philosophical Intensifier of Spinoza of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. Destruction of the Theologico-Political Complex and Democratic Radicalism. Marx encounters Spinoza in the beginning of his theoretical and political journey. In 1841 we know from the preface by Alexandre Matheron (Cahiers Spinoza), Marx, after his doctorate, reproduced the extracts he copied from the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (MEGA 2 VI/I Berlin, 1977). He is curiously presented as the author of these texts and moreover they are reorganized in their own order which is not that of the Tractatus itself. The chapters containing the critique of the supernatural, of the miracle, and all of all forms of superstition are brought forward as essential and open on the properly political chapters dedicated to the freedom of thought (XX) and the foundation of the republic (XVI). The Ethics is not ignored but it is not reproduced, Letter XII takes the place of a speculative text and is accompanied with Letter LXXVI to Burgh. Everything takes place as if Marx considered as the most important question to be that of theological politics and is concentrated on the question of human freedom in its radical ethico-political dimension. What is important is that the revolutionary democratic state is realized according to this concept. One could also consider that Spinoza is utilized here as one of the figures that a Doctorate of Philosophy considers along with Aristotle, Kant, Fichte, and Hegel as provocations, of that which puts knowledge in the service of a life liberated from the fear of authorities, which reappropriates humanity's power of thinking and acting confiscated in the service of gods and fetishes. In a certain manner Epicurus is the paradoxically the first of the thinkers who claims that "it is a misfortune to live in necessity, but it is not necessary to live under necessity." This truth finds a new application, after the French Revolution, in the age of a new ethics, where free individuals recognize themselves in a free state. 2. The explicit reference to Spinoza is displaced in the texts of the years 1841-1843—the Kreuznach manuscript dedicated to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, followed by the introduction and the Jewish Question. These constitute the Feuerbachian moment of Marx, at the heart of his theory of the alienation of the human essence. One must not make this critique of politics a simple transition towards the discovery of the alienation of social powers, nor understand it as an end of a politics understood as primarily statist. It is the ethico-political liberation which requires a transformation of social relations and which is a transvaluation or emancipation of social powers. Spinoza is not named, but certain passages from the TTP are repeated almost to the letter: Spinoza figures as the index of a new task , that is lacking in Hegel which is that of thinking beyond the dualism of civil society and the state. The name of this passage is democracy or true democracy. Marx returns to the letter of the Spinozist thesis according to which democracy is not only the name of a constituted political regime, but the essence of politics, the most natural regime, constituting the power of the people. The intensive force of Spinoza is that of democracy not as a mystical act or utopian ecstasy, but as a process of constitution that replaces actual void of the Hegelian state where the people lack themselves, in which the state becomes something separate, still theologico-political. Democracy is the active process by which the people is refigured as the negative instance of any separate political form and gives a political form to its social power. "Democracy is the truth of monarchy, monarchy is not the truth of democracy. Monarchy is necessarily democracy in contradiction with itself, whereas the monarchial moment is no contradiction within democracy. Monarchy cannot, while democracy can be understood in terms of itself In democracy none of the moments obtains a significance other than what befits it. Each is really only a moment of the whole Demos. In monarchy one part determines the character of the whole; the entire constitution must be modified according to the immutable head. Democracy is the generic constitution; monarchy is a species, and indeed a poor one. Democracy is content and form; monarchy should be only form, but it adulterates the content. In monarchy the whole, the people, is subsumed under one of its modes of existence,. the political constitution; in democracy the constitution itself appears only as one determination, and indeed as the self-determination of the people. In monarchy we have the people of the constitution, in democracy the constitution of the people. Democracy is the resolved mystery of all constitutions. Here the constitution not only in itself, according to essence, but according to existence and actuality is returned to its real ground, actual man, the actual people, and established as its own work. The constitution appears as what it is, the free product of men." It is possible to remark that this constituent power of the demos tends to be presented as a sort of causa sui in the order of world of social relations. The naturalist dimension thematized in the Ethics is not posited here with the insistence of humanity as part of nature, with the thematization of the relations between internal and external causality. Necessity seems to have disappeared for an instant. It is notable that this in the same moment that Feuerbach defends Spinoza's naturalism against Hegelian idealism and makes the author of the Ethics the Moses of modern thought who has destroyed theology by his pantheism, while reproaching him, for not having arrived at a radical humanist affirmation, since he maintained an equivocal equivalence between the naturalization of god and the divinization of nature. The Marxist reference is primarily to the ethico-political Spinoza, one of the "intellectual heroes of morality" as he says in a text contemporary with it, "Comments on the Latest Russian Censorship—" along with Kant and Fichte he is one of the heroes that found and defend the principal of moral autonomy. Spinoza makes it possible to undertake a philosophical political of Hegel, the people would be the only ontological instance that constitutes the political constitution, which is to say democracy, of civil society. Spinoza makes it possible to introduce a new dialectic within the incomplete dialectic of The Principles of the Philosophy of Right. This dialectic is simultaneously a critique. The object of this critical dialectic is the self-constitution of political activity in the struggle to overcome the domination of abstract entities erected into speculative abstractions defining the latest avatars of the theological-political complex. Schrader does not say more in the exposition of the reference to Spinoza in this first period. We could take a step beyond his analysis. A unpublished path seems to be presented. We could in fact explore it as Yovel has done (Spinoza and Other Heretics); also the first book of Matheron, Individu et communauté chez Spinoza (1968) examines the double relation of the human conatus to other conatuses and objects that suit them or do not suit them the rudiments of a theory of objectification of the human essence that Marx elaborates in the texts of 1844 where he analyzes the people under the figure of the proletariat subject and object of alienated labor. The reading can shed light on Spinoza, but Marx has for his interlocuters Hegel, Adam Smith, and Feuerbach. Spinoza does not intervene here explicitly. It is preferable to follow the letter of his texts. 3. The text which follows, The Holy Family of 1845, indicates an unexamined reversal of perspective. Far from finding in Spinoza a radical thinker of liberty through the radicalization of the democratic process and developing Feuerbach's theses of the virtues of Spinoza's naturalization, far from continuing the anti-idealist elements of Spinoza, Marx for the first time distances himself from Spinoza placing him on the side of Descartes, of Malebranche, of Leibniz, of abstract rationalist metaphysics, in a paragraph before celebrating the materialists in which he inscribes himself. These are the materialists of the French Enlightenment, La Mettrie, Holbach, Helvétius, which are lauded for having operated outside of metaphysics. These are the authors that Plekhanov reinscribes as a defenders of monistic materialism in the thought of nature and in the theory of history. Certainly as Olivier Bloch in an important contribution has demonstrated ("Materialism, genesis of Marxism, 1981, reprinted in Matières à penser, Vrin, 1997), this chapter of the history of philosophy is a plagiarism by Marx who literally takes it from the Manuel d'histoire de la philosophie moderne by Charles Renouvier (1844). The soviet Diamat has been founded by a French critic… But the fact remains that Marx endorses this reconstruction which prefers Bacon, Hobbes and Locke to Spinoza, lauding them for the empiricism and nominalism: the English thinkers critique metaphysic speculation and open directly the way to materialism. Pierre Bayler in France can be considered the only fellow traveler of British empiricism by his scepticism he dissolves the metaphysics of Spinoza and Leibniz (The Holy Family, 171). The Spinoza criticized here is that of the Ethics understood as a dogmatic treatise of metaphysics which has a "profane content" but it has lost its historical condition. This is no longer the antitheological political Spinoza but the speculative philosopher. Is it necessary to conclude that this is a contradiction on the part of Marx and to forget his previous theses? It is a surprising oversight because that which Marx and Renouvier give credit to Bacon, Hobbes, and Locke can be imputed to Spinoza as well. Everything takes place as if Marx, put off by the metaphysics of the Ethics forgets what he had found in the TTP—and this seems to be a permanent transformation. In fact the contradiction is not only apparent, or, more to the point, it concerns Spinoza himself. Marx does not have as his object an analysis of Spinozism. He uses the latter by breaking it down according to the needs of his task which is at this moment is to study the activity of real man and the possibility of his transformation by bringing together the theoretical humanism of Feuerbach, the French communism and socialism, and the English thinkers who represent this humanism in the domain of practice. "[Metaphysics] will be defeated for forever by materialism which has now been perfected by the work of speculation itself and coincides with humanism. As Feuerbach represented materialism in the theoretical domain, French and English socialism and communism represent materialism in the practical field which now coincides with humanism." (The Holy Family, pg. 168) One can detect in this passage the presence of a schematic of the history of modern philosophy which has echoes of Moses Hess and Ludwig Feuerbach, the two have confronted the problem of the critical comprehension of Hegel and have begun to present a reinterpretation of the grand moments of the history of philosophy after their master. Marx deviates from the interpretation of Hess given in a text which had a particular impact: The Sacred History of Mankind by a Young Disciple of Spinoza (1838). Hess appropriates Spinoza's theory of knowledge and exploits his theory of the imagination to develop a positive sense of social utopia, and overall makes Spinoza the true alternative to Hegel's Christian philosophy. Far from being an acosmism, the theory of substance is the perfect incarnation of the Hebraic idea of the unconditional unity of all. It is paradoxical, the other part, of the interpretation by Renouvier followed by Marx recovers and conceals that of Feuerbach that one can find in the same period in Preliminary Theses for the Reform of Philosophy (1842) and Principles of the Philosophy of the Future (1843). Marx brushes up against these theses of Feuerbach on Spinoza without reproducing them in their entirety. They make Spinoza an important moment in modern philosophy: at the heart of this movement they make this philosophy an important realization of the humanization of God, Spinoza remains still a speculative philosopher who is at once produces the realization and negation of God. Speculative metaphysics realizes with him its ultimate phase which is determined contradictorily as theism and atheism in the form of pantheism. "Spinoza is the originator of speculative philosophy, Schelling its restorer, Hegel its perfecter."(Thesis 102) Pantheism becomes the only consequential theology in that it anticipates the end of theology in atheism. The Spinozist substance transforms all independent beings into predicates, into attributes of a unique and independent being. God is no longer only a thing thought, it is equally an extended thing (Thesis 3). Spinoza does not make the self-activity of self-consciousness the attribute that unifies and transforms substance into subject. This was Hegel's tour de force but he paid for it with an absolute idealism of spirit since once again spirit prevails over extension and concrete man is subject to abstraction separated from reality of self-consciousness. This inscription of Spinoza in metaphysics is all the more paradoxical because Marx finds in empiricism and British materialism the theses that Feuerbach attributes to Spinoza, and Marx accepts a definition in which materialism coincides with communism. As can be seen in this passage from Principles of the Philosophy of the Future Pantheism is theological atheism or theological materialism; it is the negation of theology while itself confined to the standpoint of theology, for it turns matter, the negation of God, into a predicate or an attribute of the Divine Being. But he who turns matter into an attribute of God, declares matter to be a divine being. The realisation of God must in principle presuppose godliness, that is, the truth and essentiality of the real. The deification of the real, of that which exists materially – materialism, empiricism, realism, and humanism – or the negation of theology, is the essence of the modern era. Pantheism is therefore nothing more than the essence of the modern era elevated into the divine essence, into a religio-philosophical principle. Empiricism or realism – meaning thereby the so-called sciences of the real, but in particular the natural science – negates theology, albeit not theoretically but only practically, namely, through the actual deed in so far as the realist makes the negation of God, or at least that which is not God, into the essential business of his life and the essential object of his activity. However, he who devotes his mind and heart exclusively to that which is material and sensuous actually denies the trans-sensuous its reality; for only that which constitutes an object of the real and concrete activity is real, at least for man. "What I don't know doesn't affect me." To say that it is not possible to know anything of the supersensuous is only an excuse. One ceases to know anything about God and divine things only when one does not want to know anything about them. How much did one know about God, about the devils or angels as long as these supersensuous beings were still objects of a real faith? To be interested in something is to have the talent for it. The medieval mystics and scholastics had no talent and aptitude for natural science only because they had no interest in nature. Where the sense for something is not lacking, there also the senses and organs do not lack. If the heart is open to something, the mind will not be closed to it. Thus, the reason why mankind in the modern era lost the organs for the supersensuous world and its secrets is because it also lost the sense for them together with the belief in them; because its essential tendency was anti-Christian and anti-theological; that is, anthropological, cosmic, realistic, and materialistic. [In the context of the present work, the differences between materialism, empiricism, realism, and humanism are, of course, irrelevant.] Spinoza hit the nail on the head with his paradoxical proposition: God is an extended, that is, material being. He found, at least for his time, the true philosophical expression for the materialistic tendency of the modern era; he legitimated and sanctioned it: God himself is a materialist. Spinoza's philosophy was religion; he himself was an amazing man. Unlike so many others, Spinoza's materialism did not stand in contradiction to the notion of a non-material and anti-materialistic God who also quite consistently imposes on man the duty to give himself up only to anti-materialistic, heavenly tendencies and concerns, for God is nothing other than the archetypal and ideal image of man; what God is and how he is, is what man ought to be or wants to be, or at least hopes to be in the future. But only where theory does not belie practice, and practice theory, is there character, truth, and religion. Spinoza is the Moses of modern free-thinkers and materialists. 4. The anti-metaphysical fury of Marx, the blind submission to Renouvier, limits him in developing an interpretation of the Ethics more nuanced and sensitive to the historical contradictions. This situation is even more strange because it is in The Holy Family that Marx interprets materialist philosophers such that they are a Feuerbachian Spinoza. On can find then three theses that Marx distributes to different representatives of materialism and that can also be imputed to Spinoza. --Thesis 1. Nature is a primary reality, it can be explained by itself without recourse to the principle of a creator. Nothing comes from nothing. One can then have recourse to Bacon for who "the primitive forms of matter are essentially living forms, individuals, and it is they that produce specific differences." He follows, as does Hobbes, in adding that "one cannot separate thought from the matter which thinks." Thought cannot be separated from matter capable of thought. --Thesis 2. The human order is inscribed in a specific manner in nature. This specificity does not specify anything extra-worldly of human activity. Hobbes has demonstrated the sensible nature of activity. "Man is subordinate to the same laws that nature. Power and liberty are identical." The Holy Family) This order is known to promote the art of forming ideas, the human species is fundamentally educatable. ---Thesis 3. What is important is to think the constitution of this human order according to radical possibilities of the ways of transforming these necessary conditions of experience of liberty-power. "If man is unfree in the materialist sense, i.e., is free not through the negative power to avoid this or that, but through the positive power to assert his true individuality, crime must not be punished in the individual, but the anti-social source of crime must be destroyed, and each man must be given social scope for the vital manifestation of his being. If man is shaped by his surroundings, his surroundings must be made human. If man is social by nature, he will develop his true nature only in society, and the power of his nature must be measured not by the power of separate individuals but by the power of society." (The Holy Family 176). It is not necessary to give the history of philosophy presented in The Holy Family a structural importance. It acts as a provisionally constructed polemical text where Marx has given the means for his own philosophical conception in broad strokes in order to better understand the intersection of humanism, materialism, and communism. The incongruence of the treatment of Spinoza, reinterpreted to be behind Feuerbach's position, was not overlooked by Marx's comrades in combat since H. Krieg (himself denounces by Marx in a virulent circular as a confused partisan of religious socialism), he wrote in a letter of June 6, 1845 in order to restore Spinoza's battle against metaphysics overlooked by Marx, "you're probably right about what it says in the English Hobbes and Locke [i.e. that they vacillate contradictorily between materialism and theism], the same for Voltaire and his direct partisans; but Holbach is practically Spinozist, and it is with and Diderot that the Enlightenment reaches its summit and becomes revolutionary." (cited by Maximilien Rubel and his edition of the philosophical texts of Marx titled Philosophie) 5. The instrumental and fluctuating character of the reference to Spinoza as a metaphysician is confirmed precisely by The German Ideology. Marx returns in passing to the place of Spinoza in modern philosophy. Spinoza has developed the principle of substantial immanence but he has not integrated the principle with self-consciousness. Hegel would be the unity of Spinoza and Fichte (The German Ideology, 107). But for Marx this representation consigns him to a partial aspect of the Hegelian synthesis. Self-consciousness is at once a hypostasis of the real activity of human beings in the process of their self-production and the "the real consciousness of the social relations in which they appear to exists and to which they appear to be autonomous." In a similar manner substance is "an ideal hypostatized expression of the world as it exists" that is take as the foundation of the world "existing for itself." Marx returns to Feuerbach for clarification of substance and it anthropological resolution. We do not know much more, but the text seems to distinguish the Hegelian critique of substance and its possible materialist significance as "the existing world." We would have expected considerations on the immanence of modes in natura naturans and of their dynamic interdetermination. In any case, Marx refuses the young Hegelain opposition between self-consciousness and substance, and proposes to maintain the category of substance as an inseparable unity of the existing mode and the beings which constitute the world in the play of their relations. Marx's criticism has as its target the mystification of self-consciousness and its anti-substantial phobia. Everything takes place as if the ontological categories of Spinoza up until now rejected as conservative metaphysics have an intensive force irreducible to the critique of the young Hegelians. However, it remains that in this complex itinerary the use value of the reference to Spinoza is concentrated in the theological political constellation and the political constitution of the political force of social force. This reference becomes the presupposition of the materialist conception of history, but it does not intervene in the texture of these concepts. The Spinoza Reference in the Critique of Political Economy, Substance and Concept Returning to Schrader and his propositions for the study of the second moment of the reference to Spinoza, that of the Marxist use of Spinozist concepts from the Ethics in the development of the critique of political economy in the development of Capital. Schrader pays particular attention to the reappearance in the margins of the reference to Spinoza in the period of the creation and exposition of the critique of political economy which is developed from 1851 to 1863. An important letter from Marx to Lassale from May 31, 1858 which was published in an obscure book on Heraclitus, gives to Spinoza's metaphysics the same status that he gave to Hegel in a famous letter to Engels a few months before. Even among philosophers who give a systematic form to the works, as for example Spinoza, the true inner structure of the system is quite unlike the form in which it was consciously presented. The true system is only present in itself. (Marx MEW, 29, Berlin, 1963, 561).
What was of great use to me as regards method of treatment was Hegel's Logic at which I had taken another look by mere accident... If ever the time comes when such work is again possible, I should very much like to write 2 or 3 sheets making accessible to the common reader the rational aspect of the method which Hegel not only discovered but also mystified. (Correspondence Marx-Engels) Marx makes it clear that the elaboration of the critique passes through the utilization of elements of philosophical works which others appear to have completely bypassed. The presence of Hegel is the center of the interpretation of Capital. It would appear certain to this period that Marx no longer takes inspiration from the Feuerbachian critique of abstract speculation. In this case, the Idea separated from its contents generates the latter in a mystified way by legitimizing the crudest aspects, losing the benefit of seizing the real as a contradictory process, as is explained in The Holy Family or The Poverty of Philosophy. Hegel is from now on solicited for his dialectical discoveries: he elaborates the dialectic as an immanent process of thought and his discoveries serve Marx in developing his proper critique. The presence of Hegel in the period up to the publication of the first volume of Capital in 1867, in passing through diverse manuscripts of 1857-1858 (The Grundrisse) and the manuscripts from 1861-1863, has been attested to and demonstrated by works, either to reaffirm the heretical Hegelianism of Marx, (Rosdolsky, Reichelt, Zelenyi, all dedicated to research the logic of Capital, all following one of the most famous injunctions of all times, Lenin in the Notes on Dialectics) or to combat it in order to argue that Marx was Hegelian or anti-Hegelian (Althusser, and Bidet in his famous study, The Making of Marx's Capital). This usage of Hegel consists essentially in using the categories of logic to expose the theoretical structure of the passages which operate from the commodity to value, from money as the measure of value to money as the means of exchange and as the universal means of payment, from money to capital. Schrader proposes the following recovery of the Marxist exposition of Hegelian categories: --Exchange value and the form of value correspond to the pure quantity of Hegel: this value and its measure is realized as money. The Marxist measure of value adopts the Hegelian determinations of the quantitative relations and their measure. --The circulation of commodities and money is described by the concepts of an infinite qualitative and quantitative process. --Finally the passage from money to capital transposes the passage from being to essence. Marx has thus read and reused these conceptual determinations for the diverse functions of commodity, value, money and circulation. And what about Spinoza? According to Schrader, he intervenes to resolve a logical problem that is at this point unresolved, that of the determination of the concept of capital supposed to integrate the logically preceding determinations. In good Hegelianism, Marx has made the movement of capital that of the essence of the concept. When Marx maintains that exchange value is realized in the circulation of other substances, in an indefinite totality, without losing the determination of its form, always remaining money and commodities, he makes capital the totality of substances. However, it thus impossible to maintain the internal connection between capital and labor, and more precisely abstract labor. Spinoza intervenes to make possible another use of the category of substance: that would not have its function to subsume the plurality of all substances, but to determine the quality of the fluent quantity that defines abstract labor. One can see this in the text of Volume One of Capital, revised by Marx in 1873 for the French translation of J. Roy. The category of substance is introduce in the passage from the commodity to its determination as the contradictory unity of use value and exchange value. The exchange of commodities is only possible if the their values are "expressed in terms of something common to them all, of which thing they represent a greater or less quantities." This something is a substance specific to all commodities. "This common "something" cannot be either a geometrical, a chemical, or any other natural property of commodities…[] it is evident that one makes an abstraction from use value when one exchanges, and that the relation of exchange is characterized by this abstraction (Capital). Exchange and the production process which supports it operate this real abstraction from the useful qualities of the objects to be exchanged. This utility, although necessary, does not render possible the exchange of objects of value insofar as they products of labor. Exchange concerns the objects considered as products of labor. If then we leave out of consideration the use value of commodities, they have only one common property left, that of being products of labour. But even the product of labour itself has undergone a change in our hands. If we make abstraction from its use value, we make abstraction at the same time from the material elements and shapes that make the product a use value; we see in it no longer a table, a house, yarn, or any other useful thing. Its existence as a material thing is put out of sight. Neither can it any longer be regarded as the product of the labour of the joiner, the mason, the spinner, or of any other definite kind of productive labour. Along with the useful qualities of the products themselves, we put out of sight both the useful character of the various kinds of labour embodied in them, and the concrete forms of that labour; there is nothing left but what is common to them all; all are reduced to one and the same sort of labour, human labour in the abstract. Capitalism cannot be grasped as a subject enveloping the totality of the process of the development. It is no longer a simple quantity in indefinite expansion. It is thought as the "social substance of as exchange values." This substance can be determined as capital, but it goes beyond this process of determination by constituting a remainder, a "residue" that constantly reappears. "Let us now consider the residue of each of these products; it consists of the same unsubstantial reality in each, a mere congelation of homogeneous human labour, of labour power expended without regard to the mode of its expenditure. All that these things now tell us is, that human labour power has been expended in their production, that human labour is embodied in them. When looked at as crystals of this social substance, common to them all, they are – Values." The concept of Capital is not that of the concept of substance becoming subject., it returns to the concept of social substance defined as abstract labor creator of value, substance of value, and substance which increases value: purely progressive quantity reduced to its infinity which is a true infinity irreducible to the logic of bad infinity, that of capital which nonetheless subsumes it. However it is said that this reconstruction does not rest on an explicit reference to Spinoza. The objection is well founded. Schrader responds that it is Marx who reread Hegel and saw that the formal system of Spinoza could be used against Hegel critique of the concept of substance in the Logic. It is a matter of the problem of determination. Omnis determination negatio, Marx keeps reminding everyone of this. If it is Hegel who validates Spinoza's judgement by demonstrating its insufficiency which for Marx transforms into a sufficient truth to permit him to avoid identifying capital with the Hegelian concept. Capital can increase its reality only by determining this social substance of abstract labor, by negating it. The tendency of capital, its ideal, is the absolute negation of this substance. Marx makes the insufficiency of Spinoza's substance according to Hegel into a virtue. In the Logic the principle according to which determination is negation is recognized as essential. But Spinoza, according to Hegel, remains with determination as limit which is founded on an other being. The mode is in another from which it derives its being but this other is in itself. It is the integral concept of all realities. But its immanence is only apparent. Each mode negates each other, determination of each is the result of the determined negation of all of the others. Far from determining itself in these negations, substance is negated in its absolute indifference. It does not reflect itself in these negations no more than they reflect it. The Spinozist principle does not arrive at absolute negation that it anticipates contradictorily. The substance is posed by an external reflection which compromises the otherwise affirmed subsistence of the determinations which become an effervescent moment (attributes and modes). This can be read in the texts from The Science of Logic dedicated to Spinoza. "Of this proposition that determinateness is negation, the unity of Spinoza's substance — or that there is only one substance — is the necessary consequence. Thought and being or extension, the two attributes, namely, which Spinoza had before him, he had of necessity to posit as one in this unity; for as determinate realities they are negations whose infinity is their unity. According to Spinoza's definition, of which we say more more subsequently, the infinity of anything is its affirmation. He grasped them therefore as attributes, that is, as not having a separate existence, a self-subsistent being of their own, but only as sublated, as moments; or rather, since substance in its own self lacks any determination whatever, they are for him not even moments, and the attributes like the modes are distinctions made by an external intellect. Similarly, the substantiality of individuals cannot persist in the face of that proposition."Hegel, Science of Logic "Since absolute indifference may seem to be the fundamental determination of Spinoza's substance, we may add that this is indeed the case in so far as in both every determination of being, like every further concrete differentiation of thought and extension and so forth, is posited as vanished. If we stop short at the abstraction [of substance] then it is a matter of complete indifference what something looked like in reality before it was swallowed up in this abyss. But when substance is conceived as indifference, it is tied up with the need for determining it and for taking this determination into consideration; it is not to remain Spinoza's substance, the sole determination of which is the negative one that everything is absorbed in it. With Spinoza, the moment of difference — attributes, thought and extension, then the modes too, the affections, and every other determination — is introduced empirically; it is intellect, itself a mode, which is the source of the differentiation." Hegel, Science of Logic 3. It is capital which fails to realize its ideal determinations of essence and which falls back into the residue of the social substance, of the abstract labor which it masks. Capital as a mode of production is ruled by the real abstractions of exchange value which are not comprehended by social agents. Value is a social abstraction that is produced from the base of multiple dispersed evaluations, that the understanding of the economist produces only after the fact, but can be known as a real abstraction operated by society and which is determined as a social substance of abstract time. The determination of the common substance as abstract labor makes it possible to dissipate the mystification produced by the appearance of capital as the self moving essence of value. All of the people, who are modes of this substance, cannot immediately represent to themselves the internal determinations of this substance in which they appear other than as representation of theological-political complex, the same as the agents of capital who cannot represent to themselves the determinations of capital (commodity-value-money-forms of capital) without fetishizing them as autonomous movements of the value form. Theoretical knowledge, the Wissenschaft, does not dissolve this fetishism because the mechanisms of its social reproduction are founded on the constitution of these forms of representation and their real efficacy. Capital cannot arrive at self-identity in terms of an absolute reflection. The determination that Hegel imputes to Spinoza negatively of substance as exterior reflection can better convey the determinations of moments of its critique. This places within the development of initial economic forms this sort of equivalent of the attribute of extension that is human labor, this common social substance comprising the forms of modal representations which capture it, that is to say that the forms of consciousness and their functional relations in the material process of reproduction. It is therefore the relationship between the substances of abstract human labor and mystified or adequate forms of social representations of this substance that Marx finds in in the hidden Spinozian system and that he utilizes in order to escape the limits of Hegel's categories, which tend to sublimate substance into the concept and therefore annul the contradictions of capital in the passage from substance to the essence and the concept. From this point of view, Hegel and Spinoza would both be utilized without reservations by Marx as the complimentary and constitutive means of production of the critique of political economy. Spinoza would thus be primarily critical to the extent that the process of the development of the determination of capital cannot be ruled by the teleological order of being-essence-concept. The theory of the substance of abstract labor interrupts the movement of the idealization of capital from the mimesis of the Hegelian order that has been opposed. Spinoza is a moment of the emendation of the intellect internal to the Marxist critique, not an external instance that would be opposed in the confrontation with exteriority. On an Incomplete Analysis 1. Schrader goes no further. The outline of his work remains open. In particular this analysis Postulates as evidence a substantial theory of abstract labor, one that has come under criticism from multiple non-marxist thinkers (Croce, Pareto, Menger) and also, more recently, by Marxists (Althusser and Bidet). In this case the relation to Spinoza would lose its fecundity. But if one leaves to the side the labor theory of value and its supposed foundational role, on the internal level the analysis still remains allusive, because it would have been necessary to exceed the level of Volume One of Capital in order to demonstrate the decisive character of Spinoza's conceptuality in the Marxist conception. Despite these uncertainties, the perspective opened by Schrader is stimulating in that can necessitate a more rigorous study, tempering the contradictory interpretations by the rigors of philology. 2. Schrader's final remarks seem to us be more provocative. Starting from the idea that Spinoza and Marx begin from two different historical moments—that of manufacturing capital limited by the desire of hoarding and that of capitalism fully developed—the logical and ethico-political thesis of the submission of needs to absolute monetary enrichment, and that therefore the refusal of money as an end in itself, he begins to construct a shocking analogy between the third type of knowledge in Spinoza and the knowledge of the capitalist which exposes its money to circulation in order to multiply it. The determination of particular things sub specie aeternitas, as deepening the knowledge of their essence would symbolize with the effort of capitalists to insert money to measure things in their circulation sub specie capitalis. The reference to Marx attests to the irony of Marx: if the movement of true knowledge is infinite, this infinity cannot be confused with that of monetary accumulation which becomes a bad infinity because the means of accumulation are reversed and perverted to be posited as an end in itself. 3. It is more correct, as Schrader makes apparent, to find a space more effective for the forma mentis common to Marx and Spinoza: the two both diagnosis the pathology of the understanding and that of a form of life proper to a given historical world. Both understand the irreversible character of modern passions and set to understand and eventually cure these pathologies. Spinoza, son of a merchant enriched by international trade and a merchant himself in his youth, does not have contempt for money and the new wealth of nations promoted by capitalist economy. He does not dream of a return to oikos of finite needs in a household setting, he is not an aristoltean who condemns bad infinity of the circulation of merchandise which has as its object money and not the use value of merchandise. He registers the emergence of exchange value, he sees, as Aristotle did, that it is the subordination of true value. Remember the famous text from Ethics IV Appendix, consecrated to the function of money. XXVIII. Now to achieve these things the powers of each man would hardly be sufficient if men did not help one another. But money has provided a convenient instrument for acquiring all these aids. That is why its image usually occupies the mind of the multitude more than anything else. For they can imagine hardly any species of joy without the accompanying idea of money as its cause. XXlX. But this is a vice only in those who seek money neither from need nor on account of necessities, but because they have learned the art of making money and pride themselves on it very much. As for the body, they feed it according to custom, but sparingly, because they believe they lose as much of their goods as they devote to the preservation of their body. Those, however, who know the true use of money, and set bounds to their wealth according to need, live contentedly with little. The realization of money as a concept, the accumulation of money for accumulation, is unrealized. Marx adds that this goal is inaccessible because the character of use value of commodities contradicts the universal sociality of value. The common social substance in so far as it is measured in abstract labor time is measured according to quantitatively determined portions. Money is supposed to represent value in its infinite becoming of an end in itself, but it can only effectively represent a determined part. This contradiction is resolved in the deplacement that money makes in becoming capital, exchange value multiplied in profit. Spinoza's therapeutic of desire also concern the intellect of calculation: the latter is not condemned, it is superior to the intellect of avarice which theorizes by avarita and does not develop the capacity to act and think. This understanding, however, is called upon to better understand the monetary economy by subordinating it to immanent true utility, that which is inscribed in the republic of free citizens. It is only in this sense that the accumulation of wealth under the monetary form can enter into the correct perspective of knowledge of the third kind. Marx in his own way wants to understand the action of human beings without deploring or flattering them. Capital cannot be understood going from substance to the essence of the concept, but it has its basis in substance, the social substance of abstract labor, and can be rethought and regrouped in the forms of economic understanding. Capital also has as its goal a particular therapeutic manner, the health and well-being of a social body that cannot be subsumed under capital but must encompass the increase of the capacities of acting and thinking that capital subordinates to itself. 4. This anti-teleological function of the concept of substance/abstract labor is not maintained by Marx for long in his dialectic. Certainly the function of the subject cannot be attributed to capital, but it is displaced and given a different support, not that of abstract labor with its internal multiplicity and impersonality, but its bearer, that of the working class, the proletariat, the people of the people. The substance of abstract labor becomes subject in the determination that Marx always uses with the English term general intellect. One could thus see a final return of Hegel which interrupts Marx's return to Spinoza. The communism developed by the general intellect is the practical substitute of the Hegelian concept and imposes an anthropological version and anthropocentric teleology that Spinoza would not accept. What does the general intellect represent? It represents the capacity of the proletariat to organize the ensemble of forces defining the collective worker and the cooperation associated with it, under the direction of formation of the factory in the constitution of the unqualified worker, all representing the advance front of the progressive socialization of the social productive forces. Communism is not something that is imposed as a simple moral ideal, it is a product of the real historical process. However, Marx does not escape here the teleologism that he shares with majority of German idealism. The socialization of productive forces—that for Marx leads the process of the self-production of humanity realizing its immanent end and to which he attributes the function of the concept—is not realized at the level of society. It cannot in any way constitute itself as a causa sui. The human world remains a world of world of modal relations and interactions: if the effects of liberation can realize themselves at the level of the individual (by the knowledge of singular things) or at the level of collectivity ( by the democratic constitution of the multitude), these effects would not be made from a mode as a complete cause of itself under all points of view. The capacity of a mode to act and think, human individual or society, can be more or less adequate, but this adequation does not annul the difference that separates the mode which is produced by and in another which it requires to subsist and which is produced in and by itself and becomes a cause of itself. The identity of natura naturata and natura naturans cannot grant a mode the capacity to be cause of itself under all points of view: it permits it to do so under certain points of view and certain conditions which are sufficient for an ethical realization. Communism to the extent that Marx thinks in terms of the becoming concept of the collective worker exceeds the conditions and possibilities of action predicated on modes. To this structural impossibility we can add the consideration of an analytical one: modern society is not immense and singular enterprise under the order of the collective worker, it is, to say the least, a network of antagonistic enterprises in which on the contrary the process of work is fragmented to the point where it loses all material and ideal unity, a fragmentation that has been imposed by the imperative of capitalist society. Exploitation is not only maintained but it is generalized, it is only in compensation that the recomposition of labor process itself as something collective, cooperative, and associated that Marx believes leads the dialectic of the process of capitalist production. Spinozist realism is here irreducible. It does not limited us in taking the measure of the problem posed generally by Marx, it excludes, however, the solution envisioned from speculative teleology and it compels us to attempt to comprehend the modal form in which exploitation is reproduced. How can we form a new theory of the capacity for insurrection of the multitude subordinated to capital while they also resist it. What effects of liberation can still be manifested by producing new subjectivities which are embedded in real productive activities, not prisoners of unproductive ghettos ravaged by self-destructive violence, nor recluse themselves in the powerless rumination of a moral salvation? How can we escape forms of historical impotence? How can we avoid being reduced to the status of spectators of this impotence? Such are the questions posed by Marx and which are posed again today along with Spinoza and his critique of the teleological illusions of the general intellect, questions which have not arrived at the end of their road. But it is historically vain to ask Marx these questions: they are ours and it is up to us to answer them.
L'oggetto di questa tesi è la peculiare comparsa del termine imperator in un numero esiguo, ma comunque significativo di documenti provenienti dal regno di Asturia e León e dalla Britannia del X secolo. Se già di per sé questa sorta di "incongruenza storica" cattura l'attenzione, il fatto che i due fenomeni imperiali siano praticamente contemporanei e si sviluppino in due contesti molto distanti nello spazio, senza un apparente collegamento, evidenzia l'opportunità di uno studio comparativo. Ad una più attenta analisi, non si può fare a meno di notare come, in entrambi gli ambiti, il secolo immediatamente precedente sia stato caratterizzato da un momento particolarmente favorevole per la cultura – el renacimiento asturiano e the alfredian renaissance – reso possibile dall'azione attiva di due monarchi, Alfonso III di Asturia e León (866-910) e Alfred di Wessex (871-899). Nelle corti di questi sovrani vennero redatte delle cronache (le Crónicas Asturianas e la Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) nelle quali si proponeva una chiave di lettura della storia tesa a ricercare una nuova identità per i rispettivi popoli e si sottolineava il ruolo centrale delle rispettive dinastie regnanti. L'obiettivo della tesi è pertanto duplice: da una parte si desidera comprendere in quale modo e in quale senso sia stato utilizzato il termine imperator nella documentazione presa in esame, dall'altra si prova a capire quale peso ebbero le nuove identità etniche, religiose e territoriali, elaborate nelle già citate cronache, all'interno di questi fenomeni imperiali. Per una miglior resa dell'argomentazione si è deciso di dividere la tesi in due blocchi, il primo dedicato alle cronache del IX secolo e il secondo ai documenti in cui compare il titolo imperiale, risalenti al secolo successivo. A sua volta ciascun blocco si divide quindi in due capitoli, all'interno dei quali le tematiche vengono declinate nel caso ispanico e in quello anglosassone. La tesi si apre con la presentazione dei criteri impiegati nella selezione del corpus di "documenti imperiali" (Cap. 1) – nome con cui si definiscono i diplomi al cui interno compare il titolo di imperator – che ammontano ad un totale 38, di cui 20 asturiano-leonesi (privati e pubblici) e 18 anglosassoni (esclusivamente pubblici). A seguire viene fornito il contesto storico (Cap. 2) e lo status quaestionis (Cap. 3). Nel primo capitolo del primo blocco (Cap. 4) vengono trattate le tre cronache prodotte nella corte asturiano-leonese alla fine del IX secolo: conosciute anche come Crónicas Asturianas, sono intitolate rispettivamente Crónica Albeldense, Crónica Profetica e Crónica de Alfonso III. Per rendere il quadro qui esposto il più completo possibile si inizia trattando il patrimonio librario a disposizione degli autori delle cronache. A seguire si delineano i profili delle tre opere, soffermandosi in particolar modo sulla loro paternità e datazione. Si forniscono quindi indicazioni sulla tradizione manoscritta di queste cronache per poi tracciare un percorso tra le fonti. In questa parte si chiariscono concetti come quello di identità (etnica, religiosa e geografica), e si assiste alla comparsa di temi storiografici come quelli della Reconquista e del neogoticismo. Questi elementi costituiscono il punto di partenza per un ragionamento teso a far emergere il background ideologico comune a tutte e tre cronache. Nel corrispettivo capitolo inglese (Cap. 5) si delinea un profilo della produzione letteraria, in particolare storiografica, che ha caratterizzato le ultime due decadi del IX secolo anglosassone. Si inizia inquadrando gli uomini che formarono parte della cosiddetta alfredian reinassance per poi analizzare il ruolo avuto, all'interno di questo momento di rinascita culturale, dalle traduzioni in Old English delle grandi opere storiografiche. Infine, si propone una rilettura dell'unica opera storiografica scritta ex novo – l'Anglo-Saxon Chronicle – dalla quale emerge come fil rouge il concetto di overlordship. Questo è il nome che gli studiosi moderni hanno dato all'autorità che alcuni re anglosassoni poterono esercitare al di sopra degli altri regni dell'isola: si trattava di una supremazia principalmente militare che portava un re, per periodi spesso brevi, ad imporre la propria sovranità – e talvolta dei tributi – a popolazioni diverse dalla propria. Questa idea di sovranità sovrapposta era già presente in Beda e viene recuperata dai cronisti anglosassoni che la ricollegano, in maniera evidente, alla dinastia dei re del Wessex, coniando per quei re che la detennero la parola bretwalda. A conclusione del primo blocco è presente un capitolo di confronto (Cap. 6) che permette di tirare le somme della prima metà della tesi. Si ribadiscono alcuni punti in comune tra i due casi di studio qui definiti "macrocongruenze": sia la Britannia che la Spania erano parte dell'impero romano, ma non di quello carolingio e subirono un'invasione durante l'Alto Medioevo (danesi/norvegesi la prima e islamici la seconda); in entrambi i casi la produzione di cultura scritta durante il IX secolo orbitava attorno alla figura del monarca; le cronache del periodo celebrano la dinastia regnante come elemento cardine della storia "nazionale" e così facendo ne legittimano l'autorità; fra le pagine di queste cronache vengono proposte nuove identità per entrambe le popolazioni. Tuttavia, al di là di queste evidenti somiglianze, si è notato come, all'interno della cronachistica, si sia arrivati a due modi particolari di rappresentare sé stessi, il proprio regno, il proprio popolo e il proprio contesto geografico. Sono queste differenze a suscitare un particolare interesse dal momento che, come è stato chiaro sin dalla sua fase embrionale, in nessun modo lo scopo di questa ricerca è l'omologazione: non si sta cercando di uniformare la storia inglese del IX e X secolo con quella spagnola dello stesso periodo, per quanto esse abbiano sicuramente dei punti in comune. Nel capitolo di confronto si riflette quindi sulle particolari soluzioni autorappresentative soluzioni a cui sono giunti i cronisti asturiani e anglosassoni riguardo a tre punti chiave: il recupero del passato, la concezione territoriale dell'ambiente geografico e la questione identitaria. Non si può infatti trascurare il differente peso che ebbero nei relativi ambiti il ricordo del regno visigoto e quello dell'Eptarchia anglosassone e dunque, rispettivamente, le opere di Isidoro di Siviglia e Beda il Venerabile. Sarebbe inoltre sbagliato non sottolineare le differenze tra le due nuove proposte identitarie: quella inglese su base spiccatamente etnica (Angelcynn) e quella ispanica su base principalmente religiosa (regnum Xristianorum). Non poteva infine mancare un paragrafo dedicato ai differenti rapporti tra i due ambiti studiati e il mondo carolingio contemporaneo. Nel secondo blocco vengono sviscerati i fenomeni imperiali. Il capitolo dedicato all'ambito ispanico (Cap. 7) si apre con una riflessione sulle varie figure di scriptores del regno di León e sul peso avuto dai formulari visigoti nella documentazione altomedievale. Al principio del corrispettivo capitolo inglese (Cap. 8) vengono invece presentati due casi di utilizzo del termine imperiale precedenti il X secolo: quello di sant'Oswald di Northumbria (634-642) nella Vita Sancti Columbae di Adomnano di Iona e quello di Coenwulf di Mercia (796-821) nel documento S153. Seguono due paragrafi dedicati alla documentazione di Edward the Elder (899-924) e Æthelstan (924-939) che mettono in luce un sostanziale sviluppo della titolatura regia, indice di un progressivo ampliamento dell'autorità di questi monarchi. Il centro di entrambi i capitoli del secondo blocco consiste nella dettagliata analisi dei documenti imperiali e nelle riflessioni che da questa scaturiscono. Nel caso spagnolo è possibile affermare con una certa sicurezza che l'uso del titolo imperator ebbe inizio con il figlio, Ordoño II, che lo attribuì al padre per rafforzare la propria posizione di re di León. Tra la morte di Ordoño II (924) e l'ascesa al trono di Ramiro II (931) il titolo cominciò ad essere adoperato anche nella documentazione privata, senza per questo scomparire da quella regia. Non è purtroppo possibile cercare di ricondurre il fenomeno imperiale ispanico alla figura di uno scriptor in particolare – a differenza del caso inglese –; va però fatto presente che alcuni testi risalenti alla seconda metà del secolo differiscono dai documenti di Ordoño II nell'impiego del termine, poiché questo viene usato in riferimento al re vivente, anziché al padre defunto. Il titolo, almeno all'inizio del X secolo, non sembra riflettere un'autorità superiore (per l'appunto imperiale), ma richiama la sua più antica accezione, quella di "generale vittorioso" e costituisce una prerogativa dei sovrani leonesi. Per quanto riguarda il fenomeno imperiale inglese, invece, è possibile individuare un punto di inizio nei famosi alliterative charters, probabilmente redatti da Koenwald di Worcester (928/9- 957), sulla cui paternità si discute lungamente nella tesi. Sembra chiaro che imperator altro non sia che la traduzione latina di quello che gli storici hanno definito overlord. Tramite l'impiego di tale titolo i sovrani anglosassoni hanno voluto rappresentare la loro crescente egemonia sugli altri regni dell'isola, rivendicando così un'autorità più territoriale che etnica. Occorre però far presente che l'uso della terminologia imperiale forma parte di quel più ampio processo di evoluzione della titolatura regia già iniziato con Edward the Elder. Queste riflessioni vengono poi messe in relazione con quelle del primo blocco e sviluppate nelle conclusioni (Cap. 9). Esse vertono su quattro punti fondamentali: l'uso del documento e della lingua latina nei due ambiti; la Britannia e la Spania come universi a sé; il significato di imperator nei due contesti documentari; la concezione territoriale come presupposto teorico e geografico di questo utilizzo. La lettura delle fonti ci permette di affermare che entrambi i contesti rappresentavano per i rispettivi sovrani degli universi idealmente a sé stanti. I sovrani leonesi e anglosassoni ereditarono dai loro predecessori non solo una "missione" politica – di riconquista per i primi e di controllo per i secondi –, ma anche una specifica concezione – diversa per ciascun caso – dell'ambiente geografico in cui si trovavano a operare. La Britannia del re-imperatore anglosassone è la Britannia di Beda, frammentata e divisa, eppure tutto sommato unita. La Spania dei re leonesi è la Spania di Isidoro, unita, omogenea, ma drammaticamente perduta. Tuttavia, per il caso spagnolo e nel periodo qui preso in esame, al titolo non venne mai accostato un riferimento spaziale che rimandasse ad un dominio su tutta la penisola. In quello inglese, invece, tale accostamento ci fu, ma il riferimento geografico alla Britannia non fu un'esclusiva del titolo imperiale. Possiamo quindi dire che, nel caso inglese, il titolo nacque per il bisogno di tradurre in latino un'autorità indiretta ed egemonica (come quella di un rex regum), e perse poi questo significato – e quindi l'uso –, quando la situazione politica del regno si modificò; nel caso spagnolo invece, avvenne un'elaborazione quasi simmetricamente opposta. Il titolo, inizialmente usato nel suo significato più antico di "generale vittorioso" o "signore potente", venne poi reinterpretato quando nell'XI e XII secolo cambiarono gli equilibri politici della penisola. In questo periodo troviamo infatti sovrani come Alfonso VI e Alfonso VII impiegare titolature quali imperator totius Hispaniae. In entrambi i casi, l'imperator venne inteso come sinonimo di rex regum, ma in due momenti diversi: ovvero quando ve ne fu effettivamente bisogno. La tesi è provvista di mappe e della bibliografia, divisa tra fonti e studi. Inoltre si è considerato utile aggiungere in appendice i testi dei documenti imperiali. ; The subject of this thesis is the peculiar presence of the term imperator in a small, but still significant, number of 10th century documents from the reign of Asturia and León and from Britain. The fact that these two "imperial phenomena" coexisted and developed in two very distant contexts, without an apparent connection, makes a comparative study necessary. Also, in both areas the previous century was characterized by a particularly favorable moment for culture - el renacimiento asturiano and the alfredian renaissance - made possible by the action of two monarchs, Alfonso III of Asturia and León (866-910) and Alfred of Wessex (871-899). In these sovereigns' courts, chronicles were drawn up (the Crónicas Asturianas and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle), proposing an interpretation of history which tend to seek a new identity for the respective peoples, highlighting the central role of the respective ruling dynasties. The aim of the thesis is therefore twofold: on the one hand, to understand in what way and in what sense the term imperator was used in the documentation examined; on the other hand, to estimate what weight the new ethnic, religious and territorial identities had within these imperial phenomena. For a better performance of the argument, it was decided to divide the thesis into two parts, the first dedicated to the chronicles of the 9th century and the second to the documents of the following century in which the imperial title appears. In turn, each part is divided into two chapters focused on Hispanic and Anglo-Saxon cases. The thesis opens with the presentation of the criteria used in the selection of the corpus (Ch. 1), which amounts to a total of 38 imperial documents, of which 20 Asturian-Leonese (private and public) and 18 Anglo-Saxon (exclusively public). The historical context (Ch. 2) and the status quaestionis (Ch. 3) are provided below. The first chapter of the first part (Ch. 4) deals with the three chronicles produced in the Asturian-Leonese court at the end of the 9th century. Also known as Crónicas Asturianas. they are respectively entitled Crónica Albeldense, Crónica Profetica and Crónica de Alfonso III. This chapter starts treating the Asturian library, available to the authors of the chronicles, and follows with the description of each chronicle, focusing on their paternity and dating. It then provides information about the manuscript tradition of each chronicle and it finally ends with an overall reading of the sources. Here, concepts such as identity (ethnic, religious and geographic) are clarified, and we observe the origin of historiographic themes such as those of the Reconquista and neo-Gothicism. These elements constitute the starting point for a reflection aimed at bringing out the ideological background common to all three chronicles. In the corresponding English chapter (Ch. 5) is outlined a profile of the literary production, in particular historiographic, which characterized the last two decades of the 9th century in England. We start by framing the men who formed part in the so-called alfredian reinassance and then analyze the role played in this moment of cultural rebirth by the translations in Old English of the great historiographic works. Finally, we propose a rereading of the only historiographic work written ex novo, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, where the concept of overlordship emerges as a common thread. Overlordship is the name that modern scholars have given to the authority that some Anglo-Saxon kings were able to exercise over other kings in the island. It is a predominantly military supremacy which leads a king, for often short periods, to impose his sovereignty - and sometimes tributes - on populations other than his own. This idea of overlapped sovereignty was already present in Beda and is recovered by the Anglo-Saxon chroniclers who relate it, explicity, to the dynasty of the kings of Wessex, coining for those kings who held it the term bretwalda. At the end of the first part there is a comparison chapter (Ch. 6) that draws the conclusions of the first half of the thesis. Some points in common (here called "macrocongruenze") between the two case studies are reiterated: both Britain and Spania formed part of the Roman Empire, but not of the Carolingian Empire and both suffered an invasion during the Early Middle Ages (Danes / Norwegians and Muslims); in both cases the production of written culture, during the 9th century, orbited around the figure of the monarch; the chronicles celebrate the reigning dynasty as the centre of "national" history to legitimize its authority; among the pages of these chronicles new identities are proposed for both populations. However, beyond these obvious similarities, it has been noted that the chronicles adopted two different ways of self-representing themselves, their kingdom, their people and their geographical context. The comparison chapter therefore reflects on three key points: the recovery of the past, the territorial conception of the geographical environment and the identity issue. In fact, we cannot neglect the different importance that the memory of the Visigoth kingdom and of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy (and therefore, respectively, the works of Isidore of Seville and the Venerable Bede) had. It would also be wrong not to underline the differences between the two new identity proposals: the English one had a distinctly ethnic base (Angelcynn), while the Hispanic base was mainly religious base (regnum Xristianorum). The last paragraph if finally dedicated to the different relationships between the two areas studied and the contemporary Carolingian world could not be missing. In the second block imperial phenomena are examined. The chapter dedicated to the Hispanic context (Ch. 7) opens with a reflection on the various figures of scriptores of the kingdom of León and on the weight of Visigoth formulae in the early medieval documentation. At the beginning of the corresponding English chapter (Ch. 8) are presented two cases of a use of the imperial term preceding the 10th century: that of Saint Oswald of Northumbria (634-642) in the Adomnan of Hy's Vita Sancti Columbae of and that of Coenwulf of Mercia in the charter S153. These cases are followed by two paragraphs dedicated to Edward the Elder's and Æthelstan's documentation, which highlight a substantial development of the royal title, pointing out an expansion of the authority of these monarchs. The center of both the chapters of the second block consists in the detailed analysis of the imperial documents and in the reflections that arise from it. In the Spanish case, it is possible to affirm with some certainty that the use of the imperator title began with his son, Ordoño II, who attributed it to his father to strengthen his position as king of León. Between the death of Ordoño II (924) and the ascent to the throne of Ramiro II (931), the title also began to be employed into private documentation, without disappearing in the public one. Unfortunately, it is not possible, as it is in the English case, to trace the Hispanic imperial phenomenon back to a particular scriptor. However, it should be noted that some texts dating from the second half of the century differ from the charters of Ordoño II in the use of the term, adopting it in reference to the living king, rather than the deceased father. The title, at least at the beginning of the tenth century, does not seem to reflect a superior (or imperial) authority, but recalls its most ancient meaning, of "victorious general" and constitutes a prerogative of the Leonese sovereigns. As for the English imperial phenomenon, however, it is possible to identify a starting point in the famous alliterative charters, probably drawn up by Koenwald of Worcester (928/9- 957), whose authorship is largely discussed in the thesis. It seems clear that imperator is nothing but the Latin translation of what historians have called overlord. Through the use of this title, the Anglo-Saxon rulers wanted to represent their growing hegemony over the other kingdoms of the island, thus claiming a more territorial than ethnic authority. However, it should be noted that the use of imperial terminology forms part of the broader process of evolution of the royal title that started with Edward the Elder. These reflections are then related to those of the first part and developed in the conclusions (Ch. 9). They focus on four fundamental points: the use of the documentation and the Latin language in the two areas; Britain and Spania as self-contained universes; the meaning of imperator in the two documentary contexts; the territorial conception as a theoretical and geographical assumption of this use. Reading the sources allows us to affirm that both contexts represented universes ideally self-contained for their respective sovereigns. The Leonese and Anglo-Saxon rulers inherited from their predecessors not only a political "mission" - reconquering for the former and control for the latter -, but also a specific conception - different for each case - of the geographical environment in which they found themselves operate. The Britannia of the Anglo-Saxon king-emperor is Bede's Britannia, fragmented and divided, but spiritually united. The Spania of the Leonese kings is Isidoro's Spania, united, homogeneous, but dramatically lost. However, for the Spanish case in the period examined here, the imperial title was never related to a geographical reference; in the English one, the geographical reference to Britannia existed, but was not exclusive to the imperial title. We can therefore say that, in the English case, the title was born out of the need to translate into Latin an indirect and hegemonic authority (like that of a rex regum), and then lost this meaning - and therefore the use - when the political situation of the kingdom changed. In the Spanish case, conversely, an almost symmetrically opposite processing took place. The title, initially used in its oldest meaning as "victorious general" or "powerful lord", was reinterpreted in the 11th and 12th centuries, when the political balance of the peninsula changed. In this period, we find in fact rulers like Alfonso VI and Alfonso VII employing titles such as imperator totius Hispaniae. In both cases, the emperor was intended as a synonym for rex regum, but in two different moments - always when it was more needed. The thesis is equipped with maps and bibliography, divided between sources and studies. Furthermore, it was considered useful to add a final appendix with the texts of the imperial documents. ; El tema de esta tesis es la aparición peculiar del término imperator en un número pequeño, pero significativo, de documentos del siglo X procedentes de los reinos de Asturias y León y de Inglaterra. Si en sí mismo este tipo de "coincidencia histórica" capta la atención, el hecho de que los dos fenómenos imperiales sean prácticamente contemporáneos y se desarrollen en dos contextos muy distantes en el espacio, sin una conexión aparente, pone de manifiesto la necesidad de un estudio comparativo. Tras una ulterior búsqueda, no pasa desapercibido cómo, en ambas áreas, el siglo inmediatamente anterior se caracterizó por ser un momento particularmente favorable para la cultura – el renacimiento asturiano y the alfredian reinassence –, hecho posible por la acción de dos monarcas, Alfonso III de Asturias y León (866-910) y Alfred de Wessex (871-899). En los entornos de estos soberanos, se elaboraron crónicas (las Crónicas Asturianas y la Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) que proponían una lectura de la historia destinada a buscar una nueva identidad para los respectivos pueblos, subrayando el papel central de las respectivas dinastías gobernantes. El objetivo de la tesis es, por lo tanto, doble: por un lado, se quiere entender de qué manera y en qué sentido se utilizó el término imperator en la documentación examinada y, por otro lado, tratamos de comprender qué peso tenían las nuevas identidades étnicas, religiosas y territoriales, dentro de estos fenómenos imperiales. Para una mejor presentación de los argumentos, se decidió dividir la tesis en dos bloques: el primero dedicado a las crónicas del siglo IX y el segundo a los documentos del siglo siguiente en los que aparece el título imperial. A su vez, cada bloque se divide en dos capítulos donde se desarrollan las temáticas en los casos hispanos y anglosajones. La tesis comienza con la presentación de los criterios utilizados para la selección del corpus de "documentos imperiales" (Capítulo 1) – los diplomas donde aparece el título de imperator –, que asciende a un total de treinta y ocho, veinte de los cuales son asturianos-leoneses (privados y públicos) y dieciocho anglosajones (exclusivamente públicos). El contexto histórico (Capítulo 2) y el status quaestionis (Capítulo 3) se proporcionan a continuación. En el primer capítulo del primer bloque (Capítulo 4) se presentan las tres crónicas producidas en la corte asturiano-leonesa a finales del siglo IX. También conocidas como Crónicas Asturianas, estas son la Crónica Albeldense, la Crónica Profética y la Crónica de Alfonso III. Para conseguir una visión lo más completa posible, comenzamos viendo los libros que los autores de las crónicas tenían a su disposición. A continuación, se analizan las tres obras, con una particular atención a su autoría y datación. Finalmente, proporcionamos indicaciones sobre la tradición manuscrita de estas crónicas y trazamos un camino entre las fuentes. En esta parte se van perfilando cuestiones cruciales, como la identidad (étnica, religiosa y geográfica), y temas historiográficos, como la Reconquista y el neogoticismo. Estos elementos constituyen el punto de partida para un razonamiento destinado a resaltar el trasfondo ideológico común a las tres crónicas. En el capítulo sucesivo (Capítulo 5) se traza un perfil de la producción literaria, en particular historiográfica, que caracterizó las últimas dos décadas del siglo IX anglosajón. Se comienza enmarcando a los hombres que formaron parte del llamado alfredian reinassance y analizando sucesivamente el papel desempeñado por las traducciones en Old English de las grandes obras historiográficas en este momento de renacimiento cultural. Finalmente, proponemos una nueva lectura de la única obra historiográfica escrita desde cero, la Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a partir de la cual el concepto de overlordship emerge como un hilo conductor. Este es el nombre que los eruditos modernos le han dado a la autoridad que algunos reyes anglosajones pudieron ejercer sobre los otros reyes de la isla. Es una supremacía predominantemente militar que lleva a un rey – a menudo por períodos cortos – a imponer su soberanía, y a veces tributos, a poblaciones distintas de la suya. Esta idea de soberanía superpuesta ya estaba presente en Beda y es recuperada por los cronistas anglosajones que la relacionan, evidentemente, con la dinastía de los reyes de Wessex, acuñando para aquellos reyes la palabra bretwalda. Al final del primer bloque hay un capítulo de comparación (Capítulo 6) que permite resumir las conclusiones de la primera mitad de la tesis. Se reiteran algunos puntos en común entre los dos estudios del caso: tanto Britannia como Spania formaron parte del Imperio Romano, pero no del Imperio Carolingio y sufrieron una invasión durante la Alta Edad Media (Daneses / Noruegos e islámicos); en ambos casos, la producción de cultura escrita durante el siglo IX orbitaba alrededor de la figura del monarca. Las crónicas resultantes de este período celebran la dinastía reinante como la piedra angular de la historia "nacional" y al hacerlo legitiman su autoridad; entre las páginas de estas crónicas se proponen nuevas identidades para ambas poblaciones. Sin embargo, más allá de estas similitudes obvias, se ha observado que dentro de las crónicas ha habido dos formas particulares de representación de sí mismos, de su reino, de su gente y de su contexto geográfico. Son estas diferencias las que despiertan un interés particular, ya que, como ha quedado claro desde el principio, no hay absolutamente ningún intento de homologar la historia inglesa de los siglos IX y X con la historia española del mismo período, aunque sin duda tienen puntos en común. Por lo tanto, el capítulo de comparación reflexiona sobre las particulares formas de auto-representación proporcionadas por los cronistas asturianos y anglosajones y se centra en tres puntos clave: la recuperación del pasado, la concepción territorial del entorno geográfico y la cuestión relativa a la identidad. De hecho, no podemos descuidar el peso diferente que tuvo el recuerdo del reino visigodo y el de la Heptarquía anglosajona y, por lo tanto, respectivamente, las obras de Isidoro de Sevilla y de Beda la Venerable. También sería un error no subrayar las diferencias entre las dos nuevas propuestas de identidad: la inglesa, con una base claramente étnica (Angelcynn) y la hispana, con una base principalmente religiosa (regnum Xristianorum). Finalmente, no podía faltar un párrafo dedicado a las diferentes relaciones entre las dos áreas estudiadas y el mundo carolingio contemporáneo. En el segundo bloque se examinan los fenómenos imperiales. El capítulo dedicado al contexto hispano (Capítulo 7) comienza con una reflexión sobre las diversas figuras de los scriptores del reino de León y sobre el peso de las fórmulas visigodas en la documentación altomedieval. Al comienzo del capítulo correspondiente en inglés (Capítulo 8) se presentan dos casos de uso del término imperial anterior al siglo X: el de San Oswald de Northumbria (634-642) en la Vita Sancti Columbae de Adomnano de Iona y el de Coenwulf de Mercia (796-821) en el documento S153. Siguen dos párrafos dedicados a la documentación de Edward the Elder (899-924) y Æthelstan (924-939), donde se destaca un desarrollo sustancial del título real que indica una expansión de la autoridad insular de estos monarcas. El centro de ambos capítulos del segundo bloque consiste en el análisis detallado de los documentos imperiales y en las reflexiones que surgen de esto. En el caso español se puede concluir que, aunque hay rastros de un empleo del título imperial en la documentación de Alfonso III, es posible afirmar con cierta certeza que el uso del título imperator comenzó con su hijo, Ordoño II (914-924), quien lo atribuyó a su padre para fortalecer su posición como rey de León. Entre la muerte de Ordoño II (924) y el ascenso al trono de Ramiro II (931), el título también pasó a la documentación privada, sin desaparecer de la pública. Desafortunadamente, no es posible, como en el caso inglés, tratar de rastrear el fenómeno imperial hispano hasta la figura de un escritor en particular. Sin embargo, debe tenerse en cuenta que algunos textos que datan de la segunda mitad del siglo difieren de los documentos de Ordoño II en el uso del término, ya que se emplea en referencia al rey vivo y no al padre fallecido. El título, al menos a principios del siglo X, no parece reflejar una autoridad superior (precisamente imperial), pero recuerda su significado más antiguo, el de "general victorioso" y constituye una prerrogativa de los soberanos leoneses. En cuanto al fenómeno imperial inglés, por otro lado, es posible identificar un punto de partida en los famosos alliterative charters, probablemente producidos por Koenwald de Worcester (928/9- 957), cuya autoría se discute extensamente en la tesis. Parece que imperator no es más que la traducción latina de lo que los historiadores han llamado overlord. Mediante el uso de este título, los gobernantes anglosajones querían representar su creciente hegemonía sobre los otros reinos de la isla, reclamando así una autoridad más territorial que étnica. Sin embargo, debe tenerse en cuenta que el uso de la terminología imperial forma parte de ese proceso más amplio de evolución del título real que ya comenzó con Edward the Elder. En las conclusiones (Capítulo 9) se relacionan estas reflexiones con las del primer bloque desarrollándolas. Se centran en cuatro puntos fundamentales: el papel del documento y del idioma latino en las dos áreas; Britannia y Spania como universos en sí mismos; el significado de imperator en los dos contextos documentales y, por último, la concepción territorial como una premisa teórica y geográfica de este empleo de la terminología imperial. Tras leer las fuentes podemos afirmar que ambos contextos representaban, a los ojos de sus respectivos soberanos, universos dentro del universo. Los gobernantes leoneses y anglosajones heredaron de sus predecesores no solo una "misión" política – de reconquista para los primeros y de control para los segundos – sino también una concepción específica, diferente para cada caso, del entorno geográfico en el que se encontraban. La Britannia del rey-emperador anglosajón es la Britannia de Beda, fragmentada, dividida y, sin embargo, unida. La Spania de los reyes leoneses es la Spania de Isidoro, unida, homogénea, pero dramáticamente perdida. Sin embargo, para el caso español, en el período examinado aquí, nunca se encuentra el título imperial en relación a una referencia territorial que evoque un dominio sobre toda la península. En el inglés, sin embargo, existía este uso, pero la referencia geográfica a Britannia no era exclusiva del título imperial. Por lo tanto, podemos decir que, en el caso inglés, el título nació de la necesidad de traducir al latín una autoridad indirecta y hegemónica (como la de un rex regum), y luego perdió este significado – y su uso – cuando la situación política del reino cambió. En el caso español, sin embargo, tuvo lugar un procesamiento casi simétricamente opuesto. El título, utilizado inicialmente en su significado más antiguo como "general victorioso" o "señor poderoso", fue reinterpretado más tarde cuando el equilibrio político de la península cambió en los siglos XI y XII. En este período encontramos, de hecho, gobernantes como Alfonso VI y Alfonso VII que emplean títulos como imperator totius Hispaniae. En ambos casos, imperator fue concebido como sinónimo de rex regum, pero en dos momentos diferentes; cuando realmente se necesitaba. La tesis está provista de mapas y bibliografía, dividida entre fuentes y estudios. Además, se consideró útil agregar los textos de los documentos imperiales al apéndice.
The dissertation focuses on multiple (or parallel) proceedings in private international litigation. In international civil disputes it is not unusual that jurisdiction for a particular dispute exists in several countries. In that case, each party may be tempted to start litigation in the forum most favorable to it, for example to take advantage of the forum's more generous recovery rules or the extended possibilities of discovery. Similarly, one party can also choose to initiate proceedings in different countries for the same dispute. The question arises how the legal systems involved will and should deal with such 'multi-fora' disputes. The first question addressed is whether and to what extent the international legal community should strive to prevent and/or eliminate such duplicate proceedings. It is undubitable that multiple proceedings could lead to undesirable consequences, such as conflicting judgments. Concurrent jurisdiction also brings about a waste of (scarce) judicial resources, and unnecessary expenses for the litigants. To prevent altogether parallel proceedings from happening however, seems at best utopic or even dangerous. Even if the international community were to achieve a global agreement on a comprehensive set of jurisdiction rules, one cannot imagine that there rules would designate one and only one court for each particular dispute. The desire to concentrate jurisdiction for all related disputes in the hands of one court is indeed but one of the numerous factors influencing the allocation of jurisdiction in international matters. The dissertation therefore undertakes to study the rules and instruments that can be used to resolve parallel litigation once multiple proceedings have been issued. The study learns that courts can adopt a variety of attitudes when faced with parallel litigation. A legal system can decide to ignore altogether the fact that a foreign court is seised of parallel proceedings, relying on the res judicata effect of the first decision to be rendered. It can also decide to abstain from taking up the case in deference to the foreign proceedings. Finally it can try to put an end to the parallel proceedings, by enjoining a party from further proceeding before the foreign court. After an in-depth analysis of these different policies and of the various rules and instruments in which they are embodied, my conclusion is that the preference should be given to mechanisms whereby one court voluntarily declines jurisdiction in favor of the other. The preference I express for a mechanism of 'international abstention' is however qualified. Whether or not a court declines jurisdiction in favor of a foreign court, will depend inter alia on the confidence it has that justice will be done in the foreign forum. Even with a minimum level of trust and confidence between jurisdictions, the abstention rule can follow different models, from the continental lis alibi pendens rule, which offers almost automatic priority to the court first seised, to the common law doctrine of 'forum non conveniens', where priority goes to the more appropriate forum. Between these two extremes lies a world of nuances. The dissertation therefore attempts to formulate an abstention rule which will reconcile these seemingly opposed visions and explain in which circumstances and under which conditions a court should or can decline jurisdiction in deference to litigation pending before a foreign court. ; Het onderzoek handelt over parallelle procedures in het internationaal rechtsverkeer. Met parallelle procedures - in de Engelse terminologie bekend als multi fora litigation - worden procedures bedoeld die éénzelfde geheel van feiten betreffen en tegelijkertijd - of opeenvolgend - voor twee (of uitzonderlijk meer dan twee) gerechtelijke instanties in verschillende landen gevoerd worden. Spaakgelopen huwelijken tussen echtgenoten van verschillende nationaliteiten vormen vaak de voedingsbodem voor het voeren van parallelle procedures : dikwijls zal een echtgenoot de echtscheiding voor de rechter van de echtelijke verblijfplaats vorderen, terwijl de andere, die naar zijn/haar thuisland teruggekeerd is, daar eveneens gerechtelijke stappen zal ondernemen met het oog op de ontbinding van het huwelijk. Beide echtgenoten zullen vanzelfsprekend de fout in elkaars schoenen schuiven en de echtscheiding ten laste van de partner vorderen. Hierdoor worden twee gerechtelijke instanties gevraagd om zich parallel, en in concurrentie met elkaar, over hetzelfde geschil uit te spreken. Parallelle procedures komen ook in de internationale handel voor, bijv. wanneer een kooptransactie tussen ondernemingen gevestigd in verschillende landen fout loopt : indien de koper beweert dat de geleverde goederen gebrekkig zijn, heeft hij vaak de mogelijkheid om schadevergoeding te vorderen van de rechter van het land waar de levering plaatsvond, terwijl de verkoper anderzijds de rechter van zijn eigen land kan vragen te verklaren dat de goederen conform zijn of nog betaling van de koopprijs eisen. 2 Het is onmogelijk gebleken om precieze statistieke gegevens te vinden over parallelle procedures in het internationaal rechtsverkeer. Aldus kan niet met zekerheid worden gesteld dat dergelijke procedures meer en meer voorkomen – zoals nochtans vaak beweerd wordt. Wel kan worden vastgesteld dat concurrerende procedures géén recent fenomeen zijn. Reeds in 1895 heeft het Institut de Droit International zich over dit probleem gebogen. De eindresolutie van het Instituut bevatte een sterke aanbeveling naar de Staten toe om de exceptie van internationale aanhangigheid te aanvaarden. De belangstelling voor dit fenomeen is sedertdien niet verdwenen, getuige hiervan de keuze van de Internationale Academie voor Rechtsvergelijking om het onderwerp in 1994 te bestuderen. Ook in de schoot van de Haagse Conferentie voor het internationaal privaatrecht heeft het onderwerp de nodige aandacht gekregen, met name in het kader van de lopende onderhandelingen die tot een nieuw Haags Executieverdrag (zouden) moeten leiden. De litispendentieregel en de forum non conveniens-leer – twee instrumenten die een belangrijke rol in de oplossing van parallelle procedures spelen, waarover meer infra – werden tijdens deze onderhandelingen het voorwerp van lange besprekingen, die tot een bijzonder vruchtbaar compromis geleid hebben. 3 Binnen één rechtssysteem kan de pluraliteit van procedures op een vrij eenvoudige manier aangepakt worden. Het Belgisch recht voorziet bijv. in een (gesofistikeerde) litispendentieregeling, waardoor parallelle procedures voor één enkele rechtbank geconcentreerd (kunnen) worden (artt. 29 en 565 Ger.W.). Daarnaast belet de exceptie van gezag van gewijsde (artt. 23 t.e.m. 28 Ger.W.) dat een reeds beslecht geschil opnieuw aan de rechter voorgelegd wordt. Het Belgisch recht bevat tenslotte een opvangbepaling voor de uitzonderlijke hypothese waarin, ondanks de twee reeds aangehaalde rechtsfiguren, onverenigbare uitspraken het licht zouden zien (bijzonder rechtsmiddel van de herroeping van het gewijsde - art. 1133, 3° Ger.W.). Op internationaal vlak ontbreekt vooralsnog een sluitende regeling voor parallelle procedures. De meeste Staten beschikken wel over specifieke regels waarmee hun rechtbanken op conflicterende procedures kunnen reageren; tevens bestaan er op regionaal niveau, en in het bijzonder binnen de Europese Unie, afspraken over het lot van parallelle procedures. De coördinatie tussen deze verschillende regelingen is evenwel zoek. Het onderzoek had precies tot doel de bestaande regels kritisch door te lichten en voorstellen voor verbetering te formuleren. Daarbij werd vooral aandacht besteed aan de formulering van algemene beginselen, die niet louter tot één rechtsstelsel of juridische traditie beperkt zijn. It takes two to tango : conflicterende procedures zijn ex hypothesis niet tot één land beperkt. Bij het uitwerken van mogelijke oplossingen moest derhalve rekening worden gehouden met de bruikbaarheid en de aanvaardbaarheid ervan voor meerdere rechtssystemen. Het doel zelf van het onderzoek, beginselen formuleren die de overtuiging van een groot deel van de internationale gemeenschap kunnen wegdragen, heeft op een bijna natuurlijke manier geleid tot het bestuderen van meerdere rechtssystemen. Het internationaal privaatrecht, dat gericht is op de coördinatie van het door rechtsverscheidenheid geplaagde internationale rechtsverkeer, is trouwens op een natuurlijke wijze aangewezen op rechtsvergelijking als bron van internationale rechtsvorming. Bovendien ben ik snel tot de conclusie gekomen dat het rechtsdenken over internationale parallelle procedures, en in het algemeen over internationaal procesrechtelijke vragen, in België nog steeds te weinig ontwikkeld is.1 4 Uitgangspunt van het onderzoek was dat de pluraliteit van procedures in het internationaal rechtsverkeer niet wenselijk is. Parallelle procedures kunnen immers tot tegenstrijdige uitspraken leiden, bijv. omdat beide rechtbanken op basis van verschillende rechtsregels oordelen, of hetzelfde feitelijke begrip - het 'belang' van het kind - anders benaderen. Onverenigbare beslissingen zijn niet alleen schadelijk voor het ideaalbeeld van de rechtspraak; ze kunnen ook aanleiding geven tot netelige problemen bij de concrete uitvoering van de uitspraken. Parallelle procedures leiden weliswaar niet automatisch tot tegenstrijdige uitspraken, doch dit gevaar kan niet genegeerd worden. Bovendien brengt het voeren van parallelle procedures een niet te verwaarlozen verspilling van tijd en geld voor de procespartijen met zich mee, alsook voor de rechtbanken die ze hiervoor aanspreken – dit terwijl het gerechtelijk apparaat van de meeste landen reeds overbevraagd is en over onvoldoende middelen beschikt om aan de minimale vereisten van een snelle en efficiënte rechtsbehandeling te voldoen. Daarom werd het onderzoek opgevat met als doel een oplossingsmodel voor te stellen waarmee parallelle procedures tot een minimum beperkt kunnen worden. Hiervoor werden twee denksporen onderzocht. In eerste instantie werd de mogelijkheid onderzocht om het ontstaan van dergelijke procedures van meetaf aan te vermijden. Naast dit preventief luik werd ook gewerkt rond de mogelijkheid om een einde te maken aan reeds ontstane conflicterende procedures. 5 Parallelle procedures kunnen alleen verklaard worden doordat het forum voor de uitkomst van het geschil geen neutraal gegeven is. Ook m.b.t. de keuze van de rechter staan de belangen van de procespartijen immers tegenover elkaar.2 Het belang van het forum voor de uitkomst van het geschil is slechts de eerste oorzaak van conflicterende procedures. Parallelle procedures zijn verder slechts mogelijk omdat partijen voor een zelfde of aanverwante geschillen verschillende rechterlijke instanties kunnen aanspreken. Voor een groot aantal grensoverschrijdende geschillen zijn meerdere Staten immers vaak bereid de deuren van hun gerechten tegelijkertijd te openen. Hierbij moet niet alleen aan het eenzijdig karakter van de nationale bevoegdheidsregelingen gedacht worden – in beginsel bepaalt elke Staat eenzijdig onder welke omstandigheden zijn gerechten bevoegd zijn om van een internationaal geschil kennis te nemen, hetgeen betekent dat de hierdoor resulterende bevoegdheidsgronden niet noodzakelijk op elkaar afgestemd zijn. Zelfs wanneer de Staten d.m.v. verdragen over de internationale rechtsmachtsverdeling afspraken maken, verdwijnt de ruimte voor parallelle procedures niet automatisch – getuige hiervan het belangrijke contentieux binnen de Europese gerechtelijke ruimte over conflicterende procedures. Een verder bewijs is het feit dat deze verdragen vaak ook regels bevatten die specifiek toegespitst zijn op parallelle procedures, zoals bijv. een prioriteitsregel ten gunste van de als eerste gevatte rechter of bijzondere weigeringsgronden in geval van conflicterende beslissingen. In eerste instantie werd daarom de mogelijkheid onderzocht om de pluraliteit van bevoegdheidsgronden, die aan de grondslag van parallelle procedures ligt, in te dijken. Hiervoor werd een beroep gedaan op het internationaal recht en de rechten van de mens, en in het bijzonder op het recht op een eerlijk proces. De vraag luidde of deze normen concrete aanknopingspunten bieden waarmee een scheidingslijn getrokken kan worden tussen aanvaardbare en onaanvaardbare aanspraken op rechtsmacht door nationale Staten. Vastgesteld moest worden dat de grenzen van de vrijheid waarover Staten beschikken om hun internationale bevoegdheid af te bakenen, bijzonder vaag zijn en geen concrete houvast bieden – behalve dan om zeer algemene beginselen te distilleren. Daarna werd aandacht besteed aan de mogelijkheid om bevoegdheidsaanspraken te coördineren. Hierbij werd stilgestaan bij het forum connexitatis, als instrument bij uitstek om de verschillende facetten van een geschil voor één rechtbank te brengen. Vastgesteld moest evenwel worden dat deze 'catch all' bevoegdheidsregel noodzakelijkerwijze ook aan bijzondere grenzen onderworpen dient te worden, om het evenwicht tussen de overige bevoegdheidsregel niet te verstoren. Dit verklaart trouwens ook waarom deze techniek, hoewel voor de coördinatie van geschillen zeer bevorderlijk, rechtsvergelijkend geen succes is. Uiteindelijk kan de pluraliteit van fora waarschijnlijk worden verklaard door het feit dat bevoegdheidsregels aan verschillende, soms tegenstrijdige beleidsdoelstellingen dienen te beantwoorden, zoals de wens om enerzijds zwakke partijen te beschermen en anderzijds contractuele afspraken aan te moedigen. Hierdoor is het moeilijk of soms zelfs onmogelijk om op voorhand voor elk geschil slechts één enkele (zgn. natuurlijke) rechter aan te wijzen. Het besluit luidde aldus dat bevoegdheidsregels, hoe geperfectioneerd ook, waarschijnlijk steeds de mogelijkheid zullen bieden om voor een zelfde geschil verscheidene rechters aan te spreken. 6 Naast de theoretische onderbouwing van de internationale rechtsmachtsafbakening werd ook aandacht besteed aan de wilsautonomie van partijen als mogelijke remedie tegen het ontstaan van parallelle procedures. Voorafgaandelijke akkoorden over de bevoegdheid kunnen immers bijdragen tot een vermindering van het aantal gevallen van conflicterende procedures. Vastgesteld werd dat de preventieve werking van bevoegdheidsafspraken, hoewel groot, nooit sluitend is, gelet op de versplintering van de controle op dergelijke afspraken en het ontbreken van een algemeen aanvaard kader voor de wilsautonomie. Daarom werden een aantal denksporen aangereikt met als doel de werking van de wil der partijen te versterken. Belangrijk is het voorstel om de verhouding tussen gederogeerde en prorogeerde fora te herschikken, zodanig dat aan die laatste een (voorlopige of definitieve) monopolie zou worden toegekend om de geldigheid en de werking van het bevoegdheidsakkoord te toetsen. 7 Sluitende afspraken over de bevoegdheidsverdeling zullen het ontstaan van conflicterende procedures niet beletten. Daarom steunt het onderzoek ook in een belangrijke mate op een curatief oplossingsmodel. Hiervoor werd in twee fasen gewerkt. In een eerste fase werden twee technieken bestudeerd, waarvan gebleken is dat ze geen voldoening geven en aldus niet tot model-oplossingen uitgeroepen kunnen worden. Het gaat in de eerste plaats om de mogelijkheid voor een rechtbank om een partij, die een procedure voor een buitenlandse rechter instelt, een verbod op te leggen deze procedure verder te zetten. Met een dergelijk verbod – anti-suit injunction in de Engelse terminologie – kan een rechtbank rechtstreeks – of ten minste via de persoon van de verweerder, eiser voor de buitenlandse rechter - een einde aan de buitenlandse procedure maken. Het rechterlijk verbod is een bijzonder krachtig instrument, dat d.m.v. de contempt of court gesanctioneerd wordt. Het procedureverbod biedt het voordeel dat op de buitenlandse procedure zelf een (al dan niet) beslissend invloed uitgeoefend werd, zonder evenwel enige druk op de buitenlandse rechter rechtstreeks uit te oefenen. De sancties waarmee het overtreden van het verbod gepaard gaan, viseren immers slechts de persoon van de verweerder, eiser in het buitenland. Uit het onderzoek is echter gebleken dat de anti suit injunction bezwaarlijk een algemene oplossing voor conflicterende procedures kan bieden. Dit is in eerste instantie te wijten aan het feit dat de voorwaarden waaronder een dergelijke injunction toegekend wordt, bijzonder restrictief zijn. In wezen zal een Engelse of een Amerikaanse rechter slechts naar de injunction grijpen wanneer hij of zij overtuigd is dat de buitenlandse procedure een misbruik uitmaakt, bijv. doordat de eiser in het buitenland op de tegenpartij druk probeert uit te oefenen, of nog door het instellen van een procedure voor een buitenlandse rechter de erkenning resp. tenuitvoerlegging van de toekomstige Engelse beslissing tracht te dwarsbomen. Hierdoor ontsnapt een groot deel van de parallelle procedures aan deze sanctie. Daarnaast is ook gebleken dat anti suit injunctions vaak meer moeilijkheden creëren dan ze oplossingen bieden. Dit heeft te maken met het agressief karakter van het procedureverbod, dat de indruk kan wekken dat een rechter zich het recht toeëigent om te beslissen over het lot van een voor een buitenlandse rechter ingestelde procedure. Dit wordt de Engelse of Amerikaanse rechter niet in dank genomen. In de praktijk wordt op dergelijke procedureverboden soms hevig gereageerd, en wanneer de buitenlandse rechter zelf het instituut van de injunction kent, is een reactie 'in natura' niet uitgesloten (zgn. anti anti suit injunction), waardoor de kans op een ware juridische guerrilla ontstaat. Tenslotte moet vastgesteld worden dat het gebruik van anti suit injunctions fundamenteel onverzoenbaar is met het vertrouwensidee waarop internationale akkoorden tussen Staten gebaseerd zijn. Zijn de betrokken Staten gebonden door een verdrag, dat hun respectieve bevoegdheden nauwkeurig vastlegt en voor het vrij verkeer van hun beslissingen zorgt, dan kan niet aanvaard worden dat een bepaalde rechter 'politieman' speelt en eenzijdig beslist wanneer een andere zich niet aan de afspraken houdt. In dit verband moet vastgesteld worden dat afspraken tussen Staten hoe langer hoe gebruikelijker worden in het internationaal privaatrechtelijk contentieux - niet alleen binnen Europa, maar ook daarbuiten. Hierdoor verdwijnt elke ruimte voor eenzijdige initiatieven zoals de anti suit injunctions. 8 In plaats van zich (on)rechtstreeks in de buitenlandse procedure te mengen, kan een rechter ook beslissen om een afwachtende houding t.a.v. het conflict tussen procedures te nemen en de oplossing tot een later stadium uit te stellen. De gedachte is dan dat het conflict tussen twee procedures wel opgelost zal worden wanneer een van de twee rechtbanken zich uitspreekt, vermits zijn beslissing in de andere procedure ingeroepen kan worden, op grond van de exceptie van gezag van gewijsde of een equivalent hiervan. Deze methode kenmerkt een deel van de Amerikaanse rechtspraak. Onder invloed van interne precedenten hebben Amerikaanse rechtbanken immers als algemene regel geponeerd dat parallelle procedures getolereerd dienen te worden en slechts een einde zullen nemen wanneer de eerste beslissing in de andere procedure ter staving van een exceptie van gezag van gewijsde ingeroepen wordt. In andere landen wordt de exceptie van gezag van gewijsde eerder als een vervangende oplossing beschouwd, waarvan slechts toepassing gemaakt wordt wanneer andere technieken ontoereikend blijken. De exceptie van gezag van gewijsde biedt geen voldoening bij het oplossen van conflicterende procedures. Door de oplossing tot op het stadium van de erkenning uit te stellen, blijven de twee procedures parallel verlopen, hetgeen een onduldbare verspilling van gerechtelijke krachten en tijd met zich meebrengt. Het risico is ook groot dat beide partijen zullen trachten om 'hun' procedure zo snel mogelijk tot een einde te laten komen ('race to judgment'). Bovendien blijft het gevaar bestaan dat tegenstrijdige uitspraken het licht zien. De werking van de exceptie van gezag van gewijsde is immers aan talrijke voorwaarden onderworpen : naast de weigeringsgronden vormt het procedureel statuut van de exceptie ook een obstakel voor de beslechting van parallelle procedures. Het is aldus niet uitgesloten dat de eerste beslissing in het ander land geen uitwerking krijgt. Dit zal met name het geval zijn wanneer de procedure die tot de eerste beslissing geleid heeft, nà de concurrerende procedure ingeleid is geweest. In vele landen is de schending van de eerdere aanhangigheid van het forum immers een weigeringsgrond. 9 Het procedure-verbod en het gezag van het eerste rechterlijke gewijsde kunnen hoogstens als marginale oplossingen getolereerd worden. Voor de oplossing van procedureconflicten biedt de voorrangsregel meer voldoening. Hiermee wordt bedoeld dat een rechtbank die volgens zijn eigen regels bevoegd is, een geschil uit handen geeft t.v.v. een andere rechtbank zodat slechts één instantie zich over het geschil uitspreekt. Voorrang geven aan de concurrerende rechter is zeker geen evidentie, nu het betekent dat het geschil geheel volgens de buitenlandse normen – ten gronde doch ook voor de procedure - beslecht zal worden. Dit verklaart waarom de voorrangsmethode in de verschillende rechtsstelsels slechts zeer geleidelijk ingang gevonden heeft. Tegenwoordig is deze methode echter tot dé oplossing bij uitstek voor parallelle procedures uitgegroeid : zowel in nationale codificaties als in internationale verdragen wordt de 'hoffelijkheid' terecht als de oplossing voor procedureconflicten naar voren geschoven. Deze methode blijkt het best in staat om het uitgangspunt van de studie te helpen verwezenlijken, en wordt daarom geprivilegieerd. 10 Onthoudingsregels komen in verschillende vormen voor, gaande van een automatische litispendentieregel, gebaseerd op de strikte chronologie van de procedures, tot een zeer gesofistikeerde forum non conveniens-regel waarbij een afweging van zowel privé- als van publieke belangen gemaakt wordt. Bij de analyse werden drie verschillende vormen van de voorrangsregel onderscheiden, die aan talrijke modaliteiten onderworpen kunnen worden. De opdracht bestond er daarom in om een keuze te maken tussen de verschillende vormen. De hoffelijkheid kan in de eerste plaats aan het idee van misbruik van procedure onderworpen worden. In deze eerste, beperkte vorm is er slechts plaats voor onthouding door een rechtbank ten voordele van een buitenlandse procedure wanneer vastgesteld wordt dat het instellen van de forumprocedure een misbruik vormt. Deze beperkte opvatting van de onthouding heeft in de 19de eeuw lange tijd de bovenhand gehad. In Engeland stemt ze overeen met de eerste versie van wat later tot de forum non conveniens-theorie zou uitgroeien. De misbruiktheorie biedt geen voldoening om als grondslag voor de hoffelijkheid te fungeren. Door de onthouding tot die gevallen voor te behouden waar er van misbruik sprake is, blijft een groot deel van de parallelle procedures buiten schoot. In vele gevallen worden conflicterende procedures immers zonder (al te veel) bijbedoelingen ingesteld. Bovendien dwingt de misbruiktheorie de rechter tot een moeilijk onderzoek van de bedoelingen van procespartijen. De grens tussen 'gewone' forum shopping en misbruik kan moeilijk worden getrokken. Het recht van rechtsonderhorigen om toegang tot de rechter te krijgen moet centraal blijven en het misbruik mag slechts uitzonderlijk aanvaard worden. 11 De hoffelijkheid kan ook aan het idee worden aangeknoopt dat een bepaalde rechter beter geplaatst is dan een andere om het geschil te beslechten. Deze idee heeft in de common law landen ingang gevonden onder de vorm van de forum non conveniens leer : een Engelse rechter zal aan een buitenlandse rechter voorrang geven indien het oordeelt dat deze laatste, gelet op de bijzondere omstandigheden van het geval, beter in staat is om van het geschil kennis te nemen. De beslissing om zich te onthouden gebeurt in deze hypothese op basis van een erg ruim geformuleerde algemene regel, na een grondig onderzoek van de bijzondere omstandigheden van het geschil, met als doel na te gaan of het geschil tot de natuurlijke bevoegdheidsfeer van de Engelse rechter thuishoort. De leer van het forum non conveniens werd in Engeland en andere common law landen ook ten dienste gesteld van de beslechting van parallelle procedures. Deze bijzonder gesofistikeerde methode overtuigt echter niet als grondslag voor de hoffelijkheid. Het probleem met het forum non conveniens is dat het om een uitzonderingsclausule gaat : in wezen dient de doctrine om de ongewenste resultaten van ruim geformuleerde bevoegdheidsregels ongedaan te maken. Het forum non conveniens werkt aldus best wanneer er een sterk onevenwicht tussen de twee rechtbanken en hun aanspraken op bevoegdheid bestaat. Wanneer de twee rechtbanken integendeel redelijkerwijze op bevoegdheid aanspraak kunnen maken, is het forum non conveniens niet bij machte om de voorrangsvraag te beslechten. Het begrip van 'natural forum' waarop de doctrine gebaseerd is, kan derhalve niet als onderscheidingscriterium weerhouden worden. 12 Tenslotte werd een derde vorm van hoffelijkheid grondig bestudeerd : in deze vorm, geeft een rechtbank voorrang aan een andere omdat deze laatste als éérste geadieerd werd. Het tijdstip van aanhangigheid fungeert dan als onderscheidingscriterium tussen de twee procedures. Deze benadering van de hoffelijkheid kan in de continentaal-europese landen op een lange traditie steunen. Binnen de Europese gerechtelijke ruimte werd dit criterium zelfs tot de enige oplossing gepromoveerd voor procedureconflicten. De chronologische benadering contrasteert met het forum non conveniens door zijn eenvoud en zijn duidelijkheid. In de meeste gevallen zal zonder al te veel moeilijkheden kunnen worden vastgesteld welke rechter als eerste van het geschil gevat werd. Anderzijds kan het chronologisch criterium zich op het idee van proceseconomie beroepen : de eerste procedure krijgt voorrang, niet louter omwille van een arbitraire keuze, doch wel omdat partijen in de regel in de eerste procedure reeds bepaalde steppen zullen genomen hebben. Deze inspanningen zouden op de helling worden gezet indien aan de tweede procedure systematisch voorrang zou worden gegeven. De chronologische methode is echter niet zonder moeilijkheden. De bepaling van het tijdstip waarop een rechter van een geschil gevat wordt, kan bijzonder moeilijk uitvallen. Bovendien is het chronologische criterium waardeloos wanneer de twee procedures gelijktijdig ingeleid worden. In dit geval verliest het tijdscriterium bovendien een groot deel van zijn rechtvaardiging, nu beide procedures ongeveer even ver gevorderd zullen zijn. Tenslotte kan de chronologische benadering tot ongewenste resultaten leiden, in het bijzonder doordat procespartijen a.h.w. tot het instellen van een procedure aangemoedigd worden ('race to the court'). 13 Daarom wordt de voorkeur voor de chronologische benadering van de internationale hoffelijkheid in het laatste deel sterk genuanceerd. Nuances worden in twee richtingen gezocht. Ten eerste wordt aan de grondslag zelf van de hoffelijkheid gesleuteld. Voorgesteld wordt met name om de chronologische methode af te zwakken, door een uitzondering op de voorrang van de eerste rechter in te voeren. Deze uitzondering zou de eerste gevatte rechter de kans geven om de voorrang die hij geniet, te weigeren indien hij oordeelt dat het geschil manifest beter bij de andere rechter thuishoort. Daarnaast wordt ook aandacht besteed aan de randvoorwaarden van de chronologische regel. Daaronder vallen o.a. het bepalen van het tijdstip van de aanhangigheid en van de grenzen van de identiteit van de geschillen, de mogelijkheid om de chronologische voorrang aan een wederkerigheidsvoorwaarde te onderwerpen of aan een voorwaarde afgeleid uit de erkenning van de toekomstige beslissing. Tenslotte wordt ook onderzocht welke weerslag de exceptie van openbare orde op de internationale hoffelijkheid kan hebben. 14 Conclusie - De studie biedt een (hopelijk) objectieve weergave van de manier waarop een aantal landen parallelle procedures behandelen, en tracht opmerkelijke gelijkenissen en verschillen tussen deze behandelingen aan te tonen. Daarnaast, en niet in mindere mate, werd getracht om een verklarend kader te schetsen, dat kan bijdragen tot een beter begrip voor de verschillende wijzen waarop de betrokken rechtssystemen parallelle procedures behandelen. Tegelijkertijd heeft dit kader de mogelijkheid geboden om de bestaande oplossingen te evalueren en te bekritiseren. De rode draad doorheen deze kritiek was de vaststelling dat de eenzijdigheid en de daarmee samenhangende soevereiniteitsgedachte in het internationaal procesrecht nog altijd de bovenhand hebben op het streven naar harmonieuse, door samenwerking gekenmerkte oplossingen. Het onderzoek naar conflicterende procedures is de aanleiding geweest om een doorsnede van het internationaal procesrecht te maken. Parallelle procedures, die slechts één van de talrijke problemen zijn waarmee het internationaal procesrecht geconfronteerd wordt, vormen een mooie illustratie van het onvoltooid karakter van deze rechtstak. Hoewel het onderzoek ook geleid heeft tot het formuleren van een paar punctuele voorstellen tot verbetering van de thans geldende of aangekondigde regels, ligt het belang ervan vooral in het aanreiken van een aantal bouwstenen waarop de evolutie van het internationaal procesrecht naar meer samenwerking en minder eenzijdigheid kan steunen.
Transcript of an oral history interview with Dr. Carlos F. A. Pinkham, conducted by Jennifer Payne at Norwich University in Northfield, Vermont, on 9 January 2014, as part of the Norwich Voices oral history project of the Sullivan Museum and History Center. Carlos Frank Armory Pinkham graduated from Norwich University in 1965 and later returned to the campus to teach in the College of Math and Sciences. His interview includes many details of his academic career as well as recollections from his military service and family history. ; 1 Carlos Frank Amory Pinkham, NU '65, Oral History Interview January 9, 2014 Interviewed by Jennifer Payne CARL PINKHAM: Vermont. JENNIFER PAYNE: And your (inaudible) [00:00:02] class? CP: Nineteen sixty-five. JP: Ah, did you have a nickname at Norwich? CP: Not really, no. JP: No? The yearbook has you as Pink, but I imagine -- CP: Oh, yeah, Pink is -- Pink is -- if anybody used a nickname it was Pink. Yeah, mm-hmm. JP: Oh, what made you decide to choose Norwich? CP: It was very easy. My father taught here, and so as a poor university professor this is the only place he could afford to send me (laughs) because I got tuition free. JP: What was his name and what did he do? CP: Vernon Curtis David Pinkham. So, again, four names. It's a tradition in our family. JP: What did he teach? CP: He taught economics. JP: So, you came to Norwich pretty much straight out of high school. CP: Yes. JP: And were you interested in science then? CP: I have been interested in biology ever since I was able to think. So, I knew when I came here what I wanted to do. I knew what I wanted to do when I was a kid. JP: Really? CP: Yeah. I wanted to get a doctorate in biology. At the time that I came here I wasn't sure what field in biology. It was really a choice between evolution and marine biology, but I knew that I wanted to do that.2 JP: Wow. So who was your roommate when you got here? CP: Oh, boy, when I got here -- I don't remember. I do know that he never finished and I don't remember his name. JP: Do you remember any of your roommates? CP: Sure, Joe [Koons?] [00:01:50] was my sophomore year roommate and he never finished, and then Don Graves was my roommate in my junior year; he did finish. And Bob Priestly was my roommate in my senior year. JP: No kidding? CP: Yeah. JP: That's great. Now I know you've looked at these questions. Is there anything in particular that you want to focus on or start with? CP: No, not really. Just go ahead and fire away and we'll progress as ever we can. JP: Yes, OK. Your activities when you were here were humongous. You were in everything. You were corporal, master sergeant, correct? Major biology -- you were in the biology club, one, two, three, four president -- president twice; geology club, one, two, three, four; honor tank platoon, three and four; German club one, three, and four Vice President; AUSA three and four; mountain and cold weather; winter carnival committee; regimental ball committee; Epsilon Tau Sigma Vice President. CP: That's the honorary society -- the academic honorary society. JP: And you were in Who's Who, also, I noticed in the yearbook. You were on that page, but the list doesn't stop. You were in the varsity club two, three, four; class honor committee to cadet cadre two, three, four; dean's list one, two, three, four; DMS, which is -- CP: Distinguished military student. JP: Wow. What was your GPA? What was your -- CP: I was second in my class -- JP: Wow! CP: -- and the person that was first in my class, Harry Short, and I competed for that position all four years and his is a sad story because he beat me and legitimately so; he was a very smart person. He went on to med school, got his MD and in my fifth year of graduate school, I found out that he had just been killed in an airplane crash that he was flying himself. So that was probably one of the saddest things that had ever happened and has 3 ever happened in my life -- to lose this very dear friend who was my arch competitor, but still a person that I had a lot of respect for. And really it was -- another aspect of that is that I -- up to that point I kind of thought of those of us who were in this top echelon as being untouchable. In other words, somehow we were just -- our lives were special and therefore they would not be expendable and that woke me up to the fact that in fact that was a very incorrect assumption to proceed with. JP: So what do you remember most about Norwich? CP: Oh, (laughs) there's so many things. I remember, and this is going to go on to one of the other questions, William Countryman, my favorite professor, and it's hard to pick a favorite professor because there were certainly three that I had -- William Countryman, Bert Wagenknecht, who was the botany professor at the time in biology, and of course, the ever traditional and ever present Fred Larson, who played a major role in my interest in geology. So, these are the three people that vied for my preferences as the favorite professors, and Bill -- but Bill because I had him more often than all of the others. I think he won out, but he was a very special professor anyway. He was smart, knew how to teach, and knew how to keep his classroom in stitches, which is something that is very important for a good teacher to have. It's something that I never developed as a teacher, I have to admit. JP: How did he keep you in stitches? CP: Oh, he just had great stories that were always able -- that always fit in to whatever lesson he was talking about and he had a great sense of humor. He was a very wonderful fellow. I ended up working for him, actually, when I came back here for a number of years because he went into private consulting and I worked for him. That's the story we can get into a little bit later. JP: Yeah. Because you went to the military after, but what was the hardest part? It seems like you probably did very well. Were you ever disciplined? CP: No, no. Should I have been? Yes. (laughter) JP: For what? CP: Oh, there were a couple of times I think when -- well, the one time that I remember specifically is when I was the executive officer of the third battalion my senior year. I think I had a soccer game. I think that's what it was, and so I went on the soccer game without thinking about the fact that I had to make sure there was somebody who took my place in formation because the battalion commander I knew was not going to be there. And so one of our class cut ups, who was just -- went on to become a great guy -- probably because he was a class cut-up, took over the battalion at the time and he made a pretty good farce out of it from what I understand, and I was about ready to get some demerits and I think my dad stepped in and prevented that from happening. I don't know, but I know I never got them.4 JP: What did he do? CP: Well -- JP: The farcical -- CP: Oh, what did he do? Oh, he just got up and mocked the protocol, the commands and everything. I don't know. I don't know exactly what happened. I just heard that it was pretty farcical, so -- JP: Norwich cadets cutting up? CP: Right, right. JP: No, say it isn't so! So what was your least favorite? Did you have a least favorite class here? CP: Well, I suppose it had to be English. And the reason for that was that I hated writing; I didn't know how to write. And, again, there's a story about how that can be -- how that turned around, but after I got out of grad school, and so I'll hold that until later. But at the time I hated the writing aspect of English. I didn't mind the reading aspect, the reading of the different literary assignments, that was fine, but, boy, I just did not like writing. JP: OK. What was the most important thing that Norwich taught you? CP: There are several things, but the first thing I learned, I guess, is that nothing ever lasts forever, and that was a lesson I learned in rook school, and it was a lesson that I think a lot of people learned in rook school because if you didn't learn that lesson, you couldn't get through rook school. That's a valuable lesson to learn if you're really being confronted by things that are difficult at the time. It's good to know that it can't last forever. The second lesson, and I think this is one that has probably, Norwich teaches more than anything else, and I have not seen it as something that is grasped by the powers that be as something that they need to promote, and that is that done properly, if you allow it to do it to you, allow Norwich to do this to you, you discover that your limits are way beyond where you thought they were, way beyond spiritually, way beyond physically, way beyond mentally because Norwich has a tendency to push people. It was pushing people when I was a cadet here and it still does push people and in ways that many other universities don't. And one good proof of that happened my sophomore year. In the eighth grade -- I've got to go back a little bit -- in the eighth grade is when we moved to Northfield because dad took the teaching position that year, and in my homeroom I went into the first day, and of course being an eighth grader boy, I was very interested in girls, and I saw silhouetted against the window this very pretty, cute blonde and I said, "Well, that's kind of a neat girl." And so I asked about her and found out that she was going with somebody else and so being an honorable person I decided I probably 5 better not interfere. But a little while later I heard that someone had said that she was interested in me, which of course was all I needed to do. So I approached her and we struck up a relationship that lasted through the sophomore year of high school and she eventually broke off with me about that time -- at that time because she thought I was pretty much so a namby-pamby, which I was, and then -- but I always had a crush for her and the sophomore year, New Year's Eve, I had a date that didn't come through and so on just a whim I called her up because she was a townie as well, obviously, and asked her out to New Year's Eve and she didn't have a date that night, so she accepted. And from that point on we were a couple and she has now been my wife for almost 50 years. JP: Awww, that's so sweet. CP: Yeah, so basically she just liked what she had seen -- the change in me that was -- that Norwich had brought about. JP: What's her name? CP: Christine. JP: Christine. CP: Yeah. JP: Wow, so Norwich helped her fall in love -- CP: That's exactly correct. And she'll admit that, too. I'm not making this up. (laughs) JP: Did the words "I will try" mean anything to you as a student? CP: It means -- it's hard for me to kind of express because I think I always felt that way, and I always was a little bit disappointed with it because I want to do more than try; I want to succeed. And I think that probably of all of the things that Norwich did for me, its motto was not one of the things that I carried with me throughout my career. I mean, I just knew I would try. Maybe that's why Norwich and I were such a good fit, I don't know, but in any event. JP: Well, you were obviously successful from an early time. Do you have any funny stories about life or people at Norwich? CP: (laughs) I don't know whether I want to tell one of them. Well, I guess probably the story I will tell is that the infamous panty raid -- JP: Oh, yes. CP: Roy [Bear?] [00:14:58], Dick Herbert, and myself had heard about this thing happening but we were at my house that night. And we finally decided after the news had come that 6 it was probably interesting enough that we ought to go over and take a look. So we went over after it had been done and interestingly enough we were watching -- after most of it had been done -- just to watch and at this point I have mixed emotions about whether I should have been involved or not, but at any event, one of things we noticed is that the police and the fire -- well, the fire department was using a lot of fire hoses on the few that were left and they were doing most of the damage with their fire hose that was finally attributed to Norwich cadets. They were breaking windows with the water and everything. And so we were standing around, and of course we looked like Norwich cadets because we had short hair, and one of the policemen came up to us and said, "Are you guys from Norwich," and I said, "No, not me, I'm from Northfield. I'm a townie," and that wasn't a lie because I was, but at that point in time we recognized maybe we better get out of there. So we got out and came back to my house and eventually got back into school. You know, they were checking everybody coming back in at that point in time and we had not been involved in the raid and so we -- this is our junior year -- so we were let back in, and again, I think it was partly because my dad vouched for me and said yes, they were at home at our house, and that was true. So, that's one of the episodes that I think is kind of humorous. JP: So you were questioned along with everybody else that had gone? CP: Yeah, sure, sure. JP: Interesting. Were there other panty raids? I had heard there might have been annual -- CP: I wasn't aware of it and certainly nothing as big as that. I know that one made national headlines and (laughs) -- JP: Yes, yes it did. What did you do after graduation? CP: Well, I was commissioned in armor, but because of my grades and because of other good letters of recommendation from my profs and performances on the GREs, et cetera, I was allowed to defer to active duty to go to grad school. And this is during Viet Nam so I was very happy with that. I wasn't going to argue that and so I had applied to the three -- by then I knew that I wanted to do evolution -- I had applied to the three universities in the nation at the time that were giving doctorates in evolution -- Harvard, University of Illinois and UCLA. Was accepted to all three with scholarships and decided I needed to get far away but not too far away. So I chose the middle of the two, University of Illinois, to go to grad school, and went to grad school there and had a great experience and learned and awful lot. And had -- in those days you had four years of total deferment to active duty to get your doctorate -- and four years to get a doctorate in biology is really difficult if not, you know, you have to really be smart, even smarter than -- I shouldn't say even smarter -- I worked hard, I wasn't smart, I just worked hard -- and smarter than me. So at the end of the fourth year I still hadn't had my degree, but what I did -- there were two things that happened. I found out that if I had a doctorate I could switch from armor to medical service corp., which is what I had originally put in for anyway, and so there was caveat on that, though. I had a two-year obligation, active duty obligation, in 7 armor. If I switched my branch then I would have to have another two years, in other words, a total of four year obligation. So this is where I think my Norwich training came in really, really helpful in about two tenths of a second I had the decision. You know, two years of which one would have to be in Viet Nam in a tank versus four years of which I would be applying what I had learned state-side in a research institution. It was a pretty easy decision to make and so I accepted the caveated offer to go to medical service corp. The other thing I did is we got in that fourth year you had an option on when to be put on active duty, and so I took the furthest one away from when I applied, which actually gave me almost five years of graduate study in grad school, and I cut it so close that on Wednesday night I defended my thesis, Thursday morning I boarded the plane for Fort Sam, officers basic course. JP: Wow! CP: Yeah, it was close. JP: Wow. CP: So, that was a very fortunate thing for me because getting into medical service corp. was fundamental to a lot of what happened to me from that point on. JP: In what way? CP: Well, because after officer's basic which is, you know, a three month assignment, I was assigned to Edgewood Arsenal and to the biomedical research lab there and my first assignment was to do research on a nerve agent poisoning -- the mechanism of a nerve agent poisoning, organophosphorus, the nerve agents, and to do that I had to kill cats. They were anesthetized and then we exposed them to nerve agents and monitored what was happening to them with some fairly sophisticated equipment and deduced from the responses what was going on. Well, you know, I'm not opposed to research of that sort but it was not something that I was really comfortable with and it turned out that the guy across the hall from me had just -- we were living in apartment houses at the time and so this is for married couples -- and so the guy across the hall from me had just gotten out of being the executive officer for the human experiment platoon. These were humans that had volunteered to undergo various kinds of experiments, most of which were with psychedelic kind of drugs. So it was kind of a difficult job to be in charge of them. And because he still had some active duty time, he was offered a position with the newly formed ecological research branch. Now his specialty was aquatics. He was a fisheries guy, marine and fresh water fisheries, and so he kind of fit right in and I'll explain why that was newly formed here in a moment. But he told me about this, and he said that they were looking for a person who had specialty in land and my, in addition to a doctorate in evolution, one of the -- the major area in evolution that I had worked on was mammals, mammalogy, and so I had a lot of experience with mammals as well as with reptiles and amphibians because one of my major mentors was Doctor Hobart Smith, who was probably the world's leading herpetologist at the time. So I had a lot of good experience that would put me into that position. So the next day I went over and talked to the newly 8 assigned director of the ecological research branch, Scott Ward, and told him what I was interested in and what my qualifications were and the next day I was reassigned to his branch. He had a lot of pull at the time. Why did he have a lot of pull? Here's why. He was a very sophisticated politician for one thing, but what he was heading up was a really dynamic and important endeavor at the time. Basically, Nixon, who has been maligned for a number of different -- well, for one thing, and that's Watergate, but really did an awful lot of good stuff during his presidency. National Environmental Policy Act, Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, diplomacy with China, et cetera. The list goes on. One of the things he did was he signed an executive order that unilaterally ended the open air testing of offensive, active -- of offensive and defensive biological and chemical weapons, and restricted any further research to just defensive research on biological and chemical weapons in labs. So, there were two places -- a number of places around the world where this research had been going on, two in the United States. One was in Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, the southern end of the Great Salt Lake desert, out in the middle of nowhere, which you would expect to be a place where this would be conducted. And there's some stories about that that I'll get into in the future, and then the other one was 17 miles northeast of Baltimore on Carroll Island, which is part of Edgewood Arsenal, an island -- a peninsula that jutted into the Chesapeake Bay. It was called an island because it was separated from the mainland by a channel of water, cooling channel from a power plant that was right there. And because they had stopped the open air testing the question was logically raised, was there any impact of the testing on the environment? Now Carroll Island it turned out -- well, both Dugway Proving Ground and Carroll Island formed these two groups to research this. On Carroll Island it turned out there were two parts to it. There was one part next to the mainland, and then there was an intervening large saltwater marsh, and then another part where all of the jutting out into the bay where all the testing had been done. And the two parts were fairly comparable to one another, so we had a very good control and a very good experimental area to do our studies on. So we started the study of that and that was the foundation of the Army's environmental ecological research effort, and so I was in on the ground floor of that, and that played a major role in my military career because -- well, one of the things that happened while we were there is as a result of the National Environmental Policy Act, we started getting into environmental assessments and environmental impact statements, one of the first groups to start doing that. And so, again, the procedures we developed and techniques and everything were eventually implemented -- became implemented into a lot of the Army approaches and regulations. To get a little ahead of myself I think it's important at this point to explain what happened at the end of the four years. I'm going to come back to Edgewood. At the end of the four years I was -- obviously my obligation, active duty obligation, was over and I thought, OK, this is it, I'm going to get out of the service. And I wanted to come back to Norwich and teach, quite honestly, and so I applied here but there wasn't a position available, and I really didn't know much about applying anywhere else, and I tried but I wasn't successful. But I had been offered a job at the sister organization out at Dugway Proving Ground as a civilian working, doing the same thing, extending what I had done at Edgewood. And I loved the job, I loved the people that I was working with both at Dugway, and by then we had formed this extended team where Dugway and Edgewood worked together, but I hated the environment of Baltimore, just didn't like the humidity in the summer, as a Vermonter I 9 couldn't handle it. So we took the job out at Dugway, and again, I'm going to come back to Edgewood, but I've got to finish this entry into Dugway because it's kind of a fascinating story. So, I had been out there many times and new I would love it, and so in order to make the final decision I had to take my wife and my two children out, then I had two boys, I now have three. So we left Baltimore when it was about 98 degrees and 150 percent humidity, not really, I mean, the air was just soaking. And we got on the plane and flew out to Utah and about 30 minutes out of Salt Lake City the pilot came on board and said the temperature in Salt Lake City is 110 degrees at which point my wife turned to me, she said, "As soon as we get off the plane we're turning around," because she was thinking 110 degrees with all of that humidity that we had just left behind, and I knew better. So I let her get off the plane and she looked around and she felt the air and she says, "I love it!" So I knew that we were sold on going out to Dugway. So, returning back to Edgewood, because we had these two wonderful control and experimental areas, we had a lot of wonderful data comparing two different community structures, those of let's say a species of trees on both places, fishes on both places, snakes on both places, amphibians on both places, mammals on both places, et cetera. And we had these wonderful databases. But at the time there was no way to really compare them because all of the mechanisms that were out there at the time, all of the methods that were out there at the time, were focusing on diversity, on measures of diversity, and we weren't interested in measures of diversity. We were interested in how alike are these two communities or how different are these two communities. So, the guy across the hall who introduced me to Scott, his name is Gareth Pearson. He eventually went on to become one of the directors in one of the labs of EPA, very successful career. JP: EPA is? CP: The Environmental Protection Agency. So Gareth and I sat down one night with this problem and a bunch of paper with some of our data on it spread out on the floor in his apartment and a six-pack of beer. And by the end of the six-pack, we had solved the problem, and we had developed an index that would compare these two communities in a very -- I've got to say clever way -- and in a very effective way and started applying that our data and then of course published it and this index, the Pinkham Pearson Index, is now regarded as the primary way to compare community structure. So we were very fortunate to be at the right place at the right time. I'm sure if we hadn't come up with it, somebody else would have. It's one of those things that's fairly obvious once you look at it, but, you know, we were there at the right time. JP: That's wonderful. I was hoping you would talk about that. CP: So we had a lot of fun. We did some great things. Great in the sense of they were fun things and wonderful to do. We started the -- we were the -- we, Edgewood, actually, the team that I was part of at Edgewood, really established the concept of the installation environmental impact assessment or statement where basically you go in to an installation, an Army installation, and you identify all of the resources on and around that installation and all of the activities on that installation that could impact these resources, and identified ways to mitigate the impact so that the installation could continue its 10 mission. And eventually out at Dugway as we continued the effort, because by the time I was at Dugway it was such a large effort that we needed to have both camps involved in this process. Another colleague of mine that I met at Dugway, David Gauthier, whom I also kind of took on as a person that I would work with the rest of my life, David and I were the co-editors of a seven volume -- became the co-editors of a seven volume treatise on doing ecological surveys at military installations, and one of the volumes was doing all of the procedures involved in doing an environmental assessment of an installation. All of the different topics you've got to cover and all of the ways you can cover them, it was a fairly extensive document. And still is -- its descendants are still being used in the environmental program in the military. So, I really enjoyed that part of my life. We got to go and I got to see lots of different parts of the United States. Never got away from the United States, but some of the really interesting installations where testing was going on of one form or another, whether it was vehicle testing or artillery testing or whatever, we got to go to because they were part of testing evaluation command at the time, which Edgewood Arsenal was part of, and that's where most of the environmental documentation was happening. One of the things -- and again, it's a matter of being at the right place at the right time, very quickly or very soon after we started our effort at Edgewood there was an operation at Edgewood that had been going on for years and their procedures, their environmental procedures, were just terrible, and we told them that they were just awful and that they would have to do something about them and they snubbed their noses at us. About six months later EPA caught up with them, newly formed EPA caught up with them, and the directors, whom we had said you better do something about this, ended up going to jail. JP: Really? CP: Yeah. So that all of a sudden gave us the notoriety or the fame that we needed to have to get everybody's attention and from that point on we got to do some pretty neat stuff. And going from coast to coast and seeing things, you know, I saw my first rattlesnake, I saw my first copperhead and things of this sort which were fun. In the wild, you know, turning things over and finding them there, which is part of our technique, and developed further techniques for looking at -- finding whether or not a military operation had impacts. I think one of the fun ones was Redstone Arsenal where a government operated -- a government owned, civilian operated (GOCO) facility had been operating during the Second World War manufacturing DDT. Every time they had a bad batch they just threw it out the back door. So although the facility had been destroyed, long gone, this batch was still there. Now what happened is that Redstone Arsenal called us there because they knew that there was this stream that was entering a bayou or a backwater of the Mississippi that didn't have any life in it and they wanted us to find out what was going on. So what we did is we used a technique which, I don't know whether we developed or had been used by others, but in any event, you go up and every time you find a branch in the river, or in the stream, you sample both sides and when you do that, you know, one, every time we went there, one branch was fine, the other branch was dead. And we kept following it back up until we found this huge area, a two or three football field size area of old DDT, and it became one of the nation's hazardous waste facility -- sites -- that had to be cleaned up. So it was, you know, it wasn't anything that the people there were 11 trying to cover up or had been responsible for, it had been done a long time ago and we were able to find that. Another program that I think was a lot of fun is that my boss, Scott Ward, was a falconer and this was in a time when falconers were -- he was a falconer when it was legit to be, OK to be, a falconer. But then the Endangered Species Act came along, which again, was another Nixon thing, and that prevented falconers from being -- you know, without having a license. You had to be licensed to be a falconer and had to have a legitimate reason. Well, he was a veterinarian and so he got his license. He was a wheeler-dealer and he made sure that he got his license and then he started working with peregrine falcons and their recovery. As you may know, about that time DDT, again, here's this DDT rearing its ugly head, had been bioaccumulating in predator species, the peregrine falcon being one of them, so that to a level that the eggs were thinning, the shells were thinning and the parents were breaking them in the nest as they were trying to sit on them. So, there was a real decline in peregrine falcons. In fact, the peregrine falcon south of the Arctic had gone extinct. So, Scott was involved in studying their recovery and to do so he became the coordinator of the North American peregrine falcon banding program, and he would go to a number of different places, Greenland, Hudson Bay, I think Alaska, and band fledglings in the nest, and then we would go to Assateague Island in the fall and in the spring and trap peregrine falcons to see if any of them had been banded to find out where they were coming from because at that point in time we really didn't know very much of any -- the peregrine falcons that are now south of the Arctic are all derived from peregrine falcons that were in the Arctic. It's a different subspecies but basically it was the only opportunity is to take these fledglings and bring them back here, and that was a Cornell program, did a wonderful job, and breed them in a captive breeding program and then reintroduce them to the wild. But knowing we just didn't have any information on what their flight pathways were, where their migration routes were, and so Scott was instrumental in coming up with that information. And so I was able to go with him and, you know, this is a military assignment. (laughs) JP: It's a great job. CP: Somebody had to do it, right. And spend a week or two weeks in the fall and in the spring on Assateague Island trapping peregrine falcons and birding and all sorts of stuff. So that was a lot of fun. We got to know a lot of interesting people because Scott made his way through the people who had influence at the time. I think one of the more interesting things is that, for example, we would often capture peregrine falcons with -- peregrine falcons -- he would also do it on Carroll Island -- capture either hawks or accipiters or falcons and they would have feathers in their beak or we would find kills in the woods, and part of our study was, you know, what had they killed? And so he would take these feathers and sometimes just one or two feathers they pulled out of the corner of their bill and send them off to a gal at the Smithsonian Institution, I can't remember -- I think her name was Roxy or something -- and she would identify it just from a single feather what the bird was. So that was part of our ability to get some additional data. What are they preying on when they're at different places in their migratory pathway, et cetera. So, that was another, you know, it was just a lot of fun things that we got to do and we would seine for fish. 12 JP: And we're back. CP: OK, so I'm trying to think of -- in the back of my mind there's one more story I want to tell and I can't come up with it right now. So those were fun days. We really had a great time doing all that sort of stuff. Oh, I know what it was. Another story was with Chandler Robins. Now, Chandler Robins is, I think he's still alive, one of the greatest ornithologists in the country. He wrote a book on birds of North America and Scott knew him well, and so I remember one night we had been out doing some night surveys and he had a recording of a bird that he couldn't -- all he had was the song and so we got on the phone the next morning and called up Chan and said, "Chan, I want to play something for you. Can you tell me what it is?" So we just played it for him over the phone. Chan says, "OK, so let me see. It was probably about nine o'clock at night, it was raining slightly and the sound is coming from the middle of a marsh, am I right?" And Scott says, "Yes," and so he says, "Well, it's a Black Rail," which fits all of those things. JP: Wow! CP: So this guy really knew his stuff. (laughs) That's the kind of stuff that we were exposed to for all of this. It was a lot of fun. JP: Did you photograph it? CP: Oh, no, no because it was at night. But I photographed a lot of birds. In fact, because I spent so much time going around doing this sort of stuff, my life list of North America north of the Mexican border is about 420 birds, 420 species. That's not anywhere nearly as many as it could be if I were a serious birder, but just because I have travelled so much, it's a lot larger than a lot of birders do have. JP: That's a lot of birds. CP: It is. JP: And you were outside and making the world a safer place. CP: Hopefully so. JP: That's pretty amazing. CP: Yeah. JP: Wow. I'm always amazed by you guys. CP: Yeah, it's fun what we get to do.13 JP: What about the Oxford Round Table? I know I'm jumping ahead, but I want to make sure we get that. CP: All right, so the reason -- I want to also hit my military career because I think that's important and, oh, we're doing fine. So let's hit the military career and then we'll come back to the Oxford Round Table. JP: Absolutely. CP: After I got out of Edgewood, I told you I was thinking about getting out of the service, my brother, my oldest brother, who at the time was a colonel in the Reserves, said, "No, you've got to stay in," and he explained to me why I needed to stay in. He said, "The benefits that you would accrue for retirement and for Space-A travel and medical coverage, et cetera, are just fantastic. You've got to stay in." So I did, I decided to stay in. And to get to the end of that story before I come back I stayed in for 47 years or whatever it was, I mean, 37 years. I retired at 60 from the Reserves and when I retired it was in '06 and I was the senior, maybe we should say old man of preventive medicine science officers and as such I was the mentor for about 700 preventive medicine science officers in the Reserves, the National Guard around the world. And from Norwich, this is when I was doing this, I sent out a weekly newsletter. Every Saturday I would come down early in the morning and I would work until one or two o'clock in the afternoon putting together this newsletter of all of the events that were important to preventive medicine science officers that had happened in that week and sent it out to them. And it got to be such a big thing that many of the active duty preventive medicine science officers were subscribing to it as well. JP: What was it called? CP: The Preventive Medicine's -- Reserves Component Preventive Medicine Science Officers' Newsletter, very imaginative title for it. JP: But very useful. CP: But it was very useful. JP: Extremely useful. CP: Yeah, it was during the Iraq war and during Pakistan as well. The beginning parts of -- I mean, Afghanistan. JP: So what kinds of things would be in it, for example? CP: Oh, there would be health reports from around the world, alerts about outbreaks of different things. There would be announcements of upcoming conferences that -- one of the things that preventive medicine science officers -- most preventive medicine science officers are in the Reserves are not assigned to a unit. They are what is known as 14 individual mobilization augmentees. They're on their own basically and they have to get their 50 points a year on their own. Because all of us have advanced degrees, we don't fit into most units and if there is a unit, it's probably across the country that we could fit into, and some of the people fit into those units, they just had to travel and they did their two weeks of active duty. And so it was very important to be able to get these people, all of these people for retention purposes if nothing else, to recognize all of the opportunities they had to get points and part of my role in this was to provide these opportunities -- show them the opportunities that they had and make sure they were taking advantage of them. JP: That's terrific. CP: So that was another side of it. And unfortunately, I think after I left I found a successor and I think he, after a year or so, found that the job was so demanding that he had to back out and I don't think anybody else took over. But it happened during a time when it was really important too because we were so widespread and some us of involved in conflicts around the world that it was important for us to have that at that particular time. I'm sure it would still be valuable today, but I don't think anybody has followed up on it. But then that's another thing where Norwich guys have a tendency to see a need and fill it. Another thing, which also is a Norwich story, I think, is to get my points, one of the ways you can get points is to be a liaison to West Point, and what that means is basically that you are helping to guide the applicants for West Point from Vermont or from whatever state you're in, through the process so that they either are successful or not. Well, it turns out in Vermont I think we have a higher percentage of people that get in for reasons which are not worth going into here than most states. But you still, one out of ten, one out of 20 would make it. So, one of the advantages of that is it gave me an opportunity to direct the nine or 18 failures to Norwich which many of them did come here as a result. So that was a good recruiting opportunity as well. And Norwich -- West Point preferred to have of all of those senior military academies, they preferred to have either West Point or Norwich personnel fill those positions because they knew that they would do a good job and a serious job. So, let's see, what else is here? All right, we can go on to the Oxford thing. So, I, as I've stated earlier, had always been interested in evolution and ever since I was able to remember, I recognized that the beauty around me that I was fascinated with in nature, the butterflies, the flowers, the trees, the frogs, whatever I was attracted to at the time, was just not by chance but brought about by a creator. Now I grew up in a family with a Christian influence and background, but I myself, I personally never understood who Jesus Christ was and his importance to me, and just recently I kind of figured out a good way to explain that. As a kid I had understood that Christmas was all about me. And Easter somehow had something to do with this person called Jesus Christ but I wasn't sure what it was. And quite honestly I really went through childhood, school, here, graduate school, and well into my military career until early into Dugway assuming that. I now know that I got it totally backwards and in fact Christmas is all about Jesus and Easter is all about me and you and all of us, the rest of us who need to have the salvation of Jesus. Now the story, I mean, I'm not going to go there because I'm not sure that's appropriate for this but I just want to set the stage for this. So I had always felt that this creator must be really awesome, but because early on, and I don't know why, 15 I understood because I'd been reading well enough, you know, extensively enough, I understood the evidence for evolution and the fact that evolution was a mechanism. So, I began to become convinced that that God used evolution, we'll call this creator God, used evolution to bring about us, to bring about the universe, to bring about everything, and so I spent a lot of my time, in fact, I thought when I get out of grad school that that's what I would focus on but the military took me in different places. And I wanted to see if I could understand more about how evolution worked and how a creator might have brought this about. So when I got out of Edgewood, went to Dugway out there, there was -- obviously this is Mormon country and Mormons proselytize and they tried to proselytize Chris and I, and Mormons are wonderful people and my boss is a Mormon and I have an awful lot of respect for them, but we were invited to a Mormon gathering and treated wonderfully and they were a very friendly group of people and as we were going home, my wife and I were talking to one another -- no, we weren't talking to one -- we were very silent and one of us, and we don't remember to this day who said, "What did you think of that," and the other one said, "Well, my spirit was troubled," and the other one agreed that that was the case. And so we began looking at our roots and it turned out that at that point in time the chapel at Dugway -- now, let me explain something about Dugway. Even though I was a civilian because it was a remote post civilians were allowed to live on the installation, so we were living on the installation. So the chapel had just undergone a change in chaplains and my wife had started going -- after this incident she started going -- and she came home after one Sunday service fairly early in the process and said, "You got to listen, you've got to come and listen to this guy because he's talking about the evidence for God and for belief and, you know, the science of it all," and I said, oh, come on, this guy can't know what he's talking about. So, I went and come to find out he did. He had some very good compelling evidence. And so that started me on a year and a half of questioning, of investigation, of seriously considering the possibility that, in fact, this God that's talked about in the bible is, in fact, the same God, creator -- Lord God creator of the universe that I had been thinking about all along and worshipping myself. And after a year and a half of reading the bible, of seriously going to church, of going to adult Sunday school, of talking with people, et cetera, I was finally convinced and turned my life over to Jesus. So, from that point on I thought, well, OK, from here on I'm going to get back on to the track of this thing and it didn't happen, it didn't happen. I still continue the environmental movement and then about -- well, six years, six and a half years into being at Dugway my -- oh, I got to do the science fair. Don't let me forget to do the science fair. My wife's mom started showing symptoms of Alzheimer's and her dad began to try to deal with it. He was retired at the time. She never did work. And he was having some difficulty and as time went on it became increasingly obvious to us that Chris needed to go back and help her dad take care of her mom and it was a good time because at that particular point in time we had progressed enough in our understanding of what the Word says, the bible says, we felt that we had an obligation to honor our parents and come back here and so at the same time I had been working with a colleague of mine that we rode to work with. By then we had moved off the installation and we were living in a small town called Terra, Utah, which was ten miles east, roughly east, of the main gate Dugway Proving Ground, and it was across -- the ten miles were mostly across Skull Valley and the road was ten miles of absolutely arrow-straight road. So you got in your car, if you were awake it didn't matter because 16 you just aim, lock the steering wheel in, and ten miles later you were at the front gate. And so we had a lot of time for discussion as we were doing this and we had come up with an idea for -- we were both avid gardeners -- we come up with an idea for preserving, allowing us to start our garden early using some -- he was a chemist and I'm a biologist -- using some very well known, well established properties of water and when it freezes it gives off heat called the heat of fusion and that heat could protect your plants from freezing. They do it in orchards, for example, by spraying water. So we came up with a device and it took us a little while to come up with it, but we came up with a device called the Wall O' Water Plant Protector. And so I figured, alright, this is going to give me my key, we can go back here and this is going to provide enough income, but it became obvious to me that this was going to take awhile for this to grow and so I had been going to officers advance course with three people. One of them was a chaplain that had been involved with my coming to the Lord. Another one was a person that I met in Salt Lake City in Utah. This is Salt Lake where the course was, who was a business major and so the business major heard about what we were doing because one of the nights we had to talk about something we were doing and I talked about it and he said, "Oh, this is a great idea. I want to help you make this happen." So he became the president of the company and he got things rolling as far as the business side is concerned. And so I was convinced that this was going to be my key to being able to come back here. Well, as I said, it very quickly became obvious it was not. It takes, like any new idea, almost any new idea, it takes a long time to get going and I decided well I better consider trying to find a job back here. Well, it turned out that Chris had been flying back to help her dad for just a little while and on the same flight she ran into Roy Bear who was flying out Midwest for something, I can't remember what it was, and they got talking, of course they knew each other from here, and he said, "Well, you know, I have been teaching anatomy and physiology in summer school, and I just don't want to do it anymore. So there's an opportunity for Carl to teach that." Well, I had never, you know, my major was at the population level or above. I mean, my focus, and I had not really had much in the way of physiology. But I, you know, this is an opportunity, I couldn't refuse this. So I put in for it and I got the job and that was important because it filled in a part of my education that was lacking because I started focusing not at the population level and above in the levels of complexity, but at the species level and below in levels of complexity. So, it really rounded out my education by forcing me to learn the material. You know, if you want to learn something, teach it. And so all of that played a role in -- as I was going through and teaching I was seeing things that played into very nicely into this idea that, you know, there really is a creator behind all of this. And so in the middle of all of this I suddenly get a letter out of nowhere. I have no idea, and I've asked them and they won't tell me where they got my name, but I got a letter saying that the Oxford Round Table is having a session on faith and science, the great matter, and would I like to be involved in it. And my initial reaction was I'd like to be and I've been thinking about this a lot and I've got a lot of thoughts on it, but, boy, do I have time to put something together and my three sons said, yes, you've got to do this, Dad. And so I said yes and I put the paperwork through Norwich and they said yes and so I was invited to go to the Oxford Round Table and make a presentation. And that's when I had to formally put down all of my thoughts. Since that time, and that was published online and since that time I've had a chance to present it elsewhere and to develop the thoughts a lot more 17 and the evidence now is even more compelling in my mind than it was even when I did it at Oxford. The primary thing that we have to recognize is that -- and this is something that makes sense if there is a creator behind all of this, is that science now fully recognizes, there are very few scientists who don't agree with this, that the universe began with an event called the Big Bang, 13.82 billion years ago and that accompanying that event the universe was imbued with about 20 fundamental forces constants and masses whose values are such that if they weren't exactly what they were we wouldn't be having this recording and that does two things. It says A, there's a beginning, so if you've got a beginning logically you've got to have something who begins it. An uncaused cause as it's sometimes referred to, and, also, that that beginning was accompanied with some very suspicious characteristics. Now, science by definition, and properly so, eliminates -- it doesn't eliminate. It admits it cannot investigate miracles. It is just not designed to follow miracles. Science can give us insights that I think can help us to understand whether or not miracles are possible, whether or not there is a God. And the point that this revealed at the time was that we have enough information, science has enough information about that moment of creation or of coming into existence of the universe, let's not call it creation at this point, that it has to be explained or it can be explained only by invoking infinity because only with infinity can you get all of these 20 or so values coming together with their precise values. Presumably they're independent coming together and having a situation where you would have a universe come into existence because the probability of this happening is so, so very, very tiny, all of them with their values. So, there are about eight ways of the sciences come up with explaining this and all eight of them can be reduced to this use of infinity and I say there are three ways that we invoke infinity. Science embraces two. One is that the universe is infinite and we're in the part that works with these constants, these values, or the other is that there's an infinity of universes and we're in the one that works, or that the universe is created by an infinite mind. And quite honestly, at this point anyway, we cannot distinguish among those three. Each of them is arguably just as logical as the other. There are many scientists who would say that the third one is not acceptable and I would challenge them the way Ravi Zacharias and other people challenge them in that maybe they have some personal biases that they need to look at seriously. But be that as it may, I, in looking at this and accepting this, discovered that there are eight phenomena that keep recurring again and again at what I call essential conditions that in the evolution, in the progress, the evolution from the Big Bang to us whether it's cosmological or chemical or biological evolution, there are requisite conditions that have to occur and every time you find a requisite condition, you identify a requisite condition, there are eight phenomena that are associated with it that happen, that are met, and so it makes me wonder if there's this pattern, is there something behind the pattern? And that's where all this comes in and obviously I believe there is, there is a creator God behind this. JP: So this paper generated quite a bit of -- CP: Quite a bit of thought and discussion and continues to. Yeah, absolutely. So, one of the other reasons we wanted to come back to Norwich, to continue on in this vein, was that I had as part of the coming to a belief and a faith in Christ, and being at a military installation, it was logical that I would find Officers Christian Fellowship. Officers 18 Christian Fellowship is a fellowship, as it states, of officers in the military and this is the Army -- the US branch of it, but there's worldwide groups called by different names, who embrace Christian faith and use it, try to use it, in their life and in their leadership roles. And so I encountered it and became convinced that was something that Norwich could benefit from. And so one of the reasons we came back was to form a Christian fellowship at Norwich using Officers Christian Fellowship as our basic model. So we came back in 1982. Chris preceded me by about four months and so we -- I arrived here in March -- permanently arrived here in March of 1982, getting ready to teach that summer school course, and I began immediately looking for a student that would be interested in forming a Christian fellowship and I couldn't find any. I looked and went to the chapel, asked around, I was having no luck. And one day I was walking on the upper parade ground, I don't remember why, but I was walking on the upper parade ground towards Jackman on the western side and I saw a cadet coming toward me and the Holy Spirit said to me, "You see that cadet? He's the one I want you to talk to about starting a Christian fellowship." And of course my reaction, my immediate reaction, was yeah, sure. I'm so concerned about this that I just created that thought in my mind, and I said I'm not going to pay any attention to it. But the closer I got to this cadet, we were walking towards one another, the more I felt the Holy Spirit saying, "Do it, do it," and it got to the point where I knew that if I hadn't done it I would be in disobedience to God. I would be disobeying the Holy Spirit and so I stopped him. I said, "Young man, you probably are not going to understand what I'm about to tell you and you're going to think I'm nuts, but the Holy Spirit just told me that I'm supposed to talk to you about starting a Christian fellowship at Norwich," at which point he stopped, I mean, he was stopped. He kind of went, "You're kidding me," and kind of fell back, took a step back, and he said, "As I was coming towards you, the Holy Spirit was telling me that I've got to talk to you about starting a Christian fellowship at Norwich." So, that started the Norwich Christian Fellowship. The cadet's name was John Pitrowiski and we started a fellowship that was in 1982, and that must have been -- I'm gathering, I'm thinking it might have been in April, I didn't put the date down. And so that was still in the days when I think Norwich went further beyond May. I think they went to late May or beginning of June, and so it wasn't very long but he had a couple of friends from classes beneath him, Joe Saltsman being one of them, who wanted to be part of this. And so it continued from that year on. And so last year we celebrated our 30 th year together and it's been a great trip helping Norwich students who are inclined to follow the Lord and find out about Officers Christian Fellowship, et cetera. So John Pitrowski, I lost track of him because he was a senior and he graduated a month or two after we formed the fellowship. And I had assumed that I must have done this in the fall of '83 because, you know, I had to have had a longer year. I had almost a year with him before he left that was my assumption. So I went through all of the year books from '80 -- let's see, '82, it would be '83 on. I couldn't find his name so I -- you know, did I somehow get his name wrong? But I asked Joe Saltsman and he says, "Yeah, I remember John." So I knew I had it right and one day -- actually, about a year before our 30th, it all of a sudden dawned on me. I said, "Do you know what? Is it possible that he was in the class of '82?" So I got out the '82 yearbook and sure enough there he was. Come to find out he goes to a church in Waterbury very close to the church I go to.19 JP: You're kidding. CP: He's been around all of this time. JP: Oh, no kidding. CP: So, on the 30th, which was his 30th reunion of course, we got together and had a big celebration. JP: That's wonderful. Do you have time for STEM? CP: Sure, sure. What happened is as I -- when I was in the eighth grade at Northfield I entered the state science fair with my shell collection. Now, in this day and age you couldn't do that and that's not really important to understand, but one of the things that I had really gotten involved with as a kid, and why I was considering marine biology, is I loved shells. I loved the animals that made shells and I loved shells themselves because I'm kind of artistic and I kind of like art stuff as well. And shells are very beautiful, they're geometric, they're colorful, they're wonderful things. So I was naturally attracted to them. So I entered that in eighth grade, won first place in the state science and math fair, and then again in my senior year I did the same thing, only I did some research and did some dissections and had some studies that I had done. Again, not the kind of stuff that we now do in the science fairs, but at the time it was. And again I won first place. So I was kind of sold on science fairs. So from that time on I offered to judge in science fairs. So at the University of Illinois, in Utah I judged, in Maryland I judged, I think, and I'm not 100 percent sure whether I did or not, but I know at the University of Illinois I did and in Utah I did. In Utah, because I was coming in from Dugway Proving Ground I was coming in as an Army judge and it was part of my assignment, my military points to do this as a military judge. So I did it for a year or two and one of the guys that I was doing it with had been working with the Army Research Office and their program of judging the International Science and Engineering Fair. So he'd been part of the Army judges for them. And he said, "I'm going to have to get out of this. Would you like to take my place?" So I said, "Well, yeah." So that year the international fair was in San Antonio and I went there and became a member of the Army judging team, generally about 30 judges every year from the Army would judge the International Science and Engineering Fair and give wonderful prizes. We sent students to the Plum Blossom Festival in Japan or the Fortnight in England, in London. You know, when the Army judges came around the students took notice. So it was a great assignment and a great opportunity and they treat the judges really well. Afterwards they have a big shindig for them with lots of cheese and lots of hors d'oeuvres and lots of wine and stuff, and I said, boy, this is a deal! So I became sold on that and did for the next 25 years served in that capacity almost every year. A couple years I didn't make it and in the last five I was the Chief Army Judge in charge in all of those 30 judges and also got some other assignments related to that. I became the Army judge for the National Junior Science and Humanities Symposium, which is a similar kind of thing done at about the same time of year, but rather than having a poster session, which is what the International Science and Engineering Fair poster presentation judges. The National Junior Science and 20 Humanities Symposium has a platform presentation. So it's a different -- you can, you know, sometimes the same projects can be in both but there are different ways of presenting the information. So, that convinced me that, I mean, I was already convinced, but that certainly drove the nail home that I was very much still interested in STEM and then I came to Norwich and of course the science fair was being held here and so I immediately became a judge in the science fair and recognized that Vermont State Science and Math Fair was not, it was one of the two or three states not involved in ISEF, and said, you know, I've got to get it involved but I just do not have the time to teach and to do the Vermont State Science and Math Fair component that would get us involved with ISEF. But I made a pledge that I would, to myself, I guess, that once I retired from the military in 2003 because that was when I turned 60, that I would make an effort to get us involved with ISEF. And at that point I had been working with Mary Hoppe and, oh, come on, I'm drawing a blank here. We'll have to get that back up. What's her name? [Martha McBride] Anyway, who had been the two directors, working with them to kind of be an understudy. And so the next year I said I'm going to continue this process as an understudy and I'm going to link us up with ISEF. Now, the main thing about ISEF is you send, at that time, one winner on to international -- from your state fair, on to the International Science and Engineering Fair to compete there, but that requires money and of course the science fair had no money. I mean, it had very little money that they were -- the major initiative that I saw I had to do with come up with a way of getting money and that has become a really time consuming operation. We raise in terms of actual awards and prizes and trip money, we raise about $25,000 a year now and it takes a lot of time to do that even though I have -- almost all of that is coming from established partners, as we call them, because every year you have to renew it, you have to send out emails, you have to send out letters, you have to follow up on them. Some of them follow up themselves, some of them you have to follow up on. You have to record all of this so you know what you did because we have over 120 partners. It's trying to keep all of them straight. You know, what conversation you had with which one three weeks ago is just, you know, you've got to keep accurate records of that. So it's a very time consuming process. But we are really making progress, we are making headway. We are getting more and more students involved in science fair projects and of course the problem with our country -- one of the problems with our country today -- is that many of our students look at Science Technology Engineering and Math, STEM, as being over their heads, over their ability, and we want to make sure that students understand that in many cases that's not the case. It's that they haven't had the opportunities to get excited by it. For example, when I was in the science fair as a senior, that was during the space race and I remember going from the state science fair to the New England science fair and that was during the New England science fair was the -- we heard over the speakers an announcement that the US had successfully sent our first astronaut into orbit. And so those were exciting times and those are the kinds of things that get people's kids' imagination going. Well, we needed something like that because let's face it, if we're going to retain our position as strategically as number one in the world, we have got to have a good Science Technology Engineering, and Math. I had recognized, having been travelling a few other places in the world that the US, high school STEM scores were very woefully low and yet, here we are number one in the world. How can that be? Well, there's a number of reasons, but one of the reasons is, what I had discovered was happening at Norwich, is that between 21 high school and graduating from college the role of the university in this country is to push our kids. It's really important that we push our kids and make them learn the stuff that other kids were learning in high school elsewhere around the world. And, for example, in Japan they're pushed hard, they do well in high school and they score well, but my oldest son, English as a second language teacher in Japan, so we went over to visit him and it turns out that their college over there is almost a lark. And so we can catch up with them and we do catch up with them and we pass them. Certainly other reasons for this is we get a lot of influx from the best of the foreign countries as well, too. I'm not trying to downplay that. But it became obvious to me that we really needed to do something positive and we need to do something positive to encourage our young kids to discover that science, technology, engineering, and math are wonderful and they're exciting and they're full of all kinds of challenges and opportunities and experiences that you're not going to get any other way and I think we're beginning to get that. JP: That's wonderful. You have done so much and you have been -- CP: I've been blessed. I haven't really tried to do this or do that. It's just that things have fallen in my path and I think because of Norwich I don't hesitate, I don't pull back from taking advantage of them, but I really have been blessed with lots of opportunities, lots of fun stuff. JP: You have done a lot of really amazing things. The Pinkham Pearson Index alone, notwithstanding the other stuff. Do you have any relatives at Norwich besides your dad? CP: My oldest brother, the one who said that I should stay in the military, in the reserves, David, who lives in Montpelier, he's still around. He's 87 I think. He was in the Second World War and after the war he came to Norwich for two years in engineering. He actually showed me a paper he wrote on nuclear power (laughs) that at the time of the Second World War was still a concept, and then he transferred to Cornell to finish his degree in engineering. So he's part of Norwich. I have two of my three sons attended Norwich and youngest, well, the middle son went to Vermont, VC, Vermont College, when it was part of Norwich and my youngest son came here and majored in psychology and actually has gotten a masters from Norwich in the masters degree, online degree program in criminal justice management or administration. JP: What's his name? CP: Kristian Pinkham. JP: Kristian Pinkham. Amazing. The Pinkhams at Norwich. CP: And the middle one is Kreig Pinkham. JP: With a C or K?22 CP: K. All my three sons are with K's. Kevin is my oldest. He's an English professor carrying on the family tradition of teaching down at Nyack College in New York, and Kreig is the director of the Washington County Youth Service Bureau, which is really responsible for homeless and run away youth in the state of Vermont. And my youngest son is a DEA agent in El Paso, Texas. JP: Wow, that's amazing! Gosh, I want to ask you a little bit about what advice would you give a rook today about how to survive and thrive the way that you did? CP: Well, the first thing is, again, remember -- and I still tell them this -- the two things that I think are important. One is that nothing lasts forever and so you can get through the rook school, the rook experience. If you keep this in mind it will keep you sane. And secondly, that if you allow it to, Norwich will push you and will help you to develop as an individual, but you've got to go along with the flow. You can't resist the flow. You've got to take advantage of the opportunities that it provides. I think that's really important. And of course, obviously, the students that I come into contact with through Norwich Christian Fellowship, I say to continue to develop your spiritual understanding, your spiritual walk, your spiritual self. And as a teacher I think I made it clear in my courses. On the first day of course I said, first day of class I said, "You've got to understand that I am a Christian and my worldview is formed by that -- is informed by that. I will not mention anymore about it in class. You will hear an awful lot about evolution in class because I'm an evolutionary biologist and if you feel that there is a problem between the two, I'm more than happy to talk with you about how that problem is not real, but that's got to be done outside of class." And so I made it clear in all of my classes that that was something that I -- that they needed to know about me in order to be fair and open. JP: Wow. How do you define leadership or have you already, do you think? CP: Well, to be honest with you, I've not given a whole lot of thought to what leadership really is, but on the spot I would have to say that leadership is a willingness to lead and a willingness to -- openness to see opportunities and to think creatively about these opportunities and how you might use them. And that's a good question because it brings up another story that I think I would like to relate to. And that is the story of the Russian scientist. Shortly after I left Edgewood as my individual mobilization designee assignment, I was assigned back to Edgewood from Dugway. And the two weeks that I was at Edgewood, my boss had -- because he was a North American peregrine falcon banding program coordinator, had gone to Russia, not during that two weeks, but he had earlier gone to Russia and met with and formed a working relationship with his Russian corresponding -- his Russian equivalent, and he and another Russian scientist were scheduled to come to the US during this two weeks that I was going to be assigned to Edgewood Arsenal, to Scott's group. And so this was during the Cold War, but there was some efforts at detent and this being something where there was no weapon system involved or anything like that. It was something as regarded by the government as being worthwhile. So I was invited by Scott to help him get his -- he had just bought a dilapidated Southern mansion in Maryland to get it up kind of a little bit in shape for this 23 meeting. And so I helped him do it and the Russians came and we spent an evening toasting one another and going through bottles after bottles of vodka and, again, my Norwich training came through because I was able to drink two Russians under the table. I'm not overly -- well, yes, I'm proud of that. Let's face it. I don't drink that way anymore, but at the time there was a value to it because when I was at Norwich, I drank like a Norwich student. So, anyway, in the process of that evening, we had a conversation and it was very obvious to me in this conversation that something was wrong, and I'm going to explain what was wrong, but I've got to go back just a little bit. In grad school finished all my courses except for one, population genetics. Population genetics was taught by a newly minted post-doc who had the audacity to expect his students to think. Well, I was a good student because I was fantastic at rote memory, I wish I still were, but at that time I was really good at it. And I wasn't used to a course where they said think and I got a 48 on the final exam and he was good enough to give me a D in the course. I had been essentially a straight A student and that shook me up as you can well imagine. And so I had to ask myself, is thinking a skill that I don't have? Is it something I'll never have or is it a skill that can be acquired? So I started researching thinking, creative thinking, and discovered that it is a skill that can be learned that every human being is born with it but quite often the school system teaches us out of it. In my case it was perhaps the school system, but more important, understand I love my father and he was a wonderful person, but he was an old guard, old school military guy. It was his way or not. So very quickly I learned it didn't do any good to think, it didn't do any good to explain things to him, my side of the story, because there was only his side of the story, so I stopped learning how to think. And so I got to this moment in grad school, this crisis moment, and discovered that I didn't know how to think. From the studies, however, from taking courses and everything I learned how to think and that's why I've got several patents and I've been able to come up with the Pinkham Pearson Index, et cetera. But as I was talking with these Russians, it became very obvious to me they were suffering from the same problem I had been suffering from. It was dangerous for them to think. So the only way they could come up with any thought whatsoever was to just randomly go all over the place and hope that somewhere sooner or later they would stumble across something that was useful and relevant. At that instant I knew we had won the Cold War. It was clear to me that they were fighting an impediment that would just prevent them from doing anything that we had to worry about. And, in fact, that's the way it turned out. JP: That's a nice -- that's a good story, big picture, little picture. Is there anything else that you would like to say? Anything about the Citizen Soldier or -- CP: The Citizen Soldier is a very, very important concept and I'd like to think that I embody it. The reason I feel that way is because I think I embody it, but the soldier doesn't always have to be, obviously, a fighting individual in the sense of a combat. Combat service and combat service support are two very, very important aspects of the military and you can be in combat, and my hat is off to everyone who is in that position, whose life is at risk, willingly puts their life at risk for their country and for their comrades, but there's also a role for those of us who are a little bit less brave, like myself, who want to serve and have a gift to give to the country but can give it in a way where the risk to life 24 and limb is not anywhere nearly as great as it is in the combat arms. So, I think the Citizen Soldier is a very important aspect that we need to be aware of and promote. And I'm proud to say I'm a part of Norwich which founded the concept. And I generally don't miss opportunities when I'm talking with youngsters to point that out to them. JP: Is there anything else you'd like to add? CP: Probably, but I can't think of it right now. I think that's about it. JP: That's about it. Thank you. CP: Oh, you're welcome. Thank you for the opportunity, I enjoyed this. This is fun. JP: This has been fascinating and I think it's going to be fascinating for people to hear. I think it's going to be very interesting for people who are interested in the different things you've spoken about and to hear you say them. So thank you. I'm going to hit stop. I need to do a little intro. And we're back with Carl Pinkham. CP: So the parting Norwich story while I was a student has to do with three events that happened my last three days at Norwich. On Friday I was commissioned a second lieutenant in armor. On Saturday I was married to Christine Waite who has been my wife for almost 50 years and on Sunday I graduated. JP: That's a busy -- CP: That's a very busy time. (laughter) JP: That's good. CP: That's it. JP: Thank you. END OF AUDIO FILE
The College Metcufy. VOL. IV. GETTYSBURG, PA., JANUARY, 1897. No. 9, THE COLLEGE MERCURY, Published each month during the college year by the Students of Pennsylvania (Gettysburg) College. STAFF. Editor: ROBBIN B. WOLF, '97. Associate Editors : LEWIS C. MANGES, '97. ED, W. MEISEN H ELDER, SAMUEL J. MILLER '97. CHARLES T. LARK '98. JOHN W. OTT, '97. CHARLES H. TILP, '98. E. L. KOLLER, '98. Alumni Association Editor: REV. D. FRANK GARLAND, A. M., Baltimore, Md. Business Manager: HARRY R, SMITH, '97. Assistant Business Manager: JOHN E. MEISENHELDER, '97. mi™™./One volume (tenmonths). . . . $1.00 ILKMS. jslngleCOpies 15 Fayatle is advance All Students are requested to hand us matter tor publication. The Alumni and ex-members or the college will favor us by-sending Information concerning their whereabouts or any Items they may think would be interesting for publication. All subscriptions and business matters should be addressed to the business manager. Matter intended for publication should be addressed to the Editor. Address, THE COLLEGE MEKCUKY, Gettysburg, Pa. CONTENTS. EtllTORIAL, 13° CODBX SlNAITCUS, I31 THE COLLEGE LITERARY SOCIETY, - - - - - 132 BOOK REVIEWS, 135 NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS, --- 135 COLLEGE LOCALS, 135 ALUMNI NOTES, --- 137 TOWN AND SEMINARY NOTES, --- 139 ATHLETIC NOTES, --- 139 Y. M. C. A. NOTES, 140 FRATERNITY NOTES, --- 140 LITERARY SOCIETIES, 141 EXCHANGES, -- 141 EDITORIAL THIS issue of the MERCURY appears some-what later than the usual time on account of the date of opening. . * ., COLLEGE reopened oir the morning of the fifth with the majority of the boys back on time, but the usual number of stragglers keep up the reputation of id genus omne. All re-port a pleasant vacation and many New Year's resolutions. The loss of several has been more than compensated by the arrival of new ones. Very few of the boys accomplished the work mapped out by themselves for the vacation, such as essays, Specttum and MERCURY work. Who can blame them ? The Christmas vaca-tion should be a real vacation, and the appear-ance of the boys after the examinations showed their need of rest. Now comes the hard work which the middle term always brings. How-ever, if the work is more arduous, it is to be remembered that this season is most propitious for close application. * * EVER since the MERCURY was given to the present Staff, extraordinary efforts have been made to increase the number of Alumni per-sonals. Our efforts have not been altogether unrewarded. But as this publication is main-tained chiefly in the interest of the Alumni, it is fitting that a yet greater portion of its space should be devoted to them. The present plan has been found inadequate. It is unreasonable to expect that two under graduates can keep themselves informed concerning the great body of Alumni scattered all over the habitable globe. The following plan commends itself as more likely to meet the end aimed at; That in lV THE COLLEGE MERCURY. every city or section of the country which has enough Alumni residents to justify it, some Alumnus regularly furnish such personal notes, one in such places respectively as New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, York Altoona, New England and at two or three points in the South and West. This plan proposed only as tentative, at least deserves a trial, and personal letters will be written to those who are thought most willing to attend to the work and the names of those who accept will ap-pear in the MERCURY, so that all the Alumni in that section may send their personals to them. Any further suggestions which may improve this plan will be gratefully received. * *' * WE take pleasure in calling the attention of our readers to the article, in this issue, of Dr. J. W. Richard, and to the letter of Dr. J. H. W. Stuckenberg. We extend our hearty thanks to the gentlemen and commend their example to others. * * * THE Philadelphia Press of Jan. 4th, contains a striking editorial on the subject, Small Col-leges and degrees, the substance of which fol-lows. "At a meeting last week of representatives from the leading colleges of Iowa a resolution was offered asking the Legislature to change the law of that State concerning the conferring of college degrees. As the law now stands any three men can organize a college by in-corporating it under the laws of the State, and any college so incorporated can confer de-grees. Under the law there has sprung up a large number of so-called colleges in Iowa, and as all of them are handing out degrees lib-erally, much discredit is brought upon the honor. The struggle among them to attract students is fierce and many inducements are offered, one college agreeing to pay the mile-age of students in proportion to the length of time they remain in college. The question of college degrees was brought prominently before the public last winter by State Senator Garfield, of Ohio, a son of the late President Garfield. He introduced a bill in the Legislature of that State the object of which was to examine into and pass upon the fitness of colleges to confer honorary degrees. The bill provided for the creation of a univer-sity council consisting of ten members ap-pointed by the Governor. * * * When in the opinion of this council an institution did not have the requisite standing its right to confer honorary degrees should be taken away. New York has ahead}' conferred this power on the regents of the State University and this State should confer it on the University Council." * * * * * We are surprised that so eminent a journal does not know that this State has already taken a similar step, of which we are heartily glad, and that it has done away with the evil of a college like Gettysburg and others of a like high standard having the value of their degrees decreased by the host of small, so-called, colleges which are scarcely better than a good high school. Some estimable men of culture have refused the offer of a degree be-cause a degree has largely lost its significance. It is to be hoped that the Iowa Legislature will pass the bill and that all the other States will join in the movement to prevent charter-ing new institutions and withdrawing the charter from those whose standard does not justify their existence. CODEX SINAITICUS. THE CODEX SINAITICUS is the name given to a celebrated manuscript of the Bible, dis-covered by Prof. Dr. Constantine Tischendorf, February 4th, 1859, nl the Convent of St. Catharine, at the foot of Mount Sinai. The manuscript consists of 346^ leaves. Each leaf is 13^ inches wide and 14^6 high, and contains four columns of writing; and each col-umn contains forty-eight lines. It is supposed to have been prepared in Egypt, or at Con-j stantinople, about the middle of the fourth century of our era. It is written in what is known as uncial or capital letters. Each letter is separated from the others, and all are of the same size, except that frequentty a letter is re- ' duced in size in order to make it fit into the line. Tischendorf calls it "omnium codicum i unclalium sohis integei omniumque a?itiqtiissi- THE COLLEGE MERCURY. 132 mus." His designation solus integer is cer-tainly correct as applied to the New Testament portion, for it is the 011I5' known uncial manu-script that contains the entire text of the New Testament, without any omission, together with the Epistle of Barnabas and a part of the Shepherd of Hennas in Greek (147^2 leaves in all). The designation "antiguissimus." has been questioned, for it is thought by many scholars that the Codex Vaticanus at Rome, is at least as old, if not a little older. But it deserves to be called one of the two oldest, and one of the most valuable biblical manuscripts in the world. Tischeudorf having obtained possession of it as a loan, carried it to Cairo, where in two months, assisted by a German physician, and a druggist, he made a complete copy of it. Then having secured the permanent possession of it for the Russian government, he trans-ferred it to Leipzig, where a quasi-facsimile edition of three hundred copies was printed from types cast specially for the purpose. The original was then taken to St. Petersburg, where it is sacredly kept. The printed copies were distributed among the crowned heads and large libraries, mostly of Europe, except one third of the number which were placed at the disposal of Dr. Tis-cheudorf. Copies of this rare and valuable edition, which for the purposes of textual crit-icism are almost as good as the original, are in the libraries of the Theological Seminaries re-spectively at Gettysburg, Princeton, Union (New York), Andover, Rochester, Auburn, and in the Astor and Lenox Libraries and the library of the American Bible Society in New York, and in the University libraries of Har-vard and Yale. J. W. R. IT has been my privilege to address many students in Colleges, Universities, and Semi-naries; but I do not think I ever addressed any who were more attentive, more earnest, more appreciative, and more eager to learn, than those I recently met at Gettysburg. Compared with what I found there in the past it looks as if a new spirit had come with a quickening influence. The young men are evidently intent on understanding the age in which they live, through which must come all the influences which can affect them, and which is the only age which they can work on directly. They were anxious to know how they can use most effectively all that the school gives them of knowledge and wisdom. There were many evidences that the stu-dents want to make the most of their oppor-tunities in order to make the most of them-selves. With this object in view many ques-tions were asked respecting the best methods of study. It was gratifying to find that many are not content with being mere learners; they want also to become scholars and thinkers. For this purpose they strive to enter upon original research and seek to become indepen-dent investigators. The friends of higher edu-cation ought to see to it that the best means for this purpose are put within the reach of these young men. I saw evidence at Gettysburg that excellent teaching has been done in the College and Seminary. The church has reason to cherish the brightest hopes respecting these institu-tions if the aspiring and energetic spirit is pro-moted and developed. Connected with the earnest intellectual trend I found also a living faith and sincere devotion to the church. J. H. W. STUCKENBERG. Cambridge, Mass., Dec. 21, 1896. THE COLLEGE LITERARY SOCIETY. From no other source during his college course does a man receive so much training as he does from the literary society. He may be a good student and lead his class in scholarship, but if he does not make use of the advantages offered by the literary society he feels when he leaves college that he neg-lected that which would be of more practical good to him than much he learned in the class-room. The important feature of the literary society 133 THE COLLEGE MERCURY -is the training it gives a man for public speak-ing, so, that when he is called upon to make an address he has the ability to use the knowl-edge he has acquired and impart it to others in a manner easily understood. Another important feature is the knowledge of parliamentary rules' and the ability to pre-side at meetings which one receives from the literary society. After a man leaves college his influence is to a great extent measured by his knowledge of the qualifications just mentioned. We have attended meetings over which incompetent men have presided and we have noticed how uninteresting the proceedings have become and the inability of the chairman to decide questions of dispute. In some cases, perhaps, it was possible to overlook this incompetency, as in the case ot a man who has had no ad-vantages to gain any knowledge in such mat-ters ; but there is no excuse for a college man to be placed in such a position. If he should be, he can blame no person but himself, be-cause most of the institutions provide oppor-tunities for the acquirement of such qualifica-tions. . We thus see the college days are, above all others, the time, and the literary societies the place, to acquire those abilities which a stu-dent may be called upon at any time of his life to exercise. A society in order to be of any influence in the institutions in which it may exist must have members who are devoted to its welfare and who take an active part in its exercises. It is not the society which has the largest number on its roll which is the most prosper-ous, but the one in which the members work for their own good and the best interests of their society. Those who participate in the exercises because they are compelled so to do by the rules of the society do not receive nearly so much benefit as they who do so for the instruction and training derived from the participation in the exercises. The literary sotiety is the same as all other organizations in that it needs earnest, active and devoted members in order to make it a success. There has never yet been anything at-tempted for good which has not been sub-jected to influences which proved harmful to it. In many institutions the literary society is practically dead or rapidly declining. From one who is interested in the welfare of the lit-erary societies the following information was received concerning the condition of the so-cieties in about thirty-five representative in-stitutions: Eight institutions report the so-cieties flourishing. In sixteen they are rap-idly declining, some among this number are yet active and doing good work, but yet are no longer what they once were, while others have practically died as far as usefulness is concerned. In eleven of the thirty-five insti-tutions the literary society no longer exists. The societies are dying from New England southward. All institutions reporting their societies as dead are north of Pennsylvania. Those speaking of a decline are in the Middle States, while the flourishing ones are south and west of Pennsylvania. Some of the societies report the cause of their decay is the literary work done by the Greek Letter Fraternity and additional liter-ary work in the college curriculum. Other causes, such as over-prominence of athletics and the tendency of students to specialize in-stead of getting a general culture prove very detrimental to the welfare of the literary so-cieties. In the institutions in which the literary so-ciety has ceased to exist the Greek Letter Fraternities have been most full}' developed, and their influence is reported as the main cause of the society's decay. It is a question if the fraternities will ever take the place of the literary society, and if so, will they prove a satisfactory substitute. Personally, I do not believe the fraternity will supplant the society, notwithstanding the reports to the contrary. [ My opinion is the same as that of the college > president who writes: "I can conceive of no substitute for the literary societ}'." When there is anything to be neglected be-cause of press of class-room work or the meet-ings of any of the college' organizations the THE COLLEGE MERCURY. 134 duties of the literary society are invariably the first neglected. Instead of considering the weekly meetings of the society as the place to which "our duty calls us" and from which we should have a very good excuse to absent our-selves, we often think it is only the place to | pass the evening when we do not have an en-gagement for another place. The great attention given to athletics by the colleges of to-day detracts seriously from the interest in the literary society. The intense interest of the student body in one sphere is very likely to produce relaxation in others, especially in those in which the work is volun-tary. As said before, the literar)' society is the first to suffer from athletics. For some reason it has become the opinion of many peo-ple that there is more glory in the feats of brawn than those of brain. The contests to-day between the different institutions are more in athletics than in literary contests. Because of the great interest taken in athletics, Yale to-day enjoys the honor of holding the suprem-acy in athletics in the college world. In order to attain this position her literary work has suffered, and she, for this reason, meets defeat at the hands of Harvard each year in the lit-erary contests. Athletics are a good thing and cannot be denied the student, but a little less interest in them and more in the work of the literary society would prove of much advan-tage in many institutions. What is most needed by the students of to-day is a broad, liberal culture. But there are many who think this is not necessary, hence they begin early in their course to specialize. Consequently in those institutions which en-courage specializing we find less interest in the literary society. This seems contrary to what ought to be the case. If a student is unable to take a regular college course before he be-gins to specialize, he should take an active part in the literary society which would do something to aid him in securing the general culture needed to exercise the proper influ- • ence in society. The college man of to-day has much expected from him by the world be-cause of the advantages he has enjoyed. It has been said: "No one in England has any-thing to say but the scientific men, and they do not know how to say it.'' For these reasons we are led to believe the literary society has not outlived its day of use-fulness. The present time demands of men the qualifications which the work of the literary society gives. The first qualification is the art of public speaking. We notice to-day that the-number of able speakers is not increasing in the same proportion as the number of well-educated men. Public speaking is beginning to be spoken of as a lost art. The tongue is not the moving power it once was. Depew says: "In one respect the graduates of 1895 are far behind those of 1855. Few of the boys who leave college this year will be good speak-ers. They may be as good thinkers as those who were graduated four decades ago, but they will not be nearly so capable of telling what they know, or what they think, because of the decline of the debate as a means of training." In speaking about the decline of the debating society, he says: "I regard it as a national calamity." The man who desires to exert any influence in these days, when every question receives the attention of the people in public gatherings, should be able to express himself clearly and forcibly. Depew says again: "If the young college man only knew how to speak he wrould be invincible." The greatest difficulty college graduates ex-perience is that they are unable to think on their feet before an audience. As students they neglected this training and now they are at a great disadvantage in public meetings. H. R. S., '97. Where are our literary men ? Both the Spectrum and MERCURY editors would like to hear from them. Let some of our new men be heard from. There must be material in so large a class. Remember these two publica-tions depend upon the efforts you put forth in their behalf. Let us receive aid from every one. Try your hand. •35 THE COLLEGE MERCURY. BOOK REVIEWS. Abraham Lincoln—A poem by Lyma?i Whitney Allen ("Sangamon"),.pp. 112, 12 Mo. G. P. Putnam's So7ispublishers. This is the bc5und copy of the New York j Herald's $1,000 prize poem. The fact that this poem alone of all its competitors was se-lected by the set of competent judges, is the highest commendation. The poem gives a just portrait of one of America's greatest presi-dents and men. "A Princelonian," by James Ba?nes, pp. 4.31. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. This story of the college life of a Prince-tonian is particularly welcome just at this time, coming, as it does, not so long after this old and revered institution has celebrated its ses-quicentennial. It is written in a good and pleasing style and is sure to hold the interest of any reader from start to finish. But to the collage man, no matter where his Alma Mater may be, it strikes chords which find an an-swering vibration in his own breast ; and of his leisure hours he will regret none spent in reading it ; but once having begun he will look forward with pleasure to every succeed-ing hour's reading, and will close the book with a sigh because he has finished it. Besides furnishing a very vivid and delight-ful picture of college life, it is praiseworthy, as a piece of literature, for its character sketches, the character of the heroine being especially well delineated. The hero, Newton Wilber-force Hart, cannot but inspire in many a young man the ambition for a college life. The story, as a whole, reflects much credit on Princeton University and will surely bind the hearts of her sons more firmly to their Alma Afa/et and attract to her classic walls many whose ears had otherwise never heard her voice. Are you attending your literary society as regularly as you should ? If not, there must be a reason. Is it a good one? Men, be loyal! NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS. Our resolutions good we plan, To take effect the first of Jan. Generally they're on the ebb As slowly creeps the first of Feb., And often sadly broken are As quicker dawns the first of Mar. They are nowhere unless on paper When Fool's Day comes, the first of Apr. Our minds now free, we're light and gay When flowers bloom, the first of May. The skies are fair, the earth in tune We have t/uod times the first of June. Days still more bright, why should we sigh? Speed quick the hours, first of July. Our memory, conscience in a fog. # The Summer glides, 'tis first of Aug. A good resolve we mijht have kept Come.1- stealing o'er us first of Sept. Our better selves by it are shocked As it grows clearer, first of Oct. "Bad habits old with which I strove Have mastered me." The first of Nov. "To give my troubled conscience peace, 'I now resolve' "—. The last of Dec. P. S.—The new resolution is, "I now resolve not to forget my resolutions." W. H. B. C, '99. COLLEGE LOCALS. EDMUND W. MEISENHELDER and E. I*. KOLLER, Editors. Mr. B., 1900 recently told an interesting story about the "Giant's Causeway" in the northern part of Africa. H., 1900, (speaking of Fred. I. in History)— "Every one in his time smoked beer and drank tobacco.'' Dr. M.—"I guess you don't know much about that, Mr. H.," "Do you?" Mr. F., '98, would like to know if "isolated means discovered.'' Mr. L,., '99, (in looking through a book) asked, "L,et me see the picture on the frontis-piece." A young lady of town recently asked our charming and bashful Mr. B., 1900, for one of his curls. We hear that "Brigy" is right in it. Recently Mr. L,., '99, listened to a young lady singing "Tell me do you love me?" After she had finished, George stood a short while in amazement. When he at last recov-ered himself he said: "Well, you do your share, I'll do mine." THE COLLEGE MERCURY. 136 Mr. E., '99, who has quite a reputation as a student of the Bible, told some boys that they should not tease old people, lest they would be devoured by the wolves, as were the children in the Bible. Dr M. (in French)—"What does ses mean ?'' Mr. F., 1900, (after thinking awhile)—"I don't think I can guess." Mr. H., '97, recently rendered effective service at a slight conflagration in a private house up town. "Hutty" cannot tell a lie, he did it with his big feet. Prof. H.—"Mr. T. What is a bias?" Mr. T., '99—"A part of a dress." hiforniation desired.—A Prep, would like to know what building that is with a balloon on top of it. Will some one please inform him ? Now is the time to hand in your applica-tions for the base ball team. Let every one who can play ball apply early. Don't wait to be coaxed ! There is material enough in college and prep, to make two first-class teams. Mr. E., '99, (in German declining "sich") "ich, er, sich." Well done, Luther ! Let the literary matter for the Spectrum be handed in as soon as possible. Let every one be represented. "Josey" K, '99, startled Dr. H. recently by affirming that "David was related to his grandmother, Ruth." The new men take well to "gym." work and we hope that the "good work may go on." The MERCURY extends its sympathy. Luther, '99, tells us that "the hills of Judea are west of the Mediterranean." A Freshman says that Sapho was the great-est poet of the 19th century. A Seminarian says the Mercury is going down. He meant that in the thermometer. Are we going to have field sports next term ? Some of the men in other colleges are at work indoors. Don't let us be behind time. Although guying seems to be one of the necessary evils of Gettysburg College, yet it certainly is out of place in Chapel and in the halls of the literary societies. Spayd, '99, has returned after his recent illness. F. & M. may not have a base-ball team this spring and will devote their time to the relay team, etc. As yet we have taken no definite steps in this direction. It is time. > The class in philosophy has been organized and has held some meetings. Prof. Klinger is the leader of the class. New members can join at any time. If you think you can be bene-fited, join. Nick got a "hair-cut." A Freshmrn lately asked one of the biolog-ical students when they were ' 'going to bisect that cat." K., '98, gives a new version of Oedipus' so-lution of the Sphinx's riddle. He says: "When a man is a baby he goes on four legs ; in middle age he goes on two, and when he is an old man he goes on one.'' H., '98, says that a certain old Greek was taunted with being a fondling \ F., '98, has discovered a new art—the "art of distance," and he says it is based upon Astronomy. Ask Johnnie M., '99, what kind of ham sandwiches they have at the Union Depot, Baltimore. Every student should be sure to attend the course of lectures given in Brua Chapel, under the auspices of the Y. M. C. A. The course this season is especially fine. The Juniors in their first recitation in Greek this term were not exactly conversant with the Oedipus mythus. Their intellects must have been dazzled by the new tables. K., '98, has coined a new word ; it is "rip-erable," and he uses it to describe the condi-tion of silk after having been acted on by nitric acid. Kitzmeyer and Wendt of '98, and Eberly, Koppenhaver and Wendt, of 1900, have not returned to college. It is gratifying to see the large number of new men who are connecting themselves with the literary societies of the college. It is a step in the right direction ; let the good work go on. Quite a number of 1900 men who thoughjt that the first term of Freshman was a "snap," were disagreeably surprised to find the "D's" and "E's" quite prominent on their reports. '37 THE COLLEGE MERCURY. ALUMNI. I,. C. MANGES and CHARLES H. TILP, Editors. '34. Jacob B. Bacon, after having spent a very eventful life as a professor and a contri-- butor to New York papers for more than a half century, died recently in New York. He was the first matriculate of the College and by his death his class becomes extinct. '42. The Lutheran Almanac and Year Book for 1897, is out in its familiar dress. Rev. M. Sheeleigh, D. D., has been editor of this val-uable pamphlet since 1871. '43. John Gneff made a very interesting Christmas address in St. Matthews church, Philadelphia Christmas evening. '44. Rev. P. Anstadt, D. D., of York, is translating Luther's "Commentary on the Gospel," which will soon appear in book form. '•57. Rev. Dr. Earnest closed his pastorate at Mifflinburg, Pa., with the close of the year and will rest awhile from public speaking, in hope of overcoming bronchial difficulty. '57. H. Louis Baugher, D. D., presided at thegreat Lutheran Home Mission Rally held in York,. Jan. 5th. '63. Volume IX of the Lutheran Commen-tary, prepared by Prof. E. J. Wolf, D. D., is in press. It contains the Annotations on the Pastoral Epistles and Hebrews. '64. Rev. J. G. Griffith, of Lawrence, Kan., has tendered his resignation to take effect the first of May. He expects to return B)ast in the early summer, and will work there if a field is opened to him. '67. Wm. E. Parson, D. D., of the Home Mission Board, delivered a very interesting ad-dress before that board on the subject, "Does Our Work Pay?" '67. Rev. C. S. Albert, D. D., editor of "Lutheran Lesson Helps," teaches the Bible lesson once a mouth at the Y. M. C. A. in Germantown. '67. J. Hay Brown, Esq., of Lancaster, was united in marriage with Miss Margaret J. Reilly on Wednesday, December 30th. It has been reported that Mr. Brown would be offered the Attorney Generalship in Mr. McKinley's cabinet. No other lawyer in Pennsylvania would be likely to fill the office with greater credit. '68. Rev. Geo. F. Behrniger, of Nyack, N. Y., delivered the discourse to the students of Cornell University on Sunday, Dec. 6th, in the regular order of the University, which en-gages clergymen of different denominations to officiate in turn. '69. Rev. E. T. Horn, of Charleston, S. C, has been delivering a course of lectures to the students of the Theological Seminary at New-berry, S. C. '69. In addition to his duties as president of Midland College Rev. Jacob A. Clutz, D. D., preaches every two weeks for the congrega-tion at Moray, Kansas. '72. Rev. Samuel A. Weikert presided at the anniversary meeting of the Y. M. C. A. held in Poughkeepsie. The Poughkeepsie Journal pronounces his address a masterpiece. '72. Rev. B. B. Collins and family, of Meyersdale, were somewhat surprised on Fri-day evening, Dec. 18, 1896, when a wagon well laden with provisions stopped at the par-sonage and began to unload its store. The mystery was cleared up later when a large number of the members of Zion church called to extend their greetings. The Luther League presented him with a purse. '75. Rev. M. L. Young, Ph. D., Meyers-dale, Pa., is contemplating a trip through the South in the interest of the "Young Luth-eran." '76. Rev. J. C. Jacoby, of Webster City, de-livered an address on the subject, "The Sab-bath in Relation to Our Civil Government," at the State Convention of the Sabbath Rescue Society, recently held in Des Moines. '77. Rev. F. P. Manhart, of Philadelphia, has been elected pastor of our Deaconess Motherhouse in Baltimore. '77. Wm. M. Baum, Jr., delivered a pleas-ing address during the Christmas exercises of his father's church, St. Matthew's, Philadel-phia, Pa. '78. Rev. Adam Stump, of York, Pa., has received notice from the Board of Publication that the second premium of the $300 offered last spring for two new Sunday school books, has been awarded to him. '78. Rev. C. L. McConnell, of Belleville, Pa., has been elected pastor of the Mifflinburg charge (Pa.) from which Rev. J. A. Earnest is about to retire. THE COLLEGE MERCURY. 138 '78. Rev. H. Max Lentz will complete the seventh year of his pastorate at Florence, Ky., in March, 1897. '80. Rev. C. W. Heisler, of Denver, Col., is President of the Colorado State Sunday School Association. '83. Longmans, Green & Co. have issued Macaulay's Life of Samuel Johnson with notes and an introduction by Prof. Huber Gray Buehler, of the Hotchkiss School. '83. The address of Rev. W. W. Anstadt is changed from Bedford to Hollidaysburg, Pa. '84. Rev. L. M. Zimmerman, of Baltimore, has lately issued a new book entitled "Sun-shine." '87. Rev. H. C. Alleman preached his in-troductory sermon as pastor of Christ church on Sunday, Dec. 13. He was greeted by a large congregation. '88. Rev. John E. Weidley, pastor of Beth-any Lutheran church, of Pittsburg, was kindly remembered by his congregation on Christ-mas with a purse of $70 and a set of Johnson's Cyclopaedias. '89. Morris W. Croll spent the Christmas holidays in Gettysburg with his mother. '90. On Thursday, Dec. 17th, Rev. U. S. G. Rupp, pastor of the Church of the Refor-mation, Baltimore, Md., was united in mar-riage to Miss Mary O. Sheeleigh, daughter of Rev. Dr. and Mrs. M. Sheeleigh, of Fort Washington, Pa. '90. Sanford B. Martin, Esq., of Hartford, Conn., spent the holidays with his parents, Dr. and Mrs. Martin. '91. Schmucker Duncan, of Yale College, spent the Christmas holidays in Gettysburg. '91. Rev. August Pohlman, M. D., has reached his field of labor in Africa and speaks very encouragingly of the prospects for the future. '92. Rev. H. E. Berkey, of Red Lion, Pa., is actively engaged in establishing and push-ing forward a new parish paper to be called The. Yotk County Luthetan. '92. Rev. Jesse W. Ball sent a very inter-esting paper to the Luthetan World last month, showing the prosperous condition of Southern California. '93. W. C. Heffner has received a call from the Fayetteville charge in the West Pennsyl-vania Synod. '92. Rev. E. E. Parsons, who is pastor at St. Clairesville, Bedford, county, Pa., is meet-ing with great success in his work. '93. Dr. Wm. H. Deardorff, of Philadel-phia, was hurt recently in a street car accident, but is on a fair road to recovery. '93. Rev. Ervin Dieterly filled the pulpit of the Fort Washington Mission at Fort Wash-ington, Pa., Dec. 18, 1896. '93. The beautiful Lutheran church at Silver Run, Md., Rev. W. H. Ehrhart, pas-tor, was dedicated on the 21st of December. Dr. Richard, of the Seminary, preached the dedicatory sermon. '93. Mr. J. F. Kempfer, who is one of the managers of the Alpha Publishing Co., was recently married to Dr. Darietta E. Newcomb, of Worcester, Ohio. Chas. Kloss, '94, was best man. '93. At the opening of the fortieth annual session of the Somerset County Teachers' In-stitute, on Dec. 7, Mr. Virgil R. Saylor, prin-cipal of the Salisbury schools, responded to the address of welcome in an eloquent and schol-arly manner, showing that he had carefully considered the diverse questions concerning the public schools, and was thoroughly equp-ped for the profession of teaching. '94. Rev. Paul W. Kohler, of the Semin-ary, filled his father's pulpit on Dec. 13. '94. Prof. Herbert A. Allison, of Susque-hanna University, spent the Christmas holi-days with his parents, near Gettysburg, Pa. '94. Fred. H. Bloomhardt and David W. VanCamp are doing creditable work in the Medical Department of U. P. '94. James W. Gladhill has entered the Philadelphia School of Pharmacy. '95. C. H. Hollinger and Edw. Wert are reading law with prominent lawyers in Har-risburg. '95. Herbert F. Richards is studying in Mt. Air}'. Seminary, Philadelphia, Pa. '95. M. G. L. Rietz and Roscoe C. Wright are pursuing their Theological studies at Hart-wick Seminary. '95. Fred. A. Crilly has entered his broth-er's store in Chicago as clerk. '96. Prof. D. E. Rice, of the Harrisburg High School, was in Gettysburg, Tuesday, ' Dec. 22, '96, visiting friends. 139 THE COLLEGE MERCURY. '96. Wm. Menges is at present engaged in his father's mill at Menges' Mills. "Bill's" flonr is the very best. TOW|\I /\|\ID SEWIINARY NOTES. S. J. MILLER, Editor. TOWN. It has been announced that an electric rail-way, recently surveyed, will be constructed from Washington to Gettysburg by way of Frederick next spring, or probably this winter if the weather be favorable. The company s corporating under a charter known as the Baltimore and Washington Transit Company, and under that charter it enjoys the privilege of operating throughout the State of Maryland. The capital stock is $1,000,000. A grand reception was given the newly elected pastor, Rev. D. W. Woods, Jr., of the Presbyterian church, on Friday, Dec. 4th. An attractive musical program was rendered and tea was served by the ladies of the congrega-tion. It was a most successful and enjoyable affair. At the exhibition of "Dolls," recently given by the ladies of the Reformed church, the neat little sum of $80 was realized for the benefit of the parsonage fund. Mr Frank Blocher, of this place, has been awarded the contract for furniture for the Meade High School, recently erected. He represents the U. S. School Furniture Com-pany, of Bloomsburg, Pa. Misses Ethel Wolf and Emily Horner spent their holidays at home. The former is attend-ing school at Lakeville, and the latter is at the Teachers' College, New York. The various churches observed the week of prayer and the services were conducted on the line of thought suggested by the Evangelical Alliance. The ninth annual reunion of Company C, Cole's Cavalry, was held a few miles from this place, on the 17th ult. Nineteen of the sur-vivors of the company, with members of their famjlies, comrades and others, assembled and had a very enjoyable time. After the banquet a business meeting and a camp-fire were held. At the business meeting the following persons from Gettysburg were elected officers for the ensuing year : President, W. H. Dot; Treas., J. E. Wible; Sec, Lieut. O. D. McMillan. Rev. H. C. Alleman spent Christmas with his parents at Lancaster. A jury of seven was recently appointed by Judge Dallas, in the U. S. Circuit Court, in the condemnation instituted by District At-torney Beck for aji additional strip of land wanted by the United States to preserve the battlefield. SEMINARY. Rev. J. Henry Harmes, of the Senior class, was unanimously elected pastor of Trinity church, Chambersburg, Pa. The call has baen accepted but he will not take permanent charge until his graduation the coming sum-mer. Rev. J. W. Richard, D. D., filled the pulpit of the Presbyterian church, this place, Sun-day, Dec. 26th. Rev. L. B. Hafer preached in the First Lutheran church, Chambersburg, Dec. 13th; at St. Thomas on Dec. 27th, and at Chambers-burg on Jan. 3d. Rev. J. C. Nicholas preached at New Free-dom during vacation. Rev. W. O. Ibach filled the pulpit of the St. Matthews Lutheran church, of Philadelphia, on Dec. 20th. Rev. R. W. Mottern preached at Dallis-towu on Dec. 13th; at the Memorial Luth-eran church, Harrisburg, on the 20th, and at Bethany Lutheran, Philadelphia, on the 27th. G. Z. Stup preached at Conshohocken, dur-ing vacation, Rev. J. F. Shearer, pastor. Among the others who preached during va-cation were: Messrs. Clare, Yule, Apple, Shinier, Yoder and Fulper. Rev. W. M. Cross preached in the Second Lutheran church, of Baltimore, on Jan. 3d, and in the Messiah Lutheran, of Harrisburg, on the 10th. Rev. Paul W. Koller assisted his father in the administering of the Hoi}' Communion on Jan. 10th. ATHLETICS. CHARLES T. LARK, Editor. Considerable interest has been manifested of late in the formation of a Basket Ball team. This game, as it requires considerable skill and activity, is fast winning its way, and de servedly so, into popularity amongst college THE COLLEGE MERCURY. 140 men. It is played somewhat on the order of foot-ball with perhaps the danger element eliminated. Basket ball would be a new departure in the athletics of our college and there seems to be no reason why we should not put a strong team in the field as we have abundant material from which to select. Our gymnasium affords excellent advantages for the game and it is just the thing for livening up the winter term. Let us, by all means, "get into the game." At a recent meeting of the Athletic Associa-tion, Charles J. Fite, '98, was elected as man-ager of next seasons eleven. Mr. Fite is, as a manager should be, a young man with honest business principles, and with plenty of push, in fact he is just the man for the place. Dale, '00, has been elected to the captaincy of the team for the season of '97. He is a brilliant, energetic player, and under his lead-ership "our kickers" will doubless make many additions to the list of victories. Y. M. 0. A. NOTES. The Association will observe the usual da}7 of Prayer for Colleges on Sunday afternoon, Jan. 31, It is hoped that Mr. Wile, of Car-lisle, will consent to come and address the stu-dents. The services will be made as interest-ing as possible, and the students of all three institutions are invited to attend From July 18-21. the twenty-ninth annual state convention of the Pennsylvania Young Men's Christian Association will be held at Reading. The Association will endeavor to have as many go as possible. Reading is not far from here, and we ought to send at least six and possibly more. We are glad to see the students take an in-terest in the coming course of entertainments. These alone vary the routine of the term. It is no easy task to arrange this course, and the committee deserve our approval and support. FRATERNITY NOTES. PHI KAPPA PSI. The Chapter was saddened by the news of the very sudden death of Frank K. Cessna, Pa. Eta, who captained the F. and M. eleven during the season which is just past. Rev. M. C. Horine, '62, was elected Presi- I dent of the East Pa. Conference of the Luth-eran Ministerium. Ed. C. Hecht, '91, for some years General Manager of the Real Estate Department of the Southern Railway Union, is now connected with the management of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. of New York City. White, '97, spent a portion of the holidays with Lark, '98. Weaver, '99, has been elected manager of the annual Tennis Tournament. Albert F. Smith, '00, and Frank P. Shoup, '00, were initiated Dec. 7th. PHI GAMMA DELTA. Bro. Sanford Martin, '90, spent the holidays with his parents in Gettysburg. Bro. Fichthorn, '94, is employed as draughts-man at Shiffler Bridge Works, Pittsburg, Pa. Bro. D. A. Buehler, '90, spent the holidays with his mother in Gettysburg. We were pleased to have with us during the past month Bros. Stahler, '82, and DeYoe, '86. The sympathy of the Chapter is extended to Bro. J. S. Kausler, '84, whose father died re-cently. Bro. H. L. Hoffman, '95, won the prize at the tumbling contest at Yale last term. SIGMA CHI. Henry Wolf Bikle, '97, Gettysburg, Pa., was initiated Jan. 5th, 1897. Frank Hersh, '92, was home for a few days at X'mas. Heindle, ex-'97, made us a visit several weeks ago. John Wendt, '98, who left college at the end of last term, intends to take a course in the Columbia Law School. Dale, '00, visited the Chapter at State Col-lege when home at X'mas. Norman and Will McPherson were home over X'mas. Leisenring, '97, visited the Chapter at the University of Pennsylvania a few weeks ago. Charles Wendt, '00, expects to enter a busi-ness college in New York City. PHI DELTA THETA. St. John McClean, of Gettysburg, was ini- i4i THE COLLEGE MERCURY. tiated into the fraternity at the end of last term. Ben. F. Carver, Hanover, Pa., was initiated Saturday, January 9th. Rev. Harry Lee Yarger, '83, Atchison, Kansas, field secretary of the Lutheran Board of Church Extension, attended a meeting of that body in York, Jan. 1. Singmaster attended the hop given last month by the Lehigh Chapter. Dave J. Forney recently returned from a visit to Carlisle. ALPHA TAU OMEGO. White Hutton, '97, represented the Chapter at the fifteenth biennal Congress of the Fra-ternity held at Cleveland, O. It was conceded by members of other Greek Societies to have been one of the greatest gatherings of its kind ever held. H. B. Cessna, 1900, of Bedford, Pa., was initiated into the Fraternity Jan. 5, 1897. We are glad to have Charles H. Spayd. '99, with us again, who was compelled to leave college on account of sickness. W. H. Menges, '96, will enter the Semi-nary at the opening of the next collegiate year. Maurice Zullinger, '98, who left college last year, is still confined to his bed. H. H. Jones, '92, is practicing medicine at Codorus, York county, Pa. LITEFJARY SOCIETIES. JOHN W. Orr, Editor. PHILO. Philo's business meetings have taken on a new interest lately owing to several heated ar-guments on different points of parliamentary law. This is a step in the right direction as many of our members will no doubt have use for a practical knowledge of the rules of pro-cedure after leaving college. Our last special program rendered on the evening of Dec. 11, was one of the best ever given. Instead of taking up an author as usual, Christmas furnished the special theme. Dr. Stuckenberg, an honorary member of Philo, who had been giving his course of lect-ures on Sociology here, gave us a very inter-esting talk on "Christmas in Germany." The doctor was especially pleased with the solo, "Stille Nacht." The only thing to detract from the pleasure of the evening was a bit of "guying" which took place before the exer-cises had begun. Philo takes this means of disavowing the action of those who forgot themselves, and promises its visitors that it will not happen again. It was attended by fully 300 persons who greatly enjoyed the following program: Music. Announcement to the Shepherds (Bible), - - ROLLER Announcement to the Shepherds (Ben Hur), - ENGLAR Hvmn 011 the "Morning of Christ's Nativity." - Miss SiEBER Music. Christmas: Historical Sketch, SMITH Christmas in Germany. Dr. STUCKENBERG Hymn—"Stille Nacht," Miss SIEBER Christmas in England, - HERMAN "Christmas," Irving, CLUTE Our Christmas, -.- ERB " 'Twas the Night Before Christinas," - - Miss MYERS Music. The new men initiated since the last issue of the MERCURY are: H. B. Cessna, W. B. Claney, R. Z. Imler, F. E. Kolb, W. G. Lawyer, F. P. Shoup, G. D. Weaver, of the the class of 1900; Evans and Mehring, of the class of 1901. The following officers were elected at the last meeting for the ensuing term: Pres., Clute; Vice Pres., Lutz; Cor. Sec, Tilp; Rec. Sec, Weaver, Sr., Treas., R. L. Smith; Asst. Libr., Hess; Critic, H. R. Smith. EXCHANGES. Said a biker to a farmer, * "Did a lady wheel this way ? " Said the farmer to the biker, "I'll be hanged if I can say," From the outfits they are wearing From the mountains to the sea, Whether the biker is a she or whether "Tis a he." WTe are glad to see that quite a number of our exchanges contain good, short stories. We think this more tasty than so many essays, yet a few good essays are not out of place. It is policy to endeavor to please the literary tastes of all. "Politeness," says Dr. Prather, "is like a pneumatic tire, there isn't much in it, but it eases many a jolt in the journey of life. An adveitisement in a Western paper read thus : Run away, a hired man named John, his nose turned up five feet eight inches with corduroy pants much worn. ADVERTISEMENTS. BASE- i/isitors to JO A I _J i_J Gettysburg College, $ . . SURRUES, . . Pipaldi i-)cr LeatjUQ Ball, jL J^litB, >'\a.sl-,.s, Qto. Managers should send for samples and special rates. Every requisite for TENNIS, GOLF, CRICKET, TRACK AND FIEID. GYMNASIUM EQUIPMENTS AND OUTFITS, COMPLETE CATALOGUE SPRING AND SUMMER SPORTS FREE. fi'~Ths Name the Guarantee." A. G. Spalding & Bros., NEW YORK, PHILADELPHIA, CHICAGO. 1108 CHESTNUT STREET, PHILADELPHIA fy/right's Qngraving ^jfouse *? /?AS become the recognized leader in unique styles of «^f COLLEGE and FRATERNITY EN-GRAVINGS and STATIONERY, College and Class-pay Invitations, engraved and printed from steel plates; Programmes, Menus, Wedding and Reception Invitations, Announcements, etc., etc. Examine prices and styles-before ordering elsewhere. 50 Visiting Cards frcm New Engraved Plate for $1.00. ERNEST A. WRIGHT, UOS Chestnut Street, PHILADELPHIA Hon. W. J. Bryan's Book All who are interested in furthering the sale of Hun. W.J. Bryan's new book should correspond immediately with the publishers. The work will contain . . AN ACCOUNT OP HIS CAMPAIGN TOUR, HIS BIOGRAPHY, WRITTEN Bi HIS WIFB HIS MOST IMPORTANT SPEECHES. THE RESULTS OP THE CAMPAIGN OF 1896. A REVIEW OF THE POLITICAL SITUATION. •••ACENTS WANTED••• Mi. Bryan DUB an-nounced his intention of devoting one-half of all royalties to furthering the cause of bimetallism. There are already indications of an enormous sale. Address W. B. CONKEY COMPANY, Publishers 341-351 Dearborn St.CHICAGO Settysburg, !Penn*a, WILL FIND THE-Cumberland Valley R. R. running in a South-Westerly direction froniHarrisbnrg, Pa., through Carlisle. Chambersburg, Hagerstown an 1 Martinsburg to Winchester, Va., a direct and available ^ route from the North, East and West to Gettysburg, Pa" via. Harrisburg and Carlisle. Through tickets via. this route on sale at all P. R. K. offices, and baggage checked through to destination. Also, a popular route to the South via. Carlisle. AS for your tickets via. Cnmberlauil Valley Railroad anil Carlisle, Pa, I. F. BOYD, Superintendent. H. A. RIDDLE, Gen. Passenger Agent. FPH. H. MlNNlCrl, Manufacturer, Wholesale and Retail Dealer in onfeetionepNj I OYSTERS AND G>dt fe=t fe=di&%f==/j) • CLOTHIER, * FASHIONABLE TAILOR, II GENTS FURNISHER. No. 11 Balto. St. - GETTYSBURG. J. E. BOYLE, OF LEECH, STILES & CO. EYE SPECIALISTS, 1413 Chestnut Street, Phila. Will be in Gettysburg, Pa., at W. H. TIPTON'S, THURSDAY, MX 10, From 9 a. m. to 3.SI) p. m. 'No charge for consulta-tion and examination and every pair of glasses or-dered guaranteed to be *■ satisfactory by LEECH, STILES, & Co. GOTO, ♦•HOTEL GETTYSBURG -XfiAilBER SHOPX- ^Photographer, No. 2g Baltimore St., GETTYSBURG SPECIAL ATTENTION PAID TO a-cnege (p.ins Collection of. BATTLEFIELD VIEWS _®ffixOa%s on hand. Centre Square. B. M. SEFTON. 2/ou ivili find a full lino of {Pure 'Drugs dc ^ine Stationery {People 'a Drug Store. ^Proscriptions a Specialty. MAIL ORDERS RECEIVE PROMPT ATTENTION. Latest Styles \% ipssfeg^ Sl|X5«^, Elliott ffyg^T
Along with economic growth and improved living standards, waste from households, industries, and commercial or service establishments is expected to increase rapidly over the next years. Managing this waste is a hard challenge for the Government of Vietnam because of its substantial cost and lack of awareness and participation of people and businesses. Wastes can be classified according to: their form (wastewater, solid waste); their origin (industrial wastes, agricultural wastes, urban (municipal) wastes); and their hazardous nature (non-hazardous or hazardous).