Not in YBQ: "No such thing as a non-combatant."

[Jonathan Lighter]

Fred, I don't refer to these books often, and when I do I'm looking
primarily for ideas rather than verification of specific quotes.

Shafritz taught graduate courses in public administration at the University
of Pittsburgh. His book includes extended passages and source references
and therefore looks to be reliable. I don't think it's been revised since
it appeared in 1991, however.

Jon




On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 10:15 PM, Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Shapiro, Fred" <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Not in YBQ: "No such thing as a non-combatant."
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Jon, I am interested in your opinion as to whether any of the military
> quotation books that have been published are that good.  I don't recall any
> of them being very useful.
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
>
>
> ________________________________________
> From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of
> Jonathan Lighter [wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM]
> Sent: Sunday, February 02, 2014 4:06 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Not in YBQ: "No such thing as a non-combatant."
>
> This has been said more less frequently about modern warfare since 1940,
> but who said it first?
>
> According to Aaron Norman's _The Great Air War_ (N.Y.: Macmillan, 1968), p.
> 382, it was Commander ("Fregattenkapitaen") Peter Strasser, chief of the
> German Naval Airship Division in World War I.
>
> Strasser is reported as having written to his mother in 1915, in  defense
> of German Zeppelin raids on British civilians :
>
> "What we do is repugnant to us too, but necessary. ...Nowadays there is no
> such animal as a non-combatant; modern warfare is total warfare. ...If what
> we do is frightful, then may frightfulness be Germany's salvation."
>
> I'm surprised not to find thee remarks in any of the quotation books I've
> consulted, including Jay M. Shafritz's _Words on War_ (1990).
>
>
> JL
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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