Picture of the day

"Mongo just pawn in game of life." :)

Mongols (close enough) were THE light cavalry of their day. Photographs of them in their prime don't exist for a number of reasons - no one had cameras, and few people stuck around to "preserve the memories" of Mongol depredation - but military minded horse-borne Mongols were still a thing as late as WW2.

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Bad little men on wee horses. Always a recipe for trouble.

Compare the Mongols and this stately man and horse combo of the Polish Uhlans:

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Not often one sees a horseman with anti-tank capability, but that guy has it. The wz.35 was apparently a pretty snappy number early in the war. Here we see Finns with an example transferred to them by the Germans, who stole it from the Poles:

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Panzerfausts are for wussies. Real Luftwaffe hard lads use the Panzerwurfmine, a hand-thrown hoolow charge device with folding canvas fins.

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But there's always that one guy who doesn't quite get it...

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"It's not a dart, Joe. You sure you're supposed to be dickin' around with that?"
 
Nobody mentioned two seater behind a couple of Corsairs.That's SNC-1 Falcon,Navy version of Curtiss-Wright CW-22.Also it looks like naval 2 tone paint on it...
 
Canada Votes 1917:

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Borden (Mr. Hundred Dollar Bill) ran for the Conservatives on a pro-conscription platform. Interestingly, in an effort to keep Quebec's lid on about the issue, he'd formed a "Union Government" the month before consisting of Conservatives, a few pro-conscription Liberals, and a small gaggle of independents.

Laurier (Five Dollar Wilf) opposed, backed by a bunch of Quebecois who didn't see a European war as any of their damn business.

Thanks to the Wartime Elections Act, two new groups of voters came into play - soldiers and women. Both groups backed conscription. It also excluded "enemy aliens" like immigrants from Germany and Austria who would likely oppose it. All this was passed a month before the election by, surprise, the Unionists. The LPC was, naturally, choked at such baldfaced manipulation but as they weren't in power, they could be ignored.

Great system we have, huh? This from the Canadian Encyclopedia:

The campaign for the "Khaki Election," as it was called after the colour of the army's uniforms, was the ugliest in Canadian history. As historian Tim Cook writes, the campaign "mirrored the war overseas: vicious, unrestrained, and with blood everywhere."

Unionists attacked the Liberals' patriotism, and pro-conscription newspapers such as The London Free Press thundered, "Every vote cast for a Laurier candidate is a vote cast for the [German] Kaiser." Meanwhile in Québec, where the Union Government struggled to even find candidates, those brave enough to run under the conscription banner were threatened and attacked. In the midst of all this, farmers spoke out against both Unionists and Liberals, while farmers themselves were accused of bumping up food prices and profiteering from the war.

The sour mood was made worse by domestic tragedy. As Borden campaigned across Canada, he was shocked to learn on 6 December of the Halifax Explosion, which devastated his hometown, killing 2,000 people — including members of many families he knew personally. Eleven days later, Canadians voted. Borden's Unionists swept the English-speaking regions, returning to Parliament with a majority of 153 seats, including only three from Québec. Laurier's Liberals won 82 seats, 62 from Québec.

The Unionists had won a resounding victory, but the country they now governed was scarred by the vitriol of the campaign, and divided. The issue at the heart of it all, conscription, hardly mattered in the end. In 1918, new Allied offensives had the Germans on the run, and the war would be over by November that year. Although Canadian battalions in Europe were bolstered by conscripts in the final months of the war, only 125,000 Canadians — just over a quarter of those eligible to be drafted — were ultimately conscripted into the military, and of those only about 24,000 were sent to the front lines.

A more lasting consequence of the election was the political isolation felt by Québec — a fact that would hurt Conservative fortunes there, and haunt Canadian unity, for generations to come.

Safe to say that "isolation" led in time to organizations like the BQ and PQ. One wonders what isolation will be bred from yesterdays Act of Mass Forgiveness.
 
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