The Gaza War is spreading; the world is running out of (expensive) ammunition; Shakespeare’s First Folio Turns 400 (& Milton’s Copy Is Found).
The Gaza War Is Spreading
Turkish president Recep Tayyin Erdogan has threatened to go to war with Israel.
So has Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terrorist organization with perhaps the world’s largest non-state military. Hezbollah boasts some 60,000 battle-hardened veterans of the war in Syria and a huge arsenal, including 150,000 rockets plus long-range missiles. Already Hezbollah in Lebanon, on the northern border of Israel, has been exchanging fire with Israelis. If the Israeli military goes full force into Gaza, that would mean fewer troops to oppose a northern invasion from Hezbollah.
Yemen’s Houthi rebels, also affiliated with Iran, have also been launching missiles into Israel. Yemen is located all the way on the southern coast of the Arabian peninsula, almost 1,400 miles away.
As Victor Davis Hanson reminds us, “There are 500 million Arabs in the world, and nearly 2 billion Muslims — but only 9 or so million Israelis.”
And here’s a thought: Turkey is a member of NATO. If Turkey attacks Israel, as he is threatening to do, and if Israel strikes back, the America and Europe would presumably have to honor Article 5 of the NATO treaty by going to war against Israel. I know that’s not going to happen, but such a dilemma would destroy NATO.
Running Out of (Expensive) Ammunition
With U.S. and so many other countries sending military aid to Ukraine and now Israel, the world is running out of ammunition. And those artillery shells are expensive!
Before these wars broke out, one NATO-standard 155 millimeter artillery shell cost an already-expensive $2,100. Today, the inexorable economic law of supply and demand being what it is, that shell, described as “one of the most coveted objects in the world right now,”costs $8,400.
Shakespeare’s First Folio Turns 400 (& Milton’s Copy Is Found)
To turn to more pleasant news, though perhaps on a topic that only us English major types would get excited about, this year is the 400th anniversary of the 1623 publication of Shakespeare’s First Folio.
That book collected virtually of Shakespeare’s works (though a few referred to during his lifetime have been lost). It contains 36 of his plays, 17 of which–including Macbeth, Julius Caesar, and The Tempest–were previously unpublished and would have been lost to us without the Folio.
Nathan M. Anthiel has written an excellent piece for First Things on the First Folio and its significance. In the course of which, he tells of what has been called “one of the most important literary discoveries of modern times,” which happened just a few years ago, and yet I completely missed it until now.
Penn State English professor Claire Bourne and Cambridge University fellow Jason Scott-Warren discovered that a copy of the First Folio in the Free Library of Philadelphia belonged to the poet John Milton, who marked and commented upon the passages that stood out for him.
Thus we can see the immediate impact of the greatest writer in English on the second greatest writer in English!
Read this account, from 2019, of the discovery.
I would just add that one of my most prized books is the Facsimile of the First Folio, signed by the editor Charlton Hinman, inventor of the Hinman Collator (a story in itself), whom I got to know personally.
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