Odds and Ends
- From the Discourses on Livy by Niccolo Machiavelli: “Hence it happens that a republic has a longer life and has good fortune longer than a principality, because, thanks to the diversity of the citizens there are in it, it can adapt better to diversity of circumstances than a prince can. For, as has been stated, a man who is accustomed to proceeding in one way never changes; and when times unsuited to those ways of his change, he must necessarily fail.
- From Cheating and Deception by J. Bowyer Bell and Barton Whaley:
[A]round the end of 1942, when Major Oliver Thynne discovered that the Germans had learned to distinguish the dummy British aircraft from the real ones because the flimsy dummies were supported by struts under their wings. At that time Major Thynne was a novice planner with [Brigadier Dudely] Clarke’s “A” Force. When Major Thynne reported this interesting intelligence to his boss, Brigadier Dudley Clarke, the “master of deception” fired back:
“Well, what have you done about it?”
“Done about it Dudley? What could I do about it?”
“Tell them to put struts under the winds of all the real one’s, of course!”
