Tony Blankley compares the minor setbacks in Iraq with the major setbacks early in the Second World War (and the behavior of the British Opposition then with that of the American defeatists of today). As in 1942, changes in military leadership and growing experience in dealing with the enemy may in 2007 be producing a major change in momentum.

On June 25, the following resolution was tabled in the House:

“That this House, while paying tribute to the heroism and endurance of the Armed Forces, in circumstances of exceptional difficulty, has no confidence in the central direction of the war.”

That would be June 25, 1942. The House would be the House of Commons in London, England. And the government in which no confidence was expressed was that of Winston Churchill.

Almost three years into World War II, repeated military failures had induced considerable war fatigue in Britain. In February 1942, Singapore fell to the Japanese with 25,000 British troops being taken prisoner. In March, Rangoon fell. This was vastly damaging to Churchill’s prestige in Washington as Rangoon was the only port through which aid could be shipped to China’s Chiang Kai-shek — a very high priority for the United States in Asia.

In April, the Japanese Navy drove the Royal Navy all the way back to East Africa and shelled the British Indian coastal cities.

Then on June 21, 1942, Tobruk in North Africa fell to Gen. Rommel, with 33,000 British prisoners taken and the Suez Canal (Britain’s lifeline to her Asian empire and oil) threatened.

A week later, Churchill struggled to win that vote of no confidence. But shrewd political observers in London at the time (very much including Churchill himself) believed he was one more lost battle away from being removed from office — or at best stripped of his Minister of Defense cabinet powers and rendered a mere figurehead leader.

But during those months Churchill had been busy firing or re-assigning the generals who were not bringing victories: including Gens. Wavell, Dill, Auchinleck, Ritchie, Norrie, Brooke-Popham, Messervy and Corbett — among others.

Finally he found a general who could win — Bernard Law Montgomery. And at the second battle of El Alamein in October and November 1942, Montgomery beat Rommel and started the drive west across the rim of Africa — finally driving Rommel and his Afrika Corp clear off the continent. Both for Churchills’ government and the eventual victory in WWII, El Alamein was the “hinge of fate.” As Chuchill said: “Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat.”

I wonder whether, perhaps, in Gen. Petraeus President Bush has finally found his Gen. Montgomery. And whether Petraeus’s new strategy and success at beating al Qaeda in Iraq and growing success against the Mahdi Army — may be his El Alamein.

Wars are curious things. Certainly, as President Bush and many of his supporters have cruelly learned, victories cannot reliably be predicted. But as Sen. Harry Reid, the congressional Democrats (and a growing number of Republicans) may soon learn — neither can one reliably predict defeat.

Of course, there are vast differences between WWII and the current Iraq Theatre of the War on Terror (ITWOT). For one thing, in 1942, the British Parliamentarians were not proposing bringing the British troops home and surrendering to Hitler and the Japanese. They merely thought another leader (perhaps Sir Stafford Cripps) might better lead Britain to victory.

Were they more patriotic than the current defeatists in Washington? Perhaps. Or perhaps it was just that they understood (at least by that terrible summer of 1942) that for England, it was victory or death — while for many of the Washington defeatists in this dismal summer of ’07 they are under the delusion that America in all its might and glory can simply surrender to al Qaeda without potentially mortal consequences. …

So this week’s New York Times article by Brookings Institute experts arguing that we may yet be able to win the war has sent a tidal wave of hope through the pro-war camp and a chill down the backs of the Democratic Party defeatist. If it’s true, the hinge of fate unexpectedly may be swinging — knocking over many in its great arc.

Read the whole thing.

Telegraph:

Two amateur treasure hunters are in line for a pay-out of up to £500,000 after a small pot they found buried in a field turned out to contain the most important hoard of Viking silver and gold found in this country for 150 years.

Packed inside the ornately carved 8th century silver gilt pot, experts at the British Museum found 617 coins, jewellery and ingots from as far afield as Samarkand, Afghanistan, Russia, France, and Ireland. The pot had been buried in a field near Harrogate in Yorkshire, probably in the year 927.

“This really is the world in a vessel,” said Jonathan Williams, the keeper of European pre-history at the British Museum, where the treasure was put on display yesterday. “It is a quite incredible find and a very special moment for us at the museum.”

The discovery was made in January – but kept secret until yesterday – by father and son David and Andrew Whelan, from Leeds. They had spent hundreds of hours over the past three years scouring local fields with metal detectors without finding anything of value.

After the North Yorkshire coroner yesterday declared the find to be treasure – entitling the Whelans to half its value and the farmer on whose land it was discovered to the other half – David Whelan, 51, described his moment of triumph as “a thing of dreams”.

Once cleaned, the pot was found to be silver gilt, possibly an ecclesiastical vessel plundered from northern France. It is carved with vines, leaves and six hunting scenes showing lions, stags and a horse.

The value of the hoard is to be determined by an independent tribunal, but yesterday it was conservatively put at £750,000, although some suggested that it might be worth more than £1 million.

Daily Mail:

Mr Whelan, of Leeds, who spends his weekends metal detecting with his son Andrew, 35, a surveyor, added: “It’s a thing of dreams to find something like this. If we had found one coin we would have been over the moon.”

Unveiled at the British Museum, the ‘Harrogate hoard’ includes a decorated gilt and silver cup, 617 silver coins, a solid gold arm ring, brooch pins and various lumps of unworked silver.

Experts said the five-inch cup – which is decorated with animal motifs – was made in northern France in the 9th Century and was probably used in church services.

The coins date from the 10th Century and come from all over Anglo-Saxon England as well as from parts of Asia.

The necklaces, one of which is made of solid gold, are evidence that the hoard belonged to a Viking noble.

Barry Ager, curator of European objects at the British Museum, said: “It is an extremely exciting find, not just because it is the biggest and best for 150 years. The fact that the items come from all over the world shows the huge extent of the Vikings’ commercial links.”

Mr Ager said the haul would have either been amassed through trade or may have been looted.

He said it is likely that its owner would have buried it for safekeeping in 927 when the Anglo-Saxons under King Athelstan drove the Vikings out of northern England.

My guess is that the “150 year” reference is to the Lewis chessmen found circa 1831.

The silver pot that contained the Viking hoard

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Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Oleg Atbashian, at PJM, explains the alternative vision of history, the progressive version, which the left uses as the implicit basis for its view of the United States.

Prior to July 4, 1776, not a single person in the world starved, got sick, worked hard for a living, or experienced any pain nor anxiety. No one had ever been oppressed or unfairly exploited because the oppressive and unfair American system had not yet been created.

“Habeas Corpus was the law of the land, along with Exit Strategy and Geneva Conventions.”Since the beginning of time employment had been equally guaranteed to anyone who cared to work, along with an equal pay of exactly $1,000 a week regardless of outcome, occupation, or geographical area. All work was equally pleasant and enjoyable. Those who chose not to work also received $1,000 a week in unemployment compensation and union benefits. Other guaranteed rights of the people included the rights to housing and free universal health care, as well as the right to 100% literacy through federally funded public education.

People never heard of war, crime, corruption, slavery, torture, murder, cannibalism, and man-made hurricanes. Peace and harmony reigned supreme because the concepts of greed, selfishness, and private property had not yet been invented by the American corporate interests and maliciously spread around the world as part of the American cultural hegemony.

Each person in that ideal world practiced his or her own peaceful spirituality, worshipping Earth, Nature, and the Sacred Feminine, while honoring the spiritual traditions of everyone else. Benevolent chieftains dispensed benefits to each of their subjects according to their needs, taking care that ethnic and sexual minorities were equally and proportionally represented in all spheres of public life. Habeas Corpus was the law of the land, along with Exit Strategy and Geneva Conventions.

Family planning, effective birth control, and early sex education ensured that every family had exactly 2.2 children per household, which prevented overpopulation and famine. Commerce, travel, and international trade were uncommon; everyone lived and died within not more than a five-mile distance from their birthplace. People didn’t feel the need to migrate, set up colonies, take over other countries, create empires, settle in uninhabited areas, or fight one another over a creek in the desert.

All farming was organic and for subsistence purposes only. The environment was clean due to reliance on alternative fuels and invigorating manual labor. As a result, everybody lived in comfortable, carbon-neutral houses, eating plenty of good food on a regular basis, and driving fuel-efficient automobiles when they weren’t riding their 18-speed urban cruiser bicycles.

This was an amazing achievement of indigenous cultures considering that there had been no division of labor and most people lived on farms. In the free time that remained after toiling the soil and tending to the animals, the indigenous farmers discerned the laws of nature, developed vaccines for deadly illnesses, stretched out the average lifespan prodigiously, and fed the starving in far away places.

This Golden Age lasted from about 20,000 BC up until the American Revolution. After 1776 everything just went downhill.

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776: The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

— John Hancock

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Nicolò dell’Abbate, Horatius Cocles défendant un pont
16th century, lithograph, 39.8 x 55.5 cm. (15.7 x 21.9″), Louvre

Horatius Cocles’s gallant defense of the Sublican Bridge was mentioned in despatches by Livy, and sung of in the poem by Thomas Babbington Macauley

Excerpt:

Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the gate:
‘To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his Gods,

‘And for the tender mother
Who dandled him to rest,
And for the wife who nurses
His baby at her breast,
And for the holy maidens
Who feed the eternal flame,
To save them from false Sextus
That wrought the deed of shame?

‘Hew down the bridge, Sir Consul,
With all the speed ye may;
I, with two more to help me,
Will hold the foe in play.
In yon strait path a thousand
May well be stopped by three.
Now who will stand on either hand,
And keep the bridge with me?’

Then out spake Spurius Lartius;
A Ramnian proud was he:
‘Lo, I will stand at thy right hand,
And keep the bridge with thee.’
And out spake strong Herminius;
Of Titan blood was he:
‘I will abide on thy left side,
And keep the bridge with thee.’

‘Horatius,’ quoth the Consul,
‘As thou sayest, so let it be.’
And straight against that great array
Forth went the dauntless Three.
For Romans in Rome’s quarrel
Spared neither land nor gold,
Nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life,
In the brave days of old.

Then none was for a party;
Then all were for the state;
Then the great man helped the poor,
And the poor man loved the great:
Then lands were fairly portioned;
Then spoils were fairly sold:
The Romans were like brothers
In the brave days of old.

More recently, Colonel W. C. Hall had some fun imagining what Horatius’ citation would read like in our modern era (printed in the British Army Journal, January 1953).

Who knew that the German Army had such strong feelings about the followers of L. Ron Hubbard?

Reuters reports:

Germany has barred the makers of a movie about a plot to kill Adolf Hitler from filming at German military sites because its star Tom Cruise is a Scientologist, the Defense Ministry said on Monday.

Cruise, also one of the film’s producers, is a member of the Church of Scientology which the German government does not recognize as a church. Berlin says it masquerades as a religion to make money, a charge Scientology leaders reject.

The U.S. actor has been cast as Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, leader of the unsuccessful attempt to assassinate the Nazi dictator in July 1944 with a bomb hidden in a briefcase.

Defense Ministry spokesman Harald Kammerbauer said the film makers “will not be allowed to film at German military sites if Count Stauffenberg is played by Tom Cruise, who has publicly professed to being a member of the Scientology cult”.

“In general, the Bundeswehr (German military) has a special interest in the serious and authentic portrayal of the events of July 20, 1944 and Stauffenberg’s person,” Kammerbauer said.

Here in America, we expect movie stars to be members of strange cults.

Liberalism is more than a little inadvertently comedic.

First of all, it operates in an ahistoric context. There is no history. WWII never happened. Thus, it is possible to believe that “planetary morality is the only answer. Force alone is a tool to patch things temporarily, but in the 50-100 year perspective, finding some common ground for coexistence is essential.” Because no one can possibly conquer and subdue, then remake his adversary’s culture by force. “We can’t impose it.” The fact that we did impose it, i.e., democracy, on two peoples a lot tougher than the Arabs mysteriously disappears from the world inhabited by the liberal.

Secondly, with liberalism comes a lack of confidence, a self doubt, which Hamlet could envy. The liberal cannot fight for his own cause and defeat his enemy. He has to have his enemy’s permission. And he can only undertake any effort in the midst of a coalition, a coalition including all of his own rivals and all the states making profits via illegal arms trades with the enemy, too. It would just be too scary to go it alone. The liberal cannot simply make war. Any military operation cannot be for his own country. It must be a philanthropic exercise benefiting the enemy. The Marines will storm their beaches, and then improve their infrastructure. The 82nd Airborne will drop in behind enemy enemies, and build a power plant and a school. If the US invasion fleet steamed up to Normandy in our time, and the Germans in the bunkers on the beaches failed to hold up “Welcome to France – Thanks for Liberating Us!” signs, our liberals would believe we were obliged to turn around, and simply steam away.

What I want to know is: how come this kind of thinking doesn’t apply to domestic conflicts with conservatives and Republicans?

University of Virginia web-site

An Apache warrior

AP is reporting that an alleged great-grandson of the fierce Chiricahua Apache warrior Geronimo has heard the urban legend that claims that some Yale men belonging to a well known Yale senior society, while stationed at Fort Sill, Oklahoma during WWI, “crooked” (a traditional society practice meaning “to appropriate for permanent addition to the society’s memorabilia”) Geronimo’s skull, and the alleged great-grandson is writing to the White House and demanding the skull’s return.

Legend has it that Yale University’s ultrasecret Skull and Bones society swiped the remains of American Indian leader Geronimo nearly a century ago from an army outpost in Oklahoma, and now Geronimo’s great-grandson wants the remains returned.

Harlyn Geronimo, of Mescalero, N.M., wants to prove the skull and bones that were purported spirited from the Indian leader’s burial plot in Fort Sill, Okla., to a stone tomb that serves as the club’s headquarters are in fact those of his great-grandfather.

If so, he wants to bury them near Geronimo’s birthplace in southern New Mexico’s Gila Wilderness.

“He died as a prisoner of war, and he is still a prisoner of war because his remains were not returned to his homeland,” said Harlyn Geronimo, 59. “Presently, we are looking for a proper consecrated burial.”

If the bones aren’t those of Geronimo, Harlyn Geronimo is certain they belonged to one of the Apache prisoners who died at Fort Sill. He said they should still be returned.

Harlyn Geronimo sent a letter last year to President Bush, asking for his help in recovering the bones. He figures since the president’s grandfather, Prescott Bush, was allegedly one of those who helped steal the bones in 1918, the president would want to help return them to their rightful place.

But Harlyn Geronimo said: “I haven’t heard a word.”

The White House did not respond to messages asking for comment.

Their alleged custody of Geronimo’s skull is just one of numerous self-aggrandizing legends artfully disseminated by mischievous members of a certain Yale senior society over the course of its long existence.

But some politically correct and probably deluded younger alumni in a recent article in the alumni mag swallowed the yarn hook, line, and sinker.

Earlier report

A Yale senior society

The press is reporting (a bit late) that the best surviving sword owned by Napoleon Bonaparte still in private hands was to be auctioned yesterday at Versailles by Osenat.

The sword is a Mameluke-style saber, a form of edged-weapon which became fashionable in France and Britain after Napoleon’s Campaign in Egypt in 1798.

The future Emperor, then First Consul, reputedly used this sword at the Battle of Marengo, June 14, 1800.

Napoleon presented the sword after the battle to one of his brothers as a wedding present. It has descended in the same family for eight generations.

BBC

Fox News

1:42 video

Louis-François (baron) Lejeune, Battle of Marengo, 1801
Musée National du Château, Versailles, oil on canvas
1.8 m. x 2.5 m.

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Doubtless stung by NYM’s criticism for slow reporting, Fox News has stepped up with the results of the auction. The sword sold for $6.4 million.

—————————————————

Hat tip to Frank. A. Dobbs.

What was the #1 song on …

– the day you were born?

– the day you graduated from high school?

– the day you were married?

– the day your child was born?

– the approximate date you were conceived?

web-site link

Hat tip to David L. Larkin.

Eric Felten, in his weekly cocktail column in the Wall Street Journal, supplies the history.

The Tom Collins … got its start in the 19th century, named after a notorious hoax that spread in the summer of 1874.

The original prank went something like this: A friend would run into you on the street and, with great concern, tell you he just overheard someone named Tom Collins at a bar down the street saying hateful and libelous things about you. You race to that bar to confront the bounder, where you would be told that Tom Collins had just left for a bar several blocks away. When you get there, Collins would already have decamped for another joint across town. As you chase all over the city, your friends convulse with laughter.

Soon, not in on the joke, newspapers in cities across the country were reporting on people trying to find the scurrilous fellow. “Tom Collins Still Among Us,” the Decatur, Ill., Daily Republican reported in June 1874. “This individual kept up his nefarious business of slandering our citizens all day yesterday. But we believe that he succeeded in keeping out of the way of his pursuers. In several instances he came well nigh being caught, having left certain places but a very few moments before the arrival of those who were hunting him. His movements are watched to-day with the utmost vigilance.”

When the papers realized it was all a gag, they got in on the act. The Daily Republican kept playing along for months, gamely reporting that Collins had been spotted in San Luis Obispo, Calif., on his way to Arizona. “Next spring,” the paper predicted, Collins “will jauntily enter the South American republics.”

It doesn’t take much to imagine how Tom Collins came to be a drink. How many times does someone have to barge into a saloon demanding Tom Collins before the bartender takes the opportunity to offer him a cocktail so-named? Indeed, you have to wonder if the whole Tom Collins stunt wasn’t a marketing gimmick to promote pub-crawling.

Recipe:

1½ oz gin
Juice of ½ lemon
¼-½ oz simple syrup, or 1-2 tsp. sugar
2-3 oz soda water.
Build on the rocks in a short highball glass (what was once called, appropriately enough, a “Collins glass”). Garnish, if you like, with cherry, and orange or lemon slice.