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Decorating a home library is a tough task, especially if you are short on books! Then again, not everyone is fortunate enough to have a few hundred hardbacks on hand. Considering that even the smallest of home studies requires a substantial number of volumes, the cost of filling a few bookshelves can really add up!

Many people feel that it's silly to purchase books for pure decorative value. While we certainly understand this, we also savor the opportunity to change the mind of such individuals! Our books are so beautiful on the outside that their interior ceases to be important. What's more, they are available for purchase by the foot as well as the yard. In other words, no more spending hours in used bookstores looking for space fillers. At Book Décor, this process takes a matter of seconds!

The Claims of Companionship.

A man cannot justly complain if a girl accepts similar favors from other men, for until he has proposed and been accepted he has no claim on her undivided companionship. An attitude of proprietorship on his part, particularly if it is exercised in public, is as bad manners as it is unwise, and a high-spirited girl, although she may find her feelings becoming engaged, is prone to resent it. It should be remembered that a man is free to cease his attentions, and until he has finally surrendered his liberty he should not expect her to devote all her time to him.

Another lengthy excerpt from Horne's A Savage War of Peace on the effectiveness of torture. Linked references and bracketed material added:

How effective was torture?

There remains the vital question, with much relevance to today: what did torture achieve in the Battle of Algiers? Putting aside any consideration of morality, was it even effective? Massu, with a courage that demands respect, claims the end justified the means; the battle was won and a halt was brought to the F.L.N.-imposed terror and the indiscriminate killing and maiming of both European and Muslim civilians. He also notes that, when critics compared them to the Nazis, his paras practised neither extermination nor the taking of hostages. And Edward Behr, who could by no stretch of the imagination be regarded as an apostle of torture, nevertheless reckons "that without torture the F.L.N.'s terrorist network could never have been overcome. . . . The 'Battle of Algiers' could not have been won by General Massu without the use of torture." Had the Battle of Algiers indeed been lost by the French in 1957, then the whole of Algeria would almost certainly have been swamped by the F.L.N.--leading in all probability to a peace settlement several years earlier than was otherwise the case.

This is certainly true of the short term, but in the longer term--as the Nazis in the Second World War, and as almost every other power that has ever dopted torture as aninstrument of policy, have discovered--it is a double-edged weapon. In some of his last utterances even Massu's chief lieutenant, Yves Godard, expressed doubts as to the efficacy of torture; especially when weighed against the emotional weapon it presented the enemy. . . .

From a purely intelligence point of view, experience teaches that more often than not the collating services are overwhelmed by a mountain of false information extorted from victims desperate to save themselves further agony. Also, it is bound to drive into the enemy camp the innocents who have been wrongly been submitted to torture. . . . In the long run, the facile tu quoque arguments. . . can only lead to an endless escalation of horror and degradation. In answer to the standard plaint that Muslim intellectuals were rarely heard to protest against F.L.N. atrocities, Pierre-Henri Simon counters passionately: "I would reply--'If really we are capable of a moral reflex which our adversary has not, this is the best justification for our cause, and even for our victory.'"

One of the worst aspects of the admission of torture as an instrument is the wide train of corruption that inevitably follows in its wake. In a submission to the "Safeguard Committee" [a French government committee charged with investigating claims of detainee abuse] of September, 1957, Teitgen [chief of police, Algeria] wrote words that would apply equally to any latter-day authoritarian regime. . . . :

Even a legitimate action. . . can nevertheless lead to improvisations and excesses. Very rapidly, if this is not remedied, efficacy becomes the sole justification. In default of a legal basis, it seeks to justify itself at any price, and, with a certain bad conscience, it demands the privilege of exceptional legitimacy. In the name of efficacity, illegality has become justified.

. . . .

. . .Outside the army, in Algeria the rifts created by torture led to a further, decisive step in eradicating any Muslim "third force" of interlocuteurs valables with whom a compromise peace might have been negotiated; while in France the stunning, cumulative impact it had was materially to help persuade public opinion years later that France had to wash her hands of the sale guerre. As Paul Teitgen remarked: "All right, Massu won the Battle of Algiers; but that meant losing the war."

Lately, I have been reading A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962, by Alistair Horne. My paperback's cover says that it's "On the reading lists of President Bush and the US military."

With the focus on counter-insurgency operations lately, military men and analysts are dusting off books on Algeria to see what lessons might be learned from the French experience.

The French initially struck against the Algerian rebels with tanks and artillery--heavy firepower, 1954's version of shock and awe. The indiscriminate attacks brought indiscriminate reprisals: French forces would fire indiscriminately. F.L.N. rebels would launch bombing campaigns or mutilate corpses. French forces would resort to torture and more indiscriminate collective punishment--which only brought more fighters to the F.L.N. banner.

Probably the most horrifying thing I've read so far is the steady breakdown in discipline among French soldiers fighting in Algeria. I will quite one passage from the book here at length

Lately, I have been reading A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962, by Alistair Horne. My paperback's cover says that it's "On the reading lists of President Bush and the US military."

With the focus on counter-insurgency operations lately, military men and analysts are dusting off books on Algeria to see what lessons might be learned from the French experience.

The French initially struck against the Algerian rebels with tanks and artillery--heavy firepower, 1954's version of shock and awe. The indiscriminate attacks brought indiscriminate reprisals: French forces would fire indiscriminately. F.L.N. rebels would launch bombing campaigns or mutilate corpses. French forces would resort to torture and more indiscriminate collective punishment--which only brought more fighters to the F.L.N. banner.

Probably the most horrifying thing I've read so far is the steady breakdown in discipline among French soldiers fighting in Algeria. I will quite one passage from the book here at length. Horne begins by comparing the situation in Algeria to the situation in Belfast during the Troubles:

. . . In an article entitled "Stretching a Soldier's Patience," The Times of 7 June 1973 described how Belfasters cheered when four British soldiers were blown up and horribly mutilated by a mine, and how other British soldiers were "shocked and embittered by what they thought was a callous disregard for life." Multiply this several hundred times for the additional horrors of fighting in Algeria. . . for the greater numbers involved, and for the altogether less phlegmatic character fo the French soldier, and the occasional angry backlash or infraction of discipline becomes inevitable.

By 1956 accounts of such cases in Algeria were legion. Leulliette himself recounts relieving in the Nementchas the 1st Parachute Regiment of the Foreign Legion (1st R.E.P.), just after one of their sergeant-majors had been knifed in the street. A quarter of an hour later, the entire company descended on the Arab quarter: "Sixty-four people, mostly men, were slaughtered by automatic rifle or bayonet in less than an hour. Fire did the rest." Earlier, near Philippeville, Leuliette's own unit had been involved in a massacre of civilians. The rebels had proved elusive that day. "Everything seemed to slip through our fingers. We no longer knew what we were doing." Then, suddenly, a group of women and children instead of fellaghas had run into the paras' fire:

. . . could the bloke thirty yards ahead of me, firing his automatic rifle at a child of ten lying astride the path, his leg broken and chest heaving, have sworn that he couldn't see? Women, old women, stiff and awkward with fear, were massacred in full view of everyone, in broad daylight, almost as if it were a game, to make our bullets "talk." Some of us would have done anything. Back at home, civilians again, they'd think: was it possible? Yes, it was with all sorts of corpses, old men's and children's mingled with those of the rebels. The sight of an old woman, with her hair down, flattened in front of you by a burst form an automatir rifle was something you never forget. "If you've no imagination," said Celine, "dying's nothing; if you have, it's too much."

One wonders if this is what's happening in Iraq now, and whether the ongoing Haditha investigation will uncover a similar breakdown.