Sturm und drang.

Title :  Psalterium romanum.

Publication date :  1301-1400

Language :  Latin

Format : Italian writing and ornamentation. Initials of gold filigranes and 7 large initials historiated on a background of gold. Historiated frameworks.

July 5, 1918 - War Communism in Red Russia

Pictured - A Bolshevik placard entreats readers to “remember the starving!”

The Bolshevik takeover of Russia gave Lenin control of an economy in a state of collapse. Meanwhile the breakout of a vicious civil war put the revolution at risk. Fighting for survival and trying to reorganize the economy, the Bolsheviks began a program of “war communism” in the summer of 1918.

The Bolsheviks controlled the most important industrial cities of European Russia. But Russian industry was failing, and the Bolsheviks did not have firm control over the agrarian countryside, which meant feeding the urban population and the growing Red Army was a problem. Many urban Russians were starving. War communism redirected agricultural produce to the cities and the front.

June 29, 1918 - Americans Arrive in Italy

Pictured - The most famous American to be in Italy during World War One was Ernest Hemingway, who drove ambulances for the Italian army. He was wounded in July and nursed back to health by Agnes von Kurosky, pictured here, who inspired his character Catherine in Farewell to Arms.

There were 800,000 American troops in France in June 1918, a far cry from the amount demanded by Britain and France but already making a decisive impact plugging the Allied lines. To the irritation of their commander General Pershing, however, American troops were still serving under the overall command of British and French corps commanders.

The Green Wheatfield behind the Asylum, Vincent van Gogh

 L’ornementation par le pochoir 

Anthologia Palatina 7.245 = Gaetulicus (1st cent. CE?) O Time, you spirit who watch over all Affairs of every sort for mortal men, Be messenger to all of what we bore- How, trying to preserve the holy land Of Hellas, we encountered death among The far-famed level plains of the Boeotians.  Ὦ Χρόνε, παντοίων θνητοῖς πανεπίσκοπε δαῖμον,     ἄγγελος ἡμετέρων πᾶσι γενοῦ παθέων· ὡς ἱερὰν σῴζειν πειρώμενοι Ἑλλάδα χώραν     Βοιωτῶν κλεινοῖς θνῄσκομεν ἐν δαπέδοις.