Time Slips By

Since humans have been able to take note of the sun rising and setting we have found ways to measure time, distance and the temperature of the world.  Time out of these is the most abstract, as distance and temperature are physical changes in the environment, time can pass differently from person to person.  Try looking at a clock for one minute, it feels very slow right? However, during summer vacation, the days seem to go by so fast that they almost blend together.  The less you notice the passage of time, the faster it goes.  In dreams, hour pass by in a few minutes in “real time”.  The idea of time being a concept specific to one individual is shown very well in The Spot on the Wall, where a simple action of staring at a mark on the wall which in real time takes maybe a few minutes tops, is stretched out over what feels like hours, as she uses the dot to anchor herself as she jumps to different aspects of society, such as the rank of women in society and a need to feel balanced.  A classic example of time being relative is The Chronicles of Narnia where the children spend what feels like entire lifetimes in the imaginary world within the wardrobe when actuality they were gone not even a day.

The concept of time being an internal concept rather than external was coined during the period of Modernist Literature which lasted from 1915 through the 1950’s and made literature about very simple aspects of everyday life.  Again, The Mark on the Wall is an example of that, the simple normal event of contemplating what a mark you see on a wall is.  Modernism made literature once again about the common man and common things, rather than the extravagant tales of the past.

The Height of German Efficiency

The height of German engineering in World War I was the introduction of the German U-boats in Atlantic warfare.  The submarine was first invented by Wilhelm Bauer in 1850, the three man Brandtaucher sunk to the bottom of Kiel Harbor on its first test run.  The first fully functioning submarine was built in 1903, Forelle, then was sold to Russia in the Russo-Japanese War.  The design, size and weaponizing of the submarine was upgraded and altered all the way through to the U-boat.  These included, diesel engines, torpedoes and torpedo tubes.  By World War I rolled around, Germany had almost 50 submarines of 13 classes either in commission or under construction.  The U-boat was ready to begin its terror of the Atlantic Ocean.

The U-boat quickly became a force to be reckoned with, sinking Ally ships quickly and efficiently.  The first merchant ship was sunk on October 20th, 1914, the SS Glitra off of Norway.  This was seen as retaliation against British blockades and landmines by the British.  The U.S. struggled to remain neutral with distress and frustration coming from the allied powers, the Allies then would fly the American flag in order to sneak past German U-boats which further angered the United States.  The false flags made U-boat strategies more ruthless and indiscriminate towards boats.  Even though the Lusitania was a tragedy for the U.S. it was not until the SS Sussex was sunk that got a mass reaction by the public.  The U.S. threatened to severe ties with Germany which made the Germans re-think their prize rules.  The German U-boats sunk 1.4 million tons of ship between October 1916 and January 1917 and on January 31, 1917 Germany announced that they would start unrestricted warfare which due to several U.S. merchant ships being sunk, the U.S. entered the way.  As the war came to a close out of 360 submarines built, 178 were lost and on November 11, 1918 the remaining submarines were surrendered to the Allies and were scrapped and researched in order to replicate the technology.

The end of World War I did not bring the end of the U-boat as many people believe.  The Treaty of Paris restricted the tonnage of the German navy.  They got around this by having facilities for building them and training crews be labeled as “research” and by the time World War II started, the Germans had 65 U-boats, 21 in the water, ready for war.  In the beginning the U-boats were super effective at destroying Ally ship, however as the war progressed, the Ally developed sonar to detect the submerged U-boats and targeted U-boat yards with strategic bombings.  The U-boat not only shaped war, it shaped the technology of the rest of the century, radar and sonar lead to the invention of cordless telephones and radio waves and the improvement of overall submarine technology improved greatly because of German engineering.