From: Troels@ThisIsFake.invalid   
      
   In message    
   Morgoth's Curse  spoke these   
   staves:   
   >   
   > On Sat, 30 Jun 2012 05:27:52 -0700 (PDT), Mike Scott Rohan   
   >  wrote:   
   >>   
      
      
      
   I know far too little about WWI to be able to contribute to that   
   discussion, but there are a couple of points that I would like to   
   take up.   
      
   >> the Germans were the same or worse. Certainly their pride was   
   >> underpinned by a sort of distorted Darwinism that laid the   
   >> foundations for later racism,   
      
   My impression is that this, the distorted Darwinism (leading e.g. to   
   the castration of the insane and other notions of race-hygiene), was   
   fairly wide-spread in the early decades of the twentieth: I know that   
   some of this made it into Danish politics at the time, only to be   
   removed when the Nazi regime demonstrated where that road could lead.   
      
      
      
   > It is a great pity that so few of Tolkien's early letters   
   > survive.   
      
   Actually there are a number of his letters to Edith Bratt that   
   survive, but these are not available for research yet. Carpenter   
   probably had access to some -- perhaps even most -- of them when   
   composing his biography (a few of them certainly appear in   
   /Letters/), but e.g. John Garth was not granted access to them when   
   he wrote his book, /Tolkien and the Great War/.   
      
   Most of it is probably just the love-struck musings of a young man (I   
   really do hope my wife has burned those particular letters!), but   
   there might be some interesting bits here and there that may one day   
   be published (that will most likely be a matter of what generation of   
   the Tolkiens that will be willing to see the youthful transgressions   
   of John Ronald publicly known: something I very much doubt that   
   Christopher T will ever accede to).   
      
   The letters are mentioned in Michael Martinez' interesting interview   
   with John Garth (for a URL see my latest Tolkien Transactions).   
      
   --   
   Troels Forchhammer   
   Valid e-mail is    
   Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.   
      
       Elen síla lúmenn' omentielvo   
      - /The Fellowship of the Ring/ (J.R.R. Tolkien)   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)