Janet Flanner

Born this day in 1892: JANET FLANNER, (1892–1978), longtime The New Yorker magazine columnist and Paris correspondent known for her witty and sophisticated “Letter from Paris” pieces (writing under the pseudonym Genêt) and for her insightful contributions to the magazine’s “Profile” series.

Here’s an excerpt from her profile of Adolph Hitler (March 14, 1936):

“Lacking the cerebral faculty of creating new public ideologies, as a fanatic [Hitler] has developed his unusual capacity for adapting those of others. Being self-taught, his mental processes are mysterious; he is missionary-minded; his thinking is emotional, his conclusions material. He has been studious with strange results: he says he regards liberalism as a form of tyranny, hatred and attack as part of man’s civic virtues, and equality of men as immoral and against nature. Since he is a concentrated, introspective dogmatist, he is uninformed by exterior criticism. On the other hand, he is a natural and masterly advertiser, a phenomenal propagandist within his limits, the greatest mob orator in German annals, and one of the most inventive organizers in European history. He believes in intolerance as a pragmatic principle. He accepts violence as a detail of state, he says mercy is not his affair with men, yet he is kind to dumb animals…. His moods change often, his opinions never. Since the age of twenty, they have been mainly anti-Semitic, anti-Communist, anti-suffrage, and Pan-German. He has a fine library of six thousand volumes, yet he never reads; books would do him no good—his mind is made up.”

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/backissues/2010/03/eighty-five-from-the-archive-janet-flanner.html#ixzz2NR0TyerS

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Jane Delano

Born this day in 1862: Jane A. Delano (1862–1919), founder of the American Red Cross Nursing Service

Delano, an educator and administrator of formidable skills, made her greatest contribution by transforming the Red Cross Nursing Service into a reserve for the Army Nurses Corps. Through her efforts, 8,000 well-trained, professional nurses were available for mobilization at the outset of World War I. In addition, Delano mobilized an additional 20,000 nurses and other aid workers to serve the war effort overseas. She also served as the director of the Red Cross’s Department of Nursing, overseeing efforts to cope with the influenza epidemic of 1918. She died during wartime service and was posthumously awarded distinguished service medals from the Red Cross and the U.S. Army. She was inducted into the American Nurses Association Hall of Fame in 1982.

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