Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2020 October 14

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October 14

Beaverbrook, Lloyd George, and signposts

Our article David Lloyd George includes a quotation from Beaverbrook - "There were no signposts to guide Lloyd George". Unfortunately it is not sourced. Instances of it on Google appear all to be cribs from our article. Can anyone help find the source? Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 03:45, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

The quote appears in one published book that I can find: Access to History: The British Experience of Warfare 1790-1918 for Edexcel Second Edition (2015) by Alan Farmer. But it's not cited. It's possible to find similar sentiments expressed in other terms. In the Octobet 17 1923 issue of The Nation, there is this quote: "Remember that there are no precedents by which to judge him, for no statesman of any age, and none other even of this age, has had so many times to act as quickly at awful risk amid so many complications." LANTZY^TALK 17:05, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, after posting I found the Access to History book, it's a "how to pass your GCE" book, and I rather suspect they lifted the quote from us. We certainly can't use it as a source. I can only see a small snippet of the article in The Nation. I feel sure I've seen something like the alleged Beaverquote somewhere before but damned if I can place it! DuncanHill (talk) 17:14, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Hopefully, this is a better snippet view. Alansplodge (talk) 07:35, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, yes I can just about read that! I'll see if WP:RX can supply the article - by the looks of it from the time of his lecture tour. Still no joy with the Beaver. DuncanHill (talk) 14:15, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

Thanks to @Bruce1ee: at WP:RX I can share a link to the whole article at Hathi Trust - here. Doesn't answer my original question but of interest anyway. DuncanHill (talk) 15:23, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

Think I've got it:

Lloyd George led the nation to victory though confronted by desperate perils. He faced a terrible task when full command of the nation came to him. He had special difficulties. There were no road signs on the journey he had to undertake.

It's in Beaverbrook's The Decline and Fall of Lloyd George (1963). I like that phrase "when full command of the nation came to him", as if it had drifted into his hand when he wasn't looking. --Antiquary (talk) 09:05, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

@Antiquary: Brilliant! Thank you - and it's what I'd seen but couldn't bring to mind. Thanks also to @Lantzy: and @Alansplodge: for the other interesting article. DuncanHill (talk) 12:50, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

One could argue that "full command of the nation" had been wandering around looking for anyone to take it since the beginning of the War. Asquith coveted it, but fuddled by drink and high society he could not grasp it, Law could have had it but knew he wasn't up to it. DuncanHill (talk) 13:12, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Another covid 19 question

I'm not sure if this question can be answered but here goes: America has over 210,000 deaths related to covid 19. America has 10 times the population of Canada but more than 20 times the number of covid 19 related deaths. Canada's approach to covid was very different than America (as was other countries). If America had followed the same processes as other nations (i.e. masks, social distancing, etc), is there any way to guestimate how many Americans would have died under those conditions? 142.46.150.122 (talk) 14:47, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

It's a good question. Each time I was watching a queue for services from the TV there set in the US, those last past six months, they were lining, and a lot much better distancing than they are doing here in France, where I was watching at them from, home. Take a look at that Life expectancy imagery perhaps. A number of specific underlying conditions ( conditions which may be known to patients before they became exposed to the virus ) are said to weigh on lethality regarding covid. --Askedonty (talk) 15:48, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

That is going to be very difficult to model out. China has four times the population of the US and has only had 4,634 deaths (per ref at COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China). You're going to have wildly different outcomes depending on what you want to use as the baseline. Matt Deres (talk) 18:12, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

142.46.150.122 -- You asked only about individual failures, but government failures are also very important. Any U.S. president other than Trump would at least have put in place a national testing strategy months ago! According to The New England Journal of Medicine, "although it is impossible to project the precise number of additional American lives lost because of weak and inappropriate government policies, it is at least in the tens of thousands": [1] -- AnonMoos (talk) 02:23, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

It's also difficult to compare countries where factors such as population density and an ageing demographic are markedly different. Alansplodge (talk) 13:11, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

Immigrants to the United States of America lying about their education and/or their work experience

What percentage of immigrants to the United States of America lie about their education and/or their work experience when they apply to immigrate to the US? For instance, creating fake/forged documentation that indicates that they previously got an education somewhere and/or previously worked somewhere even though they actually didn't? Futurist110 (talk) 21:26, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

I apologize if my question here sounds offensive (it really shouldn't be, considering that I myself am an immigrant to the US), but this question was motivated by this one Trump supporter telling me how we shouldn't trust documentation from corrupt countries for fear that this documentation might be forged. Futurist110 (talk) 01:54, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

Is he trying to argue that the USA is not corrupt? And if not, based on what evidence? <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 04:02, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

It's a she, for what it's worth. Futurist110 (talk) 00:28, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Futurist110 -- if you want people to refer to you as "she" (or as "he"), one thing to start with would be to declare the corresponding gender in your Wikipedia user preferences... AnonMoos (talk) 12:50, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

I meant that the Trump-supporter whom I talked to about this is a she (woman); I myself am most certainly NOT a she (woman)! Futurist110 (talk) 01:54, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Start by asking them for examples of such forgeries. Temerarius (talk) 05:20, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

This is a distinct possibility. When in China several years ago, I walked through a market and one of the stalls sold exclusively University Diplomas. These came from almost any university you can name, from UNISA and Cambridge to Yale, Harvard and Nottingham. The selection of degrees was also extensive. I don't speak Chinese but I would imagine that he was able to make up any qualification to order. I did think about picking up a few PHD's for fun, but funds were short and I am too honest to use these in real life and would have had them as a joke. But, it is possible that such things are faked. -- Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.150.105.98 (talk) 09:35, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

Academic dishonesty is and always has been a thriving industry. The specific type you're talking about falls under fabrication, though we don't seem to have a well-developed article on that specific topic. Anyone may choose to fake their qualifications. One of the things that restrains people is the concern of getting caught, but that risk is obviously reduced when the institution is in another country and/or is managed under a different language. On the other hand, immigrants tend to have fewer networking options, making academic credentials a more important part of their job hunt, increasing the incentive. Which is all well and good, but the question is about how often it actually happens and that's gonna be a tough thing to report on. For one, fakery usually only gets reported if it's caught; it's not like murder where you can have a corpse with no known killer. For another, the company may choose to not publicly disclose the details to avoid embarrassing themselves (since they apparently did not perform their due diligence). I guess what you need to find is a poll that asked that specific question and hope that it's accurate enough for your purposes. Matt Deres (talk) 14:28, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

For what it's worth, if one has fake employment credentials or a fake diploma and try to immigrate somewhere else, the country that you want to immigrate to could inquire in regards to your claimed (former) place of employment and/or claimed alma mater in order to see whether or not they indeed have records for you (and if they don't, then you could be assumed to be lying). I suppose that one could try bribing some employment places/companies and colleges/universities to create fake records for you, but this isn't always actually going to be successful (because not everyone can actually be bought) and in any case you're probably going to need some really serious money for this which most people probably don't have. Futurist110 (talk) 00:42, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

• Ah yes, the allure of anecdata. The problem is, the world is such a large and varied place that, among any sizable group of people, you're going to find at least one exemplar of any concept you wish to invent in your mind. Can we find one person who tried to get into the U.S. using forged documents? The answer is undoubtedly yes. The more important question is "among ALL people, is the number of persons doing so of a high enough proportion to matter in policy decisions?" It's like the voter fraud issue. Arguing it exists is not the same thing as arguing that it matters. An anecedote is not a data point. And policy decisions that affect millions are not helpful to be based on individual anecdotes. </rant> --Jayron32 14:47, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

I did ask this Trump-supporting woman of some examples of this--such as Russian gangsters and/or fraudsters coming to the US using forged records/documents (she specifically talked about bad apples moving to the US from Russia, which makes sense given that she's originally from Ukraine and not a big fan of Russia). She hasn't responded to me so far, but we'll see if she will eventually. Anyway, though, I strongly suspect that 99% of all Russian immigrants to the US--perhaps even as high as 99.9% of them--are not gangsters, fraudsters, and the like but are instead decent, hardworking people who simply want to make a better life for themselves and their descendants. So, Yes, you are absolutely correct that one needs to see whether this is indeed a genuine problem on the statistical level or whether such bad apples are very much huge exceptions to the rule in regards to the immigrants who come to the US from extremely corrupt countries. I know that, in regards to terrorism, Diversity Visa Lottery immigrants who commit terrorism very much appear to be the exception to the rule in regards to this: https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/cheap-assault-immigration-visa-lottery (The Cato Institute certainly has an agenda in regards to immigration; however, I haven't actually seen any evidence that the data that they present here is actually inaccurate. So, I am going to treat this data as being presumptively valid and accurate unless it will be proven otherwise, which I think is a reasonable approach to take in regards to this data.) Futurist110 (talk) 00:42, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

One wonders how many natural-born citizens of the good old US of A ever lie about their education or work experience? Without the answer to that, we really can't say anything meaningful about the answer to OP's question even if we knew it. DuncanHill (talk) 14:55, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

It's just a way to slander immigrants and fuel prejudice, such as saying they're mostly all murderers, rapists and other types of street criminals. Though it's hard to imagine any intelligent person saying that, let alone buying into it. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 15:03, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

The question is whether the view that you and I imagine to be true is correct. --174.89.48.182 (talk) 21:33, 15 October 2020 (UTC)