In 1865, after mortally wounding Abraham Lincoln, famed actor John Wilkes Booth leaped gracefully onto the stage of Ford's Theater, landing uninjured while announcing to the audience, "Sic semper tyrannis!" During the chaos, he made his escape out the back door, adding, "The South is avenged!".

April 26, 1865 - Booth Evades CaptureFederal troops poured into southern Maryland in pursuit, and a $100,000 reward was offered for information leading to his capture. They followed his trail to Virginia, where Booth was spotted on April 26 in the tobacco barn of farmer Richard H. Garrett. After a brief shootout with intelligence officers under Everton Conger, Booth again escaped on horseback while his accomplices were captured.

Booth fled deep into Virginia, disappearing forever. Many cases of "Booth-fever"" would lead to numerous captures of innocent men, and it was believed that Booth was able to escape out of the newly reunited country or out west, living among miners and ranchers who had never heard of his fame. Because of his acting abilities, there would be a great deal of theories about where he could have ended up. Other theories suggested he died attempting to ford rivers under the cover of darkness while still others hold that enraged Southerners, whether white or black, killed him on sight and did not leave enough remains to identify.

One year later, in Columbus, Georgia, the Ladies Memorial Association determined that a day should be set aside for remembrance of the Southern dead in the Civil War. Elizabeth Ellis chose the day April 26, referring to General Johnston's surrender, but soon Booth's disappearance came to mind. After proper review the Association determined the memorial would be held for all dead, including a special commemoration of President Abraham Lincoln. Flowers were placed on graves both Confederate and Union while a wreath was dispatched to Illinois. Booth ironically contributed to great healing between the two halves of the American nation.

In 1861, on this day Judah P. Benjamin was inaugurated as Vice President of the Confederate States of America.
This post was written by Dirk Puehl the highly recommended author of #onthisday #history Google+ posts.

Walk the Line"We should have freed the slaves, THEN fired on Fort Sumter". (Lieutenant General James Longstreet, Gettysburg, 1993)

Whatever might have happened to the CSA if "The Little Pale Star from Georgia" Alexander Stephens acceded the office of "Vice President of the Confederate States of America" is open to debate - however, after most future states of the temporary CSA already had seceded from the Union and Stephens was on his way to deliver a speech in Savannah, Georgia, he unexpectedly died of exhaustion on March 20th, 1861, four weeks before the war broke out.

Stepping into his role was Judah P. Benjamin who was inaugurated on April 26th, 14 days after Beauregard accepted the surrender of Fort Sumter. The former designated Secretary of War of the CSA was strongly opposed against that what was to be known as Stephens' Swan Song - his "cornerstone" of the CSA, slavery on grounds of racial superiority of the Whites. If this was a personal conviction of Benjamin or political consideration is not clear, however, the diplomats chosen by him en route to persuade the major European powers to acknowledge the CSA had a clear announcement in their diplomatic bag: the South would abolish slavery.

While the Southern soldiers pushed North during the first months of war and pressed the Federals hard, Benjamin's diplomatic corps negotiated with both Great Britain and France an agreement - both would acknowledge the CSA as a sovereign state as soon as they had abolished the inanely atavistic idea of slavery, guaranteed taking on an immense governmental debt for taking over Great Britain's imports that went so far into the Union and suspending the Monroe Doctrine if France continued his invasion of Mexico.

When news of this plan leaked out of inner governmental and military circles, the Confederate's Western border states, Georgia and Texas almost ran amok. Stephens' speech about the cornerstone of the Confederacy being based on slavery was published in most newspapers, the governors of states like Alabama and Mississippi threatened to secede from the Confederacy and called for early elections.

The Union victory at Pittsburg Landing in April 1862 made most of the involved parties reconsider the facts. With the losses suffered in battle, the Western CSA grew cautious in seceding again, while the Europeans asked themselves if they had picked the right horse. It was time for Benjamin to goad President Davies into action. The Richmond Emancipation Proclamation was issued immediately after the Battle of Sharpsburg on October 1st 1862, while French and British naval formations were already at sea, positioned along the vital trade lines to protect them from eventual Union commerce raiders and to the Eastern seaboard and the Gulf of Mexico to end the blockade imposed by the Federals. Emperor Napoleon III of France acknowledged the CSA on October 16th, Palmerston's government followed three days later.

While a war with the Europeans on top of the Civil War was the last thing President Lincoln wanted, things went arse over tip in the Confederacy. Governor Francis Lubbock declared that Texas' secession from the Confederacy with immediate effect, withdrawing Texan troops from the Eastern theatre of the war to "protect the homeland from restless natives and the French" and to invade Kansas. Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia followed while Arkansas rejoined the Union. The relatively straightforward frontlines of the Civil War had become a hardly understandable patchwork within a month and nobody exactly knew who was at war with whom anymore within four weeks.

The USA and what was left of the CSA at least negotiated an armistice by Christmas 1862 to sort things out after New York finally had left the Union and joined the Confederates with the Royal Navy guaranteeing the city's safety from repercussions by the Federals. What followed was the chaos that minted the continent from Yucatan to the Canadian Border until the end of the century.

In 2008, on this day tensions between the United States and the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe escalated when two Air Force of Zimbabwe (AFZ) fighter jets fired on a flight of F/A-18 Hornets on a routine patrol off the USS Ronald Reagan; the Hornets promptly returned fire, downing one of the AFZ jets.

Bibi Letter leads to war Part #1The state-controlled Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation denounced the U.S. pilots' actions as "unprovoked aggression" and accused the Bush Administration of wantonly bombing civilian neighborhoods in Zimbabwe's capital, Harare. (In reality, the Hornets had only been equipped with air-to-air missiles).

A new article from Bibi LetterIncredibly, despite abundant evidence the Mugabe regime had instigated the incident, the AFZ chief of staff claimed the U.S. jets had fired first; in a similar vein, Zimbabwean army commander-in-chief General Constantine Chiwenga accused the United States of plotting to mount a surprise invasion of Zimbabwe just as it had launched a pre-emptive war against Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq five years earlier. While the White House did have a contingent of Marines in the region to expedite the evacuation of American citizens from Zimbabwe, there were no plans at that time for U.S. involvement in a ground war in that country-- which surprised foreign policy analysts who had considered such a conflict not only possible but maybe even inevitable.

In 2012, the Hundred and Twelfth Congress of the United States settled in for a session that would last a total of three weeks before it disbanded for the year. The majority of the American people had conveyed through Tea Party rallies nation wide that they wanted a brief, truncated legislative session so that no one in Congress could usurp power and spend months in constant and expensive session.

Woman solves man-made disaster Part 2On the first day of Congress, both Houses were convened for memorial services in memory of John McCain and his journey to the Gulf Coast.

"Maybe John did not know what to do there," said Joe Lieberman, "but he made sure he was on the spot, even if nobody had figured out all of the details by the time he got there". Speaker Boehner called two Democrats out of order when they attempted to introduce criticism of McCain strategy when the purpose of the memorial was clearly labelled "commemoration of the life and activities of John McCain".

The sixty Democrats left in Congress (forty in the House and the rest in the Senate) tried again to complain about the President's policy in stopping the oil spill. "Okey-dokey," said Sarah Palin addressing Cogress. "You would have let that leak go on for years and even longer, and everything that could have gone wrong in the Gulf of Mexico would have up and happened. I made the tough choice and stopped the deterioration of the Gulf in one step, saving it from the misfortune that would have come had no one had the gumption to do what was necessary, when it was necessary".

In the second week of Congress' session, two thirds majorities in both Houses passed the Life Amendment that expressly cancelled Roe and outlawed "any research on human genetic material" and sent that amendment out for the States to pass on its merit. Similar majorities outlawed gay-sex marriage and gave States the ability to make homosexual sex a felony, and abolished all "laws, rules and regulations, which restrain law abiding Americans from the posssession and use of weapons and firearms of their choice".

"Sarah. Mrs.President Palin," said Justice Scalia at a televised dinner in her honor, "we all miss John McCain greatly, but we have to be honest and admit that your movement to the Oval Office liberated this country and made possible our restoration of American values. All the problems have been wiped away and you are restoring everything that needs it".

On the top floor of the White House. Palin looked through her calendar and Todd commented:

"You got a full hour with Clinton, Obama and Kerry at the Oval Office. All those wimps are going to insist that the denial of citizenship is unconstitutional for babies born in the States".

Sarah shrugged and grinned. "Duh. Dontcha think they ought to someday tell me they will let me make up my own mind on what I read in the Constitution?"

"They are a waste of time," said Todd.

"I'll have my secretary buzz me if they get too tiresome for me to stand them," said Palin. "But I have to keep my ears open to what the other side is saying, or else my opinions will close up and I will be like them: a know it all asshole who goes out.

In 2003, on this day ageing fake Cowboy actor Richard B. Cheney began filming his final movie "The Bush Brothers Ride Again" in his native town of Jackson, Wyoming.

Cowboy Dick shoots his Last MovieA long but controversial career spanning forty years featured a few superficial similiarities to his character of "Cowboy Dick", especially the heavy drinking. Because in November 1962, at the age of twenty-one, Cheney was convicted of driving while intoxicated (DWI). He was arrested for DWI again the following year. Cheney said that the arrests made him "think about where I was and where I was headed. I was headed down a bad road if I continued on that course".

In fact Cheney had been born in Lincoln, Nebraska and his father was a government employee who moved the family to the blue-collar town of Casper in the 1930s.

And his raspy Marlboro Man tone was created by smoking three packets of cigarettes until a heart attack at the age of thirty-seven necessitated some moderation.

But despite the belligerent (and often pre-emptive attacks) on neighboroughing farmsteads, Cheney had no combat background, claiming that he had "other priorities in the sixties than military service".

He claimed to have received deferments to finish a college career that lasted six years rather than four, owing to sub par academic performance and the need to work to pay for his education. Initially, he was not called up because the Selective Service System was only taking older men. When he became eligible for the draft, he applied for four deferments in sequence. He applied for his fifth exemption on January 19, 1966, when his wife was about 10 weeks pregnant. He was granted 3-A status, the "hardship" exemption, which excluded men with children or dependent parents. In January 1967, Cheney turned 26 and was no longer eligible for the draft.

In fact Cowboy Dick did like to shoot, but at helpless small birds such as quails. Ironically, his acting reputation was ruined by an incident when he actually did finally shoot someone. Because on February 11, 2006, Cheney accidentally shot Harry Whittington, a 78-year-old Texas attorney, in the face, neck, and upper torso with birdshot pellets when he turned to shoot a quail while hunting on a southern Texas ranch, an incident ridiculed in the national press (pictured).

Fortunately for all concerned, health issues prevented Cowby Dick from following in the footsteps of Ronald Reagan or Arnold Schwarzneggar by progressing from a series of bad movies into acting out an arch-conservative political career.

In 2002, on this day the Director of Homeland Security Tom Ridge (pictured) set the Department's advisory system to yellow alert. This "Elevated" status reflected Ridge's assessment that black-eyed strangers now posed a significant risk of terrorist attack to government facilities in the United States.

The Black-Eyed Airline PassengerJournalist Brian Bethel first reported the phenomena in a newsgroup posting - "For the first time, I noticed their eyes. They were coal black. No pupil. No iris. Just two staring orbs, reflecting the red and white light of the marquee. At that point, I know my expression betrayed me". Numerous reports of Black-Eyed Kids (pictured below) or BEK occured in the United States over the following three years. In each case, Americans had been confronted by BEKs seeking an invitation into their house or car. Yet the event that upgraded an unexplained myth from urban legend to a national security crisis was the September 11 attacks.

Because The Black-Eyed Airline Passenger (pictured above) became central to the investigation work being performed by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. A key witness report was provided by a member of the airline ~ "I squeezed past two passengers getting off the aircraft. I glanced up just in time to see a late arriving passenger, noting his well-appointed leather jacket, pants and shoes all were nice complimentary shades of brown. His haircut was in the European cut with tendrils on the nape, instead of the precise American haircut. I froze as I looked into his eyes. They were black in entirety. He looked European or a light Arabian. I don't remember seeing the white part of his eyes. I sniffed hard in fear and told the pilots as I gave them their drinks, "We got a weird one on board, sir". Macho old captain lolled around and said, "Is he bothering anyone?" "Negative!"

Here comes the cutesy blonde who had been taking tickets. She puffs, "We're full, and by the way we got us a weird one, with green eyes on board and he asked who was the chief flight attendant. Meanwhile, the gal in the back was making coffee, etc. and her final pre-flight is to give me an accurate count of passengers. I noticed as she gave me the information of two empty seats -- meant full minus two passengers, no babies. She was tight-lipped and pale white looking, no color what soever in her face. She then announced there's a man in..... I added "6F" and she answered, YES!! He has the strangest blue eyes!

The cockpit door closes and we are latched down for departure. I give the safety announcements and I am noticing that the fourth girl keeps looking back at me and she is trembling. I finish and she returns to sit with me on the jump seat. "That man is very scary, I am so afraid".

I was very frightened too, ready to pee my pants. I laid my arm on the door ledge and watch out the porthole and wondered if we would survive this trip. The feeling was unanimous with the other girls and we were on total edge. I was pondering why each of us thought his eyes were a different color. I didn't like this. We were spooked to the ninth degree. I told the captain, something isn't right about this man. It was then we realized that the passengers who had seats next to him had gotten off the flight. I MADE the girls do the breakfast service and told then, do nothing else but remain on high alert and stay in the back. New York flights are very noisy flight; this day there was absolute silence. Nobody rang for us. There was a great sense of doom.

We were so distressed that the Captain put on his hat to come out for a look. That passengers closed his eyes and appeared to be sleeping. We landed without ado and matter of fact, the airplane emptied in world record time about 2-3-minutes. This man was coming and the Captain was saying goodbye. I refused and hopped back into the galley. I whispered, "Here he comes and I watched the Captain as all the color drained from his face, when the man passed out the door.

The captain said, WOW...whoa that was a strange man! I said, "Captain, he's not through with us. He's coming back on our flight and if he does, I'm off this flight right now!" Captain pooshed that and, sure enough, I followed at a not-too-close distance to see where that man went. I didn't see him. I sat down in the boarding area behind a pillar and waited, because I saw his bags, one on the floor and a hefty one on the seat and it was wide open with all kinds of camera, radios and other quite sellable items, if stolen... nobody touched that bag.

Momentarily, I saw him coming and he got RIGHT IN LINE for a return trip to Chicago. I flew to the phone and informed the passenger agents that this man just came in on our flight and no way should he be allowed back on our flight. If he was, I was outta here! I won't tell of the steps taken to prevent him from the return, but we were on edge until the doors were latched down and we were taxiing into take-off.

I never forgot him, and when 9/11 occurred and one of the gals who registered the pre-hijackers for flight lessons, I realized that when she said, one of them just gave her the absolute creeps... his totally black eyes freaked her right out, I knew in my heart, there went THAT MAN into the twin towers with a dear in flight friend of mine. Now all were dead. Now I know that some of the terrorist were coming into our country from Canada through Maine and I saw that on his ticket. "

In 1964, on this day Malcolm Little experienced his second Islamic conversion in a prison cell.Hajj Part 2 - The conversion of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz by Eric Oppen
In 1948, his brother Philbert had written to him in the Massachusetts State Prison in Charlestown, telling him about the Nation of Islam. Little was not interested in joining until his brother Reginald wrote, saying, "Malcolm, don't eat any more pork and don't smoke any more cigarettes. I'll show you how to get out of prison".. For the remainder of his incarceration, Little maintained regular contact with Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Black Muslims. He later reflected on his time in prison: "Months passed without my even thinking about being imprisoned. In fact, up to then, I had never been so truly free in my life".. On August 7, 1952, Little received parole and was released from prison.
A dozen years later, the circumstances were, shall we say, somewhat different - incarcerated in a Saudi gaol with his life hanging by a thread. Fellow Nation of Islam Representative Louis Farrakhan was to be executed the very next day. Little was informed that his own life would be spared only if he converted to orthodox Islam. He was not informed of another key development. Within the Saudi authorities, sympathisers of the Muslim Brotherhood would ensure that his new contacts with the Ikhwan al-Muslimun went unnoticed.
To be continued..

In 1945, on this day fifty nations gathered in San Francisco, California to begin the United Nations Conference on International Organizations. The goal was to replace the League of Nations, to stop wars between countries, and to provide a platform for dialogue. It would contain multiple subsidiary organizations to carry out its missions.

New World OrderSeven years later, the UN's head-quarters was opened in the Bay Area. It was a controversial choice of location by the U.N. Interim Site Committee. They had been lobbied intensely by East Coast power-brokers who argued that New York City was a world capital with international transport routes. However their logic was self-defeating because the political elite wanted a structure that faced eastwards towards Asia.

The decision had a number of profound consequences. The development of infrastructure to support the UN was indeed a boon to the local economy. However this was matched by a fast-growing counter-culture. By the late 1960s, the UN headquarters was the focal point of anti-war protests and demonstrations that the U.N. Interim Site Committee had not anticipated. Nor had they considered the conspiracy angle, with many of the protestors starting to believe that the UN had been located to suite the needs of a shadowy government - a true New World Order.

In 2010, on this day Sarah Louise Palin was sworn in as the first woman President of the United States after John McCain suffered a heart attack at the Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana where he had been overseeing the crisis management of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster.

Woman solves man-made disaster
Characteristically, McCain had been honouring a campaign pledge that had he been president during the Hurricane Katrina Disaster, he would have flown to the nearest Air Force base to oversee the response.


The Deepwater catastrophe had begun with the initial rig explosion on April 20. "And, unlike an earthquake or a hurricane, it is not a single event that does its damage in a matter of minutes or days" ~ former President Candidate Barack ObamaThe subsequent fire on a semi-submersible Mobile Offshore Drilling Unit created a massive ongoing offshore oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the largest in U.S. history and an environmental disaster.


Doubtless, what was required over the coming months was the deft crisis management of a national leader such as John F Kennedy. Instead having charged down to Louisiana McCain could hardly disengage with the crisis worstening.

In 1915, on this day Australian, British, French and New Zealand troops landed on the Turkish Gallipoli Peninsula; the Ottoman Dardanelle forts soon ran out of ammunition and within fourteen days Constantinople was in Allied hands.

Anzac DayThe fateful decision to open a second front at Anzac Cove and Cape Helles profoundly shaped the national leaderships of at least three nations. First Sea Lord Winston Churchill entered 10 Downing Street in 1924 and just two years later the Brigade Commander, and later Field Marshall John Monash became the Prime Minister of Australia. Together, they would lead the transformation of Imperial Defences. And of course it was Churchill and Monash who took the first step by bringing Mustafa Kemal to power in post-war Turkey.

But the true significance of the mission was the opening of the sea route to Russia which had been closed since October 1914. Without victory in the Dardanelles Campaign, the Tsar's Regime was surely doomed.

In 1997, following the agony of impeachment, Archbishop Desmond Tutu paid tribute to Mandela. South Africa's AgonyEmphasising of course the importance to the anti-apartheid struggle, at the same time he begged the former President to apologize and to admit mistakes. Graciously, the former President confessed that things went horribly wrong after her husband's death in custody a decade before.

In 1942, on this day Richard Michael Daley was born in Bridgeport, an historically Irish-American neighborhood located south of the Chicago Loop. He was the fourth of seven children and eldest son of Richard J. and Eleanor Daley, the late Mayor and First Lady of America's Second City, Chicago.

Birth of Richard M. DaleyHe was elected fifty-fourth mayor at a moment in history when Chicago's Second City status was under pressure as never before. Of course many doom-cryers had predicted that such a decline was inevitable as far back as the 1945 World Series when the National League Chicago Cubs beat the American League Detroit Tigers [1]. However events conspired to transition the blue collar "City of Broad Shoulders" to the modern day white collar mecca "Chi-Town". Firstly, the earthquake of 1964 [2] held back the development of its rival city of Los Angeles. And secondly, his father invested all of his political capital in launching a long-term policy of suburban annexation [3] being forever associated with never-ending highway construction on I-94 through the Windy City and its suburbs [4].

Neverthless, by the late nineteen eighties Los Angeles was fast re-emerging, and Chicagoans began to look nervously at the relative decline of St. Louis. Of course Detroit had only been saved from haunting ruin by the action of local advocates who had lobbied the United Nations into basing their head-quarters on Belle-Isle. The issue was still unresolved when Daley left office and was succeeded by Barry Soetoro. He would govern a mega-city sprawling out into much of Cook County. And the appointment of an ex-Community Organizer was an intriguing development for a city where the term "Chicago Politician" was still being used to cynically describe connections to the Mob, a throwback to the bad old days of Al Capone [5].

In 1861, the Republic of Texas formally recognised the Confederate States of America in a keynote speech delivered by President William B. Travis on this day in Austin; whilst offering critical diplomatic support to his fellow South Carolinians, Travis carefully avoiding any direct comparison between the sieges of Fort Sumter and the Alamo.

Line in the SandNo longer the hot-headed twenty-six year old Lieutenant Colonel of the Texian Army, Travis had learnt a number of valuable lessons about leadership since he wrote the famous "Victory or Death" Letter on March 3rd, 1836.

Because having drawn a line in the sand, only one of the defenders of the Alamo had refused to cross it - Moses Rose, a French born former soldier in Napoleon Bonaparte's Grande Armée who insisted that he was not ready to die. And so during the late night hours of March 5th, Rose had snuck through enemy lines, broke into the Old Governor's Mansion and assassinated the Mexican general Antonio López de Santa Anna. Whereupon his successor, General Castrillon launched a disasterous strike on the east wall which was repelled by heavy cannon fire (that was in fact mostly shrapnel) but which caused the Mexican troops to despair and quit the siege.

In 1804, foiled in their dastardly plans to betray the founding principles of the American revolution, the disgraced Colonel Alexander Hamilton and his fellow Federalist plotters were transported to Hudson County, New Jersey where they were summarily executed on this day at the township of Weehawken.

Traitors to the American RevolutionPrima facie evidence had emerged from a vitriolic letter originally sent from Dr. Charles D. Cooper to Philip Schuyler, Hamilton's father-in-law. Published in the Albany Register, the letter revealed the existence of a vast and insidious conspiracy of soldiers, bankers and lawyers who sought to implement an American version of British mercantilism. Shockingly, the plans for a "congressional-military-industrial complex" had begun almost as soon as the Revolution was over.

"States' rights must be crushed, in the eyes of Hamilton and his followers"Prior to the execution, a charge sheet was read by Colonel Aaron Burr, reminding citizens that the war of independence had removed an evil "system of statism which employed economic fallacy to build up a structure of imperial state power, as well as special subsidy and monopolistic privilege to individuals or groups favored by the state". In short, Hamilton, et all were traitors to the American Revolution, the worst kind of corrupt, power-seeking political scoundrels no better than King George III of England. Because these evil mercantilists sought to introduce numerous taxes and interferences with international trade that benefited American businesses and the Federal Government while treating the American citizens like tax serfs.

In -70000, year by the pre-colony calendar, indigenous humanoid cousins of the Mlosh lost a battle with extinction, an extensive archeology study suggests. Indigenous humanoids wiped out 70,000 years ago, study says.The human population at that time was reduced to small isolated groups in the central continent, apparently because of drought.
"Tiny bands of early humans, forced apart by harsh environmental conditions, forced to the brink of extinction. Truly an epic tragedy, written in our cousin's scattered remains". says the report.

In 1804, the "Cooper letter" is published in the Albany Register newspaper.

The Cooper Letter by Eric LippsIn private correspondence, Dr. Charles D. Cooper to President Hamilton's father-in-law Philip Schuyler expresses a venomously hostile opinion of Burr, then seeking the governorship of New Jersey, and claims to describe "a still more despicable opinion which President Hamilton has expressed of Mr. Burr" at a political dinner. When Burr learns of the letter, he will immediately demand an explanation, stating that "political opposition can never absolve gentlemen from the necessity of a rigid adherence to the laws of honor and the rules of decorum".

Hamilton's response will not help matters. "How such a gentleman as Mr. Burr can complain of the private opinions of others, made known to him, when he has taken it upon himself to deliver first from the concealment of an alias and then openly attacks upon this Administration and upon its President assaults of the most inflamed character, I cannot comprehend". His next words will prove fateful: "As to his remarks on honor and decorum, one cannot discern from his record in the matter of the so-called Cicero letters, or indeed from any other source, by what right he is fit to question others".

Matters steadily worsen over the following weeks, with both Burr and Hamilton claiming that "honor must be satisfied" between them. Both men have a history of dueling, and Hamilton's friends and advisers, in particular, try desperately to prevent such a contest between the pair, arguing that for a president to duel would be "injurious to the dignity and indeed the security of the nation, regardless of the result".