From July 1914
excerpted from Eyewitness To Hitory, edited by John Carey, Avon Books 1997, pgs 444 - 445 Harvard Press

From The Vulture (an account of armaments dealer, Sir Basil Zaharoff by Osbert Sitwell)
[…] This armament monger exactly resembled a vulture, and it is no good pretending, in order to avoid the obvious parallel,that he did not. To some it may cause surprise that a man who traded on weapons of death and the propects of war,and grew fat bodied on the result of them, should have resembled the scaly-necked bird; but whether or or no it seem strange, depends on one’s view of the world, and of the immense and startling range of analogy, simile and and image than it offers. There in any case, the likeness was, for all to behold: the beaky face, the hooded eye, the wrinkled neck, the full body, the impression of physical power and of the capacity to wait, the somber alertness[…]

Here’s something else on the “mystery man of Europe”

[…] But Zaharoff played a leading, if not the leading, role in that strange world comedy of the arms makers leading the double life of chauvinists and internationalists. They gave us the spectacle of Boers mowing down English regiments with Vickers’ pom-poms, Prussian surgeons picking out of Prussian wounded Austrian shrapnel fired by Krupp’s cannon, French poilus massacred by shot poured out of guns made in Le Creusot, English Tommies killed by weapons produced by Armstrong and Vickers, and American ships sent to the bottom by U-boats built on models supplied by American submarine builders. Zaharoff was the master of what one biographer has called the “principle of incitement,”under which war scares were managed, enemies created for nations,airplanes sold to one nation and antiaircraft guns to her neighbors, submarines to one and destroyers to another. He did what the cigarette people did, what the liquor industry, the beauty industry did — created a demand for his merchandise. The armament industry became a game of international politics, the arms salesman a diplomatic provocateur, the munitions magnates of all nations partners in cartels, combines, consolidations; exchanging plans, secrets, patents. He was the greatest of all the salesmen of death, and, as one commentator has observed, if you would see his monument, look about you at the military graveyards of Europe. […]

From The Merchant of Death: Basil Zaharoff
By John T. Flynn
[From Men of Wealth, pages 337–372.]

http://www.mises.org/story/2687

http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/7897401/merchants/merchant_08.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basil_Zaharoff

Readers here know that it was common for birds of carrion to wait close by when a battle was pending, in anticipation for their grisly spoils. And for those that appreciate first hand accounts, I think you would thoroughly enjoy Eyewitness to History.

http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/

Missed your “Music”

Larry,

Why do we still use the services of Bout? Also, was the movie Lord of War about him?