In his responding post, DWA does not attempt to answer this question. Although one might feel, by the juxtaposing he makes of his response in proximity to the question, that he might have been trying to answer this question, the content he chose to include shifts one's focus, does it not?, to the perennial DWA issue of the parenting of human kind: "A parental figure" may or may not have chosen the path to such authority and responsibility.". Yet surely it is obvious that the very use of the word "great" to describe a nation is an incitement to "prove the adjective to be an apt one", and the proving might well be expected to embody, amongst other factors, the exaggerated "isms" of the people of that nation. For that reason, Britons all but never use the term Great Britain, and are suspicious when flatterers from across the Atlantic do, and sometimes even remind their more generous friends here that the term is only an anglicization of Grande Bretagne (Great Brittany).

The parenting, or lack of parenting, of humankind is either an Evo issue or a Religious issue, if it is not also a language issue, and in any case a vast enough one to occupy both those other fora for at least the next five hundred years. I therefore propose that DWA initiate a thread on this subject in either or both of those fora. This would give a chance for those still with unbroken if now very stretched mental connection with Homer's initiating post to address and complete Homer's offering with what we might hope will be a manageable focus.

As to whether "the Finnish house builders, f'rinstance, were harmed in any way by the availability of wire-, machine-made, as opposed to blacksmith-wrought nails?, I propose that DWA pose that issue to our moderator to assess whether its posing serves the purpose of a debate on the causes or consequences of the big Buddha destruction in Afghanistan.

DWA: It would be interesting to study whether the arrival at empire status of Great Britain was the result of any kind of ruthless objective/pursuit. (As opposed to just being a robust assertive mercantilism being behind the effort.) Clearly, 1930s Germany and Japan chose such a role for themselves, IMO. (Going, competing after space, "Lebensraum", and vital industrial raw material resources.)

When DWA has completed a study of this subject he believes will be of interest to some nebulous "it", I feel sure TTers will want to read every one of his (10,000?) pages of report. In the interim, would everyone agree that Britain, Germany, and Japan, have all had, and still have, many ruthless characters in their history and all have some caring ones too? In this respect, I venture to suggest that the United States and Canada and other sovereign nations are not dramatically dissimilar.

DWA: "Or, was the arrival of English language as the world's lingua franca somewhat merely the result of the early healthy hopeful stirrings of the Industrial Revolution(s), commercial and trading interests and forces, that were inevitable?".