The background of the Contact section is a shot from the interior of an E-Type Jaguar—the basis for Bronaryre’s—and is the same vehicle as on the rear jacket of FLOREAT LUX. The exact model is a 1969 Series 2 Roadster, right-hand-drive and British specification, which is to say that the 4.2-liter straight-six is equipped with triple SU carburetors—Sabrina’s “row of shiny little tea kettles”—not the dual Zenith-Stromberg units on American XKEs, fitted to meet US emission standards but reducing power. In this shot is visible “a lever to the left of the steering column” that Sabrina thinks of as “selecting flap for take-off” (in fact it chokes those triple SUs, enriching the mixture for a cold start).
FLOREAT LUX
Is it true that “no two genuine democracies have ever gone to war”?
As far as the author is aware, Bronaryre’s assertion is correct. In the first Indo-Pakistani War (1947) both sides were technically democracies, but the partition had just occurred, there were still independent princelings deciding which if either nation they would join, and there had been no instance of the peaceful transition of political power that distinguishes genuine democracies. In the 1965 & 1971 wars, Pakistan was under military dictatorship (there had been an election in 1970, but the winner was imprisoned by the ruling general). In the fourth war, in 1999, both sides were again technically democracies, but the fact that there was another military coup in Pakistan that same year makes it hard to assert that democracy there was as yet genuine.
The intermittent “Cod Wars” between Iceland and the United Kingdom (1958-1976) resulted in some ships being damaged in collisions, but there were no deaths and these conflicts cannot count as real wars.
More recently, in the Russia/Georgia and Russia/Ukraine conflicts both sides were nominally democracies, but the assertion that Russia under Putin remains a genuine democracy is not credible.
Any counterexamples would be interesting to hear. In their absence, Bronaryre’s observation makes a compelling argument for a political system so effective in bringing peace to such a belligerent species, and should encourage the democracies to more resolutely close ranks against today’s global rise of authoritarian regimes.