Or Words to That Effect

The fate of a text by F.R. Scott, "W.L.M.K."

I was led to the library copy because I saw multiplied across the WWW citations containing the same error ("oderly decontrol"). The library copy netted another accidental ("conscription is necessary") which one reader corrected in the Robarts Library copy with a big fat F in blue ink which is closer to the popular conditional.

[The "is" is silently corrected to "if" in online versions that netted "oderly decontrol".]

Further research reveals that the often cited phrase "conscription if necessary but not necessarily conscription" reverses the syntax of what William Lyon Mackenzie King uttered in much more compact and clipped phrasing:

"Not necessarily conscription, but conscription if necessary"

But there is space in the popular imagination for poetic liberties.

And so for day 1944
09.04.2012