Military custom regarding nurses is most irrational

Military custom regarding nurses is most irrational. They are made officers and therefore not permitted to associate with enlisted men. This means that they must find their social life among other officers. But most male officers are married, especially in the medical corps. And most unmarried officers are from social levels into which nurses from small towns do not normally marry. As a result of this involved social system, military nurses frequently have unhappy emotional experiences. Cut off by law from fraternizing with those men who would like to marry them and who would have married them in civilian life, they find their friendships restricted to men who are surprisingly often married or who are social snobs.

J.A. Michener, Tales of the South Pacific (1947), loc. 793

The most potent revolutionary threat the nineteenth century had yet seen

The whole disastrous story of the National Guard during the siege was a shining example of half-measures. In response to popular pressures, the Government had raised 400,000 Gardes; but, doubtful of their reliability (both military and political), it had trained and armed them insufficiently to be of any combat value - yet just enough to constitute the most potent revolutionary threat the nineteenth century had yet seen.

A. Horne, The terrible year: the Paris commune, 1871 (1971), 59