Robert Boardman seeks a source for the assertion that, if political and military leaders are from different backgrounds, “the armies will be led by idiots and the politics ruled by cowards.”

Herb McArthur is looking for a poem that began “When In Remembrance of Things Past/I take down my copy of that novel vast” and ended “…Proust/ And back upon the shelf I him do boost.”

"only the strong survive" (September-October 2001). No one has provided a source for the rhymed English translation submitted to this column, but Francke professor of German art and culture Karl S. Guthke identified the original poem as Bertolt Brecht’s "Ich, der Überlebende" ("I, the Survivor," in Gesammelte Werke in 20 Bänden, volume 10, page 882). Marje Schuetze-Coburn of the Feuchtwanger Memorial Library, Los Angeles, sent an unrhymed translation by John Willett (in Bertolt Brecht Poems 1913-1956, edited by Willett and Ralph Manheim with the cooperation of Erich Fried, second edition, page 392).

Send inquiries and answers to “Chapter and Verse,” Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware Street, Cambridge 02138.