Outstanding

Diplomatic credentials (incl. Great Seal of Queen Victoria shown here) presented by Queen to Arthur BALFOUR empowering him to negotiate on behalf of the U.K. govt. in Aug. 1898. He managed to conclude a secret agreement with Germany regarding the eventual.fate of the declining Portuguese Empire. These talks were part of an effort, to explore the feasibility of an Anglo-German

alliance, which was eventually wrecked by German blunders; Germany's failure to seize this golden opportunity is wistfully regarded by German scholars as Das Grosse Nein, the Great No which, had it been a Yes, might have turned German history away from WWI, Hitler, and the Holocaust. Balfour was later Prime Minister from 1902 to 1906, and in 1917 as Foreign Minister issued the famous Balfour Declaration granting the Jews a national home in Palestine. Incl. are full length bigraphies, and books about pre-WWI Anglo-German relations.

Complete set of special grade (leather) Hero of the Soviet Union diplomas, and solid gold Hero star, awarded posthumously by Gorbachev, to Ekaterina ZELENKO for her successful ramming of a Nazi ME-109 fighter plane in September 1941, just before her fatal crash due to her bomber being attacked by five ME-109s, two (or three, according to one account) of which she destroyed before her death. Only 90 women were so honored for bravery against the Nazis; a museum in Kursk, Russia, is devoted specifically to her memory. She is the only woman ever to successfully bring down an enemy aircraft by ramming, which the Soviets called "taran"; hundreds of Soviet men had occasion to use this technique. She appears to have been the first woman to command men in mortal combat in WWII; she commanded a flight (three craft) of bombers from the start of Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union. Previously, she was the first woman to fly in combat in WWII, in the war against Finland in 1939-1940. Zelenko's is the only complete female HSU set held outside of the ex-USSR. Incl. are books about Soviet WWII female aviation, and a full length biography of her, in Russian.

An award is a object given, usually in public, to a specific person (thus not being transferable to someone else) to represent or commemorate an achievement or career, and which is intended to thereby increase public respect, for the recipient (and only this recipient), and public passion and loyalty, for the institution presenting the award

An award is world-class insofar as its issuance either
(1) is limited to recipients whose stature approach world-class status,
or who are thereby transformed into world class figures
or (2) is, at the time of issuance or later, of interest to high-level officials of states other than those directly involved.

A person is a world-class figure insofar as the person is widely known and respected within the global community, if not generally, then within a specific field of human endeavor. Anyone described in a biographical entry in Encyclopedia Britannica surely qualifies; anyone who is the subject of a biographical book, particularly years after the person's retirement or death, or those who appear in a country's Dictionary of National Biography , possibly qualify.

1913 silver "Victoria Cross" pinned onto the flag draping the coffin of suffragette martyr Emily DAVISON , who was crushed when she threw herself in front of a horse during the Derby, to protest the govt's failure to give women the vote, and died days later. This incident is one of the most famous of any kind to have been filmed before WWI, and is clearly the most famous single deed on behalf of women's rights anywhere. Her funeral procession through London drew crowds exceeded only by those for state funerals of deceased monarchs. Incl. are full length biographies.

New York City Federation of Women's Clubs, (first of only eight awarded ) solid gold (& enamel, great workmanship ) Medal of Honor, given in 1917 to Dame Leila PAGET , whose leadership of a Serbian Relief Fund in WWI made her a world figure. She caught typhus in Serbia, and was given up for dead, but recovered and still managed to save thousands of Bulgars, Serbs, etc. Incl. are Reports filed by this Relief Fund.

Diploma (signed by Tsar Nicolas II) for the Order of St. Alexander Nevsky, one of the most prestigious awards of the Russian Empire, awarded to German Gen. Colmar VON DER GOLTZ, who would become the only man ever to be made a Field Marshal, with real authority, (as opposed to honorary rank) in two major armies. Germany's most prescient pre-WWI military theoratician, he would be made a Field Marshal in the Ottoman army and would train, among others, Mustafa Kemal (later known as Ataturk). Incl. are books by von der Goltz.

Group of: Lenin Peace Prize medal, honorary law degree diplomas from E. European universities, and other awards given to D.N. PRITT, K.C . (King's Councilor) . Pritt, the William Kunstler of his day, had an international legal career that stretched from the 1920's to the 1960's. This Englishman's greatest claim to fame was his service as chairman of the international Commission of Enquiry into the Reichstag Fire of 1933. The Nazis blamed the fire on Communists, and used this purported Communist conspiracy to justify their suspension of liberties guaranteed in the Constitution of the Weimar Republic; the Pritt Commission found that the Communists could not have started the fire, and that the Nazis probably were the culprits. The Pritt Commission Report (group includes a copy with a forward by Pritt, 1934) was smuggled into Germany in time to thwart the Nazi's effort to frame a group of Communists on charges of having set the fire; the Communists' acquittal in the trial in Leipzig was the last major victory for justice in Germany until Hitler's death. This Commission's report was the first major expose' of Nazi tactics to have a major impact upon public opinion toward the Nazi threat in Western countries.
Apart from this one role, Pritt had the general reputation as an ace lawyer, whose services were provided, often pro bono, to victims of political prosecutions, as when he defended the likes of Kenyatta, Nyerere, and Ho Chi Minh, from prosecution by colonial authorities. The eventual Vietminh leader faced extradition to French Indochina, where he surely would have been executed. Pritt's services were in the highest demand from business interests, but he would never take a case against "the little guy." Pritt wrote dozens of books, capped by a 3-volume set of memoirs (incl. in this group, along with numerous books about the Reichstag Fire and Pritt's Report).