Trusting Lackeys

At one point during Julius Caesar’s Gallic campaign, when the Aeduan tribe was allied with Rome, the question of whether or not to break the alliance and join Vercingetorix’s “rebellion”–what today might be called Gaul’s “national liberation movement.” The Aeduan leader had recently been confirmed in his position through the personal intervention of Caesar, who had ruled in accordance with Aeduan laws. The Aeduan leader observed,

It is true that I am under some obligation to Caesar - though the justice of my case was so apparent that he could hardly help deciding in my favor. but the cause of national liberty outweighs any such consideration. Why should we call Caesar in to adjudicate questions involving our rights and the interpretation of our laws? We do not expect him to submit questions of Roman law to our arbitration? (Caesar, The Conquest of Gaul. London: Penguin Classics, pp.173-4.)

With that, the lackey declared his independence and led the Aeduans into revolt.

Peace, Freedom…& Responsibility

“Down to the destruction of Carthage, the people and Senate shared the government peaceably and with due restraint, and the citizens did not compete for glory or power; fear of its enemies preserved the good morals of the state. But when the people were relieved of this fear, the favourite vices of prosperity – licence and pride – appeared as a natural consequence. Thus the peace and quiet which they had longed for in time of adversity proved, when they obtained it, to be even more grievous and bitter than the adversity. For the nobles started to use their position, and the people their liberty, to gratify their selfish passions, every man snatching and seizing what he could for himself. So the whole community was split into parties, and the Republic, which hitherto had been the common interest of all, was torn asunder….The people were burdened with military service and poverty, while the spoils of war were snatched by the generals and shared with a handful of friends.” — Sallust, The Jugurthine War/The Conspiracy of Catiline, pp. 77-78 (Tr. S.A.Handford), Penguin Books, 1963.

Slippery Slope: Government Undermining of Civil Liberties

“Clematius, an utterly innocent man, was put to death without being allowed to open his mouth or speak.
After this act of wickedness, which, now that cruelty had been given free rein, aroused fears that it would be repeated in other cases, a number of people were found guilty and condemned through mere misty suspicion. Of these some were put to death; others suffered confiscation of their property and were driven into exile from their homes; left with no resource but complaints and tears they supported life on the charity of others, and when what had been a just constitutional government was transformed into a gloody despotism many rich and noble houses shut their doors. In the past savage emperors had often preserved the appearance of legality by preferring charges against their victims in the courts of law, but now even a counterfeit accusation was felt to be superfluous; as one mischief was heaped upon another whatever the implacable Caesar had resolved was immediately put into effect, as if it had all the force of a deliberate legal decision.“–Ammianus Marcellinus The Later Roman Empire (AD 453-378)(Tr. Walter Hamilton), London: Penguin Classics, 2004).

Ammianus Marcellinus, Roman military officer and historian, chronicled the decline of the superpower of his day.

Studying the Past

“On desapprend de certaines choses, et l’on fait bien, pourvu qu’en desapprenant ceci, on apprenne cela.  Pas de vide dans le coeur humain.  De certaines demolitions se font, et il est bon qu’elles se fassent, mais a la condition d’etre suivies de reconstructions.

En attendant, etudions les choses qui ne sont plus.  Il est necessaire de les connaitre, ne fut-ce que pour les eviter.  Les contrefacons du passe pressent de faux noms et s’appellent volontiers l’avenir.  Ce revenant, le passe, est sujet a falsified son passeport.  Mettons-nous au fait du piege.  Defions-nous.  Le passe a un visage, la superstition, et un masque, l’hypocrisie.  Denoncons le visage et arrachons le masque.”  [Hugo, Les Miserables, V. II  (Paris, Flammarion, 1967), p. 37.]

Democracy, Freedom, & Responsibility

On June 8,. 1978, heroic anti-Soviet intellectual Alexander Solzhenitsyn gave an address at Harvard that bears consideration on numerous grounds. The two paragraphs below offer some  remarks on Western freedom, addressing, first, the media, and, second, the population as a whole:

“The press too, of course, enjoys the widest freedom. (I shall be using the word press to include all media). But what sort of use does it make of this freedom? Here again, the main concern is not to infringe the letter of the law. There is no moral responsibility for deformation or disproportion. What sort of responsibility does a journalist have to his readers, or to history? If they have misled public opinion or the government by inaccurate information or wrong conclusions, do we know of any cases of public recognition and rectification of such mistakes by the same journalist or the same newspaper? No, it does not happen, because it would damage sales. A nation may be the victim of such a mistake, but the journalist always gets away with it. One may safely assume that he will start writing the opposite with renewed self-assurance. “ “Without any censorship, in the West fashionable trends of thought and ideas are carefully separated from those which are not fashionable; nothing is forbidden, but what is not fashionable will hardly ever find its way into periodicals or books or be heard in colleges. Legally your researchers are free, but they are conditioned by the fashion of the day. There is no open violence such as in the East; however, a selection dictated by fashion and the need to match mass standards frequently prevent independent-minded people from giving their contribution to public life. There is a dangerous tendency to form a herd, shutting off successful development.” One of Dostoyevsky’s characters [Brothers Karamazov, Signet Classic, p. 292], although developing the rather different concept of having the courage to admit one’s personal errors, makes a remark highly relevant to Solzhenitsyn’s warning: “ ’You are, I see, a man of great strength of character….You have dared to serve the truth, even when by doing so you risked incurring the contempt of all.’ ”

Leadership

Commenting on the Tsarist military leadership in August 1914, Solzhenitsyn in August 1914, p. 508 (Glenny translation, previously cited) and p. 467 (Avgust chetyrnadstatogo (Paris: YMCA Press, 1971.) noted, “And before [general] Nechvolodov had summed them up, they had summed him up–as an alien and dangerous presence for the very reason that he was not seeking personal advantage and his actions might therefore prove ruinous to his fellow officers.” [И прежде, чем Нечволодов это понял, уже поняли егоЬ как человека, чуждого их среде, опасного тем именно, что не ищет себе пользы и потомы его действия могут быть разрышутельны для сослуживцев.]

Turning Points

Whether or not Solzhenitsyn made up the passage below about a Russian commander in 1914, it provokes numerous questions:

• How often do critical moments in political behavior occur?
• How often are they recognized?
• How can one detect them in time and figure out how to respond?

Fulfilling Grandiose Plans

Solzhenitsyn (see previous post) is not the only Russian novelist to have had something to say about human military plans and their outcomes. The man Solzhenitsyn no doubt had very much in mind when writing August 1914 is also worth remembering in this context. In War and Peace, Tolstoy observed, for example:

Solzhenitsyn on Military Defeat

Lessons from history are revealed not by events but by good history, i.e., by interpretation, and a good historical novel can serve that purpose remarkably well. Consider the following marvelous explanation for Tsarist Russia’s debacle in WWI at the hands of the rapidly modernizing and efficiency-oriented Germany: