Would the fate of China have been different if Stilwell had been allowed to reform the army and create an effective combat force of 90 divisions? ... This assumption might have been true if Asia were...
With his ship faced with the danger of sinking, the Richard’s chief gunner screamed to the Serapis, Quarter! quarter! for God’s sake! Jones hurled a pistol at the man, felling him. But the cry had bee...
When he smelled battle afar off, Winston Churchill resembled the war horse in Job who turned not back from the sword, but ‘paweth in the valley and saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha.’ He was the only B...
The war, like all wars, was proving more expensive for the Bourbons than planned. Since the alliance, France had advanced to the Americans over 100 million livres, about $25 million, in loans, supplie...
That the mortality was accepted as God’s punishment may explain in part the vacuum of comment that followed the Black Death. An investigator has noticed that in the archives of Périgord references to...
That the Jews were unholy was a belief so ingrained by the Church that the most devout persons were the harshest in their antipathy, none more so than St. Louis. If the Jews were unholy, then killing...
Supposed to be commissioned by the Church, the pardoners would sell absolution for any sin from gluttony to homicide, cancel any vow of chastity or fasting, remit any penance for money, most of which...
Smite a villein and he will bless you; bless a villein and he will smite you.
Political balance among the competing groups was unstable because the king had no permanent armed force at his command.
Philip was fascinated by the all-absorbing question of the Beatific Vision: whether the souls of the blessed see the face of God immediately upon entering Heaven or whether they have to wait until the...
Perhaps by this time the 14th century was not quite sane. If enlightened self-interest is the criterion of sanity, in the verdict of Michelet, no epoch was more naturally mad.
Inevitably, as hatred of monarchy was added to hatred of episcopacy, they were led to republicanism.
Human behavior is timeless.
He said, McKinley was going around the country shouting prosperity when there was no prosperity for the poor man.
As vanguard of the invasion, the cavalry’s mission was to reconnoiter the position of the Belgian and French armies, to watch out for British landings, and to screen the German deployment against simi...
The thing you contend for to be reason, Burke had said, show it to be common sense, show it to be the means of attaining some useful end, and then I am content to allow it what dignity you please.
The Home Secretary, a young man of thirty-seven, impossible to ignore, who, from his inappropriate post, had pelted the Prime Minister during the crisis with ideas on naval and military strategy, all...
Is more unfair, as an English historian has well said, than to judge men of the past by the ideas of the present. Whatever may be said of morality, political wisdom is certainly ambulatory.
Women were considered the snare of the Devil, while at the same time the cult of the Virgin made one woman the central object of love and adoration.
Within the army, field officers despised Staff officers as having the brains of canaries and the manners of Potsdam, but both groups were as one in their distaste for interference by civilian minister...