Germans felt similar emotions. The war was to be, wrote Thomas Mann, a purification, a liberation, an enormous hope. The victory of Germany will be a victory of soul over numbers. The German soul, he...
Every repetition of the choice only hardened the issue.
Fireflies were the souls of unbaptized dead infants.
The turn of events in Belgium was a product of the German theory of terror. Clausewitz had prescribed terror as the proper method to shorten war, his whole theory of war being based on the necessity o...
The Englishman, as an American observed, felt himself the best-governed citizen in the world, even when in opposition he believed the incumbents were ruining the country.
Rule was still personal, deriving from the fief of land and oath of homage. Not citizen to state but vassal to lord was the bond that underlay political structure.
In many guilds artisans struck for higher pay and shorter hours. In an age when social conditions were regarded as fixed, such action was revolutionary.
Have we, he wondered, conceived a merely human project and then imagined it to be a decree of the Almighty?
An event of great agony is bearable only in the belief that it will bring about a better world. When it does not, as in the aftermath of another vast calamity in 1914-18, disillusion is deep and moves...
A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests. Mankind, it seems, makes a poorer performance of gov...
To plunge into passionate dispute over the trivialities of so-called honor is a queerer but not uncommon gambit of men who have just come from putting their lives at stake in serious combat,
Though surnamed the Wise, he was not immune from the occupational disease of rulers: overestimation of their capacity to control events. No
These cumbersome vehicles were as convenient as if dinosaurs had survived to be used by cowboys for driving cattle
The textile industry was the automobile industry of the Middle Ages,
The amount the rich could squander on occasions like these in a period of repeated disasters appears inexplicable, not so much with regard to motive as with regard to means.
The Battle of the Marne was one of the decisive battles of the world not because it determined that Germany would ultimately lose or the Allies ultimately win the war but because it determined that th...
Palaver is the rule, he said. Every morning I lose three hours in reports and discussions which have no results. Every decision requires an arbitration. Even as Chief of Staff to the Governor, I canno...
No less a bold and pugnacious figure than Winston Churchill broke down and was unable to finish his remarks at the sendoff of the British Expeditionary Force into the maelstrom of World War I in Europ...
Melancholy, amorous and barbaric, these tales exalted adulterous love as the only true kind, while in the real life of the same society adultery was a crime, not to mention a sin. If found out, it dis...
Medieval justice was scrupulous about holding proper trials and careful not to sentence without proof of guilt, but it achieved proof by confession rather than evidence, and confession was routinely o...