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,
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 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.
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...
When beggars die there are no comets seen; The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.
The only really detestable character in Chaucer’s company of Canterbury pilgrims is the Pardoner with his stringy locks, his eunuch’s hairless skin, his glaring eyes like a hare’s, and his brazen ackn...
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...
Stimulated by the enemy’s presence on the Loire in the center of France, the nobles responded to the summons, whatever their sentiments toward the King. They came from Auvergne, Berry, Burgundy, Lorra...
Persian poet said, the rose blooms reddest where some buried Caesar bled. The
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...
Margery Kempe was obviously an uncomfortable neighbor to have, like all those who cannot conceal the painfulness of life.
He said that whatever the outcome in America, he would always regard it as a glory and honor to have upheld the cause which he regarded as that of all humankind.
General Gallieni, dining in civilian clothes at a small café in Paris on August 9, overheard an editor of Le Temps at the next table say to a companion, I can tell you that General Gallieni has just e...
Disaster is rarely as pervasive as it seems from recorded accounts. The fact of being on the record makes it appear continuous and ubiquitous whereas it is more likely to have been sporadic both in ti...
Chief among the forces affecting political folly is lust for power, named by Tacitus as the most flagrant of all passions.
There was no dissent, no strike, no protest, no hesitation to shoulder a rifle against fellow workers of another land. When the call came, the worker, whom Marx declared to have no Fatherland identifi...
Principle, formulated for the occasion, that a woman does not succeed to the throne of France. Thus was born the momentous Salic Law that was to create a permanent bar to the succession of women where...
Though surnamed the Wise, he was not immune from the occupational disease of rulers: overestimation of their capacity to control events. No