The premier of Great Russia proposes that the conspirators kill not only their (innocent) prisoners but also even the guards. Ira Quick responds:
"'Sir, let's sleep on it and then talk further, but at the moment I am inclined to believe that in principle you are right.'" (p. 232)
That translates as: "You are right," or, in one word, "Yes." The preceding twenty one words seem to qualify but instead merely delay Quick's admission of his complicity in murder:
sleep necessary;
further talk necessary;
at the moment;
inclined to believe;
in principle...
How many prevarications are possible? An American celebrity once said, "I (used to be a person who) was promiscuous."
Before speaking, Quick thinks:
"I've had an inferno's worth of hours to agonize over the moral issues..." (ibid.)
We do not think that Quick has ever agonized over a moral issue but he has to tell himself that he did. Dishonesty begins within, as with CS Lewis' character, Mark Studdock:
"If the idea, 'Feverstone will think all the more of you for showing your teeth,' had occurred to him in so many words, he would probably have rejected it as servile; but it didn't."
-CS Lewis, That Hideous Strength IN Lewis The Cosmic Trilogy (London, 1990), pp. 349-753 AT p. 379.
Quick's inner thoughts continue:
"A time finally comes when the civilized man must attack alongside his ally of expediency, or be left behind and have no voice at the peace conference."
-op. cit., p. 232.
One word: expediency.
13 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I'll stick with Poul Anderson's Gaius Valerius Gratillonius and S.M. Stirling's Lord Bear as my idea of what effective and GOOD leaders should be like. And Nicholas van Rijn and Dominic Flandry as well!
Sean
Sean,
I am glad we have some good examples to contrast with these self-righteous jerks. Of the ones you mention, Gratillonius is my ideal of a political leader.
Paul.
Genuinely difficult decisions must be made now and then. We allied with Stalin against Hitler, for example -- which was like making league with Beelzebub against Satan.
But FDR and Churchill genuinely had no choice in the matter, except losing the war.
My father once told me that there was a joke going the rounds of the English-speaking militaries in 1942: "Define happiness. Answer: happiness is 3,000,000 dead Germans floating down the Volga... each one on a raft of four dead Russians."
Though agreed, the jerk in AVATAR was not in that position.
Dear Mr. Stirling and Paul,
Mr. Stirling: I'm sure you have studied WW II far more thoroughly than I have. But, did the UK and the US have to ally with the monstrous Stalin against Hitler? I recall how Alexander Solzhenitsyn argued in THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO that the Western Allies did not NEED Stalin to beat Hitler. Not after Adolf started Operation Barbarossa. Solzhenitsyn's view was that the UK/US could fight Hitler in the West while Germany and the USSR tore each other apart in the East. There was no need to pour massive amounts of aid into the USSR, merely to strengthen Stalin and the Soviet regime.
If the UK/US had followed such a policy, I can imagine a post-War USSR that would not have been strong enough to again overrun Ukraine, the Baltic states, and the nations of eastern Europe. That would have been a better ending for the war, carrying incalculable possible consequences.
Paul: I agree with how highly you regard Gratillonius. But, what did you think of Lord Bear?
Sean
Sean,
Bear was good too but I have read him only once so far; Grallon maybe 4 times.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Mike Havel did impress very greatly as a tough, but just ruler. Maybe he had some rough edges, but that is not so unusual to find in leaders in times of chaos and upheaval.
I too have read THE KING OF YS at least three, maybe four times.
Sean
The Russo-German war was a very close thing. WWII was fought and won and lost on the Eastern Front, where Germany suffered over 80% of its casualties. Without our aid, Germany would almost certainly have won.
Stalin was a monster, but most of the people he killed were Russians. That's where Solzhenitsyn was coming from, and it's perfectly understandable from a Russian point of view.
But I'm not a Russian and I don't look at it from their point of view.
War casualties aside, most of the people Hitler killed were -not- Germans. He was more of a threat, not least because he was a gambler and a dreamer.
Stalin never bet anything substantial unless it was a sure thing. You could frighten Stalin off; Hitler would roll the dice anyway.
As long as wars continue to occur, this is the sort of informed reasoning that helps to win them as quickly as possible. Don't fight a guy who will back down to a threat. Do fight a guy who makes insane gambles.
Dear Mr. Stirling and Paul,
Mr. Stirling: Yes, Alexander Solzhenitsyn had to look at the war rom a Russian POV. But his argument also included his belief that Hitler was going to lose whether or not Stalin got aid from the UK/US. Because once the Anglo/American armies began landing on D Day, 1944, Germany was confronted with a two front war. Maybe SOME aid should have been given to Stalin, but did it have to be as MUCH as what he got?
Yes, Stalin was an ice cold realist who did not believe in pushing his luck too far; while Hitler was the opposite. No argument there.
Paul: one small caveat. Sometimes the insane gamble actually pays off. So, we have to be careful even about reckless types such as Hitler.
Sean
Germany lost the war in 1941-42, between Moscow and Stalingrad; after that they might have ground the Eastern Front to a stalemate if Hitler hadn't deprived his own forces of operational flexibility.
By the time we landed in 1944, Germany couldn't win.
But in 1941-42, they -could- have won.
BTW, when you're talking about war in a historical context, you have to keep the political aspect in mind, because war is a political activity.
Eg., in "war-gamer" terms, where individuals can make decisions in tranquility without being badgered by others, it would probably have been good strategy for the Western powers to provoke WWIII any time before the Soviets got good nuclear delivery systems.
But that was a political impossibility.
Even an autocratic state has to take factional interests and opinions into account before starting a major war -- Hitler couldn't start WWII until late 1939, because it took that much time (and the supine attitude of the Western powers) to get a sufficient grip on the German military, who were very dubious about another general war. They came close to overthrowing him in 1938, before they were gobsmacked by the British and French rush to capitulate at the expense of the Czechs.
Democracies rarely start -big- wars at all; they usually don't fight that sort of conflict unless forced to by being backed into a corner, as the British and French were in 1939 -- and note that they didn't really start -fighting- a war, as opposed to declaring it, until the Germans attacked them on their own territory.
LIkewise, FDR was moving heaven and earth to get the US into WW2, but he couldn't until the Japanese outright attacked the US on its own territory, and then Germany unwisely declared war on the US.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
Many thanks for all these fascinating comments by you. Yes, Germany very likely would have won in the East absent the unwanted Yugoslav and Greek distractions. Yes, the Eastern Front might have been stabilized into a deadlock basically favorable to Germany if Hitler had allowed his generals operational flexibility.
Yes, again, it was not until 1939 that Hitler gained sufficient control over the German military to over come its reluctance for another war. I have known that they came close, more than once, to overthrowing Hitler due to them thinking he was being too reckless. The spinelessness of the French and British at Munich was a shock to them!
I agree with what you said about Japan and FDR. It was a very bad mistake for Japan to attack Pear Harbor, because she simply could not win a war against a far stronger power like the US, with immensely vaster resources.
I have wondered what might have happened if Hitler had not declared war on the US. Whatever FDR's own preferences, absent a German declaration of war, he would have been pressured to focus on Japan and the Pacific theater, not Europe. So what might have happened if the US had not taken a major hand in Europe for a long time?
Sean
I'm not quite sure you are right about both France and the UK not REALLY fighting Germany immediately after declaring war in 1939. Churchill, for example, was as aggressive as he could be. And the British did invade Norway in 1940, to keep it out of Nazi hands. But, I do get your point.
Somehow the paragraph after "Sean" was incorrectly transposed after I uploaded the previous comment. It belongs more properly after my second paragraph.
Sean
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