Why Don't We Learn from History?

Efficiency springs from enthusiasm, because this alone can develop a dynamic impulse. Enthusiasm is incompatible with compulsion, because it is essentially spontaneous. Compulsion is thus bound to deaden enthusiasm, because it dries up the source.

We learn from history that the compulsory principle always breaks down in practice. It is practicable to prevent men doing something; moreover that principle of restraint, or regulation, is essentially justifiable in so far as its application is needed to check interference with others' freedom. But it is not, in reality, possible to make men do so

He has to learn how to detach his thinking from every desire and interest, from every sympathy and antipathy; like ridding oneself of superfluous tissue, the "tissue" of untruth which all human beings tend to accumulate for their own comfort and protection.

Direct experience is inherently too limited to form an adequate foundation either for theory or for application. At the best it produces an atmosphere that is of value in drying and hardening the structure of thought. The greater value of indirect experience lies in its greater variety and extent. "History is universal experience," the ex

Where the two sides are too evenly matched to offer a reasonable chance of early success to either, the statesman is wise who can learn something from the psychology of strategy. It is an elementary principle of strategy that, if you find your opponent in a strong position costly to force, you should leave him a line of retreat as the quickest way

Bismarck's often quoted aphorism throws a different and more encouraging light on the problem. It helps us to realize that there are two forms of practical experience, direct and indirect and that, of the two, indirect practical experience may be the more valuable because infinitely wider.

On gaining power: They soon begin to rid themselves of their chief helpers, "discovering" that those who brought about the new order have suddenly become traitors to it. They suppress criticism on one pretext or another and punish anyone who mentions facts which, however true, are unfavourable to their policy. They enlist religion on thei

Seen with a sense of proportion, the smallest permanent enlargement of men's thought is a greater achievement, and ambition, than the construction of something material that crumbles, the conquest of a kingdom that collapses, or the leadership of a movement that ends in a rebound.

The germs of war find a focus in the convenient belief that "the end justifies the means." Each new generation repeats this argument while succeeding generations have had reason to say that the end their predecessors thus pursued was never justified by the fulfilment conceived. If there is one lesson that should be clear from history it i