2005-07-14 - 3:28 p.m.
ONCE MORE AND YET AGAIN
By Peter Fredson
July 14, 2005
Shakespeare’s Henry V urged his troops as follows:
“Once more into the breach, dear friends, once
more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead!
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility;
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favor'd rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect.” (III,i)
And in THE HISTORY OF THE PERSIAN WARS by Herodotus, Book I, we read:
“On the death of Alyattes, Croesus, his son, who was thirty-five years old, succeeded to the throne. Of the Greek cities, Ephesus was the first that he attacked. The Ephesians, when he laid siege to the place, made an offering of their city to Diana, by stretching a rope from the town wall to the temple of the goddess, which was distant from the ancient city, then besieged by Croesus, a space of seven furlongs. They were, as I said, the first Greeks whom he attacked. Afterwards, on some pretext or other, he made war in turn upon every Ionian and Aeolian state, bringing forward, where he could, a substantial ground of complaint; where such failed him, advancing some poor excuse.”
“In this way he made himself master of all the Greek cities in Asia, and forced them to become his tributaries; after which he began to think of building ships, and attacking the islanders.”
Soldiers will ever close up the walls with dead bodies, while megalomaniacal leaders, avid for power and wealth put on their royal robes to stroll around their conquered cities. Rulers will prate endlessly about morals as they prepare new adventures in violence. Some will pretend that their gods favor them, speak to them, while they prepare blood baths, murder, deceit and great vile deeds. Sycophants will surround them and place laurel wreaths on their heads, while they give glorious speeches designed to please rulers and gain great rewards. While rulers loll about on soft couches feasting on plundered food and drink, their conquered subjects will starve while giving thanks for their lives to the great leaders.
Has anyone read Herodotus, Thucydides, Plutarch, Julius Caesar, Tacitus, or any of the great Asian writers on warfare, with a view to avoiding the shedding of blood? How is it that people are still gulled into believing the most appalling lies, misrepresentations, and fabrications of dishonest leaders? How is it that many cultures have sayings like “Thou shalt not kill,” which they supposedly revere, but will take to the sword at the slightest bit of aggressive rhetoric? It seems that all the swords that were supposedly beaten into plough-shares are again being melted to make deadly weapons.
Once again read Herodotus to find how the breasts of thousands of women were cut off and nailed onto a city wall as an example of leadership.
We don’t seem to learn from history. We will go on “summoning up the blood”, filling breaches with dead bodies, and finding pretexts to make war or advancing some poor excuse for it. The excuses, the pretexts, are endless, ingenious, clever. They are designed to “summon up the blood.” They do their dirty work. The beating of war drums make an intoxicating hypnotic rhythm, to which people must march, come what may. Then the cannon will roar, the cruise missiles will swoop, and bunker busters will destroy many collaterals. The people who make the arms, the weapons, the stuff of war, will profit endlessly, gloriously, gleefully. And the leaders will preen and posture and perhaps smirk.
Eventually death by sword or guillotine, even old age, will take away the despots. Their wrinkled old bodies will be clothed in purple robes while their adoring followers will place them in marble tombs, with statues of angels hovering about them. Once they were sculptured astride proud horses, but today it is difficult to put them into Humvees or Helicopters.
Meanwhile powerless people will suffer endlessly in order to support the scum that rose to the top.
