Sedulia's Quotations

Tony Judt: Europeans understand war better than Americans

   

Compared with other major twentieth-century combatants, the US lost relatively few soldiers in battle and suffered hardly any civilian casualties.

...In World War I the US suffered slightly fewer than 120,000 combat deaths. For the UK, France, and Germany the figures are respectively 885,000, 1.4 million, and over 2 million. In World War II, when the US lost about 420,000 armed forces in combat, Japan lost 2.1 million, China 3.8 million, Germany 5.5 million, and the Soviet Union an estimated 10.7 million....

But it is civilian casualties that leave the most enduring mark on national memory and here the contrast is piquant indeed. In World War II alone the British suffered 67,000 civilian dead....France lost 270,000 civilians....Germany 1.8 million, Poland 5.5 milllion, and the Soviet Union an estimated 11.4 million....In China, the death count exceeded 16 million. American civilian losses (excluding the merchant navy) in both world wars amounted to less than 2,000 dead.

As a consequence, the United States today is the only advanced democracy where public figures glorify and exalt the military, a sentiment familiar in Europe before 1945 but quite unknown now....The complacent neoconservative claim that war and conflict are things Americans understand-- in contrast to naive Europeans with their pacifistic fantasies-- seems to me exactly wrong: it is Europeans (along with Asians and Africans) who understand war all too well.
 

       --British historian Tony Judt (1948- )in the New York Review of Books, 1 May 2008

Tolstoy: "Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women."

"Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women."

     --Prince Vassily to Anna Pavlovna, in ch. 3 of War and Peace (published 1865) by Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), 2007 translation by Richard Pevear (1943- ) and Larissa Volokhonsky

E.J. Trelawny: The poet Shelley meets a Yankee clipper and quotes Derzhavin

[In Leghorn (Livorno), Italy, about the year 1822, the poet Shelley was induced by his friend E.J. Trelawny to visit the port. They went aboard a Greek ship, then saw a Yankee clipper.]

"You must allow," [says Trelawny,] "that graceful craft was designed by a man who had a poet's feeling for things beautiful...."

The idea so pleased the Poet that he followed me on board her. The Americans are a social, free-and-easy people...so that our coming on board, and examination of the vessel, fore and aft, were not considered as intrusion. The captain was on shore, so I talked to the mate, a smart specimen of a Yankee....

The Yankee would not let us go until we had drunk, under the star-spangled banner, to the memory of Washington, and the prosperity of the American commonwealth.

"As a warrior and statesman," said Shelley, "he was righteous in all he did, unlike all who lived before or since; he never used his power but for the benefit of his fellow-creatures.

   " 'He fought
For truth and wisdom, foremost of the brave;
Him glory's idle glances dazzled not;
'Twas his ambition, generous and great,
A life to life's great end to consecrate.' "*

"Stranger," said the Yankee, "truer words were never spoken; there is dry rot in all the main timbers of the Old World, and none of you will do any good till you are docked, refitted, and annexed to the new. You must log the song that you sang; there ain't many Britishers that will say as much of the man that whipped them...."

  --From E.J. Trelawny, Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron, cited in The New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes (2006), ed. John Gross

* Shelley was quoting from the poem "The Waterfall" by Gavrila Romanovich Derzhavin in Specimens of the Russian Poets, as translated by John Bowring (1821).

The fast, skilfully sailed American ships had excited much admiration from the British during the War of 1812 a few years earlier (the American war, to the British, was a minor part of the Napoleonic Wars). This anecdote is from the website American Merchant Marine at War:

The privateer America earned quite a reputation for the number of British ships she plundered and the value of the cargo seized. The marauding work of the America was so devastating to the British merchant marine that the British government built a frigate, the Dublin, for the express purpose of chasing the America from the seas.

Long after the war ended, the captain of America and the captain of the Dublin met in Valparaíso [Chile]. Neither knew the other's identity. In the course of a conversation the Briton remarked:

"I was once almost within gun-shot of that infernal Yankee skimming-dish, just as night came on. By daylight she had outsailed the Dublin so devilish fast that she was no more than a speck on the horizon. By the way, I wonder if you happen to know. the name of the beggar that was master of her."

"I'm the beggar," smiled the American master and they drank a toast to each other's health.

Chekhov: Life will sooner or later show its claws

Every happy man should have someone with a little hammer at his door to knock and remind him that there are unhappy people, and that, however happy he may be, life will sooner or later show its claws.

   --Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), in "Gooseberries," The Portable Chekhov, translated by S. S. Koteliansky and Gilbert Cannan

Popbitch cites Yeltsin on the Russian economy

Following on from Boris Yeltsin's funeral, our favourite story from a British journalist who interviewed him:

Journalist: So, President Yeltsin, how would you describe the state of the Russian economy in one word?

Yeltsin: Good.

Journalist: Okay then Mr President, perhaps you would describe it in more than one word?

Yeltsin: Ah, in that case--not good.

            --Popbitch, British gossip online, this week

Anna Politkovskaya on the Chechen "baby dragon" Ramzan Kadyrov

[The reporter interviews Chechen warlord-- and now President of Chechnya-- Ramzan Kadyrov]

Ramzan is rarely seen outside his village of Tsentoroy, one of the unsightliest of Chechen villages, unfriendly, ugly and swarming with murderous-looking armed men....Two or three years ago, those villagers whom Kadyrov did not trust were simply expelled....Kadyrov's men take part in combat operations...they arrest and interrogate people....; and they hold people prisoner in their cellars in Tsentoroy... Tsentoroy is above the law...Tsenteroy is where the decisions are taken....

After dark, Ramzan appears, surrounded by armed men. They are everywhere: in the courtyard, on the balcony, in the rooms. Some of them subsequently involve themselves in our conversation, commenting loudly and aggressively. Ramzan sprawls in an armchair crossing his legs, his foot, in a sock, almost level with my face...."We want to restore order not only in Chechnya, but throughout the north Caucasus," Ramzan begins. "We will fight anywhere in Russia. I have a directive to operate throughout the north Caucasus. Against the bandits."

Who does he call bandits? "Maskhadov, Basaev and the like...that is the main thing, to destroy them."

...Doesn't he think perhaps there's been enough fighting? "Of course there has....They carry on fighting. That is why we have to exterminate them."

...Perhaps it is time to... sit down to negotiate? "Who with?...Maskhadov is a pathetic old man...I respect Basaev as a warrior. He is not a coward. I pray to Allah that Basaev and I may meet in open combat."...

What if Basaev won? "No way. I will. In battle I always win."

What does Ramzan consider to be the strongest aspect of his personality? "What do you mean? I don't understand the question." What are his strengths? And his weaknesses? "I consider that I have no weaknesses. I am strong. Alu Alkhanov was made president because I consider that he is strong and I trust him 100%. Do you think the Kremlin decides that? The people choose. It's the first time anyone has told me the Kremlin has a say in anything." No more than an hour later, Ramzan was saying that absolutely everything was decided by the Kremlin, that the people were just cattle, and that he had been offered the presidency of Chechnya in the Kremlin immediately after his father's assassination, but had turned it down because he wanted to fight.

"If you left us in peace, we Chechens would have reunited long ago." Who does he mean by "you"? "Journalists, people like you. Russian politicians. You don't let us sort things out. You divide us. You come between Chechens. You personally are the enemy. You are worse than Basaev."

Who else are his enemies? "I don't have enemies. Only bandits to fight."

...What does he most enjoy doing? "Fighting. I am a warrior." Has he ever killed anyone himself? "No. I've always been in command."

But he is too young always to have been in command. Somebody must have given him orders. "Only my father. Nobody else ever gave me orders, or ever will."

Has he given orders to kill? "Yes...It is not I, but Allah. The Prophet said the Wahhabis [in the Chechen context, radical Islamic groups] must be destroyed."...When there are no more Wahhabis left, who will Kadyrov fight? "I will take up bee farming. Already I have bees, and bullocks, and fighting dogs."

Doesn't he feel sorry when dogs kill each other? "Not at all. I like it. I respect my dog Tarzan as much as a human being. He's a Caucasian sheepdog. Those are the most fair-minded dogs there are."

What other hobbies does he have? "I very much like women."

Doesn't his wife mind? "I don't tell her."

What education has he had? "Higher education, law. I'm just finishing it. I am taking my exams."

What exams? "What do you mean, 'What exams?' The exams, that's all."

What's the institute called where he is studying? "It's a branch of the Moscow Institute of Business. In Gudermes. It's a law college."

What is he specialising in? "Law." But what kind of law? Criminal? Civil? "I can't remember. Someone wrote the topic down for me on a piece of paper, but I've forgotten. There's a lot going on at the moment."....

[After a terrifying interview which ends with RK shouting that he considers her "an enemy of the Chechen people," that she "should have to answer for this," Politkovskaya gets in the car to go back to Grozny.] "Kadyrov gives orders for me to be taken back to Grozny. Musa, a former fighter from Zakan-Yurt, sits at the wheel and there are two bodyguards. I get into the vehicle and think that somewhere along the route, in the dark, with checkpoints everywhere, I am obviously going to be killed. But the ex-fighter from Zakan-Yurt is just waiting for Ramzan to leave...when he starts telling me the story of his life...I know he is not going to kill me. He wants the world to hear his story. Even so, I sit there crying from fear and loathing-- tears of despair that history should have raised up, of all people, Ramzan Kadyrov. He really does have power, and rules according to his own ideas and abilities. "Don't cry," the fighter from Zakan-Yurt finally said to me. "You are strong."

It is an old story, repeated many times in our history: the Kremlin fosters a baby dragon, which it then has to keep feeding to stop him from setting everything on fire. There has been a total failure of the Russian intelligence services in Chechnya, something they try to represent as a victory and a "restoration of civilian life." But what about the people of Chechnya? They have to live with the baby dragon.

  --Anna Politkovskaya (1958-2006), assassinated Russian journalist. From A Russian Diary, pub Apr 2007. Interview conducted in August 2004, extracts published in the U.K. Guardian, 20 March 2007

Gore Vidal: The Duke of Windsor sees his mother kill the czar

The only thing of a "historic" nature that I learned from the duke [of Windsor, formerly King Edward VIII] was...about the czar and his family. "I was there," said the duke, somewhat portentously."I was there at breakfast...With the king [George V]...and the queen [Mary, left]. Just the three of us. Suddenly an equerry comes in...Not done, you know, ever. The king was furious, but the man went straight up to him with this note, which the king read and gave my mother, and she read it and gave it back and said, 'No.' The king gave it to the equerry and said, 'No.' Later that day I asked my mother what it was all about and she said the government was willing to send a ship to rescue the czar and his family but she did not think it would be good for us to have them in the country and so the Bolsheviks shot the lot of them."

  --The Duke of Windsor, quoted by Gore Vidal in his memoir Palimpsest (1995)

On Power and the Powerless: Lu Xun, Nikita Khruschev, Franz Kafka, Thomas Jefferson, a proverb and a French couplet

Those with real power do not open their mouths, but they kill people....In nature it is also like this. When the hawk catches the sparrow, the hawk is silent. The sparrow shrieks little cries. When the cat catches the mouse, the cat is silent, the mouse squeaks. In the end, it is the one which opens its mouth who is eaten by the one that doesn't open its mouth.  --Lu Xun (1881-1936), Chinese novelist, in a speech given in 1927

In 1956, Nikita Khruschev made his "secret" speech to the Soviet party congress, in which he strongly criticized Joseph Stalin and began to dismantle the Stalinist legend. He is said to have shocked the assemblage with his grim narration of Stalin's horrors and his statement that those responsible had to be held accountable.

At one point in the speech, a voice cried out: "And where were you, Comrade Khruschev, when all these crimes were being committed?" Khruschev paused, looked out over the hall, and in a thunderous voice demanded, "Who said that?" The hall was silent. Khruschev then called out, "Whoever said that, stand up."  Again, no one moved.  Then Khruschev looked in the general direction the voice had come from, and said, "Comrade, where you are now is where I was then."     --The Road From Here, Senator Paul Tsongas (1941-1997)

Cet animal est très méchant. Quand on l'attaque il se défend. [This animal is very wicked. When it is attacked it defends itself.] --unknown French ca 1868

Es kamen zwei Soldaten und ergriffen mich. Ich wehrte mich, aber sie hielten fest. [Two soldiers came and seized me. I defended myself, but they held fast.--Franz Kafka (1883-1924), Fragments from Notebooks and Loose Pages

I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. --Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) in a letter, 23 September 1800. This phrase is inscribed on the rotunda of the Jefferson Memorial.

If the stone fall upon the egg, alas for the egg. If the egg fall upon the stone, alas for the egg. --Proverb, probably Chinese: although also listed as Bulgarian, Chechen, Arab, and English.