The last two years of the decade while Europe enjoyed a rich fat afternoon, were the quietest. Nineteen-ten was peaceful and prosperous; with the second round of Moroccan crises and Balkan wars still to come. A new book, The Great Illusion by Norman Angell, had just been published, which proved that war was impossible. By impressive examples and incontrovertible argument Angell showed that in the present financial and economic interdependence of nations, the victor would suffer equally with the vanquished; therefore war had become unprofitable; therefore no nation would be so foolish as to start one. Already translated into eleven languages, The Great Illusion had become a cult. At the universities, in Manchester, Glasgow, and other industrial cities, more than forty study groups of true believers had formed, devoted to propagating its dogma. Angell's most earnest disciple was a man of great influence on military policy, the King's friend and adviser, Viscount Esher, chairman Of the War Committee assigned to remaking the British Army after the shock of its performance in the Boor War. Lord Esher delivered lectures on the lesson of The Great Illusion at Cambridge and the Sorbonne wherein he showed how “new economic factors clearly prove the insanity of aggressive wars.” A twentieth century war would be on such a scale, he said, that its inevitable consequences of “commercial disaster, financial ruin and individual suffering” would be “so pregnant with restraining influences” as to make war unthinkable. He told an audience of officers at the United Service Club, with the Chief of General Staff, Sir John French, in the chair, that because of the interlacing of nations War “becomes every day more difficult and improbable.”

Germany, Lord Esher felt sure, “is as receptive as Great -Britain to the doctrine of Norman Angell.” How receptive were the Kaiser and the Crown Prince to whom he gave, or caused to be given, copies of The Great Illusion is not reported. There is no evidence that he gave one to General Von Bernhardi, who was engaged in 1910 in writing a book called Germany and the Next War, published in the following year, which was to be as influential as Angell’s but from the opposite point of view. Three of its chapter titles, “The Right to Make War,” “The Duty to Make War,” and “World Power or Downfall” sum up its thesis.

[pp. 24-25 THE GUNS OF AUGUST, Barbara Tuchman]

"Personally, if I do get a nuke or several dropped on or near me -
which is reasonably likely if I don't relocate off Oahu - and if I'm
not, y'know, vaporized - I'll use broken glass to sever an artery.
Once thing about suburban rubble, you'll be able to find shards of
broken glass, and it's the sharpest edge there is; it's what they use
to cut cells in half for electron microscopy. Broken plate glass has
a single-molecule edge, I think. And I can attest that bleeding to
death is not only painless, but even slightly euphoric - I lost 60+%
of my blood once to an arterial bleed."

-DJ

A youth must have seen his blood flow and felt his teeth crack under the blow of his adversary and have been thrown to the ground twenty times. Thus will he be able to face real war with the hope of victory. Without practice the art of war [does] not come naturally when it [is] needed.

- Roger of Howden, 12th Century

"I'm in show business, why come to me?"

"War is show business, that's why we're here."


- "Wag the Dog" (1997 film)

‘People skills’, by the way, just means they smile while they lie.

- Elberry