Why Don't We Learn From History? (2 page)

That view may account for some of our subsequent troubles. For in recent generations, despite the immense growth of research in all other branches of knowledge, the scientific study of war has received too little attention in the universities and too little aid either from them or from government quarters.

The universities' neglect of it had a close connection with the vogue for evolutionary history and economic determinism. Its tendency has been to suggest that movements are independent of individuals and of accident; that “the captains and the kings” count for little; and that the tide of history has flowed on unperturbed by their broils.

Its absurdities are palpable. Can anyone believe that the history of the world would have been the same if the Persians had conquered Greece; if Hannibal had captured Rome; if Caesar had hesitated to cross the Rubicon; if Napoleon had been killed at Toulon? Can anyone believe that England's history would have been unaffected if William of Normandy had been repulsed at Hastings? Or—to come down to recent times—if Hitler had reached Dover instead of stopping at Dunkirk?

The catalogue of cataclysmic happenings, of history-changing “accidents,” is endless. But among all the factors which produce sudden changes in the course of history, the issues of war have been the least accidental.

In reality, reason has had a greater influence than fortune on the issue of wars that have most influenced history. Creative thought has often counted for more than courage; for more, even, than gifted leadership. It is a romantic habit to ascribe to a flash of inspiration in battle what more truly has been due to seeds long sown—to the previous development of some new military practice by the victors, or to avoidable decay in the military practice of the losers.

Unlike those who follow other professions, the “regular” soldier cannot regularly practice his profession. Indeed, it might even be argued that in a literal sense the profession of arms is not a profession at all, but merely “casual employment”—and, paradoxically, that it ceased to be a profession when mercenary troops who were employed and paid for the purpose of a war were replaced by standing armies which continued to be paid when there was no war.

If the argument—that strictly there is no “profession of arms”—will not hold good in most armies today on the score of work, it is inevitably strengthened on the score of practice because major wars have become fewer, though bigger, compared with earlier times. For even the best of peacetime training is more “theoretical” than “practical” experience.

But 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. Even in the most active career, especially a soldier's career, the scope and possibilities of direct experience are extremely limited. In contrast to the military, the medical profession has incessant practice. Yet the great advances in medicine and surgery have been due more to the scientific thinker and research worker than to the practitioner.

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 experience not of another but of many others under manifold conditions.

Here is the rational justification for military history as the basis of military education—its preponderant practical value in the training and mental development of a soldier. But the benefit depends, as with all experience, on its breadth, on how closely it approaches the definition quoted above, and on the method of studying it.

Soldiers universally concede the general truth of Napoleon's much quoted dictum that in war “the moral is to the physical as three to one.” The actual arithmetical proportion may be worthless, for morale is apt to decline if weapons are inadequate, and the strongest will is of little use if it is inside a dead body. But although the moral and physical factors are inseparable and indivisible, the saying gains its enduring value because it expresses the idea of the predominance of moral factors in all military decisions.

On them constantly turns the issue of war and battle. In the history of war they form the more constant factors, changing only in degree, whereas the physical factors are different in almost every war and every military situation.

The exploration of history

The benefit of history depends, however, on a broad view. And that depends on a wide study of it. To dig deep into one patch is a valuable and necessary training. It is the only way to learn the method of historical research. But when digging deep, it is equally important to get one's bearings by a wide survey. That is essential to appreciate the significance of what one finds, otherwise one is likely “to miss the wood for the trees.”

The increasing specialization of history has tended to decrease the intelligibility of history and thus forfeit the benefit to the community—even the small community of professional historians.

For any historian it is a valuable experience to have lived in the world of affairs and seen bits of history in the making. Not the least part of its value comes through seeing the importance of accidental factors—a touch of liver, a thick head, a sudden tiff, a domestic trouble, or the intervention of the lunch hour.

The understanding of past events is helped by some current experience of how events are determined. It has been my good fortune to see some bits of history in the making, at close quarters, and yet in the position of detachment enjoyed by the onlooker—who, according to the proverb, sees most of the game. This experience has taught me that it is often a game of chance—if the fateful effect of a personal dislike, a domestic row, or a bad liver may be counted as accidents. Perhaps the most powerful of such accidental influences on history is the lunch hour.

Observing the working of committees of many kinds, I have long come to realize the crucial importance of lunchtime. Two hours or more may have been spent in deliberate discussion and careful weighing of a problem, but the last quarter of an hour often counts for more than all the rest. At 12:45pm there may be no prospect of an agreed solution, yet around about 1pm important decisions may be reached with little argument—because the attention of the members has turned to watching the hands of their watches. Those moving hands can have a remarkable effect in accelerating the movements of minds—to the point of a snap decision. The more influential members of any committee are the most likely to have important lunch engagements, and the more important the committee the more likely is this contingency.

A shrewd committeeman often develops a technique based on this time calculation. He will defer his own intervention in the discussion until lunchtime is near, when the majority of the others are more inclined to accept any proposal that sounds good enough to enable them to keep their lunch engagement. Sometimes he will wait long enough to ensure that formidable opponents have to trickle away before a vote is taken. It was Napoleon who said that an army marches on its stomach. From my observation, I should be inclined to coin a supplementary proverb—that “history marches on the stomachs of statesmen.”

That observation applies in more than the time sense. The Japanese locate the seat of courage in the stomach; and such a view is supported by ample evidence from military history of the way that the fighting spirit of troops depends on, and varies with, the state of their stomachs. The source of the passions has also been located in that quarter. All that expresses the extent to which mind and morale depend on the physical, in the normal run of men. And from all that the historian is led to realize how greatly the causation of events on which the fate of nations depends is ruled not by balanced judgement but by momentary currents of feeling, as well as by personal considerations of a low kind.

Another danger, among “hermit” historians, is that they often attach too much value to documents. Men in high office are apt to have a keen sense of their own reputation in history. Many documents are written to deceive or conceal. Moreover, the struggles that go on behind the scenes, and largely determine the issue, are rarely recorded in documents.

Experience has also given me some light into the processes of manufacturing history, artificial history. The product is less transparent than a silk stocking. Nothing can deceive like a document. Here lies the value of the war of 1914–1918 as a training ground for historians. Governments opened their archives, statesmen and generals their mouths, in time to check their records by personal examination of other witnesses. After twenty years' experience of such work, pure documentary history seems to me akin to mythology.

To those academic historians who still repose faith on it, I have often told a short story with a moral. When the British front was broken in March 1918 and French reinforcements came to help in filling the gap, an eminent French general arrived at a certain army corps headquarters and there majestically dictated orders giving the line on which the troops would stand that night and start their counterattack in the morning. After reading it, with some perplexity, the corps commander exclaimed, “But that line is behind the German front. You lost it yesterday.” The great commander, with a knowing smile, thereupon remarked, “C'est pour l'histoire.” It may be added that for a great part of the war he had held a high staff position where the archives on which such official history would later depend had been under his control.

Many are the gaps to be found in official archives, token of documents destroyed later to conceal what might impair a commander's reputation. More difficult to detect are the forgeries with which some of them have been replaced. On the whole British commanders do not seem to have been capable of more ingenuity than mere destruction or antedating of orders. The French were often more subtle; a general could safeguard the lives of his men as well as his own reputation by writing orders, based on a situation that did not exist, for an attack that nobody carried out—while everybody shared in the credit, since the record went on file.

I have sometimes wondered how the war could be carried on at all when I have found how much of their time some commanders spent in preparing the ground for its historians. If the great men of the past, where the evidence is more difficult to check, were as historically conscious as those of recent generations, it may well be asked what value can be credited to anything more ancient than contemporary history.

The exploration of history is a sobering experience. It reduced the famous American historian, Henry Adams, to the state of cynicism shown in his reply to a questioning letter: “I have written too much history to believe in it. So if anyone wants to differ from me, I am prepared to agree with him.” The study of war history is especially apt to dispel any illusions—about the reliability of men's testimony and their accuracy in general, even apart from the shaping of facts to suit the purposes of propaganda.

Yet if the historian comes to find how hard it is to discover the truth, he may become with practice skilled in detecting untruth—a task which is, by comparison, easier. A sound rule of historical evidence is that while assertions should be treated with critical doubt, admissions are likely to be reliable. If there is one saying that embodies a general truth it is “No man is condemned save out of his own mouth.” By applying this test we can go a long way toward a clear verdict on history and on history in the making.

Lloyd George frequently emphasized to me in conversation that one feature that distinguished a first-rate political leader from a second-rate politician is that the former was always careful to avoid making any definite statement that could be subsequently refuted, as he was likely to be caught out in the long run. I gathered from Lloyd George that he learned this lesson in parliamentary experience before 1914.

The treatment of history

An increasing number of modern historians, such as Veronica Wedgwood, have shown that good history and good reading can be blended—and thus, by displacing the mythologists, they are bringing history back to the service of humanity. Even so the academic suspicion of literary style still lingers. Such pedants may well be reminded of the proverb “Hard writing makes easy reading.” Such hard writing makes for hard thinking.

Far more effort is required to epitomize facts with clarity than to express them cloudily. Misstatements can be more easily spotted in sentences that are crystal clear than those that are cloudy. The writer has to be more careful if he is not to be caught out. Thus care in writing makes for care in treating the material of history—to evaluate it correctly.

The effort toward deeper psychological analysis is good—so long as perspective is kept. It is equally good that the varnish should be scraped off—so long as the true grain of the character is revealed. It is not so good, except for selling success, when Victorian varnish is replaced by cheap staining, colored to suit the taste for scandal.

Moreover, the study of personality is apt to be pressed so far that it throws the performance into the background. This certainly simplifies the task of the biographer, who can dispense with the need for a knowledge of the field in which his subject found his life's work. Can we imagine a great statesmen without statecraft, a great general without war, a great scientist without science, a great writer without literature—they would look strangely nude. And often commonplace.

A question often debated is whether history is a science or an art. The true answer would seem to be that history is a science and an art.

The subject must be approached in a scientific spirit of inquiry. Facts must be treated with scientific care for accuracy. But they cannot be interpreted without the aid of imagination and intuition. The sheer quantity of evidence is so overwhelming that selection is inevitable. Where there is selection there is art.