Subj : Bible                                                    [2]
To   : Curtis Johnson
From : Frank Masingill
Date : Mon Oct 23 2000 07:24 pm

 FM> In fact, this shuttle away from reality was so pronounced in
 FM> the early part of the century that people were SHOCKED that
 FM> such a thing as WW I could come at ALL.  Read the history
 FM> books written

 CJ> It had been preceded by several crises that had come close to
 CJ> the brink while the alliances in place.  There had been an
 CJ> incredible amount of jingoism beforehand (I have a ca. 1910
 CJ> Belgian schoolbook, and it was amazing what what was being
 CJ> inculcated in this small neutral country).  France had been
 CJ> explicitly and publicly been vowing "revanche." The real
 CJ> surprise was that a general European war would last for so
 CJ> long:  it had "proven" that it would be economically
 CJ> impossible.

        Well, I note the rather grudging concession.  Actually, I
have the difficult task of first proving to you that I'm not
ignorant of the "annals" of "history" and then of showing the
respectability of what Ted V. McAllister has called the search of
Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin for a "postliberal order."  You
actually make my point VERY well in that last paragraph.  I'm just
as aware as you are of the revanche movement wherein one of the
French statesmen after the humiliation of the Franco-Prussian War
said that he could think of no other reason for living except to
take revenge for Alsace and Lorraine.  The ancient Treaty of Verdun
question.  But none of this reduced the enthusiams that ran so high
with assurance that mankind in the western world, aware of the
tremendous growth in firepower, surely could not engage in another
major war.  I'm certain that you've read both Fay and Schmitt on the
diplomatic efforts to limit a war that the major powers, both
England AND Germany simply permitted to happen anyhow in full
consciousness in the final analysis.  This was followed by the
unreality of "peace" through bankruptcy of one of the great powers
saddled in article 232 with the total responsibility for the war
which the diplomatic archives soon proved to be a false charge. 

        I really do not consider that in a Philosophy echo one
should have to deal with the details of historical annals beyond
a certain broad understanding but at the same time, I suspect you
are right that this cannot be true.  When we have such stark
disagreement upon what it was that Cohn was attempting to say the
interpretation of what is transpiring in our recent memory can
hardly be resolved.  

Frank

--- PPoint 2.07
 * Origin: Maybe in 5000 years (1:396/45.12)

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