From willettstevenj@qwest.net Fri Feb 28 02:24:55 2003 Received: from mxu7.u.washington.edu (mxu7.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.165]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW01.12/8.12.1+UW03.02) with ESMTP id h1SAOqA8056970 for ; Fri, 28 Feb 2003 02:24:52 -0800 Received: from mpls-qmqp-04.inet.qwest.net (mpls-qmqp-04.inet.qwest.net [63.231.195.115]) by mxu7.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW01.12/8.12.1+UW03.02) with SMTP id h1SAOoLr027975 for ; Fri, 28 Feb 2003 02:24:50 -0800 Received: (qmail 97611 invoked by uid 0); 28 Feb 2003 10:17:41 -0000 Received: from mpls-pop-12.inet.qwest.net (63.231.195.12) by mpls-qmqp-04.inet.qwest.net with QMQP; 28 Feb 2003 10:17:41 -0000 Received: from ptlddslgw13poola158.ptld.uswest.net (HELO stevenw) (65.102.32.158) by mpls-pop-12.inet.qwest.net with SMTP; 28 Feb 2003 10:24:50 -0000 Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2003 02:24:40 -0800 Message-ID: <3E5EC868.14808.D69545A@localhost> From: willettstevenj@qwest.net To: classics@u.washington.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: Stalingrad follows Marathon X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Windows (v4.01) Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Content-description: Mail message body X-Uwash-Spam: Gauge=XXIIIII, Probability=25%, Report="NO_REAL_NAME, SPAM_PHRASE_00_01, __EVITE_CTYPE, __HAS_X_MAILER" This is the 60th anniversary of the greatest military engagement in history: Stalingrad. About one million Red Army soldiers gave their lives in the decisive battle that defeated Nazi Germany. The snows along the Volga buried 150,000 Germans who died, eventually and thankfully, for nothing. This put me in mind of Marathon and its minuscule losses. Between Marathon and Stalingrad spins a kaleidoscope of war flashing with many tens of millions whom the earth has consumed. Now one likes to think that Marathon, which looks (as the poet said) on the sea, stood for something. One likes to think that Stalingrad, for a few following centuries perhaps, will stand for something. But as the 2,500-year interval between Marathon and today grows ever larger, the sheer unabating accumulation of wars begins to erase those of the past. Marathon means nothing to the Greek government in its drive to produce a successful Olympics, as Chris Robbins noted. Marathon means nothing to the vast majority of all Americans and Europeans, most of whom couldn't even place it accurately in chronology or topography. The same fate will befall Stalingrad. And after all, 10,000 years from now--when some sort of human polity may still exist--no one will think or care about all the blood that has been spilled for any cause. All causes will be extinguished. The good, as a Greek poet wisely wrote, die young. Time obliterates everything, but those obliterated young lives will still live in their truncated possibilities. The partisans who hawk war speak with the majestic voice of temporary expediency, but all they deliver is an urn of dust brought back by the money-changer whom they hired just for a moment, for a moment, for a moment that stretches so often briefly before us. ====================================== Steven J. Willett Shizuoka University of Art and Culture 1794-1 Noguchi-cho, Hamamatsu City Japan 430-8533 Tel/Fax: (53) 457-6124 willett@suac.ac.jp (Japan) willettstevenj@qwest.net (US) .