Blind Courage
George Santayana reprimanded politicians and military men who thought war was good for the country’s soul.
1905
King Edward VII 1901-1910
George Santayana reprimanded politicians and military men who thought war was good for the country’s soul.
1905
King Edward VII 1901-1910
Writing in 1905, American essayist George Santayana was full of admiration for the common soldier, and for the ordinary citizen who stands up to a bully. But to bellicose politicians and generals, and to anyone who romanticised war, he had some stern words to say.
Abridged.
There are panegyrists* of war who say that without a periodical bleeding a race decays and loses its manhood.* Experience is directly opposed to this shameless assertion. It is war that wastes a nation’s wealth, chokes its industries, kills its flower, narrows its sympathies, condemns it to be governed by adventurers, and leaves the puny, deformed, and unmanly to breed the next generation.* [...]
Blind courage is an animal virtue indispensable in a world full of dangers and evils where a certain insensibility and dash are requisite to skirt the precipice without vertigo. Such animal courage seems therefore beautiful rather than desperate or cruel, and being the lowest and most instinctive of virtues it is the one most widely and sincerely admired. In the form of steadiness under risks rationally taken, and perseverance so long as there is a chance of success, courage is a true virtue; but it ceases to be one when the love of danger, a useful passion when danger is unavoidable, begins to lead men into evils which it was unnecessary to face. Bravado, provocativeness, and a gambler’s instinct, with a love of hitting hard for the sake of exercise, is a temper which ought already to be counted among the vices rather than the virtues of man. To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman.
Abridged.
* A panegyric is a speech of praise, especially one that is excessive and lacking in balance. A panegyrist is someone who delivers such a speech.
* Santayana may have been thinking of the letter from Helmuth von Moltke (1800-1891) to Johann Kaspar Bluntschli (1808-1881) in 1880, in which he wrote: “Eternal peace, however, is a dream, and not even a beautiful dream, for war is part of God's scheme of the world. In war the noblest virtues of man develop courage and renunciation, the sense of duty and abnegation, and all at the risk of his life. Without war the world would be swallowed up in the morass of materialism.”
* In this same essay, Santayana reminded us that in the everyday ‘struggle with nature’ it is the fittest that survive, ‘while in war it is often the best that perish’.
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
What does Santayana call ‘a positive crime in a statesman’?
Delighting in war for its own sake.
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
Some think war is good for the country. Experience contradicts this.
See if you can include one or more of these words in your answer.
IBear out. IIBenefit. IIIReal.