Why Don't We Learn from History?

by B.H. Liddell Hart

First, it is a pursuit that has a continual interest and excitement—like an unending detective story in which you are a partaker and not merely a reader. Secondly, such constant exercise is the best corrective to mental arthritis—the occupational disease of more stereotyped jobs. Third, and above all, it is the least cramping of occupations in a most vital respect.

History is the best help, being a record of how things usually go wrong.

The object might be more cautiously expressed thus: to find out what happened while trying to find out why it happened. In other words, to seek the causal relations between events.

There is no excuse for anyone who is not illiterate if he is less than three thousand years old in mind.

History is the record of man's steps and slips. It shows us that the steps have been slow and slight; the slips, quick and abounding. It provides us with the opportunity to profit by the stumbles and tumbles of our forerunners. Awareness of our limitations should make us chary of condemning those who made mistakes, but we condemn ourselves if we fail to recognize mistakes.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Adaptation to changing conditions is the condition of survival. This depends on the simple yet fundamental question of attitude. To cope with the problems of the modern world we need, above all, to see them clearly and analyze them scientifically.

The soldier could hardly face the test defined in the motto of the famous Lung Ming Academy, a motto that headed each page of the books used there: “The student must first learn to approach the subject in a spirit of doubt.”

We learn too that nothing has aided the persistence of falsehood, and the evils resulting from it, more than the unwillingness of good people to admit the truth when it was disturbing to their comfortable assurance.

The consequences which have made “Passchendäle” a name of ill-omen may be traced to the combined effect of his tendency to deceive himself; his tendency, therefore, to encourage his subordinates to deceive him; and their “loyal” tendency to tell a superior what was likely to coincide with his desires.

Loyalty is a noble quality, so long as it is not blind and does not exclude the higher loyalty to truth and decency.

For “loyalty,” analyzed, is too often a polite word for what would be more accurately described as “a conspiracy for mutual inefficiency.” In this sense it is essentially selfish—like a servile loyalty, demeaning both to master and servant.

The search for truth for truth's sake is the mark of the historian.

For the soldier, “My country—right or wrong” must be the watchword. And this essential loyalty, whether it be to a country, to a regiment, or to comrades, is so ingrained in him that when he passes from action to reflection it is difficult for him to acquire instead the historian's single-minded loyalty to the truth.

Truth may not be absolute, but it is certain that we are likely to come nearest to it if we search for it in a purely scientific spirit and analyze the facts with a complete detachment from all loyalties save that to truth itself.

Hence the duty of the good citizen who is free from the responsibility of Government is to be a watchdog upon it, lest Government impair the fundamental objects which it exists to serve. It is a necessary evil, thus requiring constant watchfulness and check.

The Cabinet in England is in constitutional theory the decisive organ of the state—the brain of the national body. But it is a big committee—too big to be really effective as a source of decisions.

Pattern of dictatorship

They exploit, consciously or unconsciously, a state of popular dissatisfaction with the existing regime or of hostility between different sections of the people.

They excite popular sympathy by presenting the picture of a conspiracy against them and use this as a lever to gain a firmer hold at some crucial stage.

They suppress criticism on one pretext or another and punish anyone who mentions facts which, however true, are unfavorable to their policy.

They ultimately make war on some other state as a means of diverting attention from internal conditions and allowing discontent to explode outward.

They use the rallying cry of patriotism as a means of riveting the chains of their personal authority more firmly on the people.

Almost exactly 129 years after Napoleon launched his invasion of Russia, Hitler began his attack on Russia—on June 22, 1941. Despite the revolutionary changes which had taken place in the interval he was to provide a tragic demonstration of the truth that mankind, and least of all its “great men,” do not learn from history.

It is man's power of thought which has generated the current of human progress through the ages. Thus the thinking man must be against authoritarianism in any form—because it shows its fear of thoughts which do not suit momentary authority. Any sincere writer must be against it—because it believes in censorship. Any true historian must be against it—because he can see that it leads to the repetition of old follies, as well as to the deliberate adulteration of history. Anyone who tries to solve problems scientifically must be against it—since it refuses to recognize that criticism is the life blood of science. In sum, any seeker of truth must be against it—because it subordinates truth to state expediency. This spells stagnation.

Such a system entails the suppression of individual judgment. It violates the cardinal principle of a free community: that there should be no restriction of individual freedom save where this is used for active interference with others' freedom.

History shows that a main hindrance to real progress is the ever-popular myth of the “great man.” While “greatness” may perhaps be used in a comparative sense, if even then referring more to particular qualities than to the embodied sum, the “great man” is a clay idol whose pedestal has been built up by the natural human desire to look up to someone, but whose form has been carved by men who have not yet outgrown the desire to be regarded, or to picture themselves, as great men.

We learn from history that expediency has rarely proved expedient. Yet today perhaps more than ever the statesmen of all countries talk the language of expediency—almost as if they are afraid to label themselves “unpractical” by referring to principles. They are especially fond of emphasizing the need for “realism.”

Civilization is built on the practice of keeping promises. It may not sound a high attainment, but if trust in its observance be shaken the whole structure cracks and sinks. Any constructive effort and all human relations—personal, political, and commercial—depend on being able to depend on promises.

We learn from history that war breeds war. That is natural. The atmosphere of war stimulates all varieties of the bellicose bacilli, and these tend to find favorable conditions in the aftermath—in what, with unconscious irony, is usually described as the restoration of peace.

There is no panacea for peace that can be written out in a formula like a doctor's prescription. But one can set down a series of practical points—elementary principles drawn from the sum of human experience in all times. Study war and learn from its history. Keep strong, if possible. In any case, keep cool. Have unlimited patience. Never corner an opponent and always assist him to save his face. Put yourself in his shoes—so as to see things through his eyes. Avoid self-righteousness like the devil—nothing is so self-blinding. Cure yourself of two commonly fatal delusions—the idea of victory and the idea that war cannot be limited.

The prophets must be stoned; that is their lot and the test of their self-fulfillment.

Truth is a spiral staircase. What looks true on one level may not be true on the next higher level. A complete vision must extend vertically as well as horizontally—not only seeing the parts in relation to one another but embracing the different planes. Ascending the spiral, it can be seen that individual security increases with the growth of society, that local security increases when linked to a wider organization, that national security increases when nationalism decreases and would become much greater if each nation's claim to sovereignty were merged in a super-national body.

It is strange how people assume that no training is needed in the pursuit of truth. It is stranger still that this assumption is often manifest in the very man who talks of the difficulty of determining what is true.