Why Don't We Learn From History? (5 page)

In the private discussions of this small circle matters of high policy are debated and decisions often crystallized in advance of a Cabinet meeting—which may, in effect, be no more than a means of ratifying them. Such a procedure may appear unconstitutional, yet it is quite proper so long as the Prime Minister subsequently explains his proposals to his Cabinet colleagues at one of these formal meetings and secures their endorsement. That is rarely difficult, because of the Prime Minister's natural ascendancy in the Cabinet, coupled with his initial advantage in having his arguments already prepared.

The more powerful his own personality, as a reinforcement to his status, the more easily he can procure a smooth passage for his proposals. If he anticipates a difficulty, he can often forestall it by a preliminary talk in private with the most weighty of his colleagues. In most cases he can reckon on the acquiescence of the bulk of them in any course that he propounds. A Prime Minister who comes to a Cabinet meeting with his mind made up, and a plan thought out, is not likely to be thwarted, nor even seriously opposed. All that is quite natural and quite in order.

In a realistic view, the important links in the chain of causation are the earlier ones—the influence which led the Prime Minister to make up his mind. There lies the significance of his intimate circle of consultants, with whom he is accustomed to discuss affairs and from whom he draws ideas. They, together with the Prime Minister, are the real molders of policy.

Besides being his private advisers, they often act as a discreet intelligence and liaison service. They may be used to carry out confidential inquiries and keep him in touch with what other people are thinking. They may also be entrusted with delicate missions at home or abroad, to take soundings prior to any official approach.

In the various departments a similar process could be traced, especially in those where power ostensibly rests with a council. Major matters that came before the Board of Admiralty, the Army Council, or the Air Council had often in reality been decided beforehand in private discussion between the Minister and the chief service members or the Permanent Secretary. But where the minister was a strong personality with a mind of his own, he might be more inclined to formulate his own policy with the help of one or more intimate advisers on whom he relied to provide him with a detached and disinterested opinion.

That practice merely repeats what is constantly seen in the business world, where the chairman of a company is apt to be more influenced by one or two individuals than by the collective mind of the directors who consider the policy presented to them. In matters of policy a board meeting may modify as well as ratify, but of its nature it is not suited to originate.

Men behind the scenes

The “intimate advisers” of a Prime Minister, a President, or, in turn, of a departmental head rarely become known to the public in that capacity, though their influence may be guessed, discussed, and criticized in the higher official circles. When they are already well known in their own right, they are often more handicapped—since their influence is apt to excite more suspicion and jealousy. That handicap applies not only to outside advisers but also, and even more, to such advisers as hold ministerial offices or Civil Service posts below the top level.

Before and early in World War I one of the most widely influential intimate advisers was Lord Esher. He never held high office, but achieved a record in the number of offers he declined—including the offices of Secretary of State for War and Viceroy of India. He derived much of his back-stage influence from the extent to which he was in the confidence of King Edward VII and King George V in turn, as well as of leading ministers. Another notable veiled figure of that period was J. A. Spender, the editor of the Westminster Gazette. It was often remarked that the news columns of his paper were strangely backward in anticipating developments—the explanation being that he himself was so closely in the confidence of the Prime Minister that his knowledge of what was going to happen became a stifling gag on his power to fulfill his editorial function.

At the time of the second Labor Government Lord Thomson, the Air Minister, had an influence on the Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, much greater than his Cabinet position and extending into spheres beyond the limits of his departmental office. After Thomson was killed in the disaster to the airship R.101, John Buchan became an intimate adviser of Ramsay MacDonald and a link with the leader of the Conservative party, Stanley Baldwin in the coalition period. After Baldwin again became Prime Minister, the personal association between him and Mr. J. C. G. Davidson appeared to become an important factor in shaping Government policy. In the last two years of Mr. Baldwin's regime, Sir Horace Wilson, who had been chief industrial adviser since 1930, was “seconded to the Treasury for service with the Prime Minister.” He acquired still greater influence when Neville Chamberlain became Prime Minister in 1937—and exercised it over the whole field of policy, including foreign affairs. Ministers frequently complained that they were unable to see the Prime Minister on important matters but had to put them through to Sir Horace Wilson and get decisions that way.

When Churchill became Prime Minister in 1940 the importance of Brendan Bracken and Lord Beaverbrook in his counsels became widely known. He also brought with him Professor Lindemann, later Lord Cherwell, whose advisory position was regularized by the official announcement of his appointment as the Prime Minister's “personal assistant.” Major Desmond Morton was another.

Though the practical value of such intimate advisers has become increasingly accepted, they have remained more in the background in Britain than in the United States. There, during World War I, Edward M. House was much more than the right hand of President Wilson; he was the “other half,” and although he never held office he often deputized for the President at inter-Allied conferences. In World War II, Harry Hopkins played almost as big a part as President Roosevelt's representative, as well as his most intimate and constant adviser.

Pattern of dictatorship

We learn from history that self-made despotic rulers follow a standard pattern.

In gaining power:

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

They attack the existing regime violently and combine their appeal to discontent with unlimited promises (which, if successful, they fulfill only to a limited extent).

They claim that they want absolute power for only a short time (but “find” subsequently that the time to relinquish it never comes).

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.

On gaining power:

They soon begin to rid themselves of their chief helpers, “discovering” that those who brought about the new order have suddenly become traitors to it.

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

They enlist religion on their side, if possible, or, if its leaders are not compliant, foster a new kind of religion subservient to their ends.

They spend public money lavishly on material works of a striking kind, in compensation for the freedom of spirit and thought of which they have robbed the public.

They manipulate the currency to make the economic position of the state appear better than it is in reality.

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.

They expand the superstructure of the state while undermining its foundations—by breeding sycophants at the expense of self-respecting collaborators, by appealing to the popular taste for the grandiose and sensational instead of true values, and by fostering a romantic instead of a realistic view, thus ensuring the ultimate collapse, under their successors if not themselves, of what they have created.

This political confidence trick, itself a familiar string of tricks, has been repeated all down the ages. Yet it rarely fails to take in a fresh generation.

The psychology of dictatorship

We learn from history that time does little to alter the psychology of dictatorship. The effect of power on the mind of the man who possesses it, especially when he has gained it by successful aggression, tends to be remarkably similar in every age and in every country.

It is worthwhile to retrace the course of Napoleon's Russian campaign—not so much for the detail of operations, but as an object lesson in the workings of a dictator's mind. For this purpose we can profit, in particular, from a study of the memoirs of Caulaincourt, who not only took part in the march to Moscow but was Napoleon's chosen companion on the journey back, after Napoleon had left his army to its fate.

The adventure which undermined Napoleon's domination of Europe and brought his New Order crashing to the ground was directly due to his mingled dissatisfaction and uneasiness over Russia's attitude toward his plans for subduing England—the last obstacle to his path to world domination. In Napoleon's eyes, the Czar's attempt to moderate the burden of the Continental system appeared the thin edge of a wedge that would disjoint the lever on which he was relying to weaken England's stubborn refusal to negotiate.

Although Napoleon had himself permitted modifications in the system where it happened to pinch the French, he expected his allies, as well as the occupied countries, to put up with privations without mitigation—in his interest. And in rigid fulfillment of that fundamentally irrational logic he now took the decision to impose his will on Russia by force of arms. He decided on this course against the advice of his closest and wisest counselors.

By the middle of June 1812 he had assembled an army of 450,000 men—a vast size for those times—on the Russian frontier between the Baltic Sea and the Pripet Marshes. At ten o'clock on the night of June 23 the pontoon detachments threw their bridges across the Niemen and the crossing began. Napoleon's mood was expressed in his remark to Caulaincourt: “In less than two months' time, Russia will be suing for peace.”

On approaching Vilna, Napoleon found that the Russians had abandoned the city. “It was truly heartbreaking for him to have to give up all hope of a great battle before Vilna and he voiced his bitterness by crying out upon the cowardice of his foes.”

After five weeks' campaigning, despite his deep advance, he had inflicted little damage on the enemy, while his own army had been reduced by at least a third in numbers and still more in efficiency.

As Caulaincourt tells us: “He believed there would be battle because he wanted one, and he believed that he should win it, because it was essential that he should.” So he was led to advance on Smolensk. On entering the charred and deserted city, Napoleon gained a fresh access of confidence, declaring: “Before a month is out, we shall be in Moscow; in six weeks we shall have peace.”

On September 14 Napoleon reached Moscow and found that the Russians had evacuated the city. That evening fire broke out in many quarters, and the greater part of the city was soon in flames.

This destruction of Moscow by the Russians sobered Napoleon. He became anxious to seek any chance of peace. But he was still incapable of understanding the bitterness he had aroused. As a result he prolonged his stay in burnt-out Moscow in the misplaced hope that the Russians would the more quickly respond to his overtures. Instead, these were regarded, rightly, as evidence of his growing embarrassment. On October 25 he reluctantly gave orders to begin the march back to Smolensk.

By the time Smolensk was reached, on November 9, the army had shrunk to a bare 50,000. On reaching the Beresina the army barely escaped complete disaster, and after reaching Smorgoni Napoleon decided to leave his army and dash back to Paris, to raise fresh forces and to be on the spot where his presence would restore confidence when the news of the disastrous end of the Russian campaign reached the people of France—and the watchful capitals of conquered Europe.

He talked at length of the defects and deficiencies of his various assistants, and on one of them, Talleyrand, he made a comment that cast its shadow nearer home: “Once you've behaved like a knave, you must never behave like a fool.”

To the unromantic historian, Napoleon is more of a knave than a hero. But to the philosopher, he is even more of a fool than a knave. His folly was shown in the ambition he conceived and the goal he pursued, while his frustration was ensured by his capacity to fool himself. Yet the reflection remains that such a fool and his devastating folly are largely the creation of smaller, if better, fools. So great is the fascination of romantic folly!

We learn that when Napoleon visited the bivouacs of his frozen and starving soldiers—before he left them—he “passed through the crowds of these unfortunates without a murmur being heard. They blamed the weather and uttered not a word of reproach about the pursuit of glory.” And in the end he went back home in comparative comfort to receive the congratulations of his subjects on his safe return and to collect among them fresh reserves of cannon fodder with which to set out afresh on the pursuit of glory.

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.

The basic flaw in dictatorship

It would be untruthful not to recognize that authoritarian regimes, such as Napoleon's, have produced some good fruits. They are to be found in both the material and the spiritual fields. Many social reforms and practical improvements have been carried out in a few years which a democracy would have debated for generations. A dictator's interest and support may be won for public works, artistic activities, and archaeological explorations in which a parliamentary government would not be interested—because they promise no votes.