Why Don't We Learn From History?

Why don't we learn from history?

B. H. Liddell Hart (1895-1970)

Copyright (c) 1971 by Lady Kathleen Sullivan Liddell Hart

PREFACE

by Adrian J. Liddell Hart

At the time of his death in 1970 my father had been preparing a revised and expanded edition of a short book of historical reflections which he had published in 1944.

During the last twenty-five years of his life and until the end, he had continued to be both prolific in the writing of history and influential in the making of it. Besides numerous articles on current international and military affairs, he wrote, edited, or prefaced a number of works on subjects that had by then become part of history. He published his own memoirs in 1965–1966, covering in two volumes his career up to the outbreak of World War II. Finally he completed his history of that war and was, in fact, correcting the proofs of this long-awaited work at the time of his death.

He was, too, the unofficial adviser to an ever-widening circle of political and military leaders throughout the world. He had a vast correspondence. He traveled incessantly, often at the invitation of foreign governments and services, as a lecturer and consultant. In his seventieth year he went to be Visiting Professor of Military History at the University of California. To his country house in England came a constant flow of visitors seeking his advice and assistance and availing themselves of the facilities for research which with the support of London University he had built up in his unique library there.

To a whole generation of new historians he became a mentor, just as many of their contemporaries in the services of many countries, now often in high command, regarded themselves as his disciples. Having himself become prominent at a remarkably early age, at the end of World War I, he was personally linked with events and figures which had already passed into history: the friend as well as the biographer of Lawrence of Arabia, the collaborator of Lloyd George in his own memoirs of World War I and in ensuing controversies, the ally as well as the critic of Winston Churchill during the interwar years.

Over half a century of public life problems and personalities changed, but in his approach to them, as to life, he never grew old.

It is against this background and in this personal perspective that his contribution to history—and his reflections on it—should be rightly assessed. Immensely thorough, he was not an academic historian as the term is usually understood. His first degree was an honorary doctorate from Oxford University. Although he had studied and published books on remoter periods, from the Roman wars to the American civil war, he was predominantly concerned with events which could be checked through firsthand sources. He was a meticulous recorder of such events in his own notes of discussions. Wherever possible he visited the scenes of the campaigns which he was to describe, or revisited them; he had fought on the Western Front himself. He was a professional journalist, even a popular journalist, who continued to use the press not only as a means of influence and communication but as filed material for historical study. Moreover he remained actively interested in many aspects of history, from religion to fashion, which were outside the specialized military sphere with which his reputation was identified.

He was a historian who strove for rigorous objectivity and maintained intellectual detachment throughout the crises of his life and despite the official, commercial or personal pressures to which he was inevitably exposed. He valued and to a remarkable extent succeeded in preserving his independence of inquiry, judgment and expression, even in time of war. He was, too, a resolute defender of other people's rights in this respect and under different regimes. He was not indifferent or neutral. On many contemporary and even historical issues he felt strongly, even passionately. He would always turn aside from his studies and planned writing, often to his cost, to combat injustice or misrepresentation, as he saw it, in any form. He was involved.

He rejected, too, a determinant view of history—and of human behavior. Aware of the influence of social, economic and physical forces, interested in human psychology, scientific in his approach to causes, and critical of claims to inspiration, he was nevertheless convinced both of the uncertainties and imponderables in history and of personal influences in decisions. He himself remained an individualist and, on the whole, an optimist. We could learn before it was too late.

This book embodies the essentials of his historical philosophy. That he did not live to elaborate the principles which he had long expounded, to systematize the notes and comments which he had made and to illustrate further the conclusions which he had reached is to be regretted. Many of the views are, indeed, expressed or implicit in one way or another throughout his published works, as well as his correspondence, and especially The Revolution in Warfare (1946), The Defense of the West (1950), Deterrent or Defense (1960), and in successively revised editions of The Strategy of Indirect Approach (1948, 1954, 1962).

These essentials changed little over the years. He believed in the importance of the truth that man could, by rational process discover the truth about himself—and about life; that this discovery was without value unless it was expressed and unless its expression resulted in action as well as education. To this end he valued accuracy and lucidity. He valued, perhaps even more, the moral courage to pursue and propagate truths which might be unpopular or detrimental to one's own or other people's immediate interests. He recognized that this discovery could best be fostered under certain political and social conditions—which therefore became to him of paramount importance. He was, in the widest sense, a liberal—while recognizing the limitations, from some points of view, of liberalism.

To what end? He had no faith in blueprints for progress and he sustained the conviction that the end could never justify the means. He was a humane man who believed that human beings, in possession of the facts and undistorted by prejudice, could work out fair solutions for their common problems, based on moderation. Pre-eminently, he applied this philosophy in seeking to understand the causes and restrict the ravages of war.

Other historians have, perhaps, elaborated more impressively comprehensive philosophies. None more fully worked out in his own life, indissolubly merging action and reflection, influence and study, the principles for which he stood.

FOREWORD

If there is any value in such a personal view as I can offer, it is due largely to the fortune of personal circumstances. While in common with the great majority I have had to earn a living, I have had the rare good luck of being able to earn it by trying to discover the truth of events instead of to cover it up, as so many are compelled, against their inclination, by the conditions of their job.

Writing history is a very tough job—and one of the most exhausting. More than any other kind of writing it requires what Sinclair Lewis, in answer to a young man's question, aptly defined as the secret of success—to “make the seat of your pants adhere to the seat of your chair for long enough.”

Writing history is also the most exasperating of pursuits. Just as you think you have unraveled a knotty string of evidence, it coils up in a fresh tangle. Moreover you can so easily get caught up or tripped up on some awkward and immovable fact just as you seem to be reaching an irresistible conclusion.

What are the compensations? 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.

One more point about the writing of history: It should be written in manuscript. Not dictated. It is important always to keep in sight what you have said in the paragraphs before—both for balance and for relationship. And, in each case, both for matter and for style.

I would emphasize a basic value of history to the individual. As Burckhardt said, our deeper hope from experience is that it should “make us, not shrewder (for next time), but wiser (for ever).” History teaches us personal philosophy.

Over two thousand years ago, Polybius, the soundest of ancient historians, began his History with the remark that “the most instructive, indeed the only method of learning to bear with dignity the vicissitude of fortune, is to recall the catastrophes of others.” History is the best help, being a record of how things usually go wrong.

A long historical view not only helps us to keep calm in a “time of trouble” but reminds us that there is an end to the longest tunnel. Even if we can see no good hope ahead, an historical interest as to what will happen is a help in carrying on. For a thinking man, it can be the strongest check on a suicidal feeling.

I would add that the only hope for humanity, now, is that my particular field of study, warfare, will become purely a subject of antiquarian interest. For with the advent of atomic weapons we have come either to the last page of war, at any rate on the major international scale we have known in the past, or to the last page of history.

PART I: HISTORY AND TRUTH

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The value of history

What is the object of history? I would answer, quite simply—“truth.” It is a word and an idea that has gone out of fashion. But the results of discounting the possibility of reaching the truth are worse than those of cherishing it.

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.

History has limitations as guiding signpost, however, for although it can show us the right direction, it does not give detailed information about the road conditions.

But its negative value as a warning sign is more definite. History can show us what to avoid, even if it does not teach us what to do—by showing the most common mistakes that mankind is apt to make and to repeat.

A second object lies in the practical value of history. “Fools,” said Bismarck, “say they learn by experience. I prefer to profit by other people's experience.” The study of history offers that opportunity in the widest possible measure. It is universal experience—infinitely longer, wider, and more varied than any individual's experience.

How often do people claim superior wisdom on the score of their age and experience. The Chinese especially regard age with veneration, and hold that a man of eighty years or more must be wiser than others. But eighty is nothing for a student of history. There is no excuse for anyone who is not illiterate if he is less than three thousand years old in mind.

The point was well expressed by Polybius. “There are two roads to the reformation for mankind—one through misfortunes of their own, the other through the misfortunes of others; the former is the most unmistakable, the latter the less painful…the knowledge gained from the study of true history is the best of all educations for practical life.”

The practical value of his advice has been impressed on me in my own particular sphere of study. The main developments that took the General Staffs by surprise in World War I could have been deduced from a study of the successive preceding wars in the previous half century. Why were they not deduced? Partly because the General Staffs' study was too narrow, partly because they were blinded by their own professional interests and sentiments. But the “surprising” developments were correctly deduced from those earlier wars by certain non-official students of war who were able to think with detachment—such as M. Bloch, the Polish banker, and Captain Mayer, the French military writer.

So in studying military problems in the decades after that war I always tried to take a projection from the past through the present into the future. In predicting the decisive developments of World War II I know that I owed more to this practical application of the historical method than to any brain wave of my own.

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.

There is a too common tendency to regard history as a specialist subject—that is the primary mistake. For, on the contrary, history is the essential corrective to all specialization. Viewed aright, it is the broadest of studies, embracing every aspect of life. It lays the foundation of education by showing how mankind repeats its errors and what those errors are.

The significance of military history

Eighty years ago John Richard Green, in his History of the English People, that historical best-seller, delivered the statement “War plays a small part in the real story of European nations, and in that of England its part is smaller than in any.” It was an astoundingly unhistorical statement. In the light of today it has a devastating irony.