Jews: what goes around comes around.

Do you remember the jingle ‘In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue’?

I learned that at school. It was much later that I realised that 1492 was also the year in which King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain took other major steps, at least as significant as the decision to send an Italian sailor on his expedition westward – an expedition on which he left with no idea where he was going and came back with no idea of where he’d been.

It was in 1492 that Spain decided to rid itself of its Jews. 

Jews leaving Spain after August 1492

And 1492 saw Christians complete their reconquest of Spain from the Muslims.

My mother, who always enjoyed history, used to say that the decline of Spain as a great power dated from those times.

By moving against the Jews, Spain deprived itself of its most skilful financiers and traders. That’s no anti-Semitic slur: there is nothing inherent in Jews that makes them good with money, and few Jews were involved in high finance anyway. The law prohibited Jews owning land, forcing them into other professions such as finance, and some became very good at it.

Meanwhile, the most advanced and effective agriculture in Spain was carried out by the Muslim landowners of the south. Moving against them would carry a terrible price for the country. Like the financiers, they were outstanding wealth creators – literally feeding the nation – and it made no economic sense to drive them away.

Paradoxically, at the very moment that Spain was launching the exploration of the Americas which would turn it into a world power, it was ridding itself of the skills it needed to support itself in that position.

This kind of self-harm is what happens when nations deprive themselves of the skills that communities seen as ‘other’ bring with them. The converse is also true: when a nation drives those communities out, their neighbours benefit and move ahead of them. In 1685, France repealed the Edict of Nantes that tolerated Protestantism. Over the next thirty years, other countries such as Britain, Holland and Prussia took advantage of the flood of refugees, many of them skilled artisans – weavers, cabinet makers, clock makers – who fled with skills that enriched their hosts while their loss weakened France.

By 1720, some 11% of the population of Berlin was French-speaking. And the nation whose capital it was, Prussia, was on the way to becoming a European Great Power, one that would, indeed, overtake France in the next century.

Building bridges to take people in enriches a nation where expelling them, or building walls to keep them out, only impoverishes it. A lesson American fans of Trump need to learn. Or British fans of Brexit.

Curiously, over five centuries on Spain has made an effort to learn that lesson. A Spanish law of 2014 offered citizenship to anyone who could prove descent from the Sephardi Jews the nation threw out after 1492. They don’t have to give up their existing citizenship if they have one. They have to pass a language test and a test of culture, but they don’t even have to live in Spain.

Why, they don’t even have to be practising Jews.

The government that enacted this legislation presented it as an attempt to redress the error of 1492. I don’t know whether it does or not, but I feel it’s a remarkable aspiration. One to be admired.

Oddly, I only found out about it through the New York Times. That’s the paper that Donald Trump likes to refer to as ‘the failing New York Times’, though it seems to be flourishing. Perhaps it thrives on his criticisms.

The paper had picked up the story because a number of the Jews who had to get out of Spain decided to follow in the steps of Columbus, to the New World. That way, they remained in Spanish territory though they left Spain.

A number arrived in Mexico and some moved into the northernmost territory of that country, including New Mexico. Which was absorbed and made into a state by the US following its war on Mexico in the 1840s.

It seems that the Mexican authorities kept excellent records. So did the state of New Mexico. Consequently, a number of US citizens from that State are now well placed to prove that they are indeed descended from the persecuted Jews of Spain. With antisemitism on the rise in America, that curious Spanish law offers some Jews a potential bolthole – not one they intend to take, but one that it’s good to have available, just in case.

Through Columbus, 1492 opened up a new land of refuge. Through a law of the same year, made by the sponsors of his expedition, many Jews needed a land to which they could flee. And, in a beautifully cyclical movement – you know, what goes around, comes around – some of their descendants, now less safe in the land where their ancestors sought refugees can now claim citizenship of the land that that persecuted those same ancestors.

One thing hasn’t changed over the centuries. Nations still build walls and persecute minorities. Even it means shooting themselves in the foot.

And we don’t like learning lessons from history.

Uneasy but necessary bedfellows: history and politics

A book I read in the old East Germany, by a dissident called Heinz Knobloch, had a catch phrase running through it, ‘mistrust the green spaces’. A green space was often a spot where once a building stood that represented something the regime would rather not publicise, but which was too important to be built over completely. A major office of the Nazi regime, or of the Weimar Republic it overthrew, or even of the German Empire that preceded both.

Perhaps the best example of this fiddling with historical monuments concerned not a building but a statue. The imposing equestrian statue of Frederick the Great of Prussia, with its frieze of significant people of his time around the plinth, originally stood on the grand boulevard of Berlin, Unter den Linden.

The Frederick the Great statue in 1920

The Socialist Unity Party (SED) that ruled East Germany weren’t going to have that symbol of royalist and aristocratic elitism standing in the capital’s most prestigious avenue. For a time it vanished altogether. But, hey, Berlin was the capital of Prussia, and Prussia was the heartland of East Germany. After a while, the statue reappeared, but not in the capital, instead in the Charlottenhof Palace in Potsdam. On display, but not in too public a way.

Then came another rethink. In the 1980s, the SED changes its historical memory policy. East Germany was a state but not a nation. To make it a nation, it needed cultural roots and therefore a history. Frederick II was one of the greatest figures of its past, and the SED decided that, after mature reflection, and taking all things into consideration, it was important to bring him out of his relative obscurity and set him back up somewhere with a bit of class about it.

So the statue reappeared on the Unter den Linden. Where it stands to this day.

Politics makes history. And history matters to politics.

That’s as true in Spain as it is in Eastern Germany. Around the corner from where we’re living in Valencia is a thoroughfare that proclaims itself to be ‘Democracy Street’. However, the sign also tells us that it was formerly ‘Castán Tobeñas Street’.

Democracy Street. Formerly Castán Tobeñas

‘Aha,’ I thought when I saw it, ‘might this be a leading figure of the Fascist period deemed better forgotten than commemorated?’

So it seems. He was a jurist who rose to the position of President of the Spanish Supreme Court, a post he held for nearly 25 years under Franco, until just before his death. Seems open and shut. A major figure of Franco’s regime, far better consigned to the dustbin of history than commemorated by a street in Spain’s third city.

The reality is far more complex. But when is reality anything but complex? Why else does Donald Trump avoid it altogether?

Pascual Marzal is a Professor of the History of Law at Valencia University, and served as a member of the City Commission on the application of the Historical Memory law under which the street name was changed. He says he’s fully on board with the law, but opposes its application to Castán Tobeñas.

He points out that Tobeñas was also a leading judge under the second Republic, the one that Franco overthrew. He was, indeed, tried by a court martial of the Fascist regime, which acquitted him on the grounds that the previous government had appointed him exclusively for his legal skills, not for any particular political position. Such were those skills, indeed, that they decided to make use of them too. Hence his promotion to the Supreme Court.

Apparently, Tobeñas wrote some seminal texts on civil law and is regarded to this day as a major scholar in the field.

As Marzal asks, who can say with certainty that they would have behaved better under an autocratic regime? Would we resist? Or would we, like Tobeñas, come to terms with the regime and accommodate with it in order to make a living?

It’s an excellent question.

My wife comes from Alsace, in Eastern France. With the adjoining department of the Moselle, it is the region of the country that lost most men during the Second World War. The problem is that, because Germany regarded Alsace not as occupied France but recovered national territory, young men were subject to German conscription. So those Alsatian dead were above all wearing German grey not French blue. Few wanted to serve, but the consequences of a refusal were dire, not just for the individuals but for their families too.

These were the ‘despite ourselves’ (malgré nous) and a lot of them died in Russia. France has little reason to be proud of what they did, but Alsace has every reason to mourn their loss. So the region has its war memorials, though they say little about what uniform the men they commemorate were wearing when they died.

Tobeñas seems similar. He was unfortunate to live under a regime he could not serve with honour.

Unfortunate indeed. But though he couldn’t serve it with honour, he chose to serve it anyway. Why then should he be honoured today with a street name? After all, he was a judge. An authority of the law. And he served a regime that came to power illegally and ruled with little legal restraint. A jurist, above all others, must have found that particularly lamentable.

I’m glad the malgré nous have their monuments in Alsace. But I’m equally glad that the law on historical memory has deprived Tobeñas of his street. And I love the fact that it’s become Democracy Street instead, a lovely dig at Fascism.

History is complex. Sometimes it makes judgements that are perhaps too black and white. But they have to be made.

This one strikes me as have got more right than wrong.

A fairy tale with a touch of reality: not sparing the rod, to make the Prince

Remember all those fairy tales we’d hear as children, with their courageous, handsome princes, who’d suffer a bit (perhaps living as a frog for a while) before everything worked out just fine?

It strikes me that adults ought to be able to cope with truer tales of princes and their changing fortunes. I happen to have one right here. I hope you enjoy it.

Once upon a time, there lived a Prince whose father never went to war, but was still called “the soldier King.” That was because he’d built a wonderful army that could have defeated the forces of any of his neighbours, had he ever used it. But he didn’t.

One day, the King told his son, “I want you to be a fine soldier too. You’re going to learn to be strong and courageous and lead other soldiers.”

So he gave him a good beating in front of the courtiers, because he’d let himself be thrown from a bolting horse, or had put on gloves on a cold day, or whatever.

Like so many fathers, the King also gave his son toys to play with. Toy soldiers. Only these were alive – children, like the Prince, a whole regiment for him to train.

Sadly, the Prince had certain behaviour traits that the King his father didn’t particularly like. He regarded them as “effeminate.” To help his son overcome such terrible drawbacks, he would beat him from time to time or point out what a girl he was, to the other courtiers.

When he was eighteen, and a proper soldier in the grown-up army, the Prince met another officer, nine years older, he could get really close to. They used to write poetry and play the flute together. In fact, they got so close that one day the Prince told him he couldn’t stand life at court any more and intended to run away to another country where his uncle was King. At first, his friend begged him not to, but when he realised that there was no way of talking him out of his plan, he went along with it.

Unfortunately, the plan was betrayed and the young men were arrested. As officers, they had to face courts martial. The court refused to judge the Prince, saying it didn’t have the authority, but it sentenced his friend to life imprisonment for desertion.

“Prison? Not good enough,” bellowed the King, “chop off his head.”

"Off with his head," cried the King

So they did, and the Prince had to watch until he fainted. When he emerged from three days of despair, the King put him in gaol for a few months, but decided he didn’t need to suffer severe punishment – perhaps I should say further severe punishment – so exiled him to a castle in a cold northern region. That suited the Prince, who collected a nice library, and lots of friends (all men). He started writing, poetry and philosophy, and made friends with the greatest poet of the time, who was also a philosopher.

He wrote a great book about how a ruler should be honest and virtuous, and not at all like the nasty Kings of the past. One can guess that they included his father.

Then his dad finally died, and the young Prince took the throne himself. It was a wonderful moment. At last, a philosopher would be King, and rule for the good of humanity, cultivating the arts and the sciences, and building a land of peace, plenty and pleasure.

Alas, it was not to be.

He wrote at once to his friend, the philosopher. 

“You know that book about how rulers should be virtuous? Could you please make sure it doesn’t get published after all?”

Sadly, it was too late to stop it appearing.

In the same letter, the Prince, who was now King, also mentioned that he was adding a few more battalions to his father’s wonderful and unused army. And then – he used it. When a woman came to the throne of the next door country, he decided that would lead to so much dissension that he could nip in and take one of her juiciest provinces. So he did.

But he kept the flute going and the poetry. And had fun with his friends (all men). His dad had made him marry, but he left his wife in the capital to run the official court (which she did rather well), while he went to a nice palace he’d built some miles away and enjoyed himself with his own court of like-minded friends.

The philosopher came too, but he was a rather important man himself and didn’t like dancing to the King’s tune. So in time he ran away, and was arrested by the King, just like the King had been arrested when he was a Prince. At least the philosopher wasn’t executed. After some uncomfortable weeks, he was allowed to leave.

The other friends discovered they could enjoy themselves splendidly, just as long as they enjoyed doing exactly what the King wanted. Though some of the time he wasn’t there, as he became highly effective at killing lots of his enemies, using the army built by his father the Soldier King, who never soldiered. The son proved rather good at soldiering, much to the annoyance of his neighbours.

A fine tale, isn’t it? And sadly rather more real than the ones we listened to as kids.

The Soldier King was Frederick William I of Prussia. His son was Frederick II, who after his first war decided he’d like to be called “the Great”, so of course he was. The decapitated officer was Hans Hermann von Katte. The uncle was George I of England. The deserted wife was Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Bevern. She stayed in Berlin while Frederick lived in his palace of Sans Souci (“No worries”) in Potsdam. The philosopher and poet was Voltaire. Maria Theresa was the Empress of Austria who lost Silesia to Frederick.

History doesn’t record whether many of them lived happily ever after.

Fritz der Große playing the flute

Curious bicentenary

Two hundred years ago on Monday of this week, 15 June 1815, which back then happened to be a Thursday, the Duchess of Richmond held a ball in Brussels.

As well as guests of other nationalities, many elegant British visitors to that city attended. They had come to the Low Countries in the wake of the Duke of Wellington’s army, or they had fled there from Paris, where they had been celebrating the fall of his nemesis, Napoleon, the previous year – right up to the time that the Emperor had reappeared in France and effortlessly eased his way back into power, less than three months earlier.

The ball was a glittering affair, but with a painful ending. When disturbing news reached Wellington, he asked the Duke of Richmond whether he had a map. Soon after, Wellington, staring at the map, exclaimed “Napoleon has humbugged me, by God; he has gained twenty-four hours' march on me.”

One of the guests at the ball, Katherine Arden, wrote that “on our arrival at the ball we were told that the troops had orders to march at three in the morning, and that every officer must join his regiment by that time, as the French were advancing… Those who had brothers and sons to be engaged openly gave way to their grief, as the last parting of many took place at this most terrible ball.”

Napoleon had sent forces to a crossroads, appropriately named Quatre Bras (four arms). Control of the crossroads meant he could move either east towards the Prussian forces under Marshall Blücher, or towards the Anglo-Allied forces under Wellington. The latter, still trying to protect his right wing, had made no move to defend the crossroads, but fortunately some of his Dutch troops had taken it on themselves to take up positions there.

As a result, when Napoleon’s Marshall Ney reached the crossroads he found them held, however lightly, and decided to postpone an attack until the morning. But the allied side reinforced their position overnight.

As a result, when day broke on the Friday, two hundred years ago from Tuesday 16 June of this year, the first fighting was more nearly balanced than might have been expected. Technically, the day was a victory for the allies, since the French left the field. However, Wellington realised that the position was untenable and pulled back to positions he’d scouted previously, along the ridge of Mont St Jean, not far from the town of Waterloo.

British infantry at Quatre Bras
in the “square” defensive formation against cavalry

In the meantime, Napoleon had engaged Blücher and his Prussians at Ligny. This time the victory was technically French, since the Prussians withdrew from the field, one of the reasons Wellington felt obliged to retreat from Quatre Bras. But the Prussians retreated in good order, more than ready to fight again. One of the strengths of the Prussians was the training of their staff officers. It made the Prussian Army devastatingly efficient, the main reason why, despite its defeat, it could reorganise and move towards Waterloo within 48 hours.

By contrast, poor French staff work sent Napoleon’s marshall Grouchy, to “follow” the Prussians, whatever “following” meant.

Two hundred years ago from our Wednesday 17 June, the Saturday of that week, Wellington prepared his positions at Waterloo. He complained that he had “an infamous army, very weak and ill-equipped, and a very inexperienced Staff.” But, in the small hours of the next day – he was up at 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. – he sent a crucial letter to Blücher, assuring him that if he could send one army corps in support, he, Wellington, would stand and fight at Waterloo.

Blücher’s number 2, Gneisenau, was far from convinced that they should trust Wellington. But Blücher insisted they send three corps.

Two hundred years ago from Thursday 18 June, the Sunday of that week – there was no respect for the Sabbath – Wellington commanded 68,000 men, only 25,000 of them British (many of them actually Irish), 20,000 from the King’s possessions in Germany (the British King was also Elector of Hannover), a further 6000 Germans in the King’s German Legion (exiles fighting in the British Army) and 17,000 Dutch-Belgians.

Facing them were 73,000 French commanded by Napoleon himself. He took a leisurely approach to the day, breakfasting well, assuring his officers that the Prussians would need at least two days to reorganise, and once more ordering Grouchy to keep pressing them from the rear.

The ground at Waterloo was sodden, and Napoleon waited some hours for it to dry under the sun. Oddly, no one seems to know exactly when the battle began. The first shots were probably fired at the end of the morning or soon after noon. But the battle made up in ferocity for the delay in its start, and within a few hours Wellington was under acute pressure: at about 4:30, a farm at the centre of his line, la Haye Sainte, fell to the French and his position was fatally weakened.

He desperately needed the Prussians to arrive, but as he told the story, “the time they occupied in approaching seemed interminable. Both they and my watch seemed to have stuck fast.”

However, at much the same time as la Haye Sainte fell, the Prussians were already joining the action. The small numerical advantage of the French was wiped out by the arrival of these 50,000 fresh men. And Grouchy, trying to follow his orders, never showed up with his 33,000.

Prussian troops investing the village of Plancenoit
Just in time, from Wellington's point of view

Less than a week later, Napoleon abdicated for the second and final time. Reactionary regimes were established in France, Prussia, Russia and Austria. The fall of Napoleon is strangely ambivalent: he was a military dictator who had undone whatever gains the French revolution had made, and even went so far as to try to reintroduce slavery; on the other hand, with him out of the way, the cause of social progress in Europe was set back for decades, including in Britain. 

Militarily, Britain pulled off a brilliant piece of spin, painting Waterloo as a national victory, although only just over one in five soldiers on the allied side was British and the majority were German.

Britain became the pre-eminent world power for the best part of a century, but that disguised a much more dangerous truth shown by Waterloo: the rise of Germany, under Prussian leadership, as far and away the most effective military force in Europe.

Waterloo. Quite a day. With strange and complex results.

Enjoy the bicentenary!

We don't have to let the elite roll back our achievements, but if we don't stop them, they will

“Very well, alone!” exclaims the lone Tommy, standing on a rock amid raging seas and shaking his fist at a stormy sky with warplanes heading towards him. David Low’s cartoon of June 1940 captures the spirit of dogged defiance in Britain at that time, when France had surrendered to Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union was allied to the aggressor, and the United States, while well-inclined towards Britain, was firmly attached to its neutrality.

Britain wasn’t really alone. It had what was then still the Empire behind it, with its vast resources of wealth and manpower. Indeed, even Low himself was a New Zealander. But Britain was alone in resisting Germany in Europe.

Curiously, Britain defying Germany mirrored what had happened in Germany itself 134 years earlier. Then the aggressively expansionist power had been France, under its Emperor Napoleon. A series of devastating victories had crushed all German resistance, ended the Holy Roman Empire and left only one power, Prussia, still standing out despite – or in part because of – having lost a large proportion of its territory and population to the invader.

Rather like Britain in 1940, Prussia wasn’t strictly alone. Britain continued to be a thorn in Napoleon’s side, maintaining dominance at sea and using it to blockade the Continent of Europe (no wonder, with such a tradition, that Britain is a truculent member of the EU today). But Prussia was alone on the Continent to refuse to bow down at last to Napoleon.

It’s been fascinating to listen to Neil MacGregor of the British Museum discussing how Prussia reacted. It did away with ostentation and luxury in dress. Ladies were urged to hand over their gold, and receive in return – iron jewellery, worn with pride as a sign of patriotic spirit.

Iron is a common metal, used in industry and labour generally. It isn’t noble.

The Prussian King also decided to do away with all military decorations, and replace them with the single Iron Cross. As well as being likewise made of that common metal, it had another vital and new characteristic: unlike previous decorations, it wasn’t limited to officers, but could be won by any soldier, irrespective of rank.

The old, egalitarian Iron Cross
Before the Nazis got hold of it

So the response to invasion and defeat was retrenchment, economy and egalitarianism.

That spirit saw Prussia through to a complete turnaround in its fortunes, defeating France with support from Russia, which as in 1941 switched sides after its ostensible ally attacked it, and then from other Germans that came rallying to the Prussian cause. Prussia led the successful campaigns on the Continent, with Britain, winning victories in the Iberian Peninsula, little more than the hero of a sideshow.

Even during the final struggle, after Napoleon escaped from his first exile to return and terrorise Europe again, it was Germans, the bulk of them Prussians, that secured his final defeat: Prussian troops came to the rescue of Wellington who was battling it out with the French army, at the head of a British, Dutch and German force, at Waterloo.

And then? Once the war was over, all the egalitarianism went right out of the window. Why, even the Iron Cross was discontinued, not to be re-introduced until the 1870s. The old reactionary crowned heads of Europe took up their previous positions and began to rule in the traditional way, crushing all liberal, democratic opposition.

Sad, isn’t it? The egalitarian spirit was great when the country needed everyone to join in and kick out the French. But once the job was done, it was dropped, and back went the masses to their old subordination by the self-proclaimed elite.

Fortunately, that didn’t happen to Britain after it stood alone against the Nazis. In 1945, it elected a great reforming Labour government which ensured there were profound changes in the structure of society to protect those most in need of it.

No, in Britain we did things differently. It took 65 years before we found ourselves ruled by people who want to undo all the measures that had been taken in favour of those who made the victory possible. That’s happening now, with a vengeance. And in the wings is another party, UKIP, as intent as the Tories on taking us back to the 1930s, and which is in any case the natural heir of the British Union of Fascists which made so much noise in the country at that time.

I suppose it’s progress of a kind. Reaction that reversed social advances in a few years in Germany took as long in Britain as it takes a newborn to reach pension age.

There’s one other big difference. We elected the government that’s doing the damage to us. And we can still, if we choose, make sure that it can’t finish its job.

That the Prussian people couldn’t do, back in 1815. But we can. In elections in 2015.

Quinquiremes and Coasters, Accountants and Officials, Riches and Horrors

There’s something haunting about John Masefield’s poem Cargoes.

Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory,
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,
Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,
With a cargo of diamonds,
Emeralds, amethysts,
Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.

Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,
Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of Tyne coal,
Road-rails, pig-lead,
Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.

A galley, like the quinquireme: elegant, graceful
Just don't think about the slaves who drove the oars

The contrast between the grubby coaster and the graceful quinquireme and galleon is particularly keen, because the coaster was involved in a trade worth many hundreds, or thousands, of times more than either of the other two. And that trade even brought comfort into the homes of modest people, for whom a cheap tin tray would have been a great deal more useful, and affordable, than amethysts or ivory (God knows what they’d have done with apes or peacocks.) 

Spanish Galleon
Stately, majestic, and temptingly full of treasure

But there’s something else in the poem: its movement. 

The quinquireme is carrying sweet-smelling woods, wine, ivory. Precious things.

The galleon is carrying goods of colossal worth. Treasure.

And the coaster is carrying goods that earn a lot. Commodities.

Dirty British Coaster
A romance of its own despite its grubbiness

In 1494, something rather crucial happened in the Italian city of Florence. Luca Pacioli wrote a manual for double-entry bookkeeping. The system had been around a while, but his book is still regarded by many as the true starting point of modern accounting. 

What’s special about double entry?

It reduces commerce, one of the main areas of human endeavour, to nothing more than numbers. Indeed, and this is the special genius of double entry, it reduces it to a single number: zero. If the books have been correctly kept (or alternatively, skilfully cooked), all the sums come to zero: all the credits cancel all the debits, leaving nothing.

In other words, double-entry pierces the magic of commerce – apes and ivory – or even its mysterious riches – topazes and amethysts – and makes it a simple matter of balancing income against expenditure – cheap tin trays.

This evolution took place in parallel with another summed up by the history of the state of Prussia. It has been described as a “state of raw reason”. Why?

Because it had none of the things that your basic patriot seems to feel are crucial for building a nation: no single language, though German dominated; no single religion, with Lutherans and Calvinists alongside Catholics and a good sprinkling of Jews; not even territorial integrity, with bits of land added in scattered, separated places, depending on who the ruler married or inherited from.

What could hold such an artificial nation together?

The two things in which Prussia had mastery: a powerful army and a huge, underpaid, utterly incorruptible and highly effective civil service. They, through pure reason, bound the unseen sinews and bones of the state together and turned it into one of the most powerful in Europe.

Eventually it built, and took the leading role in, the Empire of Germany. And just to underline the weirdness of that event, the Empire wasn’t proclaimed in Germany, as anyone would expect, but in France – in humiliated, defeated France. Not just anywhere in France, either: it was in the Hall of Mirrors at the former Royal Palace at Versailles.

William I of Prussia proclaimed Emperor of Germany at Versailles
With the help of the Prussian Army and the government of Bismarck

A competent and painfully honest civil service has to be a huge advantage for a nation. But it has its downside too. It’s impersonal. It’s cold. It’s passionless. 

It also has no moral judgement. Set it to do a job, and it does it without asking what the job is for. It turns out, ultimately, men like Adolf Eichmann. During World War 2, he was the SS functionary who was responsible for organising the trains to take Jews to the extermination camps.

Adolf Eichmann,the thorough civil servant
At his trial in Israel; inset, in his SS uniform

He did the job with complete dedication. And it wasn’t easy: organising train transport in wartime for up to 12 million people? No simple matter.

What he didn’t do, and this came out at his trial in Tel Aviv, was think about what he was doing. He didn’t ask himself “is it right to send all these people to their deaths?” He did the job, in an entirely dispassionate and efficient way, without wondering about the consequences.

Which is rather like double-entry book-keeping. Brilliant. Simple. Effective.

Soulless.

We have built machines that have turned magic into mechanics, and Masefield’s poem charts that progress. We’ve reaped the benefits. But we’ve also suffered the devastation.

Fascinating ideas, aren’t they? I wish I’d had them. I’ve just embroidered on some thoughts of Max Weber’s, built on with characteristic genius by Hannah Arendt.

See? I’ve stood on the shoulders of giants, like Newton, proving that even ordinary people can do it and not just extraordinary men like him. And it still helps you see a lot further.