The Hero in History/Chapter 9
IX
THE EVENTFUL MAN AND THE EVENT-MAKING MAN
Throughout this book we have been using the word “hero” in the rather large and vague sense given to it in common usage. It is now necessary to make the term sufficiently precise to permit some check upon the position that will be subsequently developed.
Before proceeding to the main distinction upon which our thesis hangs, it will be helpful to introduce a few secondary distinctions that have been alluded to in earlier chapters. First of all, we must distinguish between the hero of historical action and the hero of thought. Popular estimates of “great” or “eminent” men rarely differentiate between the two. Thus in the well-known survey made by J. McKeen Cattell on the outstanding figures in Western history, the ten who headed the list of a thousand names were: Napoleon, Shakespeare, Mohammed, Voltaire, Bacon, Aristotle, Goethe, Cæsar, Luther, and Plato.[1] But as far as the records of historical events go, only four out of this group can be considered as candidates for the role of historical hero. No one can plausibly maintain that Shakespeare had any influence on the occurrence or non-occurrence of decisive historical events. It is not precluded that heroes of thought might also be great men of action or that the consequences of their ideas, as in the case of inventors, religious leaders, and social philosophers, might have impressive historical effects. But it is to the record of events that we must turn to evaluate their claims. In the history of the ancient world, it is Alexander, whose name does not appear on the list, who emerges as a historical hero rather than Aristotle. Only if it could be shown that it was Aristotle’s ideas that inspired Alexander in his march toward empire could the former be considered in this connection.
A second distinction must be recognized between historical figures who are famous, who can get themselves believed in, and individuals who have influenced events without achieving great popular fame. There is no reliable correlation between historical significance, measured by the effect of action on events, and historical fame, measured by acclaim or volume of eulogy. That is why the judgment of the scientific historian, who investigates specific causal connection, on the historical work of individuals, is always to be preferred to results of polls, comparative space allotments in standard works, and frequency of citation. The latter show enormous variation influenced by fashion, picturesqueness, parti pris, and very little by scientific findings. Particularly to-day, any “front” man can be built up into a “hero.” From 1916 to 1933, Hindenburg was undoubtedly the most popular figure in Germany but one could mention half a dozen individuals who had greater influence on German history, including military history, during that period.
Finally, we must rule out as irrelevant the conception of the hero as a morally worthy man, not because ethical judgments are illegitimate in history, but because so much of it has been made by the wicked. Only the making of history concerns us here, not whether it has been made well or disastrously.
The hero in history is the individual to whom we can justifiably attribute preponderant influence in determining an issue or event whose consequences would have been profoundly different if be had not acted as he did. It is sometimes objected that there is no universal agreement about the “importance” of any issue, event, or consequences. Some individuals profess that it is not “important” to them whether India remains free or not, whether the war is lost or won, or whether the future world state is democratic or Fascist in form. All this is immaterial to the problem. No matter what you regard as important, the problem is inescapable. Would that which you regard as important have taken place anyhow no matter what individual figured in the events leading up to it? Or is it ever true to say that an individual was chiefly responsible for the occurrence or non-occurrence of that important issue or event?
This brings us to the key distinction. This is the distinction between the hero as the eventful man[2] in history and the hero as the event-making man in history. The eventful man in history is any man whose actions influenced subsequent developments along a quite different course than would have been followed if these actions had not been taken. The event-making man is an eventful man whose actions are the consequences of outstanding capacities of intelligence, will, and character rather than of accidents of position. This distinction tries to do justice to the general belief that a hero is great not merely in virtue of what he does but in virtue of what he is. From this point on, unless otherwise specified, when we speak of the hero or great man in history we shall mean the event-making man.
The merely eventful men in history play a role that may be compared to that of the little Dutch boy who kept his finger in the hole of the dike and saved the town. Without meaning to strip the legend of its glamour, we can point out that almost anybody in the situation could have done it. All that was required was a boy, a finger, and the lucky chance of passing by. The event itself in the life of the community was of tremendous significance. It saved the town just as a little Dutch boy at Pearl Harbour might have saved the fleet if his alarm had been acted upon in time. But the qualities required to cope with the situation were of a fairly common distribution. Here, so to speak, one stumbles upon greatness just as one might stumble on a treasure that will ransom a town. Greatness, however, is something that must involve extraordinary talent of some kind and not merely the compounded luck of being born and of being present at the right place at a happy moment.
In the year 313, the Emperor Constantine, in the word of Gibbon, changed his status from that of “protector” to that of “proselyte” of the Church.[3] Few events have been more important in the development of western Europe than the reversal of previous Roman policy toward Christianity and its adoption by the official head of the Roman Empire. But not a single one of the qualities of Constantine’s character, which enter into the disputed question of the reasons for his conversion, indicate that he was much more than a politician with an eye on the main chance. Whatever religious piety he had was not strong enough to prevent him from murdering his own son on a trumped-up charge. Constantine was an eventful man independently of whether Christianity would have become the official religion several centuries later, under quite different conditions and with different consequences, or whether, without him, the Roman Empire would never have been called Holy. But as decisive as Constantine’s act was for his era, he was not a hero. The appellation of “great” was bestowed upon him in thanks by the grateful Christian minority. His later interference in Church affairs gave them second thoughts about his greatness.
Although there is no evidence that any other Roman Emperor would have eased Christianity into its new status, it could have been done readily. The growth of Christianity, the position of the Emperor in Roman society, the decay in traditional belief manifested by the absence of a strong, fanatical opposition, made the adoption of Christianity an objective possibility, but neither a social nor political necessity. Constantine proselytized for Christianity for imperial reasons.[4] But there was no greater justification for believing that he could strengthen the State by using the Church primarily as an instrument of public policy than by playing off Paganism and Christianity against each other. After Constantine and his work, and because of it, the effort to restore the pagan religion was doomed to fail. It is extremely unlikely that the Emperor Julian, despite his superior gifts, would have succeeded in depriving Christianity of its privileged status even if he had lived to a ripe age. But what he failed to do as a successor of Constantine—reduce Christianity to a religious sect contending on equal terms against other sects—he could easily have done in Constantine’s stead. Constantine, therefore, must be regarded as an eventful rather than an event-making historical figure.
Both the eventful man and the event-making man appear at the forking points of history. The possibility of their action has already been prepared for by the direction of antecedent events. The difference is this. In the case of the eventful man, the preparation is at a very advanced stage. It requires a relatively simple act—a decree, a command, a common-sense decision—to make the decisive choice. He may “muff” his role or let someone steal it from him. But even if he doesn’t, this does not prove an exceptional creature. His virtue or vice is inferred from the happy or unhappy consequence of what he has done, not from the qualities he has displayed in the doing of it.
The event-making man, on the other hand, finds a fork in the historical road, but he also helps, so to speak, to create it. He increases the odds of success for the alternative he chooses by virtue of the extraordinary qualities he brings to bear to realize it. At the very least, like Cæsar and Cromwell and Napoleon, he must free the path he has taken from opposition and, in so doing, display exceptional qualities of leadership. It is the hero as event-making man who leaves the positive imprint of his personality upon history an imprint that is still observable after he has disappeared from the scene. The merely eventful man whose finger plugs a dike or fires the shot that starts a war is rarely aware of the nature of the alternative he faces and of the train of events his act sets off.
It is easy to make a sharp distinction in analysis between the eventful man and the event-making man, but there are few historical figures that will fit comfortably into either classification. We must leave to historians the delicate task of ascertaining whether any particular “hero” of human history is, in respect to some significant happening, an event-making character—or merely lucky. That the classes defined by the distinction are not empty of members has been made apparent for eventful men and will be established for event-making men. Whether it is possible to treat these classes in terms of gradations or combinations of qualities common to both is doubtful: Yet the same historical personage may be eventful in one respect, event-making in another, and neither in a third.
It is not suggested that this approach is the only one that can be taken in evaluating the historical significance of individuals in history. For the nature of their influence may be expressed in ways so manifold that they sum up to a torrent, and yet at the same time in ways so indirect that it is difficult to trace their path.
The influence of Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln on American life, on the ways Americans have thought and acted, has been enormous. Yet it would be difficult and perhaps irrelevant to classify them either as eventful or event-making. Jefferson wished to be remembered after he was gone as “the author of the Declaration of Independence, the Statute of Virginia for religious liberty, and father of the University of Virginia.” Yet separately or together these achievements do not indicate that he was an eventful or event-making man. There is much in the contemporary rhetoric of democracy which would now be different had Jefferson not composed the Declaration of Independence, but the vision and faith to which he gave such felicitous phrasing were common to the distinguished company of whom he was one. The Statute on Religious Freedom gave formal expression to a movement of religious toleration already making its way through the states. The future of higher education in America, which already had a distinguished past before Jefferson, could hardly be said to have been profoundly influenced by him.
Oddly enough, from the point of view of narrow historical action, it is to something by which Jefferson himself set much less store that we must turn to find evidence for his event-making status. This is the Louisiana Purchase, in which he was the moving figure. He carried it through in the teeth of an opposition strong enough to have daunted a weaker man. And yet had this territory not been acquired from Napoleon when it was, England would probably have fallen heir to it at the Congress of Vienna, if not sooner. Without the Louisiana territory—and the west to which it furnished access—the United States might have remained an Atlantic seaboard power. Its political history as well as its economic history might have been very different. There is no assurance that another incumbent of the presidency than Jefferson would have had the foresight and energy required to seize this golden opportunity to remove a foreign power and potential enemy from our borders, and at the same time to double the area under the American flag. But however we evaluate Jefferson’s part in the territorial expansion of the United States, his stature as a man and thinker and his role as a historical force on American culture do not depend upon it. There is room for others besides those whom we call historical “heroes” in a democracy.[5]
What shall we say of historical figures who enjoyed great political power and whose reigns, although outwardly uneventful, seem to be conspicuous for their peace and prosperity? This is the type of situation with which Wood was primarily concerned, and which he too easily set down to the credit of the ruling individuals. When can they be credited with it and when not? And if they are credited with it, when can they be regarded as eventful or event-making? Our illustration here will be drawn from a period that might be called “the golden age” of Roman history.
Gibbon gives it as a considered judgment that after the reign of Augustus the happiness of all the European peoples “depended on the character of a single man”—that is, on whoever happened to be the Roman Emperor. In an agricultural society, where people could find refuge and a living in the interstices of the economy, this could hardly have been the case. But in view of the immense powers for good or evil wielded by the Roman Emperors, we can appreciate the truth behind Gibbon’s exaggeration. Yet historically, the most uneventful period of the Roman Empire from the point of view of wars, rebellions, palace revolutions, incursions of barbarians, etc., was the forty-two-year reign of the two Antonines, Pius and Marcus, in the second century of the Christian era. Of their united reigns Gibbon writes with positively un-English enthusiasm and unrestraint. They are “possibly the only period of history in which the happiness of a great people was the sole object of government.” And not merely the object of government, but the result. In one of the most extreme statements ever penned by any historian of note he asserts: “If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world, during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus.”[6]
A truly remarkable—and uneventful—period. At first glance it appears that our categories do not apply to it. Where nothing or little happens there is no call for eventful or event-making men. Yet we cannot resist the feeling that if only a tithe of what Gibbon says of them is true, the Antonines are historically just as significant as the Emperors who extended the boundaries of Rome, codified its laws, or altered its religion. But to be justified, this feeling must rest on the belief, tacitly assumed by Gibbon, that the order, tranquillity, and prosperity of an era are the consequences of policies adopted by these absolute rulers during their reign. That is to say, they prevented dire events that otherwise would have occurred. Certainly, if we hold the Roman Emperors responsible for the “crimes, follies, and misfortunes” of their reigns, as Gibbon does, we must credit them for the peace, wisdom, and good fortune, too, even if their lives do not make as interesting reading as those of Nero, Caligula, and Commodus.
Whether the Roman Emperors were in fact responsible for the condition of the country to the extent assumed by Gibbon, who was unconsciously much addicted to the heroic interpretation of history, is highly disputable. Later historians are convinced that the state of Roman agriculture accounts for much more about Roman history and the happiness of its people than the character of the Roman Emperors. But this is hardly the place to settle the question. The main point is that the outwardly uneventful appearance of a period—its prosperity—is either the consequence of a policy adopted by the ruling individuals, or the consequence of social and economic conditions (together with other factors) whose development has not been appreciably influenced by policy. In the first case, those who are responsible for the policy may be eventful or event-making men depending upon what an analysis of the situation reveals. In the second case, the historical phenomenon can be adequately explained without introducing heroes in any of the senses previously considered. To the extent that political action can influence the prosperity of an era, the Antonines may have been largely responsible, as Gibbon believes, for this happy interlude in Roman history. But the prosperity of an era is never by itself sufficient evidence to warrant an inference about existing political leadership. No historian could reasonably maintain that we owe the postwar years of prosperity in the United States to the leadership of Harding and Coolidge.
The eventful man is a creature of events in that by a happy or unhappy conjunction of circumstances he finds himself in a position where action or abstention from action is decisive in a great issue. But he need not be aware of that issue and how his action or inaction affects it. The members of the Committee of Public Safety during the French Revolution were, as a group, eventful men. But only Robespierre and St. Just were event-making in that they realized above all others what was at stake after Louis XVI. had been deposed. Napoleon believed that if Robespierre had remained in power, France would have settled down to orderly processes of republican government and made Napoleon’s accession to power impossible. But Robespierre was the architect of his own downfall and, despite all the politically motivated efforts to rehabilitate him, of the downfall of Republican France. Together with St. Just, he is responsible for carrying the Terror beyond the interests of national defence and public safety.[7]
Although Robespierre disapproved of the more barbaric excesses of indiscriminate executions and juridical frame-ups, it was his own policy that prepared the way for them. The Terror, to the point that Robespierre approved it, did not save France from the flames of counter revolution. It supplied fuel to those flames. By terrorizing tens of thousands of Frenchmen who were genuinely hostile to despotism, it made easier Napoleon’s usurpation. An incidental distinction of Robespierre is that by charging his opponents, even when they were as far apart as Danton and Anarchisis Cloots, with being spies in English pay, he set a fashion that was to be followed in the Russian Revolution. It was bad enough that Robespierre proclaimed: “The Republic owes its enemies nothing but death.” It was historically fatal when he began to regard the enemies of Robespierre as the enemies of the Republic.
The disproportion between the ordinary capacities which the eventful man brings to history and the extraordinary effects of his actions is best illustrated by the personality of the Emperor Justinian and the place he fills in history. The great military achievements under his reign, won by Belisarius, the codification of Roman law, the closing of the philosophic schools at Athens, his intervention in theological affairs, his vast architectural works, had a profound influence on European culture. But at no point did Justinian rise above the level of mediocrity. Although he made the decisions that moved much abler men than himself into action, he showed no clear purpose in what he was doing or any conception of the effects his decisions would have on what he thought he was doing.
Justinian’s most eventful act, according to Fisher, was the destruction of the heretical Arian Goths in Italy in the middle of the sixth century and the resulting desolation of the whole Italian peninsula. The rulers of the Goths had pursued a policy of strict religious tolerance toward the orthodox Christians in their realm. When Justinian ordered his generals to take the field against them, the Goths sued for peace again and again with offers of tribute and perpetual vassaldom. But the bigoted Justinian was adamant. Theodora, his beautiful, influential, and much wiser spouse, might have prevailed upon him to call off his generals, as she frequently did on other occasions, but for reasons of State she was more interested in protecting a different variety of heresy. The Goths were ultimately exterminated root and branch. “It was a profound error to destroy them. Had they been left in peace there might have been no Lombard invasions, no papal state, no revival of the Empire in the West, and the political unity which Italy so painfully achieved in the reign of Queen Victoria might have been realized in the reign of Ethelbert.”[8]
Whether this event should be called an “error” depends, of course, on one’s religious predilections. Those who accept the theology of the Council of Nicea call Justinian’s crusade a blessing. But error or blessing, the act was fateful for the history of Europe. ••••• At this point it is necessary to consider the relation between the hero and social interests. For one way of losing sight of the problem is to show that heroic action fits into the needs of a class already in power or of a class that comes into power after his work is done. Such an analysis, even when it is true, does not rule out the possibility that the class that remains in power and the class that comes to power do so in virtue of the unique qualities of the hero who serves their interests. But very often it is assumed that this possibility has been ruled out when all that has been established is that the hero must take note of social interests and find support among them.
The event-making figure in history obviously can achieve nothing by himself alone. He is dependent upon a narrow group of lieutenants or assistants who constitute a “machine,” and upon a much broader group in the population whom we may call a social class. Both groups are tied to him by bonds of interest, but the nature of the interests is different. An over-simplified conception of the role of interests often presents the event-making figure as their servant, selected because of his capacity to further them and replaceable when he fails. The event-making figure is thus reduced once more to an instrument of a historical or class Purpose, that is, the purposes of other men. The effect of his own purpose is regarded as a minor detail. That many, if not most, of the political personalities who stride the boards of history for a brief moment are instruments of other people’s purposes may be granted. But it cannot be granted for those whom we have called event-making figures. We shall consider the relation of the hero, first to the social class that supports him, and then turn to his machine.
The dependence of the eventful figure on the support of a social class is much more in evidence before he accedes to power than when he is in possession of power and commands the State forces of coercion and education. A powerful social class which sees its vested position threatened, or which desires to use political power to break the vested position of another class, can usually arrange to give a candidate for the role of hero the chance to make good. But he may not be able to carry out all the tasks entrusted to him. His role may be that of a Bruening, a Schleicher, a von Papen, a Hoover, a Kerensky, or even a Leon Blum. But when he does make good, his very success, if he is skilful enough, makes him independent of the class chiefly responsible for his selection. He may still serve its interests, but the decision to do so is his now and not theirs.
The independence of the event-making man, over and against the class whose interest he actually or presumably has been selected to serve, is achieved in various ways. First, he can build up other social interests in opposition to the class that has sponsored him. This is not difficult because in the demagogic preparation for power he has already promised much to other classes, except the national scapegoat. Since he always speaks in the name of the nation or people, he can justify his independence of the class that has originally supported him in terms of the very myths this class has helped to propagate. Secondly, the event-making man comes into control of the armed forces of the State. Not infrequently he already enjoys some military prestige and power before his advent to power. Third, he brings his machine into play to take over and administer social functions, pulverize opposition, and consolidate military influence. As far as possible the machine reduces all potential centres of resistance and draws into its periphery all independent institutions. In fact, it is the machine that makes possible the pursuit of the first two methods by which the event-making figure emancipates himself from dependence upon the class whose social need gave him his original opportunity.
It is to the machine then and not to the social class that we must look to uncover the chief dependence of the hero. Whether it be a political party, a Jesuit religious order, a military camarilla, the hero must bind it to himself with hoops stronger than steel. If he is to play the man of the hour and pay his debts to the social class that supported him, the machine is a convenient instrument. If he decides to take a course independent from the one he was expected to follow, its iron loyalty is all the more necessary. In either case the machine must become his machine if he is to triumph. How is this accomplished? In the main by giving its members certain material and psychological privileges that are sufficiently distinctive to mark them off as a separate social grouping. As a group they must be convinced that they are the senior partner in any political alliance with other social groups. They either supplant the existing bureaucracy or fuse with it in such a way that they occupy all the strategic posts.
The historical hero, however, cannot become merely the instrument of his machine and enjoy power long. For all his reliance upon it, he must remain its master. This he accomplishes by making it evident that he is indispensable to the continuation of its privileges, that his downfall is their downfall, but not necessarily that its downfall is his. Just as he uses the machine to bring other social groups in line, the hero uses these social groups, tamed but resentful over the privileges lost to the machine, to keep the latter in tow. The event-making figure in history wins the opportunity to move freely by skillfully playing off against each other the groups upon whom he is dependent. That is why he is more than social class and more than a captain of a robber band. That is why he can be ruthless, if necessary, to the social class whose interests he claims to represent. That is why he can whirl his machine around into an abrupt spin in an opposite direction without consulting them or fearing defection. It goes without saying that he always strives to keep his machine in order, free of the grit and sand of dissidence and with an ample supply of spare parts at hand for necessary replacements.
Our conclusion then is that without meeting some social and group interests—economic, national, psychological—the hero cannot influence historical events; but he meets them in such a way that he always retains a considerable degree of freedom in choosing which interests to further and which to suppress or weaken. The behaviour of most historical figures in relation to political and social issues can be explained in terms of the interests that speak through them. But them are individuals in history who not only talk back but react in such a way as to modify the original relations of social interest in a radical way.
The particular role that any historical character plays in relation to social interests may not be apparent from what he says about himself. He may claim to be serving the interests of a class when he is actually doing something quite different, or he may regard himself as completely independent of all social pressures when in fact he is merely a servant, sometimes even a contemptible tool, of special privilege.
This raises the question of individual consciousness and historical action. ••••• Many leading historical figures have little consciousness, or a false consciousness, of the eventful place they hold in history. What they do seems to them to be exacted by the necessities of the situation, working through them to a fore-ordained result, rather than achieved by voluntary action and intelligent planning in whose absence affairs would turn out quite differently. Even genuine event-making men, like Cromwell and Lenin, regarded themselves respectively as instruments of divine and dialectical necessity.
On the other hand, there are historical characters, borne along on the tide of events, who feel that they are controlling the direction of the wave. Or they make claims of having influenced events in one field whereas their real influence is in another. A particularly instructive example of this was the pathetic illusion of Neville Chamberlain that it was he alone who was settling the destiny of our century.
Immediately after the Munich Pact in 1938, Chamberlain was widely regarded as an event-making man, admired by those who approved of his policy and condemned by those who did not. The former agreed with his conviction that he had snatched “peace for our time” from the very jaws of the Moloch of war. The latter were convinced that after Munich no Western power would or could dispute Hitler’s march to the East. A few made a more sober estimate of the situation.
Although we know that the Munich Pact did not bring peace in our time, its actual historical significance is still shrouded in obscurity. It depends upon the answer to the following questions. What would have happened if Chamberlain and Daladier, who dragged after him in reluctant tow, had presented an ultimatum of war to Hitler instead of flying to Munich and coming to terms with him? Would Hitler have marched into the Sudetenland as he later marched into Poland, despite the fact that Russia had not yet assured him that he would have no second front? If he had, would the English and French have been able in the ensuing war to put up a better defence than they did when war came a year later? Was the Czech military strength of greater value than a year won for additional armament—inadequate as the latter was even in 1939? Would a war begun in 1938 have resulted in the overrunning of England before the United States, still largely peace-minded, could enter it? Had war broken out, would the large pacifist and isolationist groups in England and America have seen through the hypocrisy of Hitler’s claims in behalf of the “poor Sudetens” who indisputably were more German than Czech?
Without more data at our command we cannot answer these questions. But we can answer the question whether or not Chamberlain’s capitulation was merely a strategic postponement, forced by lack of preparedness, of the inescapable showdown. This is a matter that is not shrouded in obscurity. If it were true, as some of his defenders have urged, that this is what determined Chamberlain’s historic decision, Chamberlain’s stature as a statesman would be enormously increased. If it were true, and if the Axis goes down to defeat, historians might very well regard him as among the greatest event-making men of his generation. But it is not true. By his unwearied insistence that the peace had been saved, Chamberlain himself provides the evidence that his decision was not motivated by the desire to gain time for preparation. Even if it turns out that the year won by Munich was necessary to eventual victory, Chamberlain did not organize or plan it that way. In the light of the most favourable outcome, he was not the contriver of good fortune but, duped by his fears and made foolish by his self-righteousness, he was at best a happy accident in that good fortune. His judgment was a thousand times wrong even if historians of a later day, writing in a free world, might congratulate themselves on the lucky fact that, by gaining a year’s grace in 1938, England was able to stave off France’s fate in 1940. At best, then, Chamberlain may be considered an eventful man, certainly not event-making.
How fantastically false was Chamberlain’s consciousness of his own historical role may be plainly seen in his memorable address to the House of Commons on October 6, 1938. He unequivocally declared that whether there should be war or not depended upon him, and on him alone, and that his decision had banished its shadows for our time:
Anyone who had been through what I have had to go through, day after day and face to face, with the thought that in the last resort it would be I, I alone, who would have to say that “yes” or “no” which would decide the fate of millions of my countrymen and their wives and families;—anyone who has been through that, would not readily forget…. A man who gets to my age in my position tends to feel that he may disregard any abuse that is levelled at him if his conscience approves what he has done. Looking back on those events I feel convinced… that my action was only what one in my position would do. I say that by my action I did avert war.
It is a sobering thought that a statesman in a democracy can believe and openly proclaim that on his single word the destiny of his nation depends. But far more significant here is Chamberlain’s political innocence in seriously entertaining the notion that he could stop a war that had been in the making from the very moment Hitler assumed power.
Once Fascism had consolidated its internal position, it was beyond the effort of a host of peace-loving statesmen to block the dynamic force to war that was generated by a peculiar combination of economic need, fanatical ideology, and intense chauvinism. Hitler made no secret of his intentions before he came to power, and every step he took after he came to power showed that German society was being geared to total war. The sole effect of negotiation with him could be at most a calendar victory—an enforced change in his timetable. This might have tremendous importance, but only in relation to the striking power of the armies when war broke out. A statesman who imagined that, by a pact or memorandum, or by any concession short of total capitulation, he could immobilize the tensions straining toward release betrayed the perspectives of a small-town politician.
There are situations in the world no hero can master. They break with such fury that neither the potentially event-making man nor his pedestrian camp-follower can withstand it, although they may ride them out differently. These situations are commonly found at the end of prolonged periods of distress and oppression, as in the great revolutionary upheavals. They are also found when two powerful nations are so organized that one or both cannot feel safe so long as the main trade routes, the markets reached by them, and the sources of raw materials and supply are straddled by the other—conditions antecedent to many wars from the days when Rome faced Carthage to the days when Imperial Germany challenged British sea power and Japan strove for the hegemony of the entire Pacific. In general, whenever opposing sets of interests are conceived in an absolute way so that the fulfilment of one set demands the liquidation of the other, without compromise or pity or reference to other interests that are common, we have the makings of social catastrophes. They burst on society with the elemental force of natural phenomena and overwhelm alike the just and the unjust, the wise and the foolish.
But there are other situations in which a gifted man of good or evil genius can so profoundly affect men and events that he becomes an event-making man. That there are such situations and such men is something difficult to establish. In the next chapter we shall examine a great historical event as a crucial test of the theoretical position already sketched. We will show that there has been at least one event-making man in our time who has redetermined the course of history and, in so doing, has influenced the life of the great majority of men, women, and children on the face of the globe. ••••• Before proceeding to the evidence that there has been at least one event-making man in our own times, something should be said about the role of women in history. So far we have been discussing in the main eventful and event-making men in history. What of the position of women? Does history show any disputably eventful or event-making women? They are always around, but to what extent do they count in determining the world’s affairs?
The four women for whom the largest claims have been made are Cleopatra, Theodora, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine II. of Russia.[9]
Cleopatra is the most legendary of all the eventful women of history. But her influence on affairs has been enormously exaggerated, and she herself has been the subject of romantic myths that are great poetry but poor history. Ever since Pascal’s brief comment on her in his Pensées, she has become the perennial illustration of the way in which the history of the world depends upon trifling details. “Cleopatra’s nose, had it been shorter, the whole aspect of the world would have been different.” Pascal’s words have stimulated important reflections on the nature of history, but the example he took was unfortunate. It seems a pity to destroy a pretty story, but the true story is perhaps just as interesting.
A judicious evaluation of what we know about Cleopatra and her times makes it clear that her nose had little to do with her influence on the younger Pompey, Cæsar, and Antony. What is more important, her influence on them had very little effect upon the history of the world. She made a great difference to Antony’s life, but little to the history of the Roman Empire. Cæsar would have triumphed over Pompey in any event; Octavian and Antony would have had to settle the question of succession, to the mantle of Cæsar, and the odds of victory were with the former even if the latter had been immune to Cleopatra’s charms. What brought the great Romans to Egypt were the exigencies of political warfare together with the necessity of ensuring that this Nile-blessed country would remain the granary of Italy, then in the process of acute agricultural decline. While in Egypt they naturally improved on their opportunity, but the history of Rome would have been substantially the same if there had never been a Cleopatra.
Like most women who have played some role in history, Cleopatra’s influence was achieved by influencing men. And like most women who have influenced eventful men, Cleopatra owed her success not so much to her beauty as to qualities of intelligence, will, personality, and an obscure appeal that does not depend upon face or figure. She seems to have been petite and daintily built, but Plutarch tells us that Octavia, Antony’s wife, whom Antony deserted for Cleopatra, compared favourably to her both in youth and beauty. From the available accounts, even if Cleopatra’s nose had been shorter, she would have been no less irresistible, since the change would have been more in harmony with her pert spirit.[10] Pascal’s famous question is thus answered in respect to her influence on men. But suppose she had been a fright, would world history have been very different? It is hardly likely.
Cleopatra was not a great courtesan but a shrewd politician, with overreaching ambitions, who fought a losing battle to preserve the independence of her empire. The preservation of her empire was the fixed principle of her policy, to which she showed a far greater constancy than to any of her royal lovers. She was willing to learn to love anybody who would save her dynasty. She threw Antony over and tricked him into suicide after the Battle of Actium and would have added Octavian to her collection if his temperament had not been so cold. Ferrero and other historians suggest that she inspired Julius Cæsar to dream of a World Empire with her beside him as Queen of the Earth, but it is unlikely that Cæsar’s ambition ever waited upon anything but opportunity. Cleopatra was Cæsar’s personal weakness, not his political mentor: Cæsar was Cleopatra’s political patron, hardly her romantic ideal. At any rate, the men who killed Cæsar and who were very well acquainted with his affairs and the influences to which he was subjected made no attempt to molest Cleopatra, who was living with Cæsar in Rome at the time of his death. Had she inspired him with the ambition to become Emperor of the Roman world, it is extremely unlikely that they would have taken no action against her.
As in the case of Cleopatra, most of what we know about the Empress Theodora is derived from sources that are hostile or unsympathetic. Even after discounting the malice of religious fanatics whose orthodoxy she outraged, there is no reason to doubt the main facts of her early life. She was born to a family of circus performers, and she herself became a professional dancer and actress. In Byzantium this was the badge of another profession as well. Before she reached the age of twenty she had become the most notorious figure both on and off the stage in virtue of her scandalous performances and the multiplicity of her lovers. After a period in the provinces she underwent a religious conversion and returned to Constantinople, where she lived in obscurity. How she met the Emperor Justinian, who was already quite mature at the time, is not known, but his passion for her was so great and pure that he violated all precedent and made her Empress in A.D. 527. She seems to have lived an exemplary domestic life with him and to have devoted herself to good works. The redemption of fallen women was one of her chief concerns. It is said that she caused the laws on marriage and divorce to be strengthened in favour of women, was an energetic matchmaker, and encouraged ill-treated and unhappily married wives to seek redress and consolation elsewhere. On the whole, she had a very poor opinion of men with the exception of the adoring Justinian whom she regarded as something of a fool.
Theodora’s historical significance lies in the power she wielded. There was apparently nothing she could not get the doting Justinian to do. She mothered and warmly defended grave heretical doctrines in an age of ruthless fanaticism, fought for the rights of dissenters, deposed one Pope and made another a servant of her will—all this despite the orthodox professing Justinian—gave orders to the military, intrigued with subordinates, appointed and removed the highest officers of the realm, saved Justinian’s throne from a rebellion. In short, she showed herself the keenest statesman in the whole line of Byzantine rulers. As a woman she was attractive, but her contemporaries thought her more graceful than beautiful and were most impressed by her spirit, intelligence, and sharp wit. Only Justinian thought her perfect. “Upon the most momentous questions Justinian was pleased to take the advice of ‘the most reverend spouse whom God had given unto him’ whom he loved to call ‘his sweetest delight.’”[11]
None the less, despite her enormous power, Theodora at most must be regarded as a potentially event-making woman. The heresies she defended made little headway after her death. The Imperial treasury was bankrupted by fantastic extravagances. Had she applied the habits of a thrifty housewife to the royal economy her influence would have been more lasting. The Empire of Justianian crumbled in the West, and became weaker and weaker before the onslaughts of the Eastern “barbarians.” Theodora was in a position where she undoubtedly could have influenced Justinian to forego the reconquest of the western countries. Had she done so the Papacy would probably have played a very different role in western Europe. Only in what she could have done but failed to do can she be regarded as event-making. All of her positive achievements had little consequence for subsequent history.
Among modern eventful women, probably of greatest distinction is Catherine II., that “Russian Empress of German blood and French culture.” It is difficult to evaluate her influence since she was a contemporary of other eventful monarchs like Frederick II., and because the ground-swell of bourgeois revolution had already begun in the West. But by any reckoning, those accomplishments for which she was chiefly responsible were very impressive. Through her efforts, Russia acquired a full-fledged and permanent influence on the political history of western Europe. No longer could she be ignored in the affairs of the more developed nations. Karl Marx once declared that Russia was the most reactionary political influence on revolutionary developments in western Europe during the entire nineteenth century—an influence which was the continuation of Catherine’s policy. Under Catherine, Russia tremendously expanded its national boundaries. She added an area of almost 250,000 square miles to Russian domains. At the same time, despite her enlightened ideas, Catherine riveted the chains of serfdom more securely on the Russian masses and retarded the development of progressive social forces for generations. With great political acumen she secularized Church property and tied the Russian Church to the Crown so closely that from then on it became primarily an instrument of dynastic rule.
However we appraise them, these were no inconsiderable achievements. In virtue of what qualities was she able to bring them off? Certainly not by her beauty or other feminine charms. She was not beautiful enough to hold her own husband, whom she deposed and murdered in order to clear the way for herself. And although she never denied the needs of her passionate nature, she did not permit any of her favourites to swerve her from her fixed policy, the consolidation of a powerful national State pursuing an independent course exclusively for its own interests. To carry out this policy successfully required outstanding political talent, particularly on the part of a foreigner who had entered Russia as a royal nobody, usurped the throne, and had to hold it against a succession of pretenders. Such talent Catherine possessed to an extraordinary degree. She numbered some able men among her advisers and lieutenants, but they were completely subordinate to her purposes. Despite her amours there were no male de Pompadours in her entourage. Her eventfulness as a historic character was due to unique gifts of political intelligence.
It should be noted, however, that, as far as her domestic rule is concerned, at no point did she run counter to the interests of the large feudal landholders. There is no reason to doubt her early sincerity in espousing the ideas of Montesquieu, Beccaria, and the French Encyclopædists. Her abandonment of progressive social ideas was to some extent the result of her realization that there was no social class in Russia strong enough to support economic reforms that would have imperilled the position of the large landholders. Since she could not change the status quo, she decided to strengthen it at the cost of the peasants. Without her the emancipation of the serfs would probably have come sooner. But limited as her freedom of action was, she seems to have been an event-making woman, “every inch a ‘political being’ unmatched by anyone of her sex in modern history.”[12]
- ↑ Popular Science Monthly, vol. 62 (1903), p. 359. This study was based on the comparative space allotted to a thousand pre-eminent men in biographical dictionaries and encyclopædias.
- ↑ I owe the expression “eventful man” to Mr. Charles Haer, who is, however, in no way responsible for the position here developed.
- ↑ Edward Gibbon, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Modern Library edition, vol. I., p. 636.
- ↑ Cf. C. N. Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture, p. 211, Oxford, 1940.
- ↑ Cf. Chapter Eleven below on “The Hero and Democracy.”
- ↑ Op. cit., vol. I., p. 70. It is in this connection that his famous remark about history was made. Of the first Antonine he tells us: “His reign is marked by the rare advantage of furnishing very few materials for history: which is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.” As a historian Gibbon himself did not live up to this gloomy conception of history, i. e. his history registers much more.
- ↑ Seven out of every ten persons guillotined or shot during the French terror were workers, peasants, and members of the lower middle class. The most recent studies show that of the approximately 17,000 victims, i. e. those sentenced after “trial,” not counting those shot out of hand or those among the 500,000 political prisoners who succumbed to horrible prison conditions, 31½ per cent. were workers, 28 per cent. peasants, and 10¼ per cent. belonged to the lower middle class. See Donald Greer, The Incidence of the Terror during the French Revolution: A Statistical Interpretation, p. 166, Cambridge, 1935.
- ↑ Fisher, op. cit., vol. I., p. 131.
- ↑ Since we have already considered Madame de Pompadour in our criticism of Plechanov, we shall say no more about her.
- ↑ “For her actual beauty was not in itself so remarkable that none could be compared with her, or that no one could see her without being struck by it, but the contact of her presence, if you lived with her, was irresistible: The attraction of her person, joining with the charm of her conversation, and the character that attended all she said or did, was something bewitching.”—Plutarch.
- ↑ C. Diehl, Byzantine Portraits, English translation, p. 64, New York, 1927.
- ↑ Hotzsch, in The Cambridge Modern History, vol. VI., p. 701.