who you want to meet and we’ll bring him to you.’ ‘Abraham is a hostage,’ Satyrus said. ‘You can’t bring him out of Athens, and I need to see him.’ His captains looked at him with something like suspicion. ‘I’m going to Athens,’ he insisted. ‘Without your fleet?’ Sandokes asked. ‘Haven’t you got this backward, lord? If you must go, why not lead with a show of force?’ ‘Can you go three days armed and ready to fight?’ Satyrus asked. ‘In the midst of the Athenian fleet? No. Trust me on this, friends. And obey – I pay your wages. Go to Aegina and wait.’ Sandokes was dissatisfied and he wasn’t interested in hiding it. ‘Lord, we do obey. We’re good captains and good fighters, and most of us have been with you a few years. Long enough to earn the right to tell you when you are just plain wrong.’ He took a breath. ‘Lord, you’re wrong. Take us into Athens – ten ships full of fighting men, and no man will dare raise a finger to you. Or better yet, stay here, or you go to Aegina and we’ll sail into Athens.’ Satyrus shrugged, angered. ‘You all feel this way?’ he asked. Sarpax shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Aekes and Sandokes have a point, but I’ll obey you. I don’t know exactly what your relationship with Demetrios is, and you do.’ He looked at the other captains. ‘We don’t know.’ Sandokes shook his head. ‘I’ll obey, lord – surely I’m allowed to disagree?’ Satyrus bit his lip. After a flash of anger passed, he chose his words carefully. ‘I appreciate that you are all trying to help. I hope that you’ll trust that I’ve thought this through as carefully as I can, and I have a more complete appreciation of the forces at work than any of you can have.’ Sandokes didn’t back down. ‘I hope that you appreciate that we have only your best interests at heart, lord. And that we don’t want to look elsewhere for employment while your corpse cools.’ He shrugged. ‘Our oarsmen are hardening up, we have good helmsmen and good clean ships. I wager we can take any twenty ships in these waters. No one – no one with any sense – will mess with you while we’re in the harbour.’ Satyrus managed a smile. ‘If you are right, I’ll happily allow you to tell me that you told me so,’ he said. Sandokes turned away. Aekes caught his shoulder. ‘There’s no changing my mind on this,’ Satyrus said. Sandokes shrugged. ‘We’ll sail for Aegina when you tell us,’ Aekes said. Satyrus had never felt such a premonition of disaster in all his life. He was ignoring the advice of a god, and all of his best fighting captains, and sailing into Athens, unprotected. But his sense – the same sense that helped him block a thrust in a fight – told him that the last thing he wanted was to provoke Demetrios. He explained as much to Anaxagoras as the oarsmen ran the ships into the water. Anaxagoras just shook his head. ‘I feel like a fool,’ Satyrus said. ‘But I won’t change my mind.’ Anaxagoras sighed. ‘When we’re off Piraeus, I’ll go off in Miranda or one of the other grain ships. I want you to stay with the fleet,’ Satyrus said. ‘Just in case.’ Anaxagoras picked up the leather bag with his armour and the heavy wool bag with his sea clothes and his lyre. ‘Very well,’ he said crisply. ‘You think I’m a fool,’ Satyrus said. ‘I think you are risking your life and your kingdom to see Miriam, and you know perfectly well you don’t have to. She loves you. She’ll wait. So yes, I think you are being a fool.’ Satyrus narrowed his eyes. ‘You asked,’ Anaxagoras said sweetly, and walked away. 3 Attika appeared first out of the sea haze; a haze so fine and so thin that a landsman would not even have noticed how restricted was his visibility.
It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true. -- William James
Mr. DePree believes participative capitalism is the wave of the future. The U.S. work force, he believes, "more and more demands to be included in the capitalist system and if we don't find ways to get the capitalist system to be an inclusive system rather than the exclusive system it has been, we're
capitalism's highest potential lies in the common good, not in the individual
good, then we're risking the system itself."
-- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc., "Herman Miller's
Secrets of Corporate Creativity", The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
Far from reserving all his forces for an important struggle elsewhere, foreshadowed by the approaching death of Charles II. of Spain, Louis XIV., isolated in his turn, committed the error of wasting it for a space of ten years in a war of conquest, by which he alienated all that remained to him of European sympathy. The French armies, notwithstanding the disappearance of Condé and Turenne, had still glorious days before them with Luxembourg at Fleurus, at Steenkirk and at Neerwinden (1690-1693), and with Catinat in Piedmont, at Staffarda, and at Marsaglia; but these successes alternated with reverses. Tourville's fleet, victorious at Beachy Head, came to grief at La Hogue (1692); and though the expeditions to Ireland in favour of James II. were unsuccessful, thanks to the Huguenot Schomberg, Jean Bart and Duguay-Trouin ruined Anglo-Dutch maritime commerce. Louis XIV. assisted in person at the sieges of Mons and Namur, operations for which he had a liking, because, like Louvois, who died in 1691, he thought little of the French soldiery in the open field. After three years of strife, ruinous to both sides, he made the first overtures of peace, thus marking an epoch in his foreign policy; though William took no unfair advantage of this, remaining content with the restitution of places taken by the _Chambres de Réunion_, except Strassburg, with a frontier-line of fortified places for the Dutch, and with the official deposition of the Stuarts. But the treaty of Ryswick (1697) marked the condemnation of the policy pursued since that of Nijmwegen. While signing this peace Louis XIV. was only thinking of the succession in Spain. By partitioning her in advance with the other strong powers, England and Holland, by means of the treaties of the Hague and of London (1698-1699),--as he had formerly done with the emperor in 1668,--he seemed at first to wish for a pacific solution of the eternal conflict between the Habsburgs and the Bourbons, and to restrict himself to the perfecting of his natural frontiers; but on the death of Charles II. of Spain (1700) he claimed everything in favour of his grandson, the duke of Anjou, now appointed universal heir, though risking the loss of all by once more letting himself fall into imprudent and provocative action in the dynastic interest. Entry: A
This subdivision of forces was intimately connected with the general method of making war adopted by the "New French," as their enemies called them. What astonished the Allies most of all was the number and the velocity of the Republicans. These improvised armies had in fact nothing to delay them. Tents were unprocurable for want of money, untransportable for want of the enormous number of wagons that would have been required, and also unnecessary, for the discomfort that would have caused wholesale desertion in professional armies was cheerfully borne by the men of 1793-1794. Supplies for armies of then unheard-of size could not be carried in convoys, and the French soon became familiar with "living on the country." Thus 1793 saw the birth of the modern system of war--rapidity of movement, full development of national strength, bivouacs and requisitions, and force, as against cautious manoeuvring, small professional armies, tents and full rations, and chicane. The first represented the decision-compelling spirit, the second the spirit of risking little to gain a little. Above all, the decision-compelling spirit was reinforced by the presence of the emissaries of the Committee of Public Safety, the "representatives on mission" who practically controlled the guillotine. There were civil officials with the armies of the Allies too, but their chief function was not to infuse desperate energy into the military operations, but to see that the troops did not maltreat civilians. Such were the fundamental principles of the "New French" method of warfare, from which the warfare of to-day descends in the direct line. But it was only after a painful period of trial and error, of waste and misdirection, that it became possible for the French army to have evolved Napoleon, and for Napoleon to evolve the principles and methods of war that conformed to and profited to the utmost by the new conditions. Entry: FRENCH
The most searching scrutiny of his private life only increases the respect due to the memory of Grattan as a statesman and the greatest of Irish orators. His patriotism was untainted by self-seeking; he was courageous in risking his popularity for what his sound judgment showed him to be the right course. As Sydney Smith said with truth of Grattan soon after his death: "No government ever dismayed him. The world could not bribe him. He thought only of Ireland; lived for no other object; dedicated to her his beautiful fancy, his elegant wit, his manly courage, and all the splendour of his astonishing eloquence."[7] Entry: GRATTAN
In one important department, however, the ministry departed from the Conservative policy it pursued in other matters. Gladstone signalized his return to the exchequer by introducing a series of budgets which excited keen opposition at the time, but in the result largely added to the prosperity of the country. The first of these great budgets, in 1860, was partly inspired by the necessity of adapting the fiscal system to meet the requirements of a commercial treaty which, mainly through Cobden's exertions, had been concluded with the emperor of the French. The treaty bound France to reduce her duties on English coal and iron, and on many manufactured articles; while, in return, Great Britain undertook to sweep away the duties on all manufactured goods, and largely to reduce those on French wines. But Gladstone was not content with these great alterations, which involved a loss of nearly £1,200,000 a year to the exchequer; he voluntarily undertook to sacrifice another million on what he called a supplemental measure of customs reform. He proposed to repeal the duties on paper, by which means he hoped to increase the opportunities of providing cheap literature for the people. The budget of 1860 produced a protracted controversy. The French treaty excited more criticism than enthusiasm on both sides of the Channel. In France the manufacturers complained that they would be unable to stand against the competition of English goods. In England many people thought that Great Britain was wasting her resources and risking her supremacy by giving the French increased facilities for taking her iron, coal and machinery, and that no adequate advantage could result from the greater consumption of cheap claret. But the criticism which the French treaty aroused was drowned in the clamour which was created by the proposed repeal of the paper duties. The manufacture of paper was declared to be a struggling industry, which would be destroyed by the withdrawal of protection. The dissemination of cheap literature and the multiplication of cheap newspapers could not compensate the nation for the ruin of an important trade. If money could be spared, moreover, for the remission of taxation, the paper duties were much less oppressive than those on some other articles. The tax on tea, for example, which had been raised during the late war to no less than 1s. 5d. a lb., was much more injurious; and it would be far wiser--so it was contended--to reduce the duty on tea than to abandon the duties on paper. Notwithstanding the opposition which the Paper Duties Bill undoubtedly excited, the proposal was carried in the Commons; it was, however, thrown out in the Lords, and its rejection led to a crisis which seemed at one time to threaten the good relations between the two houses of parliament. It was argued that if the Lords had the right to reject a measure remitting existing duties, they had in effect the right of imposing taxation, since there was no material difference between the adoption of a new tax and the continuance of an old one which the Commons had determined to repeal. Lord Palmerston, however, with some tact postponed the controversy for the time by obtaining the appointment of a committee to search for precedents; and, after the report of the committee, he moved a series of resolutions affirming the right of the Commons to grant aids and supplies as their exclusive privilege, stating that the occasional rejection of financial measures by the Lords had always been regarded with peculiar jealousy, but declaring that the Commons had the remedy in their own hands by so framing bills of supply as to secure their acceptance. In accordance with this suggestion the Commons in the following year again resolved to repeal the paper duties; but, instead of embodying their decision in a separate bill, they included it in the same measure which dealt with all the financial arrangements of the year, and thus threw on the Lords the responsibility of either accepting the proposal, or of paralysing the whole machinery of administration by depriving the crown of the supplies which were required for the public services. The Lords were not prepared to risk this result, and they accordingly accepted a reform which they could no longer resist, and the bill became law. In order to enable him to accomplish these great changes, Gladstone temporarily raised the income tax, which he found at 9d. in the £, to 10d. But the result of his reforms was so marked that he was speedily able to reduce it. The revenue increased by leaps and bounds, and the income tax was gradually reduced till it stood at 4d. in the closing years of the administration. During the same period the duty on tea was reduced from 1s. 5d. to 6d. a lb.; and the national debt was diminished from rather more than £800,000,000 to rather less than £780,000,000, the charge for the debt declining, mainly through the falling in of the long annuities, by some £2,600,000 a year. With the possible exception of Sir Robert Peel's term of office, no previous period of British history had been memorable for a series of more remarkable financial reforms. Their success redeemed the character of the administration. The Liberals, who complained that their leaders were pursuing a Conservative policy, could at least console themselves by the reflection that the chancellor of the exchequer was introducing satisfactory budgets. The language, moreover, which Gladstone was holding on other subjects encouraged the more advanced Liberals to expect that he would ultimately place himself at the head of the party of progress. This expectation was the more remarkable because Gladstone was the representative in the cabinet of the old Conservative party which Sir Robert Peel had led to victory. As lately as 1858 he had reluctantly refused to serve under Lord Derby; he was still a member of the Carlton Club; he sat for the university of Oxford; and on many questions he displayed a constant sympathy with Conservative traditions. Yet, on all the chief domestic questions which came before parliament in Lord Palmerston's second administration, Gladstone almost invariably took a more Liberal view than his chief. It was understood, indeed, that the relations between the two men were not always harmonious; that Lord Palmerston disapproved the resolute conduct of Gladstone, and that Gladstone deplored the Conservative tendencies of Lord Palmerston. It was believed that Gladstone on more than one occasion desired to escape from a position which he disliked by resigning office, and that the resignation was only averted through a consciousness that the ministry could not afford to lose its most eloquent member. Entry: XII