Defeatism

“ I said, as I bent my ear earthwards to listen—"hush!—this either is the very anarchy of strife, or else"—and then I listened more profoundly, and whispered as I raised my head—"or else, oh heavens! it is victory that is final, victory that swallows up all strife." ”

“ What though I die upon the field of battle, it will be as brave men die; making thy triumph but an empty one with my never-failing challenge, "Thou hast not vanquished me yet, nor wilt thou ever!" In very truth it will be I who will have gained the victory, thou bitter foe of mine: for until my last faint breath shall have been drawn I shall have refused to own thy power! ”

“ The battling, battling, and the steep ascent,
The fight to hold the little gained,
The loss, the doubt, the shaken heart,
The stubborn, groping slow recovery!—
But looking backward toward the dim beginnings,
You that despair,
Hath he not climbed and conquered?
Look backward and all's Victory!
What coward looks forward and foresees defeat? ”

“ Then our Victory is a vast defeat, and it mocks us as we cheer. Victory! there can be but one, hallowed in every land: When by the graves of our common dead we who were foemen stand; And in the hush of our common grief hand is tendered to hand. ”

“ OF WHIGS AND POPULISTS
A country defeated in a bitter war and divested of half its territory loses its drive and spirit and suffers a shock which is communicated to all its people. For generations its citizens brood over what has happened, preoccupied with the past and dreaming of a miraculous change, until time brings apathy or a reversal of history. The Grand Army, with its crude and brutal philosophy and methods, was pride’s answer to defeat. ”

“ Are men wounded and broken by the thousands, do they lie in burning thirst, pleading for water, pleading for the bandaging of bleeding arteries, pleading for merciful death? The conquerors think of none of these things. Is night coming, are long marches coming? Still the conquerors shout like mad. Is war ended by this mammoth victory? For months and months it will drag on. Is this conquered foe a stranger, will he now withdraw to a distant country? He is our brother, his ills are ours, these wounds which we have given, we shall feel ourselves for fifty years. ”

“ Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor’s terms imposed upon the vanquished. It would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory, upon which terms of peace would rest, not permanently, but only as upon quicksand. ”

“ Why then, why then, sir, do we not as soon as possible change this from a civil to a national war? And since we must fight it through, why not put ourselves in a state to enjoy all the benefits of victory, if we gain the victory?
8. If we fail, it can be no worse for us. But we shall not fail. The cause will raise up armies; the cause will create navies. The people, the people, if we are true to them, will carry us, and will carry themselves, gloriously through this struggle. I care not how fickle other people have been found. ”

“ The struggle, the wounds, the defeats we suffer at each other's hands may all be classed under the head of battles,—battles where the ultimate defeat or victory is in our own hands,—in the harm or good done to our souls. ”

“ The general who, upon hearing the enemy is advancing, does nothing but contemplate the horrors of defeat, will inevitably be defeated. It is with matters of business as with a general in the field—to provide against nothing but defeat is to ensure defeat and final disaster. ”

“ Was retreat ever thought disgraceful, when the superior numbers and resistless good fortune of the foe made all further struggle useless? Does not history, ancient and modern, abound with examples of famous warriors who have magnanimously endured defeat, and reserved themselves to the hour of future victory? ”

“ Many a general who has fought a desperate and victorious fight after a long campaign, and amid all the anxieties and miseries of war, has failed to follow up his advantage, from a sudden lesion of the power for action in him. ”

“ Those who are conquered are forced into their army; what is more, they are put in the forefront of the battle, in the place of greatest danger, and they are driven forward, or [Pg 112] murdered if they attempt to escape! So, with danger before and behind, the miserable wretches fight with all the strength of despair; the victors share the spoil, and those who are defeated have nothing to expect but death any way, and sometimes a death of fearful torture too. ”

“ If the absolute want to which you are reduced is prolonged ever so little, if you delay to seize immediate success, your good fortune will vanish, and your enemies, whom your very presence has filled with fear, will take courage. Put far from you the disgrace from which you flee in dreams, and attack this monarch who has left his strongly fortified city to meet you. Here is a splendid opportunity to defeat him, if you will consent to expose yourselves freely to death. ”

“ Now, victory inspires men with additional courage: with defeat their morale disappears. And these three defeats at Lung-hsi have left the inhabitants utterly demoralised, with never a ray of hope for the future. ”

“ When or how that final triumph will come who shall say, but as we go forth against this false system we have the assurance that we are on the winning side and so we can praise for victory "Before the vaunting foe is dead." ”

“ A war in which the weapons are words and the wounds punctures in the swim-bladder of self-esteem -- a kind of contest in which, the vanquished being unconscious of defeat, the victor is denied the reward of success. ”

“ Amid the turmoil and tumult of battle, there may be seeming disorder and yet no real disorder at all; amid confusion and chaos, your array may be without head or tail, yet it will be proof against defeat. ”

“ Through the victors' shouts of triumph we hear subdued sounds of lamentation. I do not mean the cries of woe that proceed from the vanquished, retreating forces; these have deserved their defeat, and their sufferings inspire no compassion in me; the men I have in my mind are the wounded and the forgotten of the victorious army. ”

“ The general who risks nothing can win nothing. And the nation that should wait till absolutely sure of victory before unsheathing the sword would never draw it, or only in some poor skirmish, where victory would be as disgraceful as defeat. ”

“ All these difficulties are increased by the successes of the enemy, which clog our measures by dispiriting the army and the people. But I do not despair; One vigorous and grand campaign may yet put a glorious period to the war. All depends on proper exertions. We have to choose glory, honor, and happiness, or infamy, disgrace, and misery. ”

“ An enemy has got a footing in the heart of the Empire, and is causing this disturbance. He has evaded our fleet and our forts, and he has the power to destroy our power. The nation, like a dreamer awakening, is shaking itself as it becomes conscious of another danger than that of foreign fleets and armies. ”

“ This reservation made, and made with all severity, it is impossible for us not to admire, whether they succeed or no, the glorious combatants of the future, the confessors of the Utopia. Even when they fail they are venerable, and it is perhaps in ill-success that they possess most majesty. Victory, when in accordance with progress, deserves the applause of the peoples, but an heroic defeat merits their tenderness. ”

“ Victory begets hatred; defeat begets suffering. They that are wise will forgo both victory and defeat. Insult is born of insult, anger of anger. They that are wise will forgo both victory and defeat. Every murderer is struck down by a murderer; every conqueror is struck down by a conqueror. They that are wise will forgo both victory and defeat. ”

“ A fight for place began, a struggle for dominion, a fierce and incessant contest for supremacy, and for ages men locked arms in a terrible and merciless strife, in which the weak and incompetent steadily went to the wall, the strong, daring, and aggressive rose to power and control. ”

“ These powers, inscrutable in their dominion, destructive in their effects, stay the course of events, baffle the grandest plans, paralyse the boldest flights of the mind, and 229when victory seemed within their grasp, have often annihilated embattled hosts with the flaming sword of the angel of death. ”

“ If plans are conceived which may expedite the completion of our armies, for increasing our means of conquest, or of making our defeats less disastrous, why are they preceded to the throne by calumny and there stifled by the most perfidious malevolence? Can it be true that our triumphs are dreaded? ”

“ A strange and unprecedented contest it was, a battle that was a hundred thousand little battles, a battle in a sponge of ways and channels, fought out of sight of sky or sun under the electric glare, fought out in a vast confusion by multitudes untrained in arms, led chiefly by acclamation, multitudes dulled by mindless labour and enervated by the tradition of two hundred years of servile security against multitudes demoralised by lives of venial privilege and sensual indulgence. ”

“ This they appear to consider as an irrefragable argument against the choice of the statesman and the warriour; and swell with confidence of victory, thus furnished by the muses with the arms which never can be blunted, and which no art or strength of their adversaries can elude or resist. ”

“ They are afraid that the gravity of the issues for which we are fighting, the telling initial advantages secured by the wily enemy, the formidable nature of the difficulties in the way of decisive victory, and the tremendous sacrifices which we shall all be called upon to make before we come in sight of the goal, have not yet filtered down into the consciousness of any considerable section of the people. ”

“ It is defeat that turns bone to flint, and gristle to muscle, and makes men invincible, and formed those heroic natures that are now in ascendancy in the world. Do not, then, be afraid of defeat. You are never so near to victory as when defeated in a good cause.—Henry Ward Beecher. ”

“ Be resigned to this defeat; the stronger to become the weaker, the victors to become murderers, and to have it said that on the side of the monarchy there were those who saved children, and on the side of the Republic those who killed old men! ”

“ These come down to us in history with a solid and permanent interest, not created by a display of glittering armor, the rush of adverse battalions, the sinking and rising of pennons, the flight, the pursuit, and the victory; but by their effect in advancing or retarding human knowledge, in overthrowing or establishing despotism, in extending or destroying human happiness. ”

“ But who is ready for the struggle, and how shall we be able to encounter our foes? Left to ourselves and to our own resources, we shall surely go down in defeat. The opposing forces are too gigantic, too numerous. ”

“ I cannot forbear to wish, that this commotion may end without bloodshed, and that the rebels may be subdued by terrour rather than by violence; and therefore recommend such a force as may take away, not only the power, but the hope of resistance, and by conquering without a battle, fave many from the sword. ”

“ In one attack which we repulsed I am conservative when I say that they were lying dead and wounded three and four deep and yet they attacked again and again without faltering, only to be driven back to defeat in the end. ”

“ While the victors, disciplined and grimly intent, full of the sombre yet glorious delight of a grave thing well done, will, without shouting or confusion, be fighting like one great national body, the losers will be taking that pitiless exposure of helplessness in such a manner as their natural culture and character may determine. War for the losing side will be an unspeakable pitiable business. ”

“ Do not then complain that the glory which you cannot view without misgivings has passed away.
“Especially, do not say that your defeats are the sources of your misfortunes: say, rather, that they are the outcome of your faults. A nation suffers no more injury from a battle lost than a robust man suffers from a sword-scratch received in a duel. It is an injury that only produces a transient illness in the system, a perfectly curable weakness. ”

“ In the beginning mutual strife produced destruction, how now can it result in glory or renown? The clash of swords and bloody onset done, 'tis certain one must perish! and therefore whilst you aim to vanquish those, both sides will suffer in the fray. Then there are many chances, too, of battle: 'tis hard to measure strength by appearances; the strong, indeed, may overcome the weak, the weak may also overcome the strong; the powerful champion may despise the snake, but how will he escape a wounded body? ”

“ We see, also, that the weaker fall out defeated, and that the strong — those who are equipped to pursue the combat with undiminished ardour — obtain the victory, and enter into possession. And along with this struggle we see the suffering which is inevitably connected with it — men and women, broken down with the weight of their responsibilities, failing in their efforts and losing all; families and communities broken up, and nations subdued and subordinated. ”

“ Yet where the enemy who is to be conquered is strong, not in vital force, but in the prestige of authority, and in the enchanted defences of superstition, those truly win the battle who strike the first blow, who deprive the idol of its terrors by daring to defy it. ”