Accidents and “Its” of History.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XL, Issue 22, 27 May 1908, Page 35

Accidents and “Its” of History.

It is or once was, a favourite plan of examiners to ask "What would have been the consequences if such and such an event had not occurred?” Scope thus wa s oiven to the historical imagination and a man could show both knowledge and fancy. In our own lives we know how much hangs on trifles. You take one side of the street and miss a fortune, or an affection which might have been yours had you taken the other side. You neglect to answer a letter, you pick up an old lady who has been run over by a cab—nay, you look up andl see vou>* fate, instead of looking aown ana missing her—and all your life is altered. So it is, too, in the history of nations. There is a kind of fanciful pleasure in answering these problems; but, on the whole, would the turn of a straw, which seemed to be so momentous, have made such difference? We know how our character shapes our lives, and we doubt whether accident is so potent after all. Say you meet the wrong Fate and marry unhappily, Would you have been luckier with another Fate? Say you miss

a fortune by slight neglect. Has not your whole career been a series of slight neglects? You take up a track and are converted; or you have a vision like Col. Gardiner or Pascal. I am certain that Col. Gardiner’s conversion had! been long ripening; one day or another tne vision would have come, whether he was waiting for that particular woman or for another. If not that track, some other tract would have produced its results; you were maturing for that psychological alteration. If we apply this idea to national instead of individual life, it may appear that the accidents were not so momentous. Say that the French King had reached the frontier. Tant mieux pour lui, but the revolution would have gone on. Say that Grouchy had “come up,” and Napoleon had been well. England and the United Continent were not so near the end of their resources as France was; the Corsican still should have been beaten on another field. Besides, Grouchy’s

blunder was not an accident. It was part of a habit of missing chances which had sprung up in the French army ever since the defeats in the peninsula, themselves consequent on Napoleon's undertaking too much, even for him. Say the Persians had won at Marathon Could they have held Greece, as they did the lonians, so that Greek civilisation would have expin d? In all probability that was quite impossible tor Persia. For once, in spite of oligarchs and jealousies, llelas would have been united in resistance; she might even have gained by the struggle. Say that Carthage had supported Hannibal, and had allied herself with Phillip of Macedon. They couldl not have held Italy; they could not have reduced Rome to a village, and imposed a new civilisation on the world. This way of looking at history robs it of romance to some extent, and, 1 fear, encorages political fatalism. What can we do against a great tidal wave of influence, rising far away in the depths

of the past and sweeping gradually up up and breaking on us? Well, we can do what we may. we can modify the impact of the wave, we can adapt ourselves to its lift and) stress. Or we can decline to recognise it. England was fated to absorb Scotland to a great extent; but she struggled so well and refused so long to obey destiny in one particular form that another and honourable form at last overtook her. She was not dragged under by the swell, but rode cocking on the crest of the tide. It is ■■thing to recognise that we are not slaves ot the turn of a straw, but are obedient to wide ami probably salutary laws. King Janies might have come to his own again onee if his friends had not stopped* tor the other glass at a tavern. les, but they were always stopping for that other glass. That was the general rule ot their natures and tile constitution ot things was against it and them. It was not merely the one extra toss of brandy that did the business.