Andrew

“The ineffable talent for finding patterns in chaos cannot do its thing unless he immerses himself in the chaos first.”
― Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon

“Would the fate of China have been different if Stilwell had been allowed to reform the army and create an effective combat force of 90 divisions? ... This assumption might have been true if Asia were clay in the hands of the West. But the"regenerative idea," stilwell's or another's, could not be imposed from the outside. The Kuomintang military structure could not be reformed without reform of the system from which it sprang and, as Stillwell himself recognized, to reform such a system "it must be torn to pieces."

In great things, wrote Erasmus, it is enough to have tried. Stilwell's mission was America's supreme try in China. He made the maximum effort because his temperament permitted no less: he never slackened and he never gave up. Yet the mission failed in its ultimate purpose because the goal was unachievable. The impulse was not Chinese. Combat efficiency and the offensive spirit, like the Christianity and democracy offered by missionaries and foreign advisers, were not indigenous demands of the society and culture to which they were brought. Even the Yellow River Road that Stilwell built in 1921 had disappeared twelve years later. China was a problem for which there was no American solution. The American effort to sustain the status quo could not supply an outworn government with strength and stability or popular support. It could not hold up a husk nor long delay the cyclical passing of the mandate of heaven. In the end, China went her own way as if the Americans had never come.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45

“My son took many years to learn the simple truth. You cannot love any one person adequately until you have made friends with the rest of the human race also. Adult love demands qualities which cannot be learned living in a vacuum of resentment.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, Checkmate

“The shattered wall,
the broken tower
have a story to tell -
from the touchstones of ruins
and ancient texts
we make a pilgrimage.

from The Ruins”
― Michael Alexander, The Earliest English Poems