The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1892-10-19
The "Ifs" of History.

1t is or once was favorite plan of ex-
SINNERS to ask, What would have been
The consequences if such and such an event
had not occurred?" Scope was thus given
TO the historical imagination, and man
could show both knowledge and fancy. In
our own lives we know how much hangs
on trifes You take one side of a street
and miss 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 cab-nay, you look up and see
your fate instead of looking down and
missing her-and all your life is altered.
So it is, too, in the history of nations.
Suppose the king had not halted at Va
rennes; suppose James nose had not bled
at Salisbury; suppose somebody, whose
name forget had done as he proposed to
do at Queen Anne's DEATH suppose the
Medes had won at Marathon, or the Sara
Gems at Tours, or Hasdrubal at the Me
taurus; suppose that Napoleon had not suf-
fered from indigestion at Waterloo, or
that Grouchy had not misinterpreted his
orders-and where is history? Nay, take
case on which we cannot dwell, and
which suggests reflections which every one
can make for himself. Suppose a certain
Roman governor had been an honest man!
There is 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
much difference? We know how our char
acter 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
4I,,, F,t,g
by a slight neglect Has not your whole ca
reer been a series of slight neglects? You
take up tract and are converted, or you
have a vision like Colonel Gardiner or Pas
cal
! am certain that Colonel GARDENERS
conversion had long been ripening; one
day or another the vision would have come,
whether he was waiting for that particu-
lar lady or for another. If not that tract
some other tract would have produced its
results: you were maturing for that psyche
logical alteration, If we apply this idea
TO national instead of individual life it
may appear that the accidents were not so
very 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 that Napoleon had been we'll
We and the united continent We're not so
near the end Of our resources as France
was we should still have beaten the Cor
sican on another field Besides, Grouchy's
blunder was not an accident. 1t was part
of 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
xtrCr Mt hpp hal
Greece as they held the Ionians. so that
Greek civilization would have expired? In
all probability that was quite impossible
for Persia. For once, in spite of oligarchs
and jealouses, Hellas would have united
in resistance; she might even have gained
by the struggle
Say that Carthage had supported Han
nibal and had allied herself with Philip of
Macedon. They could not have held Italy;
they could not have reduced Rome to a
village and imposed new civilization on
the world. Had Edward II been Edward
/, Bannockburn would have been lost but
you could no more subdue Scotland than
we can hold Afghanistan. If Charles had
marched on London from Derby, if the
Welsh squires had come in and if the Eng
lish Jacobites had been true hearted, still
in a very few years James would have been
sent packing again. History would have
gained a romantic page, but England
would be much what she is at present.
The king would not have had a better
chance than Louis XVII and Charles X;
he would have squandered his opportuni-
ties as readily. Had the Armada landed
her men England would have suffered, but
few of the invaders would have seen Spain
again. Had Charles Martel been defeated
the Saracens, in the long run, would have
met the fate of their countrymen in Spain
The movement of the world may be de-
ferred, but not actually diverted. The
great stress of national character and cir
cumstance is stronger than any accident of
war.
This way of looking at history robs it of
romance to some extent, and fear encour-
ages political fatalism. What can we do
against great tidal wave of influence,
rising far away in the deeps of the past
and sweeping gradually 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 recognize 1t.
England was fated to absorb Scotland to
great extent, but she struggled so well
and refused so long to obey destiny in one
particular form that another and honor
able form at last overlook her.
She was not dragged under by the swell,
but rode cooking on the crest of the tide.
1t is something to recognize that we are
not slaves of the turn of a straw, but are
obedient to wide and probably salutary
laws. King James might have come to
his own again once If his friends had not
stopped for the other glass at tavern.
Yes, but they were always stopping for
that other glass. That was the general
rule of their natures, and the constitution
OF things was against it and them 1t was
not merely the one extra toss 1T brandy
that did the business.