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Not just another digression 有的放矢:

A cautionary tale that deserves revisiting every generation, if only to prove the epigram: plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Written in 1972-73 as an allegory for the reversion of Hong Kong. Also referenced in my 2008 article on the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

以史爲鏡，印證自其變者而觀之, 實則自其不變者而觀之。1972-73年撰寫，隱喻香港回歸。2008北京奧運文章曾引用。

Full text 全文：harvard.edu

PREFACE

“There is always something rather absurd about the past.”    Max Beerbohm

Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland on 7 March 1936 in explicit violation of both the treaties of Versailles and Locarno. Within days, it became apparent that no nation was willing to restore the status quo ante by force. And with good reasons. To politicians of the day, the Rhineland simply was not an important issue.

Historians, however, endowed, or burdened, with the gift of hindsight, have read much into the Rhineland crisis. Without exception, they pronounce this success of Hitler as the harbinger of calamity; if only Britain and France had the resolve to resist Hitler there and then, the world might have been spared a holocaust unmatched, and hopefully not to be matched, in history.

Two decades later, Anthony Eden, second-fiddle in 1936 but now at the helm of state, considered the Rhineland crisis a lesson learned; in a fit of mid-summer madness, Britain embarked on an expedition to dislodge the rightful owners of Suez, but instead, the excursion hit a watery bier. It was the same lesson, but now unlearnt.

Are we then doomed to Beerbohm’s dictum and can do no more than indulge in scholastic sophistry?  No; I beg to disagree. There was more to history than met the eyes of the post hoc Cassandras; tediously well known though it may be, the “forgotten problem” (this is Taylor’s contribution) of the Rhineland should be exhumed and reexamined in the light of new evidence and with a detachment afforded by being a generation removed. This project is but a personal fetish “to understand what happened, and why it happened.”

Table of Contents, Preface & Ch. 1

Full text 全文：dash.harvard.edu

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