Patton in North Africa.

I am occasionally told that the elevated and demanding moral precepts of ancient men were unrealistic and all talk. One may or may not like the writings of the knight Geoffroi de Charny or the sayings of the samurai Jōchō Yamamoto, but in any case no real human could actually live like this.

As an example closer to us, I can cite the American general George S. Patton. Here is a man who lived in the sole hope of achieving military glory, of killing and fighting enemies of his country, and thanked God every day when the opportunity to show his mettle was finally given to him.

That’s the sense you get reading Patton’s diaries and letters, published after the war by Martin Blumenson.

Patton has much to say of interest: on how to bring the best out of men (“pride” and self-respect), on unhappy cooperation with the British (“war by committee”), on the Arabs of North Africa (wretched mongrels, from the most part), on his relentless quest for “national prestige” (Patton thought the Brits were hogging too much of it, by preventing American forces from seeing action), and his rather philosophical reflections and religious practice in anticipation of uncertain battles that, at any moment, could result in his death.

Patton is clearly cyclothymic, his mood swinging between the exhilaration of action and the melancholy of downtime. He rapidly becomes bored and depressed assuming the duties of de facto governor of Morocco, despite the role having its fair share of responsibilities.

Patton is more cultivated a man than his image as a swashbuckling, no-nonsense cussin’ soldier might lead one to believe. He could just about speak French and could quote Frederick the Great or Napoleon from memory. Recalling episodes of modern or ancient military history was often a way for Patton to put the dangerous situations he faced in perspective and steel his will.

I was struck by a passage in Patton’s diary from June 5, 1943:

There are a lot of starry-eyed State Department boys busting to raise the living standard of Arabs who should be all killed off . . . No State Department people should be permitted in a theater of war, nor at the peace treaty.

“State Department boys” seem to correspond to a wider psychological type of bureaucratic do-gooders who mean well, perhaps, but who do not have a sense of harsh realities. This type, now increasingly feminine, has certainly been on the ascendant since then.

This may be related to a phenomenon, witnessed by Mircea Eliade, the Romanian-American historian of religions, during his time as a diplomat in Romania’s foreign service. He was struck that Romanian diplomats in various legations tended to be Anglophile despite their country’s siding with the Axis and would virtually celebrate Axis defeats. This was despite the fact that there was no reason to think that, in case the Axis fell, the British could or would make any serious effort to save Romania from the tender embrace of the Soviet Union.

Anyway, as I say, an exacerbated version of this psychological type seems triumphant today: the slippery slope may be a logical fallacy but it is a sociological reality.

Notes

Martin Blumenson (ed.), The Patton Papers: 1940-1945 (Da Capo, 1974).

Ibid., p. 263.