Sublime

Seldom in history has a general been handicapped by such constantly crippling conditions. There was scarcely a time during the war when Washington didn’t grapple with a crisis that threatened to disband the army and abort the Revolution. The extraordinary, wearisome, nerve-racking frustration he put up with for nearly nine years is hard to express.

Historians call those last years before America’s entry into the Great War America’s Age of Optimism;

Miraculous as it appears in retrospect, Ramsay’s invasion fleet of more than six thousand ships went undetected by the Germans.

describes how fear swept over her as she saw twenty masked men,

omnis moritur.

The great waves are different in that respect. They appear on the surface of the evidence. To observe them no filtering or detrending of the data is required.

I’m often reminded of what a Chinese politician said in the 1970s when asked about the effects of the French Revolution of 1789. ‘It’s a little too soon to say,’ he allegedly responded.62