MACHINA

by Sebastian Marshall

  Yo' hab to promise um a sum

  Ob wages, paid in Cloth and Rum.

  But, Lordy ! that's a ruse !

  Yo' get yo' well on de Adventure,

  And change de wages to Indenture."

  We did the thing that he projected,

  The Caravan grew disaffected,

  And Sin and I consulted;

  Blood understood the Native mind.

  He said : "We must be firm but kind."

  A Mutiny resulted.

  I never shall forget the way

  That Blood upon this awful day

  Preserved us all from death.

  He stood upon a little mound,

  Cast his lethargic eyes around,

  And said beneath his breath:

  “Whatever happens we have got

  The Maxim Gun, and they have not."

  He marked them in their rude advance,

  He hushed their rebel cheers;

  With one extremely vulgar glance

  He broke the Mutineers.

  (I have a picture in my book

  Of how he quelled them with a look.)

  We shot and hanged a few, and then

  The rest became devoted men.

  And here I wish to say a word

  Upon the way my heart was stirred

  By those pathetic faces.

  Surely our simple duty here

  Is both imperative and clear ;

  While they support us, we should lend

  Our every effort to defend,

  And from a higher point of view

  To give the full direction due

  To all the native races.

  And I, throughout the expedition,

  Insisted upon this position.“

  -- Hilaire Beloc, “The Modern Traveler,” London 1898

  You’ve heard that line before.

  It is very famous.

  “Whatever happens we have got

  The Maxim Gun, and they have not."

  Alas, though!

  The current understanding of what that line means – some long-lost British poet celebrating a grandiose overpowering superiority – is the exact opposite of what Belloc meant.

  The piece is about hypocrisy.

  But we will come back to this point in a moment.

  ***

  THE BATTLE

  Six years earlier. Shangani River, Zimbabwe. 25 October 1893.

  This sort of story had played across many times and places.

  Some minor scuffle and infraction, some petty thing, a police intervention that gives way to full-blown colonial war, justified in theory at first; shakier when looking at the grand arc of time.

  Well, there is King Lobengula of the Matabele. He is a descendent of the powerful Zulu Empire; he had punished one of his rival neighbors over some infraction or other.

  This rival of Lobengula had complained to the British, who arrived on the scene for a mix of stated reasons, many of them actually true.

  As the British forces marched on King Lobengula’s capital of Bulawayo, a force of 5,000 Matabele soldiers slept early and awoke around midnight, fast-marching to catch the encamped and sleeping 700 British forces.

  Perhaps half of the Matabele soldiers would have been armed with bolt-action rifles; the other half with a mix of assegai throwing and charging spears.

  A little after 2AM, cracks of bolt-action rifle fire filled the air, and the British sentries raised the alarm –

  “The bugles gave the alarm, the camp was all excitement in a moment, all noise with the opening of ammunition boxes and shouting of officers, the men were getting into their places... the scouts had hardly time to save themselves.”

  Being awoken from sleep to be surrounded and attacked is, of course, disorienting. Blares of British bugles and Matabele gunfire filled the air; the British were outnumbered over 7-to-1.

  But then the machine guns started.

  On elevated perimeter positions, the first auto-reloading machine gun in history could fire continuously without overheating and rarely jamming.

  Matabele skirmishers fired from the darkness under that clear night sky, attempting to lay covering fire as elite impi infantry soldiers led the charge with spears.

  But the machine gun, this they had not seen before.

  Yelling war shouts, rows and rows of Matabele charged with assegai spear and shield… and fell. The blood, it pooled on the riverbanks of Shangani River.

  The Maxim Gun matter-of-factly blasted on.

  The perimeter was soon strewn with dying Matabele soldiers.

  Eventually, impi infantry could no longer even charge quickly, with rows of the bodies of their colleagues lined up in front of them. A third of their forces dead, they withdrew.

  In the morning, the victorious British surveyed the carnage.

  1,500 Matabele soldiers lay mangled by machine gun fire.

  Meanwhile… 4 British soldiers had died in the attack. Four.

  King Lobengula burned his capital and fled, dying the next year, perhaps of natural causes due to illness, or perhaps assassinated.

  The British South Africa Company incorporated the new territory as Rhodesia, named after its founder, Cecil Rhodes.

  3,900 British settlers and mining prospectors moved into the ruins of Bulawayo, rebuilding it into the capital of Rhodesia.

  ***

  THE MONASTERIES

  354 years earlier… Glastonbury Abby, England. 15 November 1539.

  “Aye, Richard, c’mon, we’ve got to go.”

  The bailiff can’t help but feel some pity for the old man as he helps him out of his cell and down the stairs.

  The 78-year-old man is frail, weak, and half-blind at this point. He had been held in the Tower of London since September.

  The former Abbot of Glastonbury, Richard Whiting, no longer resembles a member of the House of Lords who formerly oversaw one of the wealthiest of monastic lands in England.

  He looks like an old, tired man.

  But while the bailiff showed some final courtesy to the old man in private, the regular guards are altogether less kind as Richard Whiting leaves the Tower.

  They hitch the old Abbot to horses and he’s dragged through the streets; the loyal and faithful to the old cause are not to be seen, and he’s greeted with only jeers as he tries to make pace, occasionally stumbling and being dragged by the horses marching forwards.

  Whiting had been questioned personally by the Chief Minister to Henry VIII, Thomas Cromwell, and the night before he had undergone a fait accompli type of very brief trial.

  The gallows had been constructed hastily even as the trial was underway.

  There are no records of any grand speeches by the 78-year-old Abbot as he’s forced to ascend the gallows.

  The executioner hangs the elderly man, cuts the body down, and cuts his corpse into four pieces.

  His head is placed on top of the West Gate of the former Glastonbury Abbey.

  Over the coming decades, Glastonbury Abbey is reduced to a ruin, its stones and building materials being carted away for other Crown building projects.

  In one of those unsurprising-in-retrospect events that comes so often with revolutions, Thomas Cromwell – the chief architect of the breach with the Roman Catholic Church, architect of the founding of the Church of England, chief advocate of the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and Abbot Whiting’s condemner – was himself executed the following year.

  ***

  THE THESES

  22 years earlier… Brandenburg, Germany, Holy Roman Empire. 31 October 1517.

  Archbishop Albert reads the letter from the 33-year-old priest. The letter is a standard enough discussion on theological matters even if a little bit… forwards… in its tone.

  The Archbishop then he turns to the attached Theses.

  The first thesis is simple and innocent enough –

  Thesis 1. “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ``Repent'', he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.
”

  The first few are harmless enough, though they take some broad and sweeping language –

  Thesis 5. “The penalty of sin remains as long as the hatred of self (that is, true inner repentance), namely till our entrance into the kingdom of heaven.”

  The next thesis is a tautology, but a little more concerning –

  Thesis 6. “The pope neither desires nor is able to remit any penalties except those imposed by his own authority or that of the canons.”

  And then the theses start to grow more explosive –

  Thesis 32. “Those who believe that they can be certain of their salvation because they have indulgence letters will be eternally damned, together with their teachers.”

  The Archbishop starts getting downright flummoxed as this tone continues –

  Thesis 86. “Why does not the pope, whose wealth is today greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build this one basilica of St. Peter with his own money rather than with the money of poor believers?”

  Archbishop Abbot sighs and wipes the sweat from his brow, finishing the last of the theses of this Martin Luther –

  Thesis 92. “Away, then, with all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, ``Peace, peace,'' and there is no peace!”

  Thesis 93. “Blessed be all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, ``Cross, cross,'' and there is no cross!”

  Thesis 94. “Christians should be exhorted to be diligent in following Christ, their Head, through penalties, death and hell.”

  Thesis 95. “And thus be confident of entering into heaven through many tribulations rather than through the false security of peace.”

  Well… this looks a lot more like a declaration of war than a simple theological argument.

  The Archbishop thinks, then sends messengers out to the local University and to Rome. The verdict soon comes – this man must be stopped from preaching, and perhaps… detained and… forced to justify himself… if not…

  The last such attempted reformer who was so-detained, of course, was Jan Huss – who, after being promised safe conduct in 1415, was arrested and burned alive, setting off the Hussite Wars between the Czech Hussite insurrectionaries and Papal Crusaders.

  The orders come soon enough – Luther is to be arrested. But with Gutenberg’s printing press invented some 50 years beforehand, the Theses spread widely. German Princes take to Luther, and shelter him from the Pope’s wrath.

  The Protestant Reformation has begun.

  10 years hence, Europe would be at war.

  ***

  DUBIOUS BATTLE #1: FAITH VS WORKS

  We begin our final series of Machina, Dubious Battle.

  The reference is, of course, from Milton’s Paradise Lost –

  “His utmost power with adverse power opposed

  In dubious battle on the plains of Heaven,

  And shook his throne. What though the field be lost?

  All is not lost—the unconquerable will,

  And study of revenge, immortal hate,

  And courage never to submit or yield:

  And what is else not to be overcome.“

  Now would be a good time, though, to revisit that question –

  What are we doing here? Why do I write this? Why do you read it?

  I started writing essays the essays that became Machina at The Strategic Review for a few reasons. The first is that I simply need to write, or I go crazy. It’s like going to the gym or getting on a decent sleep schedule. In the absence of writing regularly on meaningful things, I go nuts. I have to write.

  Okay. I need to write. But why this?

  To me, so much of today’s writing comes across trite, repetitive, safe, sanitized, patronizing and talking-down to the audience. Few writers want to explore truly deep and hard things. That’s the second reason – to go beyond the stagnation and over-caution in most of the current era’s writing.

  Of all the subject matter in the world, history is clearly one of the most important – it’s what actually happened; obviously, a lot can be learned from what has actually happened.

  My intention for readers here has been, has always been, not to just to be entertained, but to actually discern deep truths and patterns that can be used to improve one’s life and to actually do effective things out in the world.

  In past series we’ve covered – most recently, Vantages and Temporal Control; before that, Uncommon Virtues, Toughness, and Upstream Effects (now available in the book Progression) – I believe there are some fairly clear right and wrong answers on how to approach things. We can understand, for instance, the power of rational accounting – and use it. We can learn about how to make excellent friendships by studying great works on the topic, particularly Aristotle. We can learn, absorb, and train in toughness by studying those who did and do it so effectively.

  Dubious Battle is a little different. In Dubious Battle, there are less right and wrong answers, and more tradeoffs. Dubious Battle investigates a few of the long-running and never-ending conflicts across all of history.

  A business that doesn’t understand its numbers, operations, and accounting fails to a business that does; all else being equal, tougher athletes and soldiers defeat less tough athletes and soldiers on the playing field and the battlefield.

  But there are certain ideas and ways of seeing the world that constantly recur, that go back and forth, where there is no permanent right answer in those domains. These, these we explore in Dubious Battle.

  Our first battle to explore is that been Faith and Works.

  ***

  SOLA FIDE: BY FAITH ALONE

  Wikipedia: Sola Fide –

  “The doctrine of sola fide or "by faith alone" asserts God's pardon for guilty sinners is granted to and received through faith alone, excluding all "works". All mankind, it is asserted, is fallen and sinful, under the curse of God, and incapable of saving itself from God's wrath and curse. But God [… alone] grants sinners judicial pardon, or justification, which is received solely through faith. Faith is seen as passive, merely receiving Christ and all his benefits, among which benefits are the active and passive righteousness of Jesus Christ.”

  Perhaps you’re not religious. Probably, you’re not religious. Even if you’re religious, if it’s still 2016, you’re probably not very seriously doctrinally interested in your religion. That’s not a judgment; just a statistical fact.

  But please, dear reader, don’t skim too fast through these passages. This is not abstract theological hair-splitting – it’s actually one of the core foundations that 2016’s version of Western Civilization is built upon. It’s critically important to understand.

  At the time Luther was writing up his theological arguments, the Catholic Church was in the middle of the reign of Pope Leo X.

  Of course, “Leo X” was the name he ascended to the papal throne with; he was born Giovanni de Medici, son of Lorenzo de Medici.

  Yes, that Lorenzo Medici; “Lorenzo the Magnificent”; the most famous member of the wealthiest banking family in Europe; the man who funded the vast majority of Renaissance art – and who then put his second son at the head of the Roman Church.

  Almost all Protestants and probably even a majority of Catholics would agree the Catholic Church was a rather corrupt institution at this time, by any sort of standard. The famous “Since God has given us the papacy, let us enjoy it” quote attributed to Leo X upon accession to Pope might or might not have actually been said, but it’s undoubtedly true that he lived very large, underwent great public works and art projects, and otherwise had tastes far more like a merchant prince than an austere monk.

  The Catholic conception of salvation required good works, but by Luther’s time, “good works” became a sort of sham cover for raising sums of money. Memberships in pious knightly orders were sold to high-bidders, indulgences and pardons for a variety of crimes could be purchased for gold.

  Luther didn’t merely rebuke this; he took a battleax to it. He’s typically called a reformer, but
eventually he wound up with a revolutionary position rather than a position of mere reform.

  Wikipedia on sola fide again –

  “Protestants exclude all human works (except the works of Jesus Christ, which form the basis of justification) from the legal verdict (or pardon) of justification.”

  Luther position wasn’t just, “Stop selling indulgences and knighthoods for gold. It’s embarrassing.”

  Rather, he eventually settled on something like, “You don’t have to do anything except believe to be saved. And the Pope has basically nothing to do with that.”

  “Traditionally, Lutherans have taught forensic (or legal) justification, a divine verdict of acquittal pronounced on the believing sinner. God declares the sinner to be "not guilty" because Christ has taken his place, living a perfect life according to God's law and suffering for his sins. For Lutherans, justification is in no way dependent upon the thoughts, words, and deeds of those justified through faith alone in Christ.”