mettez votre guerre

I’d been trying to formulate my opinion of the rather pathetic crop of “war” “bloggers” for a while, until I remembered a comment from my thesis, and the quotation that inspired it, made three hundred years ago by a rather insightful cleric named Swift:

“Now, is the reader exceeding curious to learn from whence this vapour took its rise, which had so long set the nations at a gaze? What secret wheel, what hidden spring could put into motion so wonderful an engine? It was afterwards discovered that the movement of this whole machine had been directed by an absent female, whose eyes had raised a protuberancy, and before emission, she was removed into an enemy’s country. What should an unhappy prince do in such ticklish circumstances as these? . . .

“Having to no purpose used all peaceable endeavours, the collected part of the semen, raised and inflamed, became adust, converted to choler, turned head upon the spinal duct, and ascended to the brain. The very same principle that influences a bully to break the windows of a whore who has jilted him, naturally stirs up a great prince to raise mighty armies, and dream of nothing but sieges, battles, and victories.”

Get your war on, indeed.