{"id":24175,"date":"2014-09-04T06:37:09","date_gmt":"2014-09-04T14:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=24175"},"modified":"2015-01-07T11:33:26","modified_gmt":"2015-01-07T19:33:26","slug":"squandered-lives-and-snuffed-out-genius","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2014\/09\/04\/squandered-lives-and-snuffed-out-genius\/","title":{"rendered":"Squandered Lives and Snuffed Out Genius: Mises, Tolkien, and World War I"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently in\u00a0The Times<\/em>, Richard Morrison\u00a0discussed<\/a>, \u201cThe musicians silenced in the carnage of the Great War,\u201d this being the centennial year of World War I. Morrison explored the war\u2019s, \u201ccataclysmic effect on the musical world,\u201d and how \u201cit left an indelible mark on musical composition\u2014partly because almost a whole generation of brilliant young composers were killed, and partly because those that survived were changed for ever.\u201d Morrison ends on a poignant note:<\/p>\n

\u201cAs with so many of that horribly ill-fated generation, you wonder what might have been\u2014had mankind not slaughtered so many of its brightest and best.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This sentiment can be extended beyond music to all fields of human endeavor. Every life is precious for its own sake, but we can only have a full accounting of the costs of war if we also reflect upon the squandered potential of its victims.<\/p>\n

Of course we can never know exactly what was lost to civilization in a war, but one way of getting an idea is to consider what we\u00a0almost<\/em>\u00a0lost.<\/p>\n

For example, World War I might have easily cost us most of the contributions of\u00a0Ludwig von Mises<\/a>, the greatest economist, and one of the greatest champions of liberty, who ever lived. In his\u00a0wonderful biography<\/a>\u00a0of Mises, Guido H\u00fclsmann wrote of how much danger Mises was in as an artillery officer on Austria-Hungary\u2019s Northern Front:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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Mises in uniform.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

\u201cArtillery was not only the main agent of destruction, but also one of its prime targets. Mises\u2019s battery constantly had to change position, often under fire. Heavy rainfall set in, hampered their movements, and proved that k.u.k. uniforms were not waterproof.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As I have written in my\u00a0biographical essay<\/a>\u00a0about Mises, this was an incredibly close call for humanity:<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of history\u2019s greatest geniuses was a single air burst away from having his career nipped in the bud.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How tragic that would have been! Mises had not yet even written his great 1920 essay\u00a0Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth<\/a>, which contained the single most powerful argument against central planning that had ever been formulated.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Neither had he yet elaborated the true, praxeological foundation of sound economics (which he would accomplish in the 1930s) or reconstructed on that foundation the entire edifice of economics as a rigorous, systematic, and complete science of the market (which he would accomplish in the 1940s). Imagine how subsequent Austrian economists would be have had to grope in the dark had he never made those discoveries. There would have been no\u00a0Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis<\/em>, a book\u00a0<\/em>that forever changed the life and career of Friedrich Hayek (who also might have died in the World War I), and no\u00a0Human Action<\/em>, a book that forever changed the life and career of Murray Rothbard .<\/p>\n

Mises himself was almost a tragic example of a phenomenon he would do so much to illuminate: the state\u2019s calamitous misallocation of resources. In all their wisdom, the planners in Vienna decided that the mind that had already formulated the Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle and would soon discover the Socialist Calculation Problem was best employed figuring out how to effectively blow up Russians, and that the hand that would later pen\u00a0Human Action<\/em>\u00a0might just as well instead lie cold and dead somewhere in the Carpathian Mountains.<\/p>\n

Another such near-tragic misallocation, one made on the other side of the same war, was that of J.R.R. Tolkien, who would later author the beloved epic\u00a0The Lord of the Rings<\/em>. The lore of Middle-earth, still germinating in Tolkien\u2019s imagination\u2014a narrative world that would mold an entire genre and bring joy to millions of readers and movie-goers\u2014might have been snuffed out unwritten in the Battle of the Somme.<\/p>\n

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Source: Governors of the Schools of King Edward VI in Birmingham, via\u00a0John Garth<\/a>. Garth\u2019s caption: \u201cA face in the crowd: Tolkien, fourth from left in the middle row, stands for inspection with the new Cadet Corps at King Edward\u2019s School, Birmingham, on 4 April 1907″<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Luckily, Mises and Tolkien survived the awful war. But what of those who did not? How many Miseses and Tolkiens laid dead in the trenches? How much bourgeoning genius was nipped in the bud?<\/p>\n

Again, we can never know the answer to this question, but we can get an even better idea by also reflecting on the war casualty rates in the circles of these great men.<\/p>\n

H\u00fclsmann wrote wistfully of the pre-War intellectual ferment at Mises\u2019s University of Vienna, and of its tragic end (emphasis added).<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat glorious days when one could study under B\u00f6hm-Bawerk, Wieser, Philippovich, and Mises! But these days were numbered. The all-star Austrian faculty lasted only three semesters. In August 1914, B\u00f6hm-Bawerk died and Mises was sent to the front.\u00a0His best students perished in the war.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And before the War, Tolkien had enjoyed a deep and inspiring camaraderie as one of four friends in a tight literary circle called the Tea Club Barrovian Society (T.C.B.S.). As John Garth\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0earlier this year in\u00a0The Daily Beast<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\u201cThey dreamed of making art that would create a better world, and for Tolkien a T.C.B.S. gathering in December that year was followed by \u2018finding a voice for all kinds of pent up things and a tremendous opening up of everything\u2019?\u2014?the beginning of Middle-earth.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But the dreams and lives of this circle were to be almost entirely devoured by the nightmare of the Great War. On July 15, 1916, T.C.B.S. member Geoffrey Smith\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0to Tolkien of the death of another member, Robert Gilson:<\/p>\n

My dear John Ronald,<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I saw in the paper this morning that Rob has been killed. I am safe but what does that matter? Do please stick to me, you and Christopher. I am very tired and most frightfully depressed at this worst news. Now one realises in despair what the T.C.B.S. really was.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

O my dear John Ronald what ever are we going to do?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yours ever.
\nG. B. S.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Five months later, Smith too was killed. Just before setting off for his fatal mission, Smith wrote Tolkien one last letter that is truly heart-rending:<\/p>\n

My chief consolation is that if I am scuppered tonight\u2014I am off on duty in a few minutes\u2014there will still be left a member of the great T.C.B.S. to voice what I dreamed and what we all agreed upon. For the death of one of its members cannot, I am determined, dissolve the T.C.B.S. Death can make us loathsome and helpless as individuals, but it cannot put an end to the immortal four! A discovery I am going to communicate to Rob before I go off tonight. And do you write it also to Christopher. May God bless you my dear John Ronald and may you say things I have tried to say long after I am not there to say them if such be my lot.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yours ever,
\nG. B. S.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Fortunately for us, John Ronald did get to say those things. But what did Geoffrey never get to say? We will never know, but surely it would have been something splendid and profound, given the greatness of soul evinced in these letters and that he must have had to be so inspiring to Tolkien. And what did Mises\u2019s \u201cbest students\u201d never get to say about markets and human society?<\/p>\n

Perhaps Tolkien himself said it best, when he wrote:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThe utter stupid waste of war not only material but moral and spiritual, is so staggering to those who have to endure it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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To paraphrase Robin Williams\u2019s John Keating in the film\u00a0Dead Poet\u2019s Society<\/em><\/a>: They\u2019re not that different from you, are they? They believe they\u2019re destined for great things, just like many of you. Their eyes are full of hope, just like you. Because you see gentlemen, these boys are now fertilizing daffodils. But if you listen real close, you can hear them whisper their legacy to you. Go on, lean in.\u00a0\u201cStop the wars, boys.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Here we are, a century later, and the Washington-driven western hegemony that emerged from the World Wars is afflicted with the same imperialistic hubris and entangled in the same kind of \u201ccollective security\u201d tripwires that detonated the conflagration that almost consumed Mises and Tolkien, and that\u00a0did<\/em>\u00a0consume Mises\u2019s best students and Tolkien\u2019s best colleagues. President Barack Obama has not only just relaunched the very war in Iraq that he was elected to get us out of (much as Woodrow Wilson dragged us into World War I after winning re-election with the\u00a0slogan<\/a>\u00a0\u201cHe kept us out of war\u201d), but, unbelievably, has embroiled us in a proxy war with nuclear Russia. Just\u00a0the other day<\/a>, a member of the Ukrainian junta serving as Washington\u2019s proxy darkly insisted that yet another \u201cgreat war has arrived at our doorstep,\u201d in which \u201ctens of thousands\u201d could die. And the neocons (like Victoria Nuland, who started the whole mess), \u201chumanitarian\u201d interventionists (like Susan Rice), and bumblers (like John Kerry) guiding Obama\u2019s foreign policy seem to be doing everything they can to realize that unthinkable outcome: cheered on, of course, by the\u00a0war drum beaters<\/a>\u00a0in the media.<\/p>\n

How much unrealized genius already lies under the rubble in Donetsk, or in other urban centers demolished by American-supplied weapons like Gaza and Aleppo? How many dancers, doctors, and dreamers will never come to be? And how many times over will that number grow if we don\u2019t finally stand up to the warmongers and war makers before it\u2019s too late: before world conflict once again spins completely out of control as it did a hundred years ago?<\/p>\n

\n

Also published at DanSanchez.me<\/a> and Medium.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently in\u00a0The Times, Richard Morrison\u00a0discussed, \u201cThe musicians silenced in the carnage of the Great War,\u201d this being the centennial year of World War I. Morrison explored the war\u2019s, \u201ccataclysmic effect on the musical world,\u201d and how \u201cit left an indelible mark on musical composition\u2014partly because almost a whole generation of brilliant young composers were killed, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":193,"featured_media":24176,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[481],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-24175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-war-i"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/tolkien-kes-cadets-1907.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/193"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24175"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24692,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24175\/revisions\/24692"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24175"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=24175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}