“Letters on England”, by Voltaire, translated and introduced by Leonard Tancock

162 pages, Penguin Classics, ISBN-13: 978-0140443868

Voltaire, the nom de plume of François-Marie Arouet, was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit, his attacks on the established Catholic Church and his advocacy of freedom of religion, freedom of speech and the separation of church and state. This, as one can well imagine, did not make him popular with many – most? – in the upper echelons of French society, and he found himself, more often than not, on the run from the authorities or in exile. This was how he found himself in exile in England between the years 1726 to 1729 where he wrote a series of twenty-five essays, the Letters on England, in which he made several striking observations about the same, holding up a mirror to France by praising English liberty, democracy and tolerance (his fellow French subjects couldn’t read these works, however, as they were banned in his home country...c’est la vie). From these works it is obvious that Voltaire was enamored of England’s religious tolerance vis-à-vis France, describing how the Quakers, Anglicans, Presbyterians and others all coexist and described just how religious freedom worked. Many of Voltaire’s views are what we would describe today as Libertarian; he was a great admirer of English trade, commerce and businessmen, has nice things to say about John Locke, Isaac Newton and other figures from English literature and their styles, and even devotes a letter to smallpox inoculation. Letters on England is a fascinating look at key aspects of English culture and life, and American readers will recognize some of the characteristics of England that later found even greater expression in this country. As it is true that in the area of liberty England is an outlier compared with the rest of Europe, America is an outlier compared to England.

“Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President”, by Candice Millard

432 pages, Anchor Books, ISBN-13: 978-0767929714

I remember visiting the James A. Garfield Memorial in Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland, Ohio, when I was a kid and was struck by the immensity: I mean, the guy didn’t even serve one year as 20^th President of the United States and there was this overwrought and unbalanced tribute to what he might have done if only that psycho, Charles Guiteau, hadn’t shot him (in fact, at the time, I said to my Dad that a lot of what was said about Garfield in 1881 sounded a lot like what would be said about Kennedy in 1963). But after reading Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard I see how wrong I was, as Garfield had the makings to be one of our greatest-ever Presidents. However, Destiny is not just the rags-to-riches story of Garfield; it is also a stirring account of American life and politics at the start of the Gilded Age, not long after the conclusion of the Civil War, and of a presidential murder.

Garfield’s early years are sketched out in cursory fashion, his (sometimes troubled) relationship with and eventual devotion to his wife Lucretia is covered in only a few pages, and the death of his youngest child receives little more than a mention. Rather than focusing on Garfield’s personal life, Millard devotes her attention to political divisions within the Republican Party (particularly Garfield’s battles with New York Senator Roscoe Conkling and Chester A. Arthur, the Veep he all but controlled), as well as Garfield’s frustration with the obligations of the office that he had little desire to hold. Guiteau, the President’s assassin, is given nearly as much attention as Garfield himself (and man, what a whackadoodle). There are times when the book has the feel of a thriller, as the ominous Charles Guiteau weaves in and out of the text, inching himself closer to the President. Millard depicts Guiteau as a con man with delusions of grandeur whose madness was characterized by a growing belief that his plan to assassinate Garfield was divinely inspired. The assassination occurs at the book’s midway point, after which Millard then treats us to a different kind of political battle, a medical drama about doctors who vie for the opportunity to treat the president and who, ironically, become responsible for his death. Arrogant in their refusal to believe in the existence of germs(!), American doctors rejected evidence accumulated over several years by the British Dr. Joseph Lister that antiseptic surgical conditions increase a patient’s chance of survival. The dirty fingers and unwashed probes inserted into Garfield’s wound in search of the bullet sealed the president’s fate, infecting an injury that Garfield would likely have survived if left untreated. The book concludes with an account of Garfield’s autopsy and Guiteau’s trial.

Destiny of the Republic succeeds on two levels. 1^st, it is informative, as Millard fills the text with interesting facts culled from a variety of primary and secondary source materials – including frequent quotations from contemporaneous news stories and Garfield’s diary – to set the scene for his too-brief presidency. We learn enough about the man to understand that he would have made an admirable president as Garfield, despite his love of farming, was a scholar, a professor of literature and ancient languages, well-versed in mathematics and keenly interested in science. Garfield’s speeches condemning slavery and the unequal treatment of black Americans were eloquent and moving, and the book is worth reading for those passages alone. 2^nd, it is entertaining, for Millard’s prose is lively and moves along at a brisk pace, despite its attention to detail. She captures personalities as if she were writing a novel and seasons the narrative with humor while creating tension as the events leading to Garfield’s encounter with Guiteau unfold. Really, my only complaint concerns the attention given to Alexander Graham Bell; granted, Bell’s life intersected with Garfield’s more than once – especially when Bell worked diligently to invent a device that would pinpoint the location of the bullet lodged in Garfield’s body – but the full chapter and parts of several others devoted to Bell’s life seem out of place, as if Millard felt the need to pad her relatively short book with filler (I, for one, would have preferred a more thorough discussion of the political aftermath of the shooting). Millard speaks movingly of the unifying effect the assassination had on a nation that was still emerging from the blood and hate of the Civil War, but provides few facts to support that proposition; a more extensive look at the impact of the assassination on the country would have been more germane than the pages devoted to Bell’s life before and after his invention of the telephone.

That criticism aside, Destiny of the Republic is excellent for readers who want to know more about a key yet-little known American President without being subjected to mind-numbing detail or leaden prose. Millard’s book is enlightening and enjoyable, and Garfield is one dead president that I’m happy to have met.

“Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World”, by Margaret Thatcher

512 pages, Harper, ISBN-13: 978-0060199739

Oh, Maggie, Maggie, Maggie…why-oh-why couldn’t you have been born a Yank? *sigh* *whimper* *groan* Ah, well, we must make do with what we have been born with, and that’s that. So, then…Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World by Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, LG, OM, PC, FRS, FRIC (née Roberts), is the Iron Lady’s primer for American and British statesman on how to create a better world. The book is broad and sweeping and eminently readable as Thatcher covers every region on earth and presents her views of the appropriate approach for the United States and Britain in its relations with foreign powers (as a bonus, she devotes a considerable number of words to her unmitigated hostility to the European Union that she considers negative in every conceivable way – oh, how she would have loved the passage of Brexit!). In her prescriptions for Britain she accepts those facts she regards as irreversible and, thus, her recommendations are clearly plausible and deserve to be considered seriously. One does not have to agree with each and every pronouncement to appreciate the soundness of Thatcher’s basic approach and to admire her refusal to bend her views to the popular assumptions of the day. As Thatcher describes it in her introduction, “statecraft” differs from “statesmanship” in that the former contains an emphasis on “activity rather than rhetoric, strategy not just diplomacy”. In the age of globalism, Thatcher is scornful of those statesman who see the world as they would like it to be rather than as it is. Thatcher’s pronouncements in this book are too broad to cover in this review but here is a sampling:

• She regards the United States as the only true global super power; 
• She is strongly against “internationalism”, or the tendency of states to subsume their sovereignty in favor of international organizations; 
• She is remarkably hostile to the European Union and its efforts to create a super-state to rival the United States; 
• She opposes the Euro and argues that the subordination of national sovereignty to an organization she regards as a bullying anti-democratic bureaucracy to be a recipe for future disaster; 
• She would tie Britain to the economic and political fortunes of the United States, even going so far as to suggest that Britain join NAFTA; 
• She is properly hostile to such international entities as the world criminal court, regarding it as a vehicle to subvert the superior legal systems of the U.S. and Britain, and sees such international organizations being used to hurt the interests of the West; 
• She notes the dangerous precedent set by the case of Augusto Pinochet, the military ruler of Chile between 1973 and 1990, when Spain demanded his extradition for alleged crimes committed in Chile; 
• Finally, she rails against “do-goodism” which assails common sense, citing the arms embargo on the former Yugoslavia as one of many examples of myopic western diplomacy which had the effect of allowing the Serbs (who controlled the Yugoslav military) to maintain a vast armaments superiority, which had the effect of encouraging Serbian aggression – the opposite of the intended effect.

Thatcher was an impressive thinker with consistency and logic often on her side. The key to statecraft is not to place the entire world into a single system but to know what situations require the carrot and which require the stick. I do not see this wisdom in existence in either the American State Department or the British Foreign Ministry; I certainly do not see it in the nations of Western Europe who foolishly often stand in opposition to American efforts to secure tranquility around the world. Thatcher would have promoted the growth of free markets everywhere, confronted bad regimes and rewarded good regimes, and sought to deter aggression through the credible threat of force, not through endless talk, appeasement and unenforceable treaties. You can quibble with her over the details, but after observing the world over the past several decades I think that Thatcher’s approach to the world is, by and large, the correct one. Anyone with an open mind will enjoy and appreciate Statecraft; filled with her personal observations and anecdotes; always readable and lively, this excellent book is must reading for anyone interested in the subject of international affairs.