'A History of Warfare' by John Keegan

Starting off with a denouncement of Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, 'war is not the continuation of policy by other means', John Keegan begins a thorough survey of all aspects of military adventures throughout history in his 'History of Warfare'.

For a nominal pacifist with deep ignorance of the army I found much to my surprise in this book that has changed the way I see warfare.

For example: did you know that 'the great nobles of Japan...did not seek military reputation at all, but stove for literary glory' thereby meaning that the samurai all wanted to be poets?  Or that, also on the samurai,  'for whom fighting was an act of self-expression by which a man displayed not only his courage but also his individuality'.  This sentence alone gives me a deeper understanding of why man makes war.

Keegan argues that it is not politics that drives war but culture, that 'war embraces much more than politics: that it is always an expression of culture'.  This somehow makes war into more like an art than a necessary tool for survival.  Yet the objects and stories of war are consumed with fascination by people who want only second-hand experience.  But as Keegan suggests some people are only fit to be soldiers embracing the lifestyle boredom punctuated by moments of terror.

So to the question:  would I fight?  Say their was a group on their way to murder everyone in my town, friends, family, my friendly newsagent, would I try to organise a group with whatever weapons were laying around to fight them off?  I suppose I would have no choice, though as Keegan says

'when men of equal worth fight on unequal terms the side with the better weapons wins'.  Right now I probably couldn't, despite having a black belt in karate (though not practicing for fourteen years), but if I had a few months and some decent weapons then maybe.  But I'll do it Celt style.

The closest I've come to warfare was playing  Gavrilo Princip, assassinator of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in street theatre.  I sat on a bench, gun in hand, waiting for my moment.  Then when the time came I launched off in front of the wooden car and fired two shots.  So maybe my revolutionary potential is there.  Acting is one thing but what about the real deal?  Well if war is supposed to be a type of performance I could probably convince myself to do some heavy method acting.