The following remarks responded to a comment that the allies of Ukraine were not doing enough  to reach peace with Russia.

1.  It is not a matter of punishing Putin, but of  protecting a nation from annihilation by Russia.
2. Ukraine needs assistance for that purpose, and we and other free nations have a moral obligation to give it.
3. Those supporting Ukraine – including Australia and me – will have an interest in any settlement offer.  We will be like a lawyer acting on legal aid.  If the client unreasonably refuses to settle, we withdraw the aid.  
4. We are no way near that now, and I have not seen articulated what might be described as a reasonable offer of settlement from Russia.  (If Australia got invaded, and the US said we should settle by giving up a slice of Queensland, we would see that as a breach of trust of Trumpian proportions.)
5. It is above my pay level to say if our strategic interests are suited by having Russia engaged in such a war, but I have seen it said by respectable people – like Timothy  Snyder.
6. The settlement issue looks moot until one reasonable opening appears.
7. If it does, then I think the position of the allies should be guided by two principles.  We should give the benefit of the doubt to the  people attacked.  And we should do all we can to deter other belligerent regimes.  (Russia, China and Iran are similar.   They mistreat their own people so that they can mistreat other peoples.  Serial pests.)
8. I pay little attention to the posturing of the aggressor.  It comes from someone who is not used to being checked.  He is cruel and evil and a coward, but not insane.  People who say they are not bluffing usually are. 
9. And it sounds childish to say to Ukraine you can only use our weapons at home against an invader. There is an old saying we probably got from England – if you don’ like the heat, don’t go near the bloody kitchen.
10. As it happens, there are many precedents  of the quagmire Russia finds itself in.  I wrote the note below ten years ago in a book about revolutions.  I agree with Pitt the Elder.

Guerilla Wars

On 4 July 1976 the colonists formally declared their independence with a document prepared by a number of lawyers and others, setting out in detail, although not with any objectivity, the grounds upon which the colonists were entitled to say that they were discharged from any further obligations to the English crown.

Although the Americans like to see themselves as having been the underdogs, they won the War of Independence, as they call it, and it is not hard to isolate some of the reasons why their position was eventually so much stronger than that of the English.  You can apply the following criteria to the American War of Independence – or to the Vietnam War, the Russian war in Afghanistan, the second Iraq war, or the present military operations in Afghanistan.  The phrases ‘home team’ and ‘away team’ are used for convenience and not to detract from the significance of the wars, or the valour shown and losses taken by those who actually fought them and are fighting the present one.

1. The away team is the biggest in the world, or as the case may be, the only empire in the world, or the second biggest.
2. The away team is a regular professional army while the home team consists of amateur irregulars.
3. The professional soldiers in the away team have no advantage over the amateurs in the other team because they have not been trained for this kind of war and people who fight for the cause are more reliable than those who do it for money.
4. People defending their own soil are far more motivated than those who cross the world to try to bring them into line.
5. The away team has massive resources and advantages in population and war matériel (such as the navy) and technology, but the home team has local knowledge. 
6. The home team can move more quickly, avoid pitched battles, and use guerilla tactics, which are sometimes referred to as terrorism, and which, as we saw, the British objected to as not being fair play.
7. The away team has problems with morale and supplies that just get worse as time goes on.
8. The away team finds that winning requires more than just winning battles – they may beat the army of the other side, but they will not beat the country, which has widespread support among its people (even if the people are otherwise split).
9. The away team has a hopeless dilemma – it has to hit hard to win, but every time it hits hard it loses more hearts and minds.
10. The home team finds it is easy to generate heroes and leaders; the away team finds it is easy to sack losers.
11. The home team out-breeds the others – the result is just a matter of time.
12. The war becomes one of exhaustion and attrition, which in turn exaggerates the above advantage of the home team.
13. Because of its felt superiority, its actual ignorance, and its sustained frustration, the away team resorts to atrocious behaviour that it would never be guilty of in a normal war, or against an enemy of its own kind.

In short, the American colonists felt that they were fighting on the moral high ground, a position that they have never surrendered. Appalling crimes were committed on both sides, especially in the civil war in the south between the Patriots and Loyalists. There were, Churchill said, ‘atrocities such as we have known in our day in Ireland.’ Professor Gordon S Wood said that the ‘war in the lower south became a series of bloody guerilla skirmishes with atrocities on both sides’ (like Vietnam). But for the intervention of the French, this civil war – guerilla war may have gone on for years and degenerated into what would happen in Latin America with ‘Caesarism, military rule, army mutinies and revolts, and every kind of cruelty’ (like the Roman Empire).

But the terrorism on both sides ceased and the result was dictated by the sentiment expressed at the time by another former Prime Minister of England. The older Pitt, by this time the Earl of Chatham, one of the most experienced war time leaders England has ever had, knew what the home ground advantage meant: ‘My Lords, if I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I would never lay down my arms – never, never, never.’

If you asked who were the greatest minds the U K produced, the answer would include Isaac Newton, scientist, Adam Smith, economist, and David Hume, philosopher.  Shakespeare is in a different category.   What then did the great Scot think of the great English poet and playwright?

If Shakespeare be considered as a MAN, born in a rude age, and educated in the lowest manner, without any instruction, either from the world or from books, he may be regarded as a prodigy: If represented as a POET, capable of furnishing a proper entertainment to a refined or intelligent audience, we must abate much of this eulogy. In his compositions, we regret, that many irregularities, and even absurdities, should so frequently disfigure the animated and passionate scenes intermixed with them; and at the same time, we perhaps admire the more those beauties, on account of their being surrounded with such deformities. A striking peculiarity of sentiment, adapted to a singular character, he frequently hits, as it were by inspiration; but a reasonable propriety of thought he cannot, for any time, uphold. Nervous and picturesque expressions, as well as descriptions, abound in him; but it is in vain we look either for purity or simplicity of diction. His total ignorance of all theatrical art and conduct, however material a defect; yet, as it affects the spectator rather than the reader, we can more easily excuse, than that want of taste which often prevails in his productions, and which gives way, only by intervals, to the irradiations of genius. A great and fertile genius he certainly possessed, and one enriched equally with a tragic and comic vein; but, he ought to be cited as a proof, how dangerous it is to rely on these advantages alone for attaining an excellence in the finer arts.  And there may even remain a suspicion, that we over-rate, if possible, the greatness of his genius; in the same manner as bodies often appear more gigantic, on account of their being disproportioned and misshapen. He died in 1616, aged 53 years.

But wait. There is more.

Johnson possessed all the learning which was wanting to Shakespeare, and wanted all the genius of which the other was possessed. Both of them were equally deficient in taste and elegance, in harmony and correctness. A servile copyist of the ancients, Johnson translated into bad English the beautiful passages of the Greek and Roman authors, without accommodating them to the manners of his age and country. His merit has been totally eclipsed by that of Shakespeare, whose rude genius prevailed over the rude art of his cotemporary. The English theatre has ever since taken a strong tincture of Shakespeare’s spirit and character; and thence it has proceeded, that the nation has undergone, from all its neighbours, the reproach of barbarism, from which it’s valuable productions in some other parts of learning would otherwise have exempted it. Johnson had a pension of a hundred marks from the king, which Charles afterwards augmented to a hundred pounds. He died in 1637, aged 63.

(The only other reference to Shakespeare in the six volumes is in a footnote that says there is no reference to ‘civil liberty’ in the history plays from King John to Henry VIII.  Perhaps that’s because ‘civil liberty’  had not yet been invented and would have struck either king as hilarious.)

Hume was admired for his mind and well  regarded for his affable character – especially by les belles dames in Paris.  What poison  – unless it was  green eyed jealousy – caused  him to unload this bile?

We all have our flaws, but this is a blinder.

And it is also very sad.  Coming from the great philosopher who said that ‘reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions.’