Latest / Language Matters by Elias Winter
The War We Have Already Fought
Prologue — The Tsar Was Certain
In the winter palace of Nicholas II, the world still possessed an order.
There were great nations and lesser nations. There were ancient empires and newly dressed imitators. There were white armies, disciplined by history, and yellow armies, assembled from peoples who had only recently learned the machinery of Europe. Russia stretched across the curvature of the earth. Japan was an island at its edge.
The Tsar was certain.
He was not certain because he had studied Japan carefully. Certainty rarely comes from study. Study produces complication, and complication…
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