And what did they do with their time at Andover and Yale?

When the significance of the Bosnian annexation was debated in the Duma in the spring of 1909, the conservative interests .. argued that the annexation had in no way damaged Russian interests or security .. The real enemy, they argued, was Britain, which was trying to push Russia into a war with Germany in order to consolidate British control of world markets. Against this position, the pro-French and pro-British liberals .. called for .. a Triple Alliance that would enable Russia to project power in the Balkan region and arrest the decline of its great power status.

This was one of the central problems confronting all the foreign policy executives (and those who try to understand them today): the 'national interest' was not an objective imperative pressing in upon government from the world outside, but the projection of particular interests within the political elite itself.

Christopher Clark

St Catherine's College

  Cambridge

The Sleepwalkers

  How Europe Went to War

  in 1914

Harper Collins, 2013©

Le Corbusier

Taureau

1964

The closest soap we have to Champagne?

In an age of which it is possible to understand only less and less, with every passing day, while blogs for gentlemen continue to prescribe nostrums for this predicament of ever more excruciating specificity, readers may forgive a celebratory digression to the contrary, occasioned by a bit of travel one had to endure over the past few days. Our apothecaries at Kiehl's, now taken under the wing of L'Oréal, have come up with an application which is to fetishes of the bath what Champagne is to the flatulent wine list: balsam for any contingency. Just add water, they say, not even Champagne.

Ta-da! The Kiehl's [Since 1851] Cross-Terrain All-in-One Refueling Wash, Paraben-Free & 99.9% Biodegradable, promises An Energizing Shower Cleanser for Hair and Body, A tri-mendous formulation for the cross-terrain adventurer! It may also be used (oh, thank heaven) as a speed shaving aid, whatever that daredevil pursuit may be. They do not say if it can be ordered with a masquing stencil.

You may well think, I know, that too much can be made of general remedies, when discrimination allows such illusion of discern-ment, and flattery of trespasses. But in the present case, even our heroic pharmacist - who stands to lose countless sales of single-nuance products - has seen the advantage of traveling light, to say nothing of the advantage of social mobility, per se. It all comes fully certified, adventure tested. What a windfall to the human rite of washing! Who knew there might be a one-app-suits-all remedy to dispense, as if we were all adventurers? 

Undergraduating, contextually

Poor Valentino, caught up
in the unfairness of fash-
ion, suffers his trousers
now to be worn too short
to celebrate the cut, to
say nothing of the stride.

This would be unthinkable
to Alistair, who wore one
length of trouser for sit-
ting on the club veranda,
and another for venturing
off to a seminar on Yeats.

But the thing about doing
without socks would be a
consolation, always assum-
ing the foil of the her-
ringbone, paving his way.

Ben Eidem

Chilling, as he was, in his Farrow & Ball whites

our idler thought of Venice, 

as he contemplated dressing.

            Then it was all true. I saw the skins 

            of tigers flaming in his palace on the 

            Grand Canal; I saw him opening a chest 

            of rubies to ease, with their crimson-

            lighted depths, the gnawings of his 

            broken heart.

I've been reading (haven't we all been reading), and with acute in-terest, the happy volunteerings of many voices, on what they think The Great Gatsby is, and what it would be like to make it relevant. New York donated space to a lady who used it to denounce Fitzgerald's morals; The New Republic opened up for one who sees it as our Moby Dick of class consciousness; then, naturally, there are spirited findings on the latest movie, The New York Times taking care to insist, the text is nothing sacred.

Possibly not. You can jockey for position on it, and money; and yet the world will go right on,              getting it.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby

op. cit.

How is it, we don't hear, Gatsby's at a beach?

       

       I think, I never thought,

       he wants it that way.

Pomp and circumstance

.. I must essay a path by which I too

may rise from earth a triumph fluttering on the lips of men.

I first, if only life prolong, into my country returning

will lead the Muses from the Aonian mount,

and in the green field a marble temple plant

at water's edge, where in slow turns wanders

great Mincius fringing its banks with supple reeds.

In its nave I will have Caesar, and he will have its dominion.

In his honour I, a victor dazzling in Tyrian purple,

will drive a hundred quadrigs along the river.

  ..

  Meanwhile it flies,

  time flies irretrievably,

  while captivated with love

  we ramble through minutiae.

Virgil

Kimberly Johnson, translator

Georgics: A poem of the land

  Book III, 8-18, 284-285

Penguin Classics, 2009©

Where there is progress

This is very deeply saddening 

news about Susie. As you know 

so well, and better than I, 

she was one of the breed's 

great innocent partisans, ex-

tremely generous and caring 

toward those who adopted her 

dogs and modest about their 

success in showing. I dis-

tinctly remember when Geor-

die's mother died, it was a 

great blow to her, and I sent 

her a Coronation mug for Ed-

ward VIII, of interest because 

he was, like Geordie, never 

crowned. I still regard Geor-

die as the most positive in-

fluence on my life since col-

lege, a completely unexpected 

miracle. I will not forget her.