Presents

         The girl reaches out to
         take the boy's hand. Hello, 
         young man! she says. He is 
         your grandson?

         Not my grandson, not my son,
         but I am responsible for him.

I think there's an ethical ques-

tion inscribed there which looks

backward.. Is history about, as

Aristotle said, what Alcibiades

did and suffered? Or do sources

from the past merely provide raw

material which we turn to polit-

ical or intellectual ends?

J.M. Coetzee

The Childhood of Jesus

Viking, 2013©

Tony Judt

Timothy Snyder

Thinking the Twentieth Century

op. cit.

ii  Recession of the last funeral

     of a soldier of the Great War

    Wells Cathedral