Saturday, April 19, 2014

Chastenings


  Anyone who undertakes an inquiry
  of such a [forensic] kind is
  soon made aware of one important
  fact: the worthlessness of human
  testimony. It is a chastening
  thought to a historian to consider
  how much of history is written on
  the basis of statements no more 
  reliable than those of Admiral
  Doenitz .. If such statements had
  been made and recorded with refer-
  ence to the disputed death of the
  Czar Alexander I in 1825, plenty
  of historians would have been ready
  to take them seriously. 



         
         What might I be ready
         to take seriously, if
         not a gentle teaching
         that frees me from a-
         lienation of distrust?






         


















Hugh Trevor-Roper
Student [Fellow] of
  Christ Church, Oxford
Late Regius Professor 
  of Modern History
The Last Days of Hitler
1947
  Introduction to the 
    Third Edition
  1956
University of Chicago Press 
  Sixth Edition, 1987©


             






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