XII 31st March 1999
The varying sizes of fields making up any farm, some large, some small and awkward shapes, demand a simple way for establishing precisely the size of each one.
When we asked for a mathematical solution of an irregular triangle - perhaps on Pythagorean formula - which could be used to calculate any shape, the answer that
came was:
¼ x √ (4 x a2 x b2 -
(c2 - a2 - b2) 2 ) where “c” is the longest of three irregular sides. Inserting into the formula the three odd sides, which a farmer can lovingly tape or pace on the ground and with a hand calculator, work out the area of any triangle or of any polygonal shape, consisting of number of triangles, without the inconvenience of sighting angles and trigonometry. The formula is so convenient that it perhaps can be useful elsewhere and we were proud in helping to discover it, although it was always a part of its Pythagorean root. The size of a field is important at all times for counting the harvest or calculating sowing, fertilizer, or herbicide, and not least for - an on the spot - discussion, in the pride of its ownership or its value.
On the fifth anniversary of Leszczyn farm we are settling down to a steady job of work, establishing the beginning of a balanced team. We were joined last September by D - who has agricultural qualifications and accepted to deal for us with all administration and accountancy. She had not worked for a number of years, bringing up children, and is able to apply her skills with a fresh energy. J - who is now with us for two years, has built up his knowledge with zeal and taken control that is achieving success, whilst I make my contribution in discussion of policy and planning every morning, by telephoning if abroad. Our aim is to produce high quality wheat, at 6 to 8 tons per hectare for ʻwhite breadʼ - a European tradition - and to do so using modern skills to improve the soil.
Yvesʼ brother who is an agricultural scientist in Carcassonne, working in an institute there, albeit not in an area of cereal production but of wine, told us that they are now pulling out vines and planting wheat. He studied our notes of field work, reviewing our earth quality, which is better than his, often quite stony and dry soil there, and drew our attention, again and again to the importance of lime; pH is the condition of success, he says, with a figure of 6 or more, guaranteeing satisfactory control of acidity. It should be regularly checked and lime replenished as necessary - which we already do. It was rewarding to have an evaluation of our work from a scientist who himself is working in this area, moving into the production of cereals. In experimental conditions they achieved 10 and 11 tons per hectare, which is not practical farming, but shows the capacity of the crops. Advice whether from Carcassonne or from our Strzelce Institute builds up our thinking and capabilities every day.
The dogmatic American assertions surfacing about Kosovo raise a question: what reasons lie behind it? Why are these people so intent on righting our European tensions? Why do they threaten to shoot cruise missiles from Texas? What is their moral urge which justifies it? The United States is a young country; it was created two centuries ago by a revolution which was enshrined in a Constitution based on the 18th century European encyclopaedist views. It was a model of political thinking at the time, but even then the founding fathers had many doubts. Jefferson said “if once our people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors shall all become wolves”. Looking at events of today, the question arises: whether the people may not be becoming inattentive, distracted by the business of making money, or by the euphoria of past achievements, or by xenophobic nationalism, or by some other reason which causes this American foreign involvement?
In the 19th century two men, within 50 years of each other, inherited two great Revolutions: Napoleon and Lincoln. It is curious to observe that Napoleon preserved his, leaving behind the Code, the administration of France, the lycées, the Légion dʼHonneur, the tree lined roads, a new, though imperial, style in art and all the dreams inspired by the Revolution for France and for the World and enshrined in the tricolour and words “liberté, egalité, fraternité”. Lincoln on the other hand can be said to have destroyed his: “the men in blue”, said one Southerner late in 1865, “destroyed everything, which the most infernal Yankee ingenuity could devise means to destroy: hands, hearts, fire, gunpowder, and left behind the spirit of hell: the agencies which they used”, and with hindsight we might add also: the spirit of the Revolution. In this unnecessary war, he laid the foundations of a super-state in the image of others at the time, of Russia, Britain or France. He took a unique democracy of intellect and of people back to the Realpolitik of the Prince, leaving a million dead and misery and despondency behind. Greed and brutality had an easier road to reassert themselves, moving away from the early idealism of America towards the images of Empires of the time. The early ideals still hold powerful sway over the American mind and have been an example to the rest of the world, but the two trends compete in the nation angrily and bring the Republic to the end of its tether. But it is not easy for a European to chuck the “dream of America”. The two great wars, recognized as just wars, and the confrontation with the Soviets, built up and reinforced a kinship with Europe, but wars are wars and there are so many wars in their history (a legacy of Lincoln) Civil, Spanish, Mexico, Cuba one and two, Vietnam, Iraq and now Kosovo; it is beginning to look as though the country is choosing war as a tool of its diplomacy. Has it become a war country? Is this the reason for intervention in a small country so far away?
And if so, what are the causes of this plank? American idealism born with the pilgrims of Mayflower was given form by the Revolution. The elegant and aristocratic tradition in the South, even with the slavery, was not a danger to the idea- listic views and was certainly more gentle on the blacks than the Ku-Klux-Klan after their liberation. It would have faded away peacefully whether it became a one or two states solution. Lincolnʼs assertion of aim: “Union with slavery, or without slavery, or with some freedom and some slavery” was the beginning of the mendacity which puts forward an aim with any plausible justification; it brought the Revolution nearer to losing its ideals. It prevented the ideals developing into con- ceptual notions for further exercise in democratic concepts and into what Jefferson called a continuous revolution.
This loss of theoretical interest in political issues has made the American Revolution, Hannah Arendt asserts, sterile in world politics, as opposed to French and Russian revolutions. It has opened Godʼs own country to aggressive and vicious capi- talist forces, concealed for a time, by the romance of the Wild West, which established freedom and confidence in action, but also brutality, affirming the psyche and influence of criminal- ity. This was the background when the empty continent opened its doors to the deprived masses of Europe, as the ʻLand of the Freeʼ with its Statue of Liberty. There is no doubt that the na- tion believed in the ideals and that most of those who were wel- comed benefited by comparison with what they faced at the time of industrialisation, in impoverished, Dickensian Europe.
And in these fervid circumstances a new society was being formed with the poorest and simplest, even if often the most enterprising, of the European continent. The Irish peasantry escaping from the potato famine, followed by disenfranchised peasants of Poland and Russia, joined by Yiddish speaking ghetto Jews from the east and peasanty Italians from Calabria or Sicily. A rich brew of people, missing or deprived of their rights in the past, arriving in a country of opportunity, but one without many rules.
The great harvest of achievement, with a moralising strain, was born from the extreme practicality of man and his inventiveness and opened to the world the American Dream; a story and joy which has been with us all this century, and not even deeply stained by the aggressions or political and industrial gangsterism which developed alongside. This society with a paucity of true intellectual habits offered simple beliefs which were icons, to the simplest coming from the old world and settling in a geography without any autochthons to engender ancient tradition. The warnings of dangers which may aggress this society were noted by Americans themselves: by Mark Twain, John Reed, Henry Miller, and Jack London who assesses their causes, in his ʻIron Heelʼ which mirrors the events of today.
Their society is further confused by new immigrants in great numbers, even now, with the Latino Americans, who often do not speak the language and add to the tensions or resentments felt by the established citizens. Looking at its history one recognises that America, with its variety of social and racial backgrounds, has never been a Nation in the European sense, but is a State, which as such has to assert the allegiance of its citizens by State Means. It is chastening to realise that the best of these are war and nationalism.
If this analysis suggests that the dangers facing America are those arising from its structure or contradictions in its society, then it also suggests that they can, as usual, be diminished by creating a fear of external aggression. A society harassed by internal tensions with resulting artificial economic difficulties may seek to alleviate the difficulties by hegemonic assertiveness, dressed in subtle guises of ʻpolicing the worldʼ or ʻbringing democracyʼ. America which was seen before as a strong nation held together by moral strength, with governments responsive to its people, appears now to us to be the opposite: a country of pliant, not to say weak people, run by a strong government no longer accountable to them. A system which offers its leaders a solution by aggression is easier, than one of rebuilding the Republic by going to its original precepts. The fact that it may shadow Hitler - with only a change of nomenclature, seems not to be a bother to them.
We hear no more of a Jack London there, nor Mark Twain, or Miller who warns: “I see America spreading disaster. I see America as a black curse upon the world. I see a long night settling in...” nor for that matter do we hear a Solzhenitsyn, a Brecht, or a Zola, raising their voices, to help the society to understand itself. The concept of the end of history, may be translating into one of the end of morality. We are watching with disquiet these tensions being transplanted into the world.
