The way in which people react to the defeat, death or misfortune of their foes is largely determined by who they are rather than what their enemies deserve. Should you gloat when a foe falls? You don’t have to be magnanimous, but you could be if you are. Shakespeare said it best:
But mercy is above this sceptred sway; It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings, It is an attribute to God himself; And earthly power doth then show likest God’s When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew, Though justice be thy plea, consider this, That, in the course of justice, none of us Should see salvation.
But as history teaches us long and bitter combat makes us forget mercy. The first Christmas of World War I in 1914 saw the famous Christmas Truce, a spontaneous, unofficial ceasefire along the Western Front where British and German soldiers emerged from trenches to exchange gifts (like chocolates, cigarettes), sing carols, bury the dead, and even play football in No Man’s Land, a powerful display of shared humanity and mercy before generals clamped down on such fraternization, making it a unique, brief moment of peace amidst the brutal war. A year later these same men were serrating their bayonets to make the wounds hurt.
By March 1943 in the brutal Battle of the Bismarck Sea, Allied planes systematically strafed Japanese survivors in the water with machine guns, a controversial but effective tactic to prevent them from reaching shore and rejoining the fight, resulting in few waterborne survivors. The last flames of mercy had been extinguished and it was “die f**ker, die”.
We remain men, but of a different sort. Robert Graves, writing after the Great War in 1922 prefaced his book “Goodbye to All That” with these lines: Dedicated with affection to the Man I Used To Be.