We Lost Because We Lost Poem by gershon hepner

“We lost because we told ourselves we lost, ”
Prince Andrey said
After Austerlitz.
De Maistre said it first.
We go from worse to worst,
and tend to lose our wits
when we are led
by thoughts that make us pay an awful cost.

Inspired by an article in the TLS, July 17,2009, by A. N. Wilson on Isaiah Wilson (“The Dictaphone Don”) . Sir Isaiah pointed out that when Prince Andrey, after Austerlitz, states in Tolstoy’s War and Peace “We lost because we told ourselves we lost, ” he is quoting the French neo-Thomist Catholic Royalist philosopher Joseph de Maistre.

7/22/09