If.
If—laconic fate-word! hinge of destiny! If the Persians had won at Marathon; and if the brilliant imagination of a Persian Herodotus had fixed in fame the glories of conquering Persia: if the Peloponnesian War had not mutually destroyed the Grecian empire: if Alexander the Great had lost the battles Granicus, Issus, Arbela; if world-conquering Alexander the Great had been successful in the conquest of his own down-dragging human heart, and if he had not died at Babylon, aged thirty-two, world-victor and self-victim: if the village by the Tiber had not advanced by bloody strides o’er fixed-star battlefields from Rome a wilderness, to Rome Mistress of the World: if the barbarous hordes of the North had not ever longingly before their eyes the fairyland of southern Europe, the troll-gardens of Italy: if Rome had not become enervated; if Gaul and Goth and Hun and Norseman had not won: if the Crescent had waved victorious o’er a fallen Cross at Tours, Belgrade, Lepanto: if William of Normandy son of Robert the Devil, had been pierced by an arrow and buried indistinguishably among the dead on the slaughter-field of Senlac-Hastings—If!
But we are a perennially hopeful race and happily unimaginative and dully content with the Real: and so we unquestioningly acquiesce when grave historians tell us that in each and every historic struggle the juggernaut determinant of the If acted favorably to the best interests of civilization and progress: so, too, would we obligingly believe had the determinant favored the opposing cause. Perhaps to all-conquering Progress as to world-conquering Rome, all battles are victories; either as a victory proper with roll of triumph-drum and flash of conquering colors, or as that grim Cannæ-defeat potential of a future Zama-victory.
It is well that there should be two possible interpretations of the answers of the oracle: thus is Truth ever serenely secure unperturbed by the errors of mortals.