Angell and devils

We ignore the evil realities of human nature at our peril | Marvin Olasky

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We have lots about foreign policy in this issue, so it's a good time to remember the "illusion" a talented writer spotted a century ago—and how the supposed illusion took 20 million lives within a decade, and 50 million more a third of a century later.

I'm referring to a writer once celebrated, now forgotten: Norman Angell, author a century ago of Europe's Optical Illusion, which he expanded in 1910 into The Great Illusion, a book that sold 2 million copies and garnered translation into 25 languages.

Angell (1872-1967), one of six children born into an English middle-class family, grew up reading Voltaire, Darwin, and John Stuart Mill. At 17, convinced that Europe's problems were too many to untangle, he headed to America. For the next seven years he dug ditches, chased cattle, prospected for gold, delivered mail, and became a reporter for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat and then the San Francisco Chronicle.