19th
“I think you listen too much to the soldiers. No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologian, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require to have the strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense.”
Lord Salisbury, Secretary of State for India, to Robert Bulwer-Lytton, Viceroy of India.
Lytton would lead the charge for Britain’s second invasion of Afghanistan in 40 years, a war that Salisbury opposed. Pierce Fredericks on that war: “a war started to forestall Russian influence at Kabul was ….settled by the installation of a Russian pensioner in the same location.” And shedding copious amount of Afghan and British blood, of course.
