Indeed, in many respects Hebrew literature was far more dynamic than Greek. Greek texts, from Homer onwards, were guides to virtue, decorum and modes… - Paul Johnson

The evil of competition, as he saw it, which destroys man’s inborn communal sense and encourages all his most evil traits, including his desire to exploit others, led Rousseau to distrust private property, as the source of social crime.

The Japanese conquest of Manchuria and their full-scale invasion of China in 1937 led to clashes on the badly mapped Soviet-Manchurian frontier. Some of these were serious and involved large-scale tank battles, which the Russians, under Marshal Zhukov, won.

Ibsen was saying to humanity: ‘Be yourselves!’ Yet in this letter he was in effect admitting that to be oneself involved the sacrifice of others. Personal liberation was at bottom self-centred and heartless.