Remember where I started? Well, here I am now. I have about 200 pages left to read. I am hoping to spend as much time this weekend as I can on W&P, though I am not sure I will be able to finish it before Monday. I am getting close, however. Although there are moments I wish Tolstoy hadn't spent so many pages discussing the historical interpretations/implications of the war, I thought this passage was interesting:
"We may find it strange when history describes the process by which some king or emperor falls out with another king or emperor, raises an army, fights and wins a battle against the enemy, killing three, five or ten thousand men, and thus subjugates a state and a whole nation running to millions; we may find it hard to understand how the defeat of an army, a mere hundredth part of a nation's strength, somehow forces the whole people into submission, yet all the facts of history (as far as we can know history) justify the general belief that the success or failure of one nation's army is the cause, or at least a major indication, of the waxing or waning of a nation's power. An army wins a battle, and the winners' rights are immediately increased at the expense of the losers'. An army suffers a defeat, and the people are immediately deprived of their rights according to the magnitude of defeat, and if defeat is total, they fall into total submission. It has been like this (history would have us believe)from ancient times right up to the present day. All of Napoleon's earlier wars serve to confirm this principle."
Yes, we are still at war. I am hoping the book ends on a peaceful note!