Edward Gibbon:

IF we seriously consider the purity of the Christian religion, the sanctity of its moral precepts, and the innocent as well as austere lives of the greater number of those who during the first ages embraced the faith of the Gospel, we should naturally suppose that so benevolent a doctrine would have been received with due reverence even by the unbelieving world; that the learned and the polite, however they might deride the miracles, would have esteemed the virtues of the new sect; and that the magistrates, instead of persecuting, would have protected an order of men who yielded the most passive obedience to the laws, though they declined the active cares of war and government. If, on the other hand, we recollect the universal toleration of Polytheism, as it was invariably maintained by the faith of the people, the incredulity of philosophers, and the policy of the Roman senate and emperors, we are at a loss to discover what new offence the Christians had committed, what new provocation could exasperate the mild indifference of antiquity, and what new motives could urge the Roman princes, who beheld without concern a thousand forms of religion subsisting in peace under their gentle sway, to inflict a severe punishment on any part of their subjects who had chosen for themselves a singular but an inoffensive mode of faith and worship.


 

A.M. Rosenthal:

So here we are at the U.N. A half-century ago it was created to keep peace and expand freedom, not a feckless dream but a reachable goal dear to the United States, the key founding member.

Now the U.N. is carpeted in contempt for the U.S., for failure to use either its material power or what remains of its intellectual power to eliminate a minor dictator with major plans for mass slaughter.

The case of Secretary General Kofi Annan is part of the change at the U.N.

Power voids are filled, quickly. Mr. Annan moved into the emptiness created by the failure of American leadership against Saddam Hussein. He brought into his expanding role great charm and wit, and a clear concept of how to handle Saddam -- with diligent appeasement.

By himself, he has become Saddam's greatest single asset at the U.N. And with Russia, China, France and other countries "sympathetic to Iraqi sentiments," as it is put at the U.N., he is part of an active coalition, along with selected top members of the huge U.N. bureaucracy.