EDITORIAL

Beware the Ides of March

“What is still more extraordinary,” wrote Plutarch in Julius Caesar, “many report that a certain soothsayer forewarned him of a great danger which threatened him on the ides of March, and when that day has come, as he was going to the senate-house, he called to the soothsayer, and said laughing, “the ides of March are come”; to which he answered softly, “yes, but they are not gone.” (Longhorne translation)

AGE and stature—and the accompanying wisdom—breed the kind of arrogance that have made Julius Caesars in the past as well as at present throw care and humility to abandon. Such men build on their dreams and hopes, sacrifice, and harvest the fortune that come about with sheer industry. The men and women that surround these great men play the role of the soothsayers, forever with their words of caution as they have known it themselves.

The danger that lurks in each human endeavor—whether on land or at sea—is what excites the fated fool. Speaking of fools, that’s what the first day of April follows it up with. Too much of nothing the confident Caesar—with or without his own Brutus—confides in his scared and scarred soul. He breathes the scent of death or conquest and is consumed by it in the end.

Size and magnificence double his heart’s content. Too soon is forgotten the lesson of Davids against Goliaths, Vietnams against Americas, pugakhangs against Big Berthas, pumpboats against Titanics and Yamatos, bees against beasts. Could it be that grandness is the dark concealment of inferiority? Might EDSAs have taught us anything in the true workings of sought-after liberation and freedom?

Is it then kindness turned madness that unmakes men? We believe such persons are lonely in a crowd; they picture themselves as the conquerors of men and beasts—heroes at best—and refuse to be tamed by what they missed in their childhood, refuse to see today or what others forget to tell them. They come, they see, they conquer! But too little is left there for themselves to believe.

The greatest falsehood is that men make other men like them or like heroes. Man or hero, the pretender knows, are made by their times, not by other men. In  a place and time like ours, who knows what’s really inside of the hirsute and the shaven, the man with a gun and the one with legal cloak, the hoarse-voiced speaker and the silent crowd?

Unbelief eats up victories. Disbelief consumes the truth like wildfire.

Oh, well. No matter what, a ship comes to shore not because it is safe there but because that’s where they were built from.

EDITORIAL:

Beware the Ides of March
 

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Capt. Telesforo Solda
 

CHRIST AT SEA:
Jubilee on the high seas
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THE LAW AND SEAFARERS:
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"The Protector"
 

SOUNDING LEAD:
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MEAN INDICATED PRESSURE:
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Engr. Nelson P. Ramirez