their own era (the century in which they were born), and of how little our vast Western university systems—especially their fad-prone humanities and social-science departments, devoted to nominalist scholarship of diminishing circles of significance and intelligibility—have done to remedy that deficiency. Nevertheless, as two recent popes—a Pole and a German—who lived through the tragic events of the 20th century have repeatedly struggled to make clear, only moral truth can make us free, in any sense of “free” that is worth having.

M.D. Aeschliman is Professor Emeritus of Education at Boston University, Professor of Anglophone Literature at the University of Italian Switzerland, and the author of The Restitution of Man: C.S. Lewis and the Case Against Scientism (1983, 1998). His most recent book is a new edition of Charles Dickens’snovel A Tale of Two Cities (Ignatius Critical Editions, 2012).

My great grandmother came to the US from Warsaw in 1906. She kept in touch with her family for the next several years. After this battle, she never heard from them again, and found out later that they had all died as a result of this invasion. Thank you to Adam Zamoyski for shedding light on this dark, unknown time in world history.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Tony-Esolen/1184164082 Tony Esolen

Thank you for this, Michael.

A former student of mine several years ago gave me a book of Civil War memoirs written by Major John Sobieski. Yes, I said that right: John Sobieski. He was a descendant of the John Sobieski who had saved Europe from the Turks at Vienna in the seventeenth century. It’s apparent