[The Might]

There you are wrong, since I would not be considering diplomacy with Sauron, but with those supporting him, the Men of Khand and Harad and further into the east.

I believe they could have been reasoned with and brought on the good side.
Now you may argue that this was attempted and failed - with the Ithryn Luin setting off to the east and possibly having founded magic cults around themselves and with Gandalf having also went a bit further South (not that far) where he gained the name Incanus.

But I do not believe that all was done that could have been done. Gondor's insecurity of how to handle the southern neighbours and their seeming unwilligness to initiate any true diplomatic talks is what brought the Easterlings and the Southrons closer to Sauron.

First of all, we know they could be reasoned with, we see that after the war when peace is made with the people of the south and the east.

But unfortunately, we hear of no such attempts by kings like Romendacil or Hyarmendacil, they just conquer, but don't seem to try and win over the population.

I believe that had these people received better treatment, had Gondor invested more in helping these people they conquered, improving their lives for the better, then they would have been a lot more resistant to supporting Sauron.

Now, I will give you this, by the time of the War of the Ring it was probably already too late, this I accept, however it would not have been too late before earlier. So much for the War of the Ring.


You make a valid point that Sauron or Saruman lacked the conscience needed for such an action to work, I admit my lack of thinking deeper here, I did indeed miss that part.


And lastly, the part about my signature. It gets a bit personal there, but I won't complain, so the idea behind it is I am proudly showing that date, but not necessarily for the reason you think of, so don't be so quick to jump to conclusions. 1815 was the year when the Urburschenschaft was founded in Jena, a student organization which unlike previous ones had also political goals. Indeed they did pretty much dispise the French for their part in the war and were no big fans of Napoleon, as they had fought against him in the war as volunteers (at least many of them). But the special thing about them was that they also fought against the state order at that time, the old rooted outdated conservative structures which wanted to suppress the intelligent people in the state and get everything under the control of the nobility again with Metternich as the one leading the whole process. So they founded their organization with the motto "Honour, Freedom, Fatherland", but they were very, very liberal for that time. They were patriotic, but in a good way, not the jingoistic kind of patriotism they unfortunately later developed after 1870.

Now, the point is, it's a motto standing as a symbol for liberal ideology, for freedom. I see no contradiction between produly displaying it and in the same time looking for better (at least in my opinion) means to reach this freedom for all people. I see no problem in being proud of people that died to achieve something good in the past and trying to find new ways, again perhaps better ones to achieve something good in the present.

After all, should we not learn from history? Yes, you make a good point with Chamberlain, I agree upon that, but again looking further back in history, had England taken a more German-friendly position in the 20s and had made more pressure for an ease on reparation payments and had supported Germany's economy more, the whole Hitler episode would never had happened. Actually, England did that partially, and it almost worked. It was mostly just the Wall Stree Crash that nailed it for the Nazis. With the economy a bit stronger it all may have well worked out in the end.

So just saying "Oh, Neville was too nice and this caused all the war" is in my opinion wrong and way too one-sided. Looking back into history more in depth, one realises that had the British (and especially the French) been a bit nicer to Germany all could have probably been avoided.

Ok, sorry for the big off-topic part but I felt it was necessary to set things straigh from my point of view.


So, concluding with the Scouring of the Shire, I agree that you make a good, valid point there - Saruman had no conscience, but I doubt the ruffians had none. So it would have been very difficult indeed to manage anything without violence, but not impossible. Ruffians were not Orcs or trolls, they were men, bad men, but in the end still men and not some mental people. So the idea is that maybe one could have done things like Frodo did. If you look at the Battle of Bywater he seems to have had a position more like mine, whilst Sam would have been on your side. He refused to take part and to kill sentient beings for the common good and spent his time making sure no ruffian who gave up were killed by Hobbits.

Moving further, did the Scouring make Hobbits better? And mark the question, it's not did it make it better for the Hobbits, but made them better. I believe not. It took away their inocence, best example is the killing of Wormtongue. The exhausted and tormented Wormtongue kills his evil master and gets three arrows in his body in return from Hobbit archers before Frodo could intervene and stop them from killing him. Great way to end a war.

So yes, perhaps violence was the only way to make things better for the Hobbits, but it did exactly the opposite with their characters.


Btw, sorry for respoding after so much time, I was afk this whole time and only got the chance to type all this now.