But the NUM's choice was not between humane decline and the gamble of all-out victory: it was between the certainty of rapid rundown and the possibility of halting the assault.
"We were inspired by the clear understanding that there is a gap in the society between humane caring and economic well-being," Kivi wrote on the Bank of Happiness site.
The Army Field Manual's appendix has long set off alarm bells among professional interrogators, who have said its carefully worded descriptions of interrogation techniques just barely toe the line between humane treatment and torture.
In fact the two sides of the film come together to constitute an allegory about the soul and the national identity of Spain, and in a wider sense about the struggle between good and evil, between the humane and the inhumane, the civilised and the barbaric.
In the new edition (to be published this summer), I have changed the subtitle and sought to make a clear distinction between the humane and progressive feminist movement and a few hard-line women's lobbying groups who have sometimes thwarted efforts to help boys.
Amidst this stylised grotesquerie, however, is a startlingly intense and believable love story between Virginia and Alex, humane and tender, which is ignited by a very erotic and convincing love scene.
There is, it feels, a wafer-thin thin line in the human condition between what makes us fair, civil, humane and decent and what makes us barbarians.
Cooperative education, in which students alternate between tightly integrated classroom time and paid work experience, represents a humane and pragmatic model.
It is that supple movement between laughter and horror that makes this rich pageant of Tudor life her most humane and bewitching novel.
This was humane, and right.
