 Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe used it in that sense in "The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus" in 1588.The phrase has had fitful use in American politics.It was used by several figures during the Vietnam War, including Gen. William Westmoreland, who wrote in his 1976 autobiography "A Soldier Reports" that "a lack of determination to stay the course...demonstrated in Cambodia, South Vietnam, and Laos that the alternative to victory was defeat."