Wednesday, August 12, 2009

The Road to Dunkirk

“The practical way of looking at things . . . may serve well enough in ordinary, normal times. But our times are not ‘normal’ in the good old Victorian sense, and never will be again. . . . These men, even Halifax, were essentially middle-class, not aristocrats. They did not have the hereditary sense of the security of the state, unlike Churchill, Eden, the Cecils. Nor did they have the toughness of the 18th-century aristocracy. They came at the end of the ascendancy of the Victorian middle-class, deeply affected as that was by high-mindedness and humbug. They all talked, in one form or another, the language of disingenuousness and cant: it was second nature to them – so different from Churchill. . . . It meant that they failed to see what was true, until too late, when it was simply a question of survival.”
-- A.L. Rowse, Appeasement: A Study in Political Decline, 1933-39

5 comments:

  1. I feel like you're trying to tell me something, but I just can't wrap my brain around it....

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  2. Psst...look at Rex Butler.

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  3. From Immoral Minority-

    "By the way I was also happy to hear "Tank" Jones receive that shout out from the Johnston family. Tank was the man who graciously answered my questions about Levi and let me know, and therefore all of you, that he was safe."

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  4. A-freakin'-men.

    Are you listening, Krauthammer, Ace, Moran, et al?

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  5. The high-mindedness and humbug came from the Edwardians [for you Upstairs Downstairs fans, from the James Bellamy types]. Churchill was Victorian in his outlook.

    A.L. Rowse was right on most things [and a raging puffda to boot], but his dissection in this matter, was quite off.

    Cordially,
    Sir Bob of Belvedere
    [http://www.thecampofthesaints.com/2009.08.09_arch.html#1250187973633]

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