DOCSLIB.ORG

Somewhere South of Suez

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Somewhere South of Suez SOMEWHERE SOUTH OF SUEZ by Douglas Reed published: 1950 CONTENTS Part One – New Lands For Old Part Three – Before The Millennium 01 London Leavetaking 01 Balcony Over Durban 02 ‘Passengers For Johannesburg …’ 02 Full Fifty Years 03 The Second Act 04 The Rise Of Zion Part Two – South African Year 05 The Decline Of The American Republic 01 Feet Of Gold 06 The Bundle Of Hay 02 Fifty-Fifty? 03 Natal The Beleaguered 04 ‘This Is Our England!’ Part Four - … The Caravan Goes On 05 The Problem! 06 Immigrants! Dance Of The Fireflies 07 Great Closed Spaces 08 White Christmas 09 March Of The Coons 10 … For Ever Java! 11 Parliament At The Cape 12 Nocturne Postscript 13 Just Nuisance! 14 Brand From The Burning 15 The Fiction Of Food Facts 16 Sound Of A Horn 17 The House That George Built 18 Poor Little White Girl 19 After Us The Desert? 20 In Blanketland 21 The Crown And Malefu 22 Basuto Masquerade 23 The Government Path 24 What Price Protection? 25 Soliloquy In Plaster 26 Dawn Rendezvous 27 City Of Suspense 28 I Cyprian! 29 Passive Aggression 30 Cry Hue! 31 Journey’s Log To H.M.S. AMETHYST July 1949 PART ONE NEW LANDS FOR OLD Chapter One LONDON LEAVETAKING I could find nothing more to pack or throw away. At last the house was bare of all trace of us, unless, in some cupboard-corner, still lay the fragment of a broken toy, or, in the miry little backyard, the sodden shell of a Roman Candle. The stillness of London in the small hours was intolerable. I would have given much suddenly to hear again the clatter-patter of feet and the uproar of voices which so often distracted me from my work when the house was full. I had toiled all day, clearing up forgotten odds and ends, and now stood in the empty house among my bags packed for Africa, while a northbound train carried the others from me. Big Ben had long chimed midnight. It was time to go. I looked round the deserted rooms, thinking that to leave a home still warm with family life is to die a little. It was not right to go away from a place that liked us, and that we liked, so well. I went once more through the house, where now only the dust and shadow of a happy year remained. It was one of the years that followed the second of the twentieth-century wars. London all around was unkempt, cheerless and underfed. My native city was not allowed to revive freely after its long ordeal, but was held by official decrees in an artificial twilight of troubled frustration. Our Chelsea year was therefore one of present discomfort and ominous prospect, yet for the family in that tiny house it was an unforgettably happy time, because its members were happy in each other and because London, in this purgatory, was so lovely. God disposes, no matter what man may ordain. The enforced dilapidation of old London only enhanced its grace and beauty. Wren’s churches, once hemmed in by the thrusting, elbowing, tiptoeing buildings of the City, now, as ruined shells, rode free and high like fine frigates in the razed area round St. Paul’s. Bumbles might dim the very lights of London, but this gave greater brilliance to the red, amber and green disks at the street-crossings; these made carnival in the blue dusk and enchanted the homeward walks of a London family from Hyde Park, through Sloane Street, to the little house. The drab drapes of privation and disrepair lent fresh colour and importance to small human things that spoke of London’s brave past, of its strength and endurance, and of the hope of a brighter future. We loved them all, during our Chelsea year: the artists who sold pictures in the King’s Road and the pleasant cafés with striped awnings which men back from the war opened there; the Guardsmen who on summer afternoons played cricket by the great barracks, where anti-aircraft guns pointed minatory fingers at dangers past or to come: the Chelsea Pensioners, in red or black frock-coats, who contentedly watched the game while the bomb-holes in their historic home, next door, were slowly mended. Beyond, tugs and barges plied on the Thames, and children played in Battersea Park in the shadow of the great power-station which the bombers never could destroy. If ever we had a little petrol the five of us, packed into an aged two-seater, drove to old Putney Bridge, and Wimbledon and Richmond, turning again towards London Town in that bejewelled twilight which made it, so battered and tattered, a fairy city still. I was enchanted by this beauty of grey London in 1947. I felt a sadness in it and wondered if this were born of suffering endured and would pass, or if it were premonitory. I sometimes think that cities do become fey and, unless this was only in the eye of the beholder, I believed I saw in the Nineteen-Thirties a wistful, twilight loveliness in ancient cities over which great tribulation hung, like Vienna, Dresden and Cologne; today they are razed or sunken in sad oblivion, captive or half- free. I felt it in Prague and in Paris before the German invasions. To me the very stones of those cities, the air in their streets, the looks and voices of their people, joined in a symphony of presentiment. With such memories in mind I looked at the loveliness of London, as the decisive second half of the fateful twentieth century approached, and hoped that when the final balance of this stupendous hundred years was struck it might still stand, sturdy as ever, while the hopes of men revived around it; it has a simple faith and a rocklike staunchness which may outlast the century’s concluding storms. Under the spell of its beauty we passed as happy a year as five people were ever likely to know and from empty rooms I now looked back on this twelvemonth and scanned its ups and downs. Laughter around the table at Christmas, on birthdays, on Guy Fawkes Day. Dire anxiety for a baby and heartfelt gratitude when the danger passed. Great delight in unexpected parcels from Canada and Australia, New Zealand and South Africa; had we not been kept short of food we could not have known the joy of those feasts. The cruellest winter in memory, when Londoners were forbidden to warm themselves, and the loveliest summer we ever knew. The joy of finding a sitter- in who enabled us to have a rare evening out, and the added zest this lent to a modest dinner at the little club near Hyde Park Corner, to a new play by Noel Coward, and to the homeward stroll together beneath the trees of St. James’s Park to Knightsbridge, the last look at sleeping babes, the footsteps in the quiet street as we fell asleep.... Now the lovely year was gone as wine from a pitcher. I felt the life fading from the house, like the light from a failing lamp. I wondered how I could have been foolish enough to disperse a happy family. Could I by incantation have resummoned them all, restored babes to cots, hubbub to quiet rooms, books to shelves, clothes to pegs, I would have done this. But there was no turning back now. A man is usually two men. One of his selves belongs to his family and the other to his calling. If he is a sailor, or a roving journalist in this Gadarene century, that is bad for him and for his family. Before 1939, when I returned to England because the new war was at hand, my life was one of constant movement. Now my writer’s blood was stagnant from eight years pent in my native island, and the gyves of this inaction had eaten deep grooves of impatience into my soul. In eight years I felt traveller’s air against my face only during five brief escapes, or escapades: a journey to Paris before the German invasion, a cruise along the Channel with a naval convoy, a mad excursion to the Isle of Man (which I made to feel a ship’s planks beneath my feet again, and because it was the only place outside his shores which an islander might reach in wartime), a visit to Normandy and a dash to Dublin. Now one of my two selves longed to stay and the other desperately needed to get out into the great world-again, to see what was going on and who was behind what was going on. I thought that the great Plan, of imprisoning all men, everywhere, within their lands or islands, would continue during the coming half-century, and that the next decade or two might offer the last respite before the final showdown, when freedom would either return to the world or be banished for a long and dark time. This might be my last chance to sniff the air of liberty, to go like a freeman about the lovely world. Eight years of energy were stored in me like a compressed spring. Now it was released, and I was off like a bullet. I opened the front door, put my baggage on the top step, and with a heavy heart closed the door; behind it lay a happy year and in front of it the future stretched as obscure as the night itself, which was pitch dark.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Cr^Ltxj
    THE NAZI BLOOD PURGE OF 1934 APPRCWBD": \r H M^jor Professor 7 lOLi Minor Professor •n p-Kairman of the DeparCTieflat. of History / cr^LtxJ~<2^ Dean oiTKe Graduate School IV Burkholder, Vaughn, The Nazi Blood Purge of 1934. Master of Arts, History, August, 1972, 147 pp., appendix, bibliography, 160 titles. This thesis deals with the problem of determining the reasons behind the purge conducted by various high officials in the Nazi regime on June 30-July 2, 1934. Adolf Hitler, Hermann Goring, SS leader Heinrich Himmler, and others used the purge to eliminate a sizable and influential segment of the SA leadership, under the pretext that this group was planning a coup against the Hitler regime. Also eliminated during the purge were sundry political opponents and personal rivals. Therefore, to explain Hitler's actions, one must determine whether or not there was a planned putsch against him at that time. Although party and official government documents relating to the purge were ordered destroyed by Hermann GcTring, certain materials in this category were used. Especially helpful were the Nuremberg trial records; Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919-1939; Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918-1945; and Foreign Relations of the United States, Diplomatic Papers, 1934. Also, first-hand accounts, contem- porary reports and essays, and analytical reports of a /1J-14 secondary nature were used in researching this topic. Many memoirs, written by people in a position to observe these events, were used as well as the reports of the American, British, and French ambassadors in the German capital.
    [Show full text]
  • Notes to Pages 485-92 709
    Notes to Pages 485-92 709 13 Jones, War in the Air, 1v. 287-8. app. XVII. 453-{i 14 Ibid., 284-5 15 Canadian Bank or Commerce, Leners from the From: Being a Record of the Part Played by Officers o.fthe Bank in the Great War. 1914-1919, C.L. Foster and W.S. Duthie, eds. (Toronto I 1920-1 )). 1, 256 16 'Fl ugzeugverluste an der Westfront Miirz bis September 1918,' in Deutschland, Oberkommandos des Heeres, Der Weltkrieg 1914 bis 1918 . Band x iv Beilagen: Die Kriegfiihrung an der Wesifro111 im Jahre 1918 (Berlin 1944), Beilage 40 17 Ibid.; 84 Squadron air combat repons, 17 March 1918, Air 1/1227/204/5/2634/84: 84 Squadron operational record, 17 March 1918, Air 1/1795/204/155/2 18 K. Bodenschatz. ' Das Jagdgeschwader Frhr.v.Richthofen Nr I.' quoted in G.P. Neumann, ed .• In der left u11besieg1 (MUnchen 1923), 227. DHist SO R 1 196. Set 72 19 [E.) Ludendorff, My War Memories, 1914-1918 (London nd), 11, 589, 596; Edmonds, Military Operations: France and Belgium, 1918. 1, 109, 154-5; Jones, War in the Air, IV, 268 20 Jones, War in the Air, 1v. 268: Edmonds. Military Operatio11s: France and Belgium, 1918, I, 109, 152-4 21 Jones, War in 1he Air, 1v, app. xvi, table 'A': France, Ministere de la Guerre. Etat-Major de l'Armee, Service Historique, Les Armeesfrant,aises da11s la Kra11de Guerre (Paris 193 1), Tome v1. 1, 168-9n 22 v Brigade work summary, 21 March 1918, Air 1/838/204/5/285; Ludendortf, War Memories, 11 .
    [Show full text]
  • Comparative Perspectives on American Political Development
    IN THIS ISSUE... Volume 19 Number 2 Spring/Summer 2009 Comparative Perspectives on American Political Development Richard Franklin Bensel Department of Government, Cornell University I write to you as the 19th president of the section, a section now mature enough to have spanned a generation. We, as the Jefferson Airplane once sang, “are no longer young.” But we are also not old. We are somewhere in between, neither idling at a crossroads nor hurtling down a freeway. The section has its share of challenges but seems to be in good shape. But this is not a “state of the section” essay. Instead, I write as one who, along with the rest of you, have watched Politics and History develop over the years. We have, as I will describe below, become a bit of a tribe but our tribalism has always been less developed than most of our peer sections. And this is all to the good. A tension lurks at the center of most In In this Issue academicIN life, a tension between the sociological imperative of a profession and the individualizing, creative spirit of scholarship. The sociological imperativeTHIS implacably demands that we belong to an identifiable intellectual community. These communities,ISSUE... in turn, come to have boundaries From the President ...............................................1 Editor’s Note.........................................................2 marked out by the analytical assumptions the 2009 APSA Officer Nominees.........................2 members share, the subject matter of their Nichols on Realignment.....................................3
    [Show full text]
  • Insanity Fair by Douglas Reed
    Insanity Fair by Douglas Reed published: April, 1938 Publishers Note: Douglas Reed was living in Vienna in 1937 and in the beginning of 1938 when he wrote this book. While the book was in the press the storm broke. The publishers could easily have edited the chapters on Austria to recognize the changes already accomplished. But by this means much of the vividness of the author's first-hand account of the last days of Austrian independence would have been lost. Therefore the chapter on Austria (ch 32) was allowed to stand as it is written. All but the last four paragraphs of it was written before events began to move; and this part shows how clearly the author felt the suspense that lay over the country and shared the anxiety of its inhabitants. The last four paragraphs of Chapter 32 were written after von Schuschnigg visited Hitler at Berchtesgaden, and these paragraphs show equally clearly that Douglas Reed then immediately recognized the end of Austria to be imminent. It came a month later, and Chapters 44, 45, 46 and 47 (which were incorporated after the second impression) describe how it happened. In these chapters the reader sees a sound prediction, based on knowledge and experience, come true. * Authors Note: None of the characters in this book is imaginary. They all exist, believe it or not. None of the opinions expressed in this book commits any third party. They are mine, all mine, and nobody's but mine. None of the material in this book has been published before, but I wrote a full-length book about the Reichstag Fire, which is briefly discussed in this volume, and it was published (The Burning of the Reichstag) by Messrs.
    [Show full text]
  • This Age of Conflict
    THIS AGE OF CONFLICT By Ivor Benson ABOUT THE WRITER: Ivor Benson is a former South African and Fleet Street, London, journalist; South African Broadcasting Corporation news analyst and commentator 1963/64; Information Adviser to Ian Smith's Rhodesian Front Government 1964/65; political analyst and author of several books, he has traveled widely. Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past -- George Orwell It is almost a joke now in the Western world, in the 20th century, to use words like 'good and 'evil'. They have become almost old- fashioned concepts, but they are very real and genuine concepts. These are concepts from a sphere which is higher than us. And instead of getting involved in base, petty, short-sighted political calculations and games. we have to recognize that the concentration of world Evil and the tremendous force of hatred is there and it's flowing from there throughout the world. And we have to stand up against it and not hasten to give to it, give to it, give to it, every-thing that it wants to swallow. -- Alexander Solzhenitsyn Knowledge can be of two kinds: knowledge of the world outside ourselves, the macrocosm, and knowledge of the kingdom within, the microcosm, both of them boundless. The better we know ourselves, the easier it will be to know the world; alternatively, the better we know the world, so much easier it will be to know ourselves and our deepest and most enduring needs. It is not more and more knowledge that we need for the purpose of strengthening our position as individuals, but only knowledge of a kind that holds together and makes sense.
    [Show full text]
  • The Battle for Rhodesia
    The Battle For Rhodesia by Douglas Reed published: 1967 CONTENTS [Editor's Note: Although no chapter numbers were used in the original book, they have been adopted here for convenience] 1 INSANITY FAIR, 1966 22 THE PINNACLE OF WEAKNESS 2 ON MOVING FRONTIERS 23 THE WORLD OF WAPWAG 3 THE RISE OF RHODESIA 24 THE MASTER PLAN 4 THE DECADE OF DOUBLETALK 25 INSANITY FAIR, 1967? 5 THE CROSS AT KARIBA 26 THE SUMMING UP 6 THE TERROR BY NIGHT 7 ON REPRESENTING THE PEOPLE * 8 MISS PHOMBEYA’S TOE 9 INDEPENDENCE POSTSCRIPT 10 PORTRAIT OF A REBEL 11 … AND OF A REBELLION! * 12 POLICE STATE 13 ON PERSUADING THE PEOPLE APPENDIX 1 14 GREEN AND PLEASANT PLACE 15 HALF-YEARLY AUDIT * 16 THE LAST BASTION 17 BLUEPRINT FOR A BATTLE APPENDIX 2 18 AMERICA GONE AMOK? 19 BENIGHTED NATIONS * 20 DESTINY NON-MANIFEST 21 AMERICA MOVES IN APPENDIX 3 * Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report: if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. – (Philippians 2 v 28) These are the golden rules for a writer. The qualities enumerated are hard to find in the picture of our times, but I have tried to discern them as I went along and to give them their place in this chronicle of events as seen by me. * Chapter One INSANITY FAIR, 1966 Respected reader, To those of you who know my books (a diminishing band: but aren't we all?) and to those who know them not, let me recall that in 1936, sitting at a window in Vienna, I wrote a book, Insanity Fair, about the coming Second World War.
    [Show full text]
  • Airmen-Ww1-14.Pdf
    648 Appendices TABLE 22 Fatal and non-fatal casuallies by year 1915 1916 1917 1918 Total I 8 80 387 897 1372 2 16 75 339 682 1112 3 2 27 11 3 228 370 TOTAL 26 182 839 1807 2854 TABLE 23 Percentage of each type of casualty by year 1915 1916 1917 1918 I .6 5.8 28.2 65.4 2 l.4 6.7 30.5 61.3 3 .5 7.3 30.5 61.6 TABLE 24 Percentage or each year's casualties by type 1915 1916 1917 191 8 I 30.8 44.0 46.I 49.6 2 61.5 41.2 40.4 37.7 3 7.7 14.8 13.S 12.6 1 Killed and missing 2 Wounded and injured 3 POW and interned Total X2 - 10.0 Critical xi .001 (6d0 - 22.5 significant figure here, these do serve to show the steadily increasing scale of the air war, and the increasing price that Canadians were paying in it. Table 25 is an analysis of RFC and RA F casualties in the programme as a propor­ tion of the total RFC/RAF casualties.• Even allowing for the incomplete nature of • It is obvious that the total RFC/RA F casualty figure for prisoners is very low for 1918. and it is suspected that these ngures. probably made up in the last days of the war. con tain many indi­ viduals among the Missing who subsequently turned up as prisoners. A more complete total showed 8136 killed, died, or presumed dead and 7245 wounded and injured.
    [Show full text]
  • A.K. Chesterton and the Problem of British Fascism, 1915-1973
    A.K. CHESTERTON AND THE PROBLEM OF BRITISH FASCISM, 1915-1973. Luke LeCras Bachelor of Arts in History with Honours. THESIS PRESENTED FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN HISTORY MURDOCH UNIVERSITY, AUGUST 2017 THESIS DECLARATION I declare that this thesis is my own account of my research and contains as its main content work which has not previously been submitted for a degree at any tertiary education institution. .................................... Luke LeCras i ABSTRACT Fascist and extreme right-wing political movements in Britain have been the subject of enduring interest to historians since 1945, with the majority of works centring on the British Union of Fascists (BUF), a political party founded and led by Sir Oswald Mosley between 1932 and 1940. Despite the BUF’s failure to achieve levels of support on par with many fascist movements in continental Europe, there is now a sizeable body of historiography dealing with the party as a minor case within the study of European fascism and as a unique phenomenon of radical politics in interwar Britain. By comparison, little interest has been devoted to aspects of British fascism not connected to Mosley or the BUF. Moreover, extreme right movements operating in Britain since 1945 have largely been characterized as either a direct legacy of the interwar movement or an attempt to reform British fascism under a different guise. This thesis re-examines the continuity between the interwar and the post-war iterations of the extreme right in Britain by focusing on the ideas and activism of Arthur Kenneth (A.K) Chesterton. A high-ranking member of the BUF who made substantial contributions to the party’s propaganda, Chesterton split with Mosley in 1938 to pursue an independent career in extreme right-wing politics that persisted until his death in 1973.
    [Show full text]
  • Lest We Regret
    Lest We Regret by Douglas Reed published: 1943 CONTENTS Author's Note Part One - Great Argument Part Four - Battle In England 01 To Friends And Foes 01 In Civvy Street 02 ‘Something Constructive!’ 02 When The Boys Come Home 03 When The Girls Come Home 04 Snap! Part Two - Freedom Lost! 05 Peace, The Graveyard 06 The Example Of France 01 God’s Englishman 07 The House That Jerry Built 02 Where England Stood 08 Escape! 03 Where England Stands 09 The Example Of Germany 10 ‘All Nazis And Quislings’ 11 The Breed! Part Three - Freedom Regained? 12 A Tale Of Three Mothers 13 The Children Of Israel 01 First Things First 14 On Holding Our Own 02 The Choice Of Enemies 15 Social Security 03 Whodunnit? 16 Nineteen-Sixty Corner 04 The Re-education Of England 05 Four English Freedoms Kind Friends, Adieu AUTHOR'S NOTE I would be grateful if people in many parts of the Empire, who have received no reply from me, would read this book as an acknowledgment of their letters, a token of friendship reciprocated and an answer to their questions. I was forced to choose between continuing to write books or entering into a correspondence so great, that it would have occupied all my time. Most of these letters share a common theme - anxiety for the future, however our victory in this war may appear - and this book is a joint reply to them. The clear road beyond victory, for which we long, is still not visible. That is why I chose for my title the words Battle in England, from a letter written by a young officer who served far away from this, his native island.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction
    Notes Introduction 1 V. Bartlett, Nazi Germany Explained (London: Victor Gollancz, 1933), p. 9; G. R. Stirling Taylor, ‘Review of The Cambridge Ancient History, Vol. X: The Augustan Empire 44 B.C.–A.D. 70’, English Review, 61 (1935) 629. 2 Cited in H. Fein, Accounting for Genocide: National Responses and Jewish Victimization during the Holocaust (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), p. 4. 3 F. Borkenau, The New German Empire (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1939), p. 132. 4 H.-J. Gamm, Der braune Kult: Das Dritte Reich und seine Ersatzreligion. Ein Beitrag zur politischen Bildung (Hamburg: Rütten & Loening Verlag, 1962), p. 63. 5 G. Norlin, Hitlerism: Why and Whither? (London: Friends of Europe, 1935), p. 5. Cf. H. G. Alexander, ‘Whither Germany? Whither Europe?’, Contemporary Review, 144 (1933) 662: ‘the pagan faith that has brought a new hope to Germany’; E. W. D. Tennant, ‘Hitler’, in The Man and the Hour: Studies of Six Great Men of Our Time, ed. A. Bryant (London: Philip Allan, 1934), p. 138: ‘in Hitlerism the Germans have found a new religion’; Rev. E. Quinn, ‘The Religion of National Socialism’, Hibbert Journal, 36 (1938) 444–5: ‘The real religion of National Socialism consists in Germanism.’ 6 See especially M. Burleigh, The Third Reich: A New History (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000); and R. S. Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2001); see also H.-J. Schoeps and M. Ley, eds., Der Nationalsozialismus als politische Religion (Bodenheim: Syndikat, 1997); C.-E. Bärsch, Die politische Religion des Nationalsozialismus: Die religiöse Dimension der NS-Ideologie in den Schriften von Dietrich Eckart, Joseph Goebbels, Alfred Rosenberg und Adolf Hitler (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1998); P.
    [Show full text]
  • Disgrace Abounding
    Disgrace Abounding by Douglas Reed published: March, 1939 CONTENTS (click on a title to go straight to that chapter) Preface 01. Journey Resumed 20. Nature Of The Beast 02. Island Lament 21. Out Of Joint 03. Bird’s-Eye View 22. The Little Rocket 04. A Coloured Handkerchief 23. How Odd Of God 05. David Undaunted 24. Long, Long Trail 06. Portrait Of A Gentleman 25. In Town To-Night 07. Hungarian Summer 26. Little Girl From Nowhere 08. End Of A Baron 27. One-Eyed Outcast 09. Hungarian Idyll 28. Make Thee Mightier Yet 10. Swastika Over Hungary 29. Christmastide In Prague 11. Blue-Faced Venus 30. Reds!!! 12. Half A League 31. Christmas Day In Chust 13. Better The Devil … 32. Carol And Codreanu 14. Hungarian Tragedy 33. Magyarland Again 15. War In The Air 34. Belgrade Burlesque 16. And Thou 35. Bohemia In Bondage 17. Boy King 36. Looking At England 18. Fly, Fly, Fly Again 37. The Twilight Thickens 19. Blockmarks And Balkan Markets Postscript Appendix: Mort De Bohème Preface All the fictions in this book are characteristic. None of the characters is fictitious, though some are disguised. A multitude of opinions is expressed. They may be poor things; in any case, they are mine own. If the book were to have a dedication it would be, in the words of the furniture removal man, to you - from me. While I was finishing the book, Insanity Fair, to which this is a sequel, events began to move so fast, and myself with them, that I never had time to go through the proofs with a microscope for the misprints of others and the mistakes of myself.
    [Show full text]
  • Political Writings of George Orwell By
    POLITICAL WRITINGS OF GEORGE ORWELL BY: GEORGE ORWELL CATEGORY: COMMENTARY & OPINION -- HISTORICAL POLITICAL WRITINGS OF GEORGE ORWELL By George Orwell CONTENTS Essays • P olitics and the English Language • Wh y I Write • N otes on Nationalism • Th e Prevention of Literature Newspaper Columns, Letters and Editorials 1943-1946 • R evising History As I Please 4 February 1944 • N o New Ideas? As I Please • R obot Bombs As I Please, 30 June 1944 • C ivilian Bombing As I Please, 14 July 1944 • " My Country, Right or Wrong" As I Please, 24 December 1943 • A trocity Pictures As I Please, 8 September 1944 • H ell As I Please, 14 April 1944 • C onversation with a Pacifist As I Please • Wi shful Thinking Partisan Review, Winter 1945 • Th e Coming Age of Superpowers As I Please • C apitalism and Communism: Two Paths to Slavery • U gly Leaders As I Please • War Guilt As I Please • R evenge is Sour 9 November, 1945 Politics and the English Language 1946 Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language -- so the argument runs -- must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.
    [Show full text]