London Can Take It
By Callimachus | Related entries in History, Quotes, Smart Things Said By Smart People, The War On Terrorism, The World, WarOnce upon a time, the reaction would have been thus:
“He hopes, by killing large numbers of civilians, and women and children, that he will terrorise and cow the people of this mighty imperial city …. Little does he know the spirit of the British nation, or the tough fibre of the Londoners, whose forebears played a leading part in the establishment of Parliamentary institutions and who have been bred to value freedom far above their lives. This wicked man, this repository and embodiment of many forms of soul-destroying hatred, this monstrous product of former wrongs and shame, has now resolved to try to break our famous island race by a process of indiscriminate slaughter and destruction. What he has done is to kindle a fire in British hearts, here and all over the world, which will glow long after all traces of the conflagration he has caused in London have been removed.”
The speaker is Winston Churchill, of course. The date of the broadcast, coincidentally, September 11, 1940.
Amid mourning, I would wish for the same answering fire to kindle in the hearts of Londoners on this awful day. But there is no certainty of it. Poison has circulated for a long time in those veins. This is a Britain where in 2003 almost half the people told poll-takers they fear America as the greatest threat to world peace.
In much of America, on Sept. 11, 2001, the people stood to their captain — regardless of the fact most didn’t approve him and many thought his immediate reaction reprehensible. It’s an old reaction, deep-rooted in the clannish Scots-Irish folkways from which modern America largely is forged. Those qualities come from the stony soil of the British Isles.
But so much of it drained off to the New World in the immigration centuries. Where will Britain be in a month? Will Blair be Giuliani or Aznar?
This entry was posted on Thursday, July 7th, 2005 and is filed under History, Quotes, Smart Things Said By Smart People, The War On Terrorism, The World, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
