“Europe in labour had through its pain seen for an instant a new glory, and then had collapsed to welter again in the agonies of war and fear. Governments had risen and fallen; men and women had worked, had starved, had made speeches, had fought, had been tortured, had died. Hope had come and gone, a fugitive in the scented bosom of illusion. Men had learned to sniff the heady dreamstuff of the soul and wait impassively while the lathes turned the guns for their destruction.”
— Eric Ambler, A Coffin for Demetrios (1939)
Postscript: Oct. 11 — And in America, what will happen if Trump wins again? “I think it would be the end of the republic,” says Princeton University professor Sean Wilentz, one of the historians quoted by The Washington Post. “It would be a kind of overthrow from within. … It would be a coup of the way we’ve always understood America.”
Certainly appears appropriate for 2022. Rumors abound that 2023 will be cancelled.
About that Ambler quote, yes! and yes again, it might not be a bad idea to cancel 2023 the way high-rise elevators cancel the 13th floor.
“Coffin” is a truly great book. Unfortunately, the Hollywood version didn’t match it.
Agreed, re book and film.
Perhaps Ambler is right for rediscovery. Thanks for recalling that passage, Jan.
By all means then, re-elect Biden. Idiot.
Biden has convened a strong international coalition in opposition to Putin’s aggression. That’s not what the US did as Nazism rose in Germany. Biden’s 2020 opponent would have turned Ukraine over to Putin, echoing Chamberlain’s attempt to appease Hitler, but with more enthusiasm. Perhaps the West has learned something since Ambler wrote in 1939.
You have to be delusional to think that that old fool could convene anything.
The WORLD HATE PUTIN, duh!
The administration of “that old fool” has managed to pass a major infrastructure bill, bring us out of a pandemic, steadily pursue multiple investigations of the criminality of the former guy, speak up for womens’ rights to bodily autonomy, pardon pot “criminals”, offer relief to holders of student debt, get a Black woman on the Supreme Court, face off with China, and provide help to Florida and Puerto Rico. After hurrying damage. Ok in my book.
Perhaps 1914 is a better analogy, the great powers jostling to establish new spheres of dominance, unaware of the explosion they are about to cause.