PERPETUAL GLOOM

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 150, 28 June 1938, Page 10

PERPETUAL GLOOM

UTTERANCES OF LEADERS The news that Norway has coun- 1 selled its people to start at once to , hoard foodstuffs on account of the j ominously disturbing. atmosphere of , present-day Europe will be welcomed . by pessimists as confirmation of their . fears, says the "Manchester Guardian." j But optimists can still smile and quote ( a "Bagshot" comment to the effect that "the Empire has been ruined a hundred ( times every year since I came on the , scene, and I used to be quite miser- 1 able about it, but since I became forty , I have resigned myself to live philo- ] sophically among the ruins." . More comfort came, four years ago, j from Sir Josiah Stamp, and it is just as , comforting now as it was then. In 1933 . Sir Josiah collected the following j Cassandra-like utterances, designed to , raise the obstinately flat hair of the ( speaker's contemporaries:— j There is scarcely anything around us , but ruin and despair. (Pitt.) j Everything is tending to a convul- t sion. (Lord Grey, 1819.) \ I thank God I shall be spared from . seeing the consummation of ruin that . is gathering around us. (Duke of Wei- ] lington, 1851.) In industry, commerce, and agriculture there is no hope. (Disraeli, 1849.) Nothing can save the British Empire from shipwreck. (Lord Shaftesbury, 1848.) But before the optimist cheers he should reflcct that it would be quite J easy to compile a list of correspond- \ ingly confident remarks made by states- s men on the eve of war and catastrophe, t