“PERFIDIOUS ALBION?”

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 79, 11 January 1944, Page 1

“PERFIDIOUS ALBION?”

There are some who consider that the principal vice of the English, the Scots, and the fighting Irish is that they exist. This stubborn attitude of mind has become more than ever deeply rooted. In the summer of 1940, when all other support was gone, a Scottish soldier was heard to say that, if England also were to collapse and Scotland alone remained, it would be a long war Their second vice is that of hypocrisy. They say they do not want to fight, and yet neither appeaser nor tyrant has found them willing to abdicate; they say they are without continental ambition, and yet 3 times in little more than a century they have built up continental coalitions, and have insisted upon giving the world time in which to save itself. Their third vice is harder to define. The French have called it perfidy, others opportunism. It consists in their habit of taking sides with the second strongest of European Powers, and of attempting, wherever they have influence, to prevent enthusiasts from cutting one another’s throats. — ("Menander." in "The Times Literary Supplement.")