I listened today as an elderly man described a dispute he'd been having with a near neighbour. He sounded tired, sad, deflated. He'd seemingly done his best to resolve the issues with his nuisance neighbour but had been unable to do so by means of dialogue and persuasion.
The man was Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister of Great Britain, and his dispute was with Adolf Hitler, whose invasion of Poland was to have disastrous consequences for that generation and their men and women of fighting age.
A wag on the radio has since said; "A British Prime Minister fooled by a foreign dictator - it couldn't happen today...", referring to Tony Blair and Saddam Hussein. Well, it's easy to be smart after the event, but then that's the whole idea of looking to the past for guidance in avoiding mistakes in the present that will affect the future.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment