As you must have gathered, I am somewhat ancient myself, and I have vivid recollections, still, of the year 1940…in England, a year which I began as a very junior teacher at the University of London, and ended as a very junior member of His Majesty’s Forces. I must say that I felt more confident, more optimistic, then, about the future of our struggle, than I do now. It doesn’t give me any pleasure to say this, but I feel I should speak the truth.
We were in a bad way. Our French allies had capitulated and, in effect, changed sides. The Soviet Union, which one might have thought of as an ally against fascism and Nazism, had become Hitler’s most faithful and loyal ally. Stalin collaborated in many ways very loyally with Hitler, up to and including the day that the German armies invaded Russia. He refused to believe his own intelligence, as well as what we provided about impending German invasions. (I have been told by Russians that Hitler was the only man that Stalin ever really trusted. And given the many affinities between the two, that’s understandable.) The United States was still neutral, with very strict neutrality laws, which President Roosevelt was able to modify to a limited extent by adopting the principle of Cash and Carry: we sell you anything you want, provided you pay cash and fetch it yourselves. At a later date, when the cash was exhausted, it was switched to Lease-Lend.
At that time, as I say, we were really and truly alone in a hostile world. But, I remember very vividly that we, generally -- the people of my generation, as well as our elders -- had no doubt that at the end we would triumph, that our cause would survive, and this enemy, though he seemed overpowering, so overwhelming at the time, would be defeated. I don’t have that confidence now…
To me and my eye Fred Halliday, although a generation younger, seems to have kept more even a keel than has Professor Lewis in our post-9/11 planet's murky and unsettled waters. But, looking around in the immediate aftermath of last summer's Israel/Hezbollah war, he saw dangers that reminded him of nothing less than 1914 in Europe:
It is in this multidimensional context, rather than in the memory of earlier bilateral, Arab-Israeli wars, that the current Israeli-Hezbollah conflict must be seen. In the perspective of a longer history it can be said to resemble the European war that began in 1914 – another regional conflict long-planned even if suddenly, almost casually, detonated; and one which, once started, drew all the major states of the area into its wake, with dire consequences for all and catastrophic for many. It is a sobering comparison, but nothing in the current pattern of events across greater west Asia makes it extreme. There may be possibilities for progress in the present moment, but currently it is the dangers that are far easier to see.
So, if you happen to be a gloom-doomer, this is the time of the fat, and not the lean.
