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Alistair Cooke's "Letter From America" (Alistair Cooke, BBC Broadcaster, is now about 95 years old.) About the author: In 1936, the NBC network invited Alistair Cooke to do a weekly broadcast of reflections on British life called London Letter. Cooke then emigrated to the United States in 1937, and asked the BBC to let him do the same thing in reverse. Eventually he succeeded, and Letter from America is now the longest running radio broadcast in human history. In the process it has won a faithful worldwide audience of several million and many friends in high places. When Cooke was awarded an honorary knighthood in 1973, the Queen is reputed to have expressed bewildered admiration at his ability to sit down, week after week, and communicate so directly with his audience. "...I promised to lay off topic “A” - Iraq - until the Security Council makes a judgment on the inspectors report, and I shall keep that promise. But I must tell you that throughout the past fortnight Ive listened to everybody involved in or looking on to a monotonous din of words, like a tide crashing and receding on a beach making a great noise and saying the same thing over and over. And this ordeal triggered a nightmare a day-mare, if you like. Through the ceaseless tide I heard a voice, a very English voice of an old man Prime Minister Chamberlain saying: I believe it is peace for our time a sentence that prompted a huge cheer, first from a listening street crowd and then from the House of Commons, and next day from every newspaper in the land. There was a move to urge that Mr. Chamberlain should receive the Nobel Peace Prize. In Parliament there was one unfamiliar old grumbler to growl out: I believe we have suffered a total and unmitigated defeat. He was, in view of the general sentiment, very properly booed down. This scene concluded in the autumn of 1938, the British prime ministers effectual signing away of most of Czechoslovakia to Hitler. The rest of it, within months, Hitler walked in and conquered. Oh dear, said Mr. Chamberlain, thunderstruck. He has betrayed my trust. During the last fortnight a simple but startling thought occurred to me every single official, diplomat, president, prime minister involved in the Iraq debate was in 1938 a toddler, most of them unborn. So the dreadful scene Ive just drawn will not have been remembered by most listeners. Hitler had started betraying our trust not twelve years but only two years before, when he broke the First World War peace treaty by occupying the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland. Only half his troops carried one reload of ammunition, because Hitler knew that French morale was too low to confront any war just then, and ten million of eleven million British voters had signed a so-called peace ballot. It stated no conditions, elaborated no terms. It simply counted the number of Britons who were for peace. The slogan of this movement was Against war and fascism chanted at the time by every Labor man and Liberal and many moderate Conservatives a slogan that now sounds as imbecilic as against hospitals and disease. In blunter words, a majority of Britons would do anything, absolutely anything, to get rid of Hitler except fight him. At that time the word pre-emptive had not been invented, though today its a catchword. After all, the Rhineland was what it said it was part of Germany. So to march in and throw Hitler out would have been pre-emptive wouldnt it? Nobody did anything and Hitler looked forward with confidence to gobbling up the rest of Western Europe country by country course by course, as growler Churchill put it. I bring up Munich and the mid-30 because I was fully grown, on the verge of thirty, and knew we were indeed living in the age of anxiety. And so many of the arguments mounted against each other today, in the last fortnight, are exactly what we heard in the House of Commons debates and read in the French press. The French especially urged, after every Hitler invasion, negotiation, negotiation. They negotiated so successfully as to have their whole country defeated and occupied. But as one famous French leftist said: We did anyway manage to make them declare Paris an open city no bombs on us! In Britain, the general response to every Hitler advance was disarmament and collective security. Collective security meant to leave every crisis to the League of Nations. It would put down aggressors, even though, like the United Nations, it had no army, navy or air force. The League of Nations had its chance to prove itself when Mussolini invaded and conquered Ethiopia (Abyssinia). The League didnt have any shot to fire. But still the cry was chanted in the House of Commons the League and collective security is the only true guarantee of peace. But after the Rhineland, the maverick Churchill decided there was no collectivity in collective security, and started a highly unpopular campaign for rearmament by Britain, warning against the general belief that Hitler had already built an enormous mechanized army and superior air force. But hes not used them, hes not used them, people protested. Still, for two years before the outbreak of the Second War you could read the debates in the House of Commons and now shiver at the famous Labour men Major Atlee was one of them who voted against rearmament, and still went on pointing to the League of Nations as the savior. Now, this memory of mine may be totally irrelevant to the present crisis. But it haunts me. I have to say I have written elsewhere with much conviction that most historical analogies are false because, however strikingly similar a new situation may be to an old one, theres usually one element that is different and it turns out to be the crucial one. It may well be so here. All I know is that all the voices of the 30s are echoing through 2003..." To visit the Boycott Network’s “French Gateway” page, click HERE To visit the Boycott Network’s “Germany Gateway” page, click HERE
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To view the Boycott Network’s “Super Index” of boycott information hosted on this website, click HERE |
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Due to the extensive scope and breath of coverage pertaining to the power grab of the “Franco-German Axis,” the Boycott Network recommends use of their special subject index by clicking HERE |
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If your long distance is costing more than 3.9 cents per minute and you live in one of the old “Bell System” areas, you’re simply overpaying! Even if you’re an individual, you may be entitled to the same low 3.9 cent rate as major corporations! To see what rates are available in your neck of the woods, click HERE
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