Quotations | Edmund Burke ~ 1775 ~ The Late Lord Ashdown ~ 2018
In March 1775 Edmund Burke, in considering how to secure an honourable peace for the American Revolutionaries, said:
“ I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people ... for wise men, this is not judicious; for sober men, not decent; for minds tinctured with humanity, not mild and merciful.”
Edmund Burke (1729-1797) by James Northcote (1746-1831)
In his superb history, NEIN Standing Up To Hitler 1935 - 1944, the (Late) Lord Ashdown refers to this on page 301 when considering the difficulty for the Allies in dealing with the defeat and unconditional surrender of Germany.
As Lord Ashdown wrote: There is a tragic irony in the fact that, more than 250 years later, it was an American President who insisted on imposing on Germany a capitulation of the kind Burke so wisely argued against for the colonists of America. It is of course always easy to have perfect vision in hindsight. Even allowing for this, however, it might still be said that, in their single-minded pursuit of unconditional surrender which admitted no end other than the apocalyptic destruction of Germany, the Western Allied leaders, too, allowed militarism to triumph over statesmanship. And so perished the old Europe. And so began a new Europe.
This, to my mind, is so important. Lord Ashdown continues:
Almost all the plotters who thought about the future, most notably [Carl] Goerdeler, [Wilhelm] Canaris and the Kreisau Circle, saw a unified Europe as a necessary bulwark against Soviet expansion, and the only safe context for a peace capable of containing the old European contagion of destructive nationalism.
In this, they would have found themselves completely at home in the European Union of today.
That the Germany that has emerged to such a powerful position today is, in very large measure, the kind of post-war Germany they hoped for, and for which they gave their lives. the kind of post – War Germany they hoped for, and for which they gave their lives.
And so, though there may not be any unblemished heroes here, there are many examples of human trials.
For us, living in similarly troubled and turbulent times, it must surely be inspiring that there was such a rebellion of conscience and moral anger from human spirits who refused to submit, even in the face of such terrible power and even at the seemingly futile cost of their own lives.
My own handwritten note on page 302 and dated July 20 2019 reads:
Thus writes a gentleman of great stature, international prestige
and with a respected reputation
both as a statesman and diplomat,
not to forget his exemplary military service.
My point is: Lord Ashdown was very aware that the tide of life was on its final ebb, and he was right to remind us in 2018 that we are "living in similarly troubled and turbulent times". Only yesterday, respected analysts drew comparisons "with Hitler's Nazi Germany".
It is worrying, for I do not see how diplomacy can restore international peace, order and liberal democracy. It worries me, too, that whereas the Cold War envisaged nuclear annihilation, we now talk of ‘theatre nuclear weapons’ i.e. like the Atomic Bombs used in 1945.
My View Six Days On?
It is imperative that we defend freedom of democracy and the rule of law both within the United Kingdom and rule of law as defined and upheld by the United Nations General Assembly.
World War II resulted not just from a nation being raped by a megalomaniac. It resulted from the horrific bullying of communities, peoples and nations, instigated by that one man, aided by an identically-minded man in Italy, and in Japan and initially by his equal in the business of mass killings of millions until the former turned on the other latter and carried out very willingly by many, partially known and partially unknown, to the wider general population.
In any police state, people learn very quickly to keep their heads down, to blend into the background; the things they prefer not to read or hear of, they naturally blank out with that threaded needle of hope ... oh this is too preposterous to be true. In all police states, it is not a long journey to cross the Rubicon.
If we take interest in history, we have an anchor point. We have an inbuilt check-and-balance. This forewarns us, that this anchor point is not limited. It applies to every individual life. It is how we measure our progress, or our lack thereof.
We know the troublemakers today, just as we did then. We know too, the horror of religious fanaticism, which is as ugly and terrifying as Nazism. Those who argue that Communism is, therefore, the way forward, need to recall the Purges from 1917 onwards. Purges come about only at the hands of megalomaniacs ~ Trotsky, Stalin, Hitler, and Mao Tse Tung, to name just four. There are many more that litter the pages of 20th Century history between 1945 - 1999. Communism, too, is as fanatical, ugly and as terrifying as extreme religions, every religion, and which therefore naturally includes the three monotheistic religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam. On all three, we are wise to cast a very hard and discerning eye.
My View in 2023?
Vladimir Putin has openly boasted that his aim is two-fold. To attain victory, which one would expect f any invader; to establish a new world order. To hear that man speak those words sent a chill through me. For the first time, I truly gained a perspective on how my parents and grandparents must have felt in 1938-1939.
Simply put, it is not a question of if but when NATO engages militarily.
3 January 2023
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© Kenneth Thomas Webb 2023
