I am obliged to The Spectator, er, the American one, that is, not the London original, for drawing my attention to the late Sir Norman Angell, and I admit that like you I had never heard of the gent until now. Apparently he was yet another recipient of a Nobel peace prize who, like the current winner, gained the prize not for what he had actually achieved but for his well-meaning aspirations. He was from the Wilsonian mould that instilled belief in vast international bureaucracies to oversee and keep unruly nations in order. The fact that he received his prize in 1933 when a certain Austrian upstart confirmed his dictatorial rule over Germany is an irony so delicious that not only does it prove that God exists but that He has an excellent sense of humour as well! The author of the piece in The American Spectator maintains that Angell's writings were tremendously influential particularly on British foreign and defence policies. I bow to his superior knowledge but I can't help thinking that British ministers during the middle and late '30s were only too happy to seize his ideas and wave them to the idiot masses who themselves, for very good reasons, had no wish for more war. The only prominent opposition to Angell's idealism was that old attack dog, Winston Churchill, whose warning speeches were regularly jeered at by a House of Commons devoid of both education, historical knowledge and even basic intelligence - so no change there, then! Let us all hope and pray that Angell's succesor in the Nobel prize stakes does not fall at the first hurdle in the way his predecessor did!
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