Backs To The Wall
T must be clear to most people now, how- ] ever it appeared at the time, that the reverse in Norway was the best thing that has happened to Britain in the whole course of the war. It was a tragedy for the relatives of the men who fell, a disaster for the Government, but to the nation at large it was a blow that shook every foolish parrot off his perch. And most of us had been parrots. How we ever got it into our heads that we could win a war by saying so it is not worth trying to find out; but if it had not been in our heads it would not have dropped so often from our tongues. We had not only given hostages to fortune. We had forgotten that we had given them, and that fortune favours those who keep awake. Well, we are awake now. The blindest and dullest know that we are fighting with our backs to the wall, and that not merely our nation but the whole world is passing this week through one of the decisive periods of history. If we lose we go back three hundred years. If we win we return to 1918, shaken but still free, and able to start again. Meanwhile it would be shameful not to salute those men who had the courage to start again eighteen months ago. They were deceived, they were disappointed, they were shamefully outmanoeuvred, but they saw it and they turned back; and if they had not then preached preparedness as fearlessly as they had previously preached appeasement we should already be lost. Mr. Chamberlain may not be a great man, but he has passed on a great tradition, viz., that the leader himself is nobody and nothing, the public safety everything; that a man who has served in the highest office ennobles himself by serving in a humbler office; and that there are neither persons nor parties when the State is endangered. He is a poor man who feels no emotion to see a leader effacing himself with such dignity. :
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 48, 24 May 1940, Page 12
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354Backs To The Wall New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 48, 24 May 1940, Page 12
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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