Perhaps the greatest change which the last 30 years have brought about in European collective psychology is that war has lost all its ancient glamour, and that even some traditionally military nations have become profoundly pacifist.
Unfortunately, in order to attain peace, pacifism is not enough. Unthinking and uncritical pacifism may even increase the danger of war, by encouraging the careers of ambitious men, as it notoriously did with Hitler and Mussolini. When gigantic military and air parades at the Red Square in Moscow are followed by Communist-inspired peace rallies in Trafalgar Square, peace is endangered.
Peace settlements with a number of ex-enemies were made in 1947, without in any way relieving world tension. There is little reason to believe that formal peace treaties with Germany and Japan, if they could be made, would by themselves have any greater effect.
It is not Germany and Japan whom we now have to fear, and by whom we find ourselves forced, bitterly against our will, to rearm. It is Russia.
Key quote
“There is one thing that I cannot forgive Mr Hitchcock. It is a shocking error of judgment, as well as taste, to begin Rope with the murder. In the theatre, the opening scene gains immeasurably in horror because we imagine, and never see, the victim.”
Film critic CA Lejeune on Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope, adapted from a stage play
Talking point
Top-ranking British officials were tonight more confident than at any time since the Palestine mandate ended that a permanent settlement may yet be negotiated, with American backing, to end the fighting between Arabs and Jews.
Nora Beloff on a US statement on Palestine at the UN political committee in Paris
