Britain and the dictators

The present volume, planned as in some sense a sequel to my recent study of British Foreign Policy from 1789 to 1914 cannot fail to be highly controversial in character, owing to the many still unsolved problems of which it treats and the parlous state to which the cult of rival "ideologies" has reduced contemporary Europe. We have ached a moment when the fate of the whole British Commonwealth is in the balance, and with it, I profoundly believe, the fate of free institutions throughout the world. Herein lies my excuse, if excuse there be, for my extreme outspokenness.

In our Victorian dislike for the practice of calling a spade a bloody shovel, it is not necessary to go to the opposite extreme of calling it an agricultural implement. Even so mild-mannered a man as the late Lord Balfour was not always content to speak of mere "terminological inexactitudes": and if he were still with us today, he would certainly be one of the first to endorse our present Prime Minister's view that unprecedented measures are needed for altogether unprecedented times. For myself, I have always been attracted by the phrase of Joseph de Maistre: "Je continuerai toujours à dire ce qui me paraît bon et juste sans me gêner le moins du monde: c'est je vaux quelque chose."