“In 1931, the country was up to the eyes in hell-broth. The complete complete collapse of a vast eddifice of sham, pretence, humbug and hypocrisy could no longer be concealed even from a people who, through thirteen years of ‘peace’, had shown little disposition to wake up to the facts of life. Mr. Ramsay MacDonald’s government ‘went to the country’, taking Mr. Baldwin and Sir John Simon along in hand-in-hand. They made their celebrated demand for a ‘doctor’s mandate’, which was, at long last, a rceognition that the patient was in a very bad way. The patient, shaken to the soul, placed himself in their hands with a lack of reservation rarely witnessed in English political history. The doctor’s bill came in 1939….”

(‘In the Meantime’ – Howard Spring, 1889 – 1965)

Now why did I choose this quote?

John Lentell

13th February, 1969