Living in History
told us that "courage is a sublime form of hypocrisy." Nobody fed our young minds on stale paradoxes, or taught us to discount the foolish impulsiveness of adults. Our parents, as Mr. Henry James rejoicingly observes, "had no desire to see us inoculated with importunate virtues." The Honourable Bertrand Russell had not then proposed that all teaching of history shall be submitted to an "international commission," "which shall produce neutral textbooks, free from patriotic bias." There was something profoundly fearless in our approach to life, in the exposure of our unarmoured souls to the assaults of enthusiasms and regrets.
The cynic who is impatient of primitive emotions, the sentimentalist whose sympathy is confined exclusively to his country's enemies, grow more shrill-voiced as the exhaustion of Europe becomes increasingly apparent. They were always to be heard by those who paused
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