The Resignation of Sir Anthony Eden

In The Second World War: The Gathering Storm, Sir Winston Churchill vividly tells of his traumatic experience learning of the resignation of Foreign Secretary Sir Anthony Eden:

Late in the night of February 20, a telephone message reached me as I sat in my old room at Chartwell (as I often sit now) that Eden had resigned. I must confess that my heart sank, and for a while the dark waters of despair overwhelmed me. In a long life I have had many ups and downs. During all the war soon to come and in its darkest times I never had any trouble in sleeping. In the crisis of 1940, when so much responsibility lay upon me, and also at many very anxious, awkward moments in the following five years, I could always flop into bed and go to sleep after the day’s work was done—subject, of course, to any emergency call. I slept sound and awoke refreshed, and had no feelings except appetite to grapple with whatever the morning’s boxes might bring. But now, on this night of February 20, 1938, and on this occasion only, sleep deserted me. From midnight till dawn I lay in bed consumed by emotions of sorrow and fear. There seemed one strong young figure standing up against long, dismal, drawling tides of drift and surrender, of wrong measurements and feeble impulses. My conduct of affairs would have been different from his in various ways; but he seemed to me at this moment to embody the life-hope of the British nation, the grand old British race that had done so much for men, and had yet some more to give. Now he was gone. I watched the daylight slowly creep in through the windows, and saw before me in mental gaze the vision of Death.

"Oh, jolly times, you are no more"

Stumbled across a dairy of a former UW-Madison student while I was sifting through the university's digital archives at work. Sindey Dean Townley was an astronomy student who earned both his undergrad and grad degrees at UW-Madison between 1886 and 1892. His thoughts on graduating and leaving Madison:

Thursday morning Boly left for Fox Lake and since then I have been at work getting ready to pull out. Expect to leave Madison for good tomorrow, to stay home for a week or so and then go to the Lick Observatory for a year's work and study. Will have charge of the time service there same as I have had here for the last three years. I do not regret at all leaving the city of Madison; I regret but little leaving old U.W. now that I have gotten all that I want out of it, but I do regret sincerely leaving dear old Mendota and the college girls. No more pleasant rows, no more beautiful sunsets to watch, no more rides home by the light of the moon. Oh, jolly times, you are no more. I will hie me away to the top of a mountain where there is scarcely water enough to drink. Never will I regret the day I came to the University of Wisconsin. Six years I have spent here and I will probably never spend another six in a more profitable manner. A college education is a grand thing and something that no one can ever regrets [sic] having obtained. It lifts a man up, gives him broader ideas and above all teaches him how to think and investigate. 

                                                                                              -June 17, 1892

Procrastination of Death

From Charles Booth's Life and Labour of the People in London: 

Life to large numbers of married women in the East End is nothing more than procrastination of death. They bear children and bury them. Their minds have been starved and their senses dulled. "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here" might well be inscribed above the entrance to the Red Church. For these women but little can be done. The position of the married woman can only be affected through the better education of the child, the training of the girl, and through everything that tends to raise the man morally and industrially.

From a 1970 reprint of the seventeen-volume third edition published between 1902 and 1904.

"Regrettably, It Can Still Be Lost"

Last post about The Civil War:

I think what we need to remember most of all is that the Civil War is not over until we, today, have done our part in fighting it as well as understanding what happened when the Civil War generation fought it. William Faulkner said once that ‘history is not was, it’s is.’ And what we need to remember about the Civil War is that the Civil War is, in the present as well as in the past. The generation that fought the war, the generation that argued over the definition of the war, the generation that had to pay the price in blood, that had to pay the price in blasted hopes and lost future, also established a standard that will not mean anything until we have finished the work. You can say ‘there is no such thing as slavery anymore, we’re all citizens.’ But if we’re all citizens then we have a task to do to make sure that that, too, is not a joke. If some citizens live in houses and others live on the street, the Civil War is still going on. It’s still to be fought, and regrettably, it can still be lost.

Barbara J Fields, PhD

A Nationality

More from The Civil War:

Strange, (is it not?) that battles, martyrs, agonies, blood, even assassination, should so condense - perhaps only really lastingly condense - a Nationality.

Walt Whitman

Darkest of All Decembers

I few lines from Mary Chestnut, a South Carolina diarist who lived through the American Civil War:

Darkest of all Decembers
ever my heart has known,
Sitting here by the embers,
stunned, helpless, alone.

From Ken Burns' The Civil War.

Wikipedia's Simple English

I just learned today that you can "translate" Wikipedia articles into Simple English if the normal articles are too difficult to understand.

The opening line of the Wikipedia article on Liberalism in Standard English:

Liberalism (from the Latin liberalis) is a political philosophy or worldview founded on ideas of liberty and equality.

The opening line of the Wikipedia article on Liberalism in Simple English:

Liberalism is a way of thinking about politics and government.

Definitely taking things one step at a time in the Simple English version.

I'm not quite sure yet if this is a knowledge revolution or a signal of the downfall of civilization as we know it...