"Olaf Stapledon - Last And First Men" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stapledon Olaf)

impossible for these two nations to understand one another, was suddenly
exaggerated by this provocative incident into an apparently insoluble discord.
England reverted to her conviction that all Frenchmen were sensualists, while
to France the English appeared, as often before, the most offensive of
hypocrites. In vain did the saner minds in each country insist on the
fundamental humanity of both. In vain, did the chastened Germans seek to
mediate. In vain did the League, which by now had very great prestige and
authority, threaten both parties with expulsion, even with chastisement.
Rumour got about in Paris that England, breaking all her international
pledges, was now feverishly building giant planes which would wreck France
from Calais to Marseilles. And indeed the rumour was not wholly a slander, for
when the struggle began, the British air force was found to have a range of
intensive action far wider than was expected. Yet the actual outbreak of war
took England by surprise. While the London papers were selling out upon the
news that war was declared, enemy planes appeared over the city. In a couple
of hours a third of London was in ruins, and half her population lay poisoned
in the streets. One bomb, falling beside the British Museum, turned the whole
of Bloomsbury into a crater, wherein fragments of mummies, statues, and
manuscripts were mingled with the contents of shops, and morsels of salesmen
and the intelligentsia. Thus in a moment was destroyed a large proportion of
England's most precious relics and most fertile brains.
Then occurred one of those microscopic, yet supremely potent incidents
which sometimes mould the course of events for centuries. During the
bombardment a special meeting of the British Cabinet was held in a cellar in
Downing Street. The party in power at the time was progressive, mildly
pacifist, and timorously cosmopolitan. It had got itself involved in the
French quarrel quite unintentionally. At this Cabinet meeting an idealistic
member urged upon his colleagues the need for a supreme gesture of heroism and
generosity on the part of Britain. Raising his voice with difficulty above the
bark of English guns and the volcanic crash of French bombs, he suggested
sending by radio the following message: "From the people of England to the
people of France. Catastrophe has fallen on us at your hands. In this hour of
agony, all hate and anger have left us. Our eyes are opened. No longer can we
think of ourselves as English merely, and you as merely French; all of us are,
before all else, civilized beings. Do not imagine that we are defeated, and
that this message is a cry for mercy. Our armament is intact, and our
resources still very great. Yet, because of the revelation which has come to
us today, we will not fight. No plane, no ship, no soldier of Britain shall
commit any further act of hostility. Do what you will. It would be better even
that a great people should be destroyed than that the whole race should be
thrown into turmoil. But you will not strike again. As our own eyes have been
opened by agony, yours now will be opened by our act of brotherhood. The
spirit of France and the spirit of England differ. They differ deeply; but
only as the eye differs from the hand. Without you, we should be barbarians.
And without us, even the bright spirit of France would be but half expressed.
For the spirit of France lives again in our culture and in our very speech;
and the spirit of England is that which strikes from you your most distinctive
brilliance."
At no earlier stage of man's history could such a message have been
considered seriously by any government. Had it been suggested during the