Uncle Matthew’s four years in France and Italy between 1914 and 1918 had given him no great opinion of foreigners. “Frogs,” he would say, “are slightly better than Huns or Wops, but abroad is unutterably bloody and foreigners are fiends."
~~Nancy Mitford (1904–1973). The Pursuit of Love, ch. 15 (1945).
[Uncle Matthew was a fictional character based on Nancy Mitford's father, Lord Redesdale]
Update:
No true-born Englishman ever gave a fig about whether or not his country was liked. Who cares what foreigners think? As my old Dad was wont to express it from the depths of the paternal armchair: “Foreigners? Bloody fools, for all I can see.”(HT to Omphale of Common Defence)
~~John Derbyshire. Obama’s Black Edge.
2 comments:
What a contrast between England of old and today's multicultural PC Britain. John Derbyshire, in a recent column ("Obama's Black Edge") recalls: "No true-born Englishman ever gave a fig about whether or not his country was liked. Who cares what foreigners think? As my old Dad was wont to express it from the depths of the paternal armchair: "Foreigners? Bloody fools, for all I can see."
Also, if you read Sherlock Holmes mysteries, you'll notice that Holmes occasionally has some un-PC things to say about Arabs and other ethnicities. Today, Conan Doyle would be brought before the courts for fomenting race-hatred or some such, I expect.
It wouldn't just be Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in the Dock of the Thought Crime Tribunal - it would be most Victorian and Edwardian writers. H.G. Wells, Sapper, Capt. W.E. Johns, Sax Rohmer, etc. would be doing time if they were alive in these Post Cultural Revolutionary Days when the only stereotypes allowed are those hostile to Europeans - e.g. "Whites are a cancer of the world".
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