Welfare State: Prophetic words from 1945.
Discussion
Something which I thought the educated politically aware element here may appreciate.
Written in 1945 by Major-General Sir Percy Hobart, one of the founding fathers and leading lights of Tank warfare, and responsible for Hobart's Funnies - the highly specialised assault tanks responsible for limiting casualties in the British and Canadian sectors on D-Day.
In a letter to his wife, he discusses politics, himself being slightly left-of-centre. Specifically with regards the Labour manifesto of the Welfare State.
"All our lives we've been told 'It is more difficult for a rich man to enter the Kingdom... But it is one of the things that mankind can't realise. Especially when he sees the wretchedness of poverty and unemployment: and the continual uncertainty and lack of security, and fear, fear of destruction.
And yet I am still convinced that that fear - that sharp insistent necessity to keep tuned up, that struggle - is an essential of life.
And if we achieve Security without Effort we may be thrusting our fellows down and invisible slope of degeneracy."
Seventy years on, that last paragraph is suddenly very prophetic.
Written in 1945 by Major-General Sir Percy Hobart, one of the founding fathers and leading lights of Tank warfare, and responsible for Hobart's Funnies - the highly specialised assault tanks responsible for limiting casualties in the British and Canadian sectors on D-Day.
In a letter to his wife, he discusses politics, himself being slightly left-of-centre. Specifically with regards the Labour manifesto of the Welfare State.
"All our lives we've been told 'It is more difficult for a rich man to enter the Kingdom... But it is one of the things that mankind can't realise. Especially when he sees the wretchedness of poverty and unemployment: and the continual uncertainty and lack of security, and fear, fear of destruction.
And yet I am still convinced that that fear - that sharp insistent necessity to keep tuned up, that struggle - is an essential of life.
And if we achieve Security without Effort we may be thrusting our fellows down and invisible slope of degeneracy."
Seventy years on, that last paragraph is suddenly very prophetic.
Edited by Dunk76 on Monday 20th July 15:34
Edited by Dunk76 on Monday 20th July 15:36
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