Tuesday, August 19, 2008
AUGUST 21 - THE JOAD DIARIES (1948)
And so I used such influence as I possessed to persuade young people against taking part in war.
You may remember a resolution which the Oxford Union passed in the early thirties, affirming that in no circumstances would members of the Union consent to fight for king and country.
Well, I was the visiting speaker at the Oxford Union on that occasion.
A week or so after the Oxford Resolution was passed, the Nazis seized power in Germany.
In the light of what happened afterwards, there was, I can't help feeling, something symbolic in the sequence of these two events, for it was the latter which was presently to make nonsense of the former.
You may remember a resolution which the Oxford Union passed in the early thirties, affirming that in no circumstances would members of the Union consent to fight for king and country.
Well, I was the visiting speaker at the Oxford Union on that occasion.
A week or so after the Oxford Resolution was passed, the Nazis seized power in Germany.
In the light of what happened afterwards, there was, I can't help feeling, something symbolic in the sequence of these two events, for it was the latter which was presently to make nonsense of the former.
