Dhimmi
Half Man Half HobNob
"In the desperate circumstances of the time, it was excusable to be angry at what Wodehouse did, but to go on denouncing him three or four years later -- and more, to let an impression remain that he acted with conscious treachery -- is not excusable.
Few things in this war have been more morally disgusting than the present hunt after traitors and Quislings. At best it is largely the punishment of the guilty by the guilty. In France, all kinds of petty rats -- police officials, penny-a-lining journalists, women who have slept with German soldiers -- are hunted down while almost without exception the big rats escape.
In England the fiercest tirades against Quislings are uttered by Conservatives who were practising appeasement in 1938 and Communists who were advocating it in 1940. I have striven to show how the wretched Wodehouse -- just because success and expatriation had allowed him to remain mentally in the Edwardian age -- became the corpus vile in a propaganda experiment, and I suggest that it is now time to regard the incident as closed.
If Ezra Pound is caught and shot by the American authorities, it will have the effect of establishing his reputation as a poet for hundreds of years; and even in the case of Wodehouse, if we drive him to retire to the United States and renounce his British citizenship, we shall end by being horribly ashamed of ourselves.
Meanwhile, if we really want to punish the people who weakened national morale at critical moments, there are other culprits who are nearer home and better worth chasing."
excerpt from: http://www.drones.com/orwell.html
W: "Jolly decent of that Orwell fellow to speak up for PG eh Jeeves?"
J: "Quite, sir."
W: "Never heard of him until now, who is he?"
J: "He's a journalist, political author and novelist sir."
W: "Ahh is he the chap would does the racing tips for the Sporting Post?"
J: "No sir."
W: "Shame, I lost ten guineas on the last "dead cert" and wouldn't mind tracking him down and giving him a solid cuff around the ear..."
Few things in this war have been more morally disgusting than the present hunt after traitors and Quislings. At best it is largely the punishment of the guilty by the guilty. In France, all kinds of petty rats -- police officials, penny-a-lining journalists, women who have slept with German soldiers -- are hunted down while almost without exception the big rats escape.
In England the fiercest tirades against Quislings are uttered by Conservatives who were practising appeasement in 1938 and Communists who were advocating it in 1940. I have striven to show how the wretched Wodehouse -- just because success and expatriation had allowed him to remain mentally in the Edwardian age -- became the corpus vile in a propaganda experiment, and I suggest that it is now time to regard the incident as closed.
If Ezra Pound is caught and shot by the American authorities, it will have the effect of establishing his reputation as a poet for hundreds of years; and even in the case of Wodehouse, if we drive him to retire to the United States and renounce his British citizenship, we shall end by being horribly ashamed of ourselves.
Meanwhile, if we really want to punish the people who weakened national morale at critical moments, there are other culprits who are nearer home and better worth chasing."
excerpt from: http://www.drones.com/orwell.html
W: "Jolly decent of that Orwell fellow to speak up for PG eh Jeeves?"
J: "Quite, sir."
W: "Never heard of him until now, who is he?"
J: "He's a journalist, political author and novelist sir."
W: "Ahh is he the chap would does the racing tips for the Sporting Post?"
J: "No sir."
W: "Shame, I lost ten guineas on the last "dead cert" and wouldn't mind tracking him down and giving him a solid cuff around the ear..."
