Until now when we have started to talk about the uniqueness of America we have almost always ended by comparing ourselves to Europ...e. Toward her we have felt all the attraction and repulsions of Oedipus.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The people of Western Europe are facing this summer a series of tragic dilemmas. Of the hopes that dazzled the last twenty years t...hat some political movement might tend to the betterment of the human lot, little remains above ground but the tattered slogans of the past.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I think the people over here are coming to realize what would happen if Germany and Italy won a European war. We would be out of t...he picture entirely.... If I were a German conqueror what would I do? Obviously I would have the British navy out of the way and the French army out of the way.... The first thing I would do is look around and say, "What outside territories do I want to take for myself?"... We are not quite ready to take on the United States but we can do it by indirection very nicely. We are going to dominate South America ... without violating the Monroe Doctrine. [FDR set forth a scenario of economic domination of Latin America by giving Argentina a choice of agreeing to German domination of its army by economic blackmail by virtue of the fact that Germany controlled all the agricultural markets in Europe on which Argentina depended for livelihood and the same for Brazil.] It is a perfectly open and shut thing and, if you have the complete, physical power to do it, you win.... [F]rom Hitler's point of view, it is rational. And, if any of us were in his place, with his methods, we would do it. I made myself a hump-back, dyed my skin in several places with great spots of yellow; so that, when I look'd in the glass, I was almost frighten'd at my own figure.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
He even ran away with hunself and became a farsoonerite, saying he would far sooner muddle through the hash of lentils in Europe t...han meddle with Irrland's split little pea.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What worries me, especially, is that public opinion over here is patting itself on the back every morning and thanking God for the... Atlantic Ocean (and the Pacific Ocean). We greatly underestimate the serious implications to our own future.... Things move with such terrific speed these days, that it is really essential to us to think in broader terms and, in effect, to warn the American people that they, too, should think of possible ultimate results in Europe and the Far East.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent con...troversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It's a queer sensation, this secret belief that one stands on the brink of the world's greatest catastrophe. For it means the fall... of Western Europe, as it fell in the fourth century. It recurs to me every November, and culminates every December. I have to get over it as I can, and hide, for fear of being sent to an asylum.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The more I live here in western Europe, the more I am impressed by the sense of decay;Mnot the graceful and dignified decay of an ...oriental, but the vulgar and sordid decay of a bankrupt cotton-mill.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »