Activists From England

"The object of policy is not to prove one's moral worth, but to succeed."

"The history of the Germans is a history of extremes. It contains everything except moderation, and in the course of a thousand years the Germans have experienced everything except normality."

"1848 was the decisive year of German, and so of European, history: it recapitulated Germany's past and anticipated Germany's future. Echoes of the Holy Roman Empire merged into a prelude of the Nazi "New Order"; the doctrines of Rousseau and the doctrines of Marx, the shade of Luther and the shadow of Hitler, jostled each other in bewildering succession. Never has there been a revolution so inspired by a limitless faith in the power of ideas; never has a revolution so discredited the power of ideas in its result. The success of the revolution discredited conservative ideas; the failure of the revolution discredited liberal ideas. After it, nothing remained but the idea of Force, and this idea stood at the helm of German history from then on. For the first time since 1521, the German people stepped on to the centre of the German stage only to miss their cues once more. German history reached its turning-point and failed to turn. This was the fateful essence of 1848."

"British history has been made by a series of true compromises. The landed classes compromised with the merchants at the beginning of the eighteenth century; this coalition compromised with the industrial capitalists in the time of Peel; and Peel's coalition has compromised with the industrial workers in our own day. Since the days of Cromwell there has never been in England a class or a party determined to force through its extreme claims, whatever the cost; the terrible exception was in the early months of 1914. No such compromise took place in Germany. The Bismarckian Reich was a dictatorship imposed on the conflicting forces, not an agreement between them."

"The failure of the "good Germans," not the ranting of the "bad" ones, was the real crime of Germany against European civilization."

"This is the explanation of the paradox of the "Third Reich." It was a system founded on terror, unworkable without the secret police and the concentration camp; but it was also a system which represented the deepest wishes of the German people. In fact it was the only system of German government ever created by German initiative. The old empire had been imposed by the arms of Austria and France; the German Confederation by the armies of Austria and Prussia. The Hohenzollern empire was made by the victories of Prussia, the Weimar republic by the victories of the Allies. But the "Third Reich" rested solely on German force and German impulse; it owed nothing to alien forces. It was a tyranny imposed upon the German people by themselves."

"It is the theme which has run through European history since the French Revolution—the search for stability in an unstable world. The great revolution destroyed tradition as the basis for society; ever since men have been seeking for something to take its place."

"Human reason is the only saviour we have... We need more education, not less; more science, not less; more hope for the future, and more confidence in it."

"The Communist Party is not concerned with peace or with better conditions; it is only concerned with power. It exploits everyone, including its own members, for this purpose."

"National freedom is as important as economic freedom or the freedom of the individual."

"I am against inequality of the sexes, as much as I am against class privilege or colour prejudice."

"The United States remains a country where there is trial by jury and more freedom of expression of every sort of opinion than anywhere else in the world – including England."

"War must come into the record of history, whatever else is left out. It has been the greatest single factor in the shaping of human history."

"Quakerism has always been in danger of smugness, and is redeemed from it only by an obstinate radicalism."

"Once hitch yourself to the Establishment and you must become the supporter of injustice sooner or later."

"The things that really matter have nothing to do with politics. Love between friends. Good books. The beauties of nature."

"Maxton's failure was more than the failure of a man. It was the failure of a movement – the movement of romantic revolutionary socialism. Keir Hardie, Maxton's predecessor, could combine romance and reality... Revolutionary Socialism turned into the Bolshevik dictatorship; parliamentary Socialism achieved the practical gains of the Welfare State. There was no third way between Lenin and Arthur Henderson."

"I am not a philosophic historian. I have no system, no moral interpretation. I write to clear my mind, to discover how things happened and how men behaved. If the result is shocking or provocative, this is not from intent, but solely because I try to judge from the evidence without being influenced by the judgements of others."

"The massacre of Peterloo shook the moral prestige of the old order as nothing else had done; and English democracy owes a lasting debt to the eleven martyrs of St. Peter's Fields."

"In my experience Communism is intellectual alcohol – nasty and harmful if taken neat, but an essential ingredient of every stimulating drink."

"In essence, Toryism rests on doubt in human nature; it distrusts improvement, clings to traditional institutions, prefers the past to the future. It is a sentiment rather than a principle."

"The traditional "liberties of England" rested on law and custom, not on rational dogma; and the man who maintained them, as in Poland or Hungary, was the country squire. He maintained them no doubt for his own profit and advantage, a point which Feiling is inclined to slide over; still England would not be a free country without him. The unique feature of our history is that the conservative defender of liberty had to take other classes into partnership, and finally indeed found himself in the position of a tolerated minority."

"From Luther to Hitler the Germans have always wanted an iron framework of discipline to keep them in reasonable order; when they lose this, they go mad, as Nietzsche did, and it was only to be expected that the Germans would follow his example rather than his teaching."

"In the last resort the national question is not a question of schools or of government officials—these are mere preliminaries. It is a question of power. Men wish to decide their own destinies. In a national State this leads them to resist kings and emperors and to demand democracy. In a multinational State they resist the rule of other nationalities as well."

"Every historian loves the past or should do. If not, he has mistaken his vocation; but it is a short step from loving the past to regretting that it has ever changed. Conservatism is our greatest trade-risk; and we run psychoanalysts close in the belief that the only "normal" people are those who cause no trouble either to themselves or anybody else."

"Conformity may give you a quiet life; it may even bring you to a University Chair. But all change in history, all advance, comes from the nonconformists. If there had been no trouble-makers, no Dissenters, we should still be living in caves."

"In my opinion we learn nothing from history except the infinite variety of men’s behaviour. We study it, as we listen to music or read poetry, for pleasure, not for instruction"

"The present enables us to understand the past, not the other way round."

"The worker is by nature less imaginative, more level-headed than the capitalist. This is what prevents his becoming one. He is content with small gains. Trade Union officials think about the petty cash; the employer speculates in millions. You can see the difference in their representative institutions. There is no scheme too wild, no rumour too absurd, to be without repercussions on the Stock Exchange. The public house is the home of common sense."

"American statesmen might like some Europeans more than others and even detect quaint resemblances to their own outlook; but they no more committed themselves to a particular group or country than a nineteenth-century missionary committed himself to the African tribe in which he happened to find himself."

"Communists have no principle or belief except the seizure of power by their party."

"The New Deal was the nearest thing to a revolution ever carried out in a democracy."

"Why should knowledge of where I came from tell me where I am going to?"

"He detested titles. This, no doubt, is why he distributed them so lavishly."

"Politically we are not Europeans and never have been."

"The First World War had begun — imposed on the statesmen of Europe by railway timetables. It was an unexpected climax to the railway age."

"Like most of those who study history, he learned from the mistakes of the past how to make new ones."

"The great underlying conflict was between freedom and organization. Could the war be conducted by 'Liberal' methods—that is, by voluntary recruiting and by laissez-faire economics? Or must there be compulsory military service, control of profits, and direction of labour and industry?"

"The Commune was...heroic, with its strange mixture of patriotism and working class idealism, a mixture which no historian will ever clearly resolve."

"I think you can say that the British were more responsible than anyone for the destruction of Nazism and Fascism in Europe."

"The peace of the world depends on American strength and, still more, on American restraint."

"Economic planning from above can be carried out in peacetime only by the aid of fines, prisons, and ultimately concentration camps."

"[The Common Market] is a political device for creating a European alliance by a back door... From feebleness, folly or sheer blindness, they are betraying all that has made us great over the centuries."

"CARD (Campaign Against Racial Discrimination) should be by now a bigger movement than CND at its biggest. It isn't. We have all turned cowards."

"We too should be true to our tradition. That tradition is one of national independence and Splendid Isolation."

"The revolt of the agricultural labourers in 1830 was the greatest manifestation by the English people between Monmouth's rebellion and the General Strike."

"[Hitler] aimed to make Germany the dominant Power in Europe and maybe, more remotely, in the world. Other Powers have pursued similar aims, and still do. Other Powers seek to defend their vital interests by force of arms. In international affairs there was nothing wrong with Hitler except that he was a German."

"In my opinion, statesmen are too absorbed by events to follow a preconceived plan. They take one step, and the next follows from it. The systems are created by historians, as happened with Napoleon; and the systems attributed to Hitler are really those of Hugh Trevor-Roper, Elizabeth Wiskemann, and Alan Bullock."

"A racing tipster who only reached Hitler's level of accuracy would not do well for his clients."

"It [the Munich Agreement] was a triumph for all that was best and most enlightened in British life; a triumph for those who had preached equal justice between peoples; a triumph for those who had courageously denounced the harshness and short-sightedness of Versailles. Brailsford, the leading Socialist authority on foreign affairs, wrote in 1920 of the peace settlement: "The worst offence was the subjection of over three million Germans to Czech rule." This was the offence redressed at Munich."