"They were made of that sombre, youthful stuff, rich in ideals but poor in experience, that modern terrorist movements feed upon."That's not somebody in the papers summing up the two murderers of Lee Rigby, who were convicted today. It's Christopher Clark, author of The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914. He's describing the teenagers who killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo a hundred years ago.
Thursday, December 19, 2013
Hims Ancient And Modern
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An apt and topical quote David about which I'm sure all your readers will familiar. Exhausted too by the sheer wretched misery-making of it all. Enough said.
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Barbara Tuchman's wonderful book 'The Proud Tower' which is about various aspects of political life in Europe, during the twenty-five years up to the eve of WW1, has a very good chapter on anarchism. From memory I think that she showed that it had a greater hold upon the radical mind than did socialism. Those anarchists beat the socialists in the race over the Pyranees to enchant the Spaniards.