Ww1

I am quite used to people smirking into their sleeves when they hear that I’ve just written a book called The Islamic Enlightenment. The really helpful wags say they expect something along the lines of The Wit and Wisdom of Spiro Agnew, which was billed as a collection of all the memorable aphorisms of the former US vice-president, and contained only blank pages. So, the Islamic Enlightenment — good for a laugh. But we’re all familiar with the serious argument that lies behind the jests; that Islam has not been through an Enlightenment, a Reformation, or any of the other rites of passage that have formed our modernity, and that,

Arguably the cruellest thing you can do to human beings is to rob them of faith in their own sanity. People can endure physical torment, even torture, so long as their minds are clear. If they feel sane, they can still make sense of what is happening to them and work out how to survive. But if you undermine somebody’s mental stability, they soon unravel. In the words of John Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost, ‘Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell;/And in the lowest deep a lower deep,/Still threatening to devour me, opens wide.’ Chipping away at a person’s mental health is known as ‘gaslighting’, after Gas

From ‘The United States and Britain’, The Spectator, 10 February 1917: It would be easy to write down a hundred reasons why unclouded friendship and moral co-operation between the United States and Britain are a benefit to the world, and why an interruption of such relations is a detriment to progress and a disease world-wide in its effects. But when we had written down all those reasons we should not have expressed the instinctive sentiments which go below and beyond them all. To our way of feeling, quarrelling and misunderstanding between the British and American peoples are like a thing contrary to Nature. They are so contrary to Nature that

From ‘Lenders and taxpayers’, The Spectator, 3 February 1917: As to the general financial soundness of the country there can be no question… Indeed, one of our worst economic troubles at the present moment is that many classes of people are in possession of more money than they have ever handled before, and cannot resist the temptation of spending it lavishly. Somehow or other their expenditure on their personal gratification has to be controlled in the interests of the state. A considerable amount of control is being exercised through the power which the government possess of regulating our imports. That power, as we shall presently urge, must be more extensively used

From ‘Raiders, submarines and some naval problems’, The Spectator, 20 January 1917: At the moment the enemy’s fleet is compelled to remain in its own ports and to challenge us from safe retreats, sometimes behind lock-gates and always behind well-sown minefields. Still, the fact remains that the enemy can come out if they like, though we cannot make them do so when we like, and further that with good luck they can actually smuggle out a raider or two. We are top-dog, but up till now we have not been able to get a good bite at the under-dog, and he remains, though in a humiliating position, quite fit for work

From ‘News of the Week’, The Spectator, 6 January 1917: The war has been crowded with romantic adventures by sea and land in every part of the world, but perhaps nothing is more sensational, more reminiscent of blue lights and the accents of warning and suspense from the orchestra, than the murder of the monk Rasputin in Petrograd… Whether those who took his life did so on the grounds of private revenge or of patriotism remains to be seen. In any case, we agree with Reuter’s correspondent that the disappearance of this sinister figure is a subject for congratulation for all true friends of Russia.  

From a letter published under the heading ‘The religion of the ordinary soldier’, The Spectator, 23 December 1916: During a discharge of gas at the beginning of July along our front, one of the cylinders was displaced by the near bursting of an enemy shell. It turned the nozzle round, and the gas began to pour into our own trench. One of my lads, who was acting as orderly, heard from the communication trench that something was happening and ran into the front line… He ran forward unprotected, tugged at the cylinder, and pointed its nozzle outwards again before he fell unconscious. He died a few minutes afterwards. Those who saw

From ‘The food shortage and how to meet it’, The Spectator, 2 December 1916: A rise in prices, if properly understood and properly used, will be our salvation, not our injury. High prices help conservation, and, what is still more important, they help supply… If we artificially cut down prices here, we sterilise instead of stimulating the impulse to feed us from abroad. We are in effect saying to the world: ‘If you are such fools as to send us food, we warn you that you are not going to obtain inflated prices. You will get nothing more here than what we choose to tell you is a fair price. Our

From ‘English versus German banking’, The Spectator, 18 November 1916: At the present moment a good many of us are in the mood to feel that we never wish to see any kind of German within our country again; but it is quite certain that this attitude of mind will not endure for ever, and it is equally certain that if we prevent German bankers from establishing themselves in London after the war they will take their business elsewhere, and to that extent London will lose its character as an international banking centre. Mr Pownall well expresses the main proposition: ‘It is the universality of London, its cosmopolitan composition, that creates