Читать книгу The Oaken Heart онлайн

13 страница из 73

After the Anschluss, which startled us considerably, we cocked an anxious eye at the Government, but received no warning dig in the ribs from it. There was none of the time-honoured rumbling on the drums, no sudden and gratuitous reminder that the army was a man's life; nothing, only an insistence on social improvements at home, which as everybody knows, indicates an all-clear abroad.

The effect of this was to make us feel that, odd though it looked, there must be something in the inside story (which we never expect to know until afterwards) which made all the difference, and it was all right for us to go on putting the final touches to our recovery from the last war. What never occurred to us was the incredible fact that the men in charge at that time were mainly afraid of the horse.

The habit of confusing the strong urge towards a fairer chance for everybody with red revolution has been very common, but from a country point of view--which thinks in generations, or at least in decades--it still seems extraordinary that there should have been any real excitement anywhere about the country going anti-capitalist, when already we were the only state in Europe wherein by common consent money was taken regularly in cash from the rich and paid regularly in cash to the poor. We are anti-capitalist--in a Tory fashion--and have been so for some years.