On the upswing in British public life today is tall, trim-mustached Major Herwald Ramsbotham (pronounced Rams-bottom), Minister of Pensions, who wears behind his icy monocle an engaging twinkle. He became active last year as an oratorical scout, reconnoitring British public opinion in advance of the isolationist policies formally adopted by His Majesty’s Government last week . In his preliminary skirmishes last year handsome Major Ramsbotham, the epitome of a British officer with a gallant War record, characteristically declared:
“We cannot become the universal policeman and patrol all the back streets of Europe and Asia. … It is all very well to talk about the brotherhood of man, sanctity of treaties, rights of minorities and the rule of law. . . . Let us realize that our power to deal with the world as it is and the realists who inhabit it is not unlimited.
“We must realize that some of the rulers of the States we have to deal with are not idealists and sentimentalists, but cold, hardheaded. ruthless, determined men. . . . Such men are more easily impressed by high explosives than by high objectives. “We are not our brother’s keeper and we cannot go running about all over Europe like a knight-errant rescuing damsels in distress. It is not our job to play the part of an amiable Don Quixote.”
With the official adoption of an anti-Don Quixote policy by the Prime Minister last week, it becomes the duty of Major Ramsbotham and other Conservative leaders to popularize it with the British masses. The engaging twinkle behind the monocle was working overtime last week as Orator Ramsbotham made headlines and scored chuckles all over the United Kingdom with a speech in which he referred to Adolf Hitler’s annexation of Austria thus:
“The nation whose conduct has recently perturbed us all is a nation of beer drinkers. Beer is a peaceful drink. Beer is the drink for the ordinary, kindly, simple workingman in the street—the man who can be found in millions all over the world. If he could get together with his fellows in other countries over a pint of beer, we should hear much less of dictators and all the other high and mighty political personages that at present bully and bewilder the ordinary man. In these unstable, quarrelsome days. I think I can give you a slogan for all peaceful, genial, companionable folks of all countries: ‘Beer Drinkers of the World Unite.’ ”
The editors of Punch, meanwhile, came out with what was intended to be a side-splitting full-page article calculated to impress the English mind with a notion that Czechoslovakia is a funny name, that even the fate of Czechoslovakia is not far from an affair for English mirth, and that as for an Englishman taking up arms to fight for Czechoslovakia—well that, implies Punch, is a simply hilarious idea.
Thus His Majesty’s Government were again profiting last week from the natural tendency of the typical John Bull never to take Central European troubles seriously, his incurable taste for chuckling with the rulers of the British Empire at the rest of the cockeyed world.
More Must-Reads from TIME
- How Canada Fell Out of Love With Trudeau
- Trump Is Treating the Globe Like a Monopoly Board
- Bad Bunny On Heartbreak and New Album
- See Photos of Devastating Palisades Fire in California
- 10 Boundaries Therapists Want You to Set in the New Year
- The Motivational Trick That Makes You Exercise Harder
- Nicole Kidman Is a Pure Pleasure to Watch in Babygirl
- Column: Jimmy Carter’s Global Legacy Was Moral Clarity
Contact us at letters@time.com