For me this is the vital litmus test: no intellectual society can flourish where a Jew feels even slightly uneasy.

As a child I found railroad stations exciting, mysterious, and even beautiful, as indeed they often were.

The Second World War took place not so much because no one won the First, but because the Versailles Treaty did not acknowledge this truth.

Long periods of recession, which tend to be self-perpetuating, are usually ended by war, or by preparations for it.

Bismarck had cunningly taught the parties not to aim at national appeal but to represent interests. They remained class or sectional pressure-groups under the Republic. This was fatal, for it made the party system, and with it democratic parliamentarianism, seem a divisive rather than a unifying factor. Worse: it meant the parties never produced a leader who appealed beyond the narrow limits of his own following.

Scanning the newspapers and absorbing with a mixture of incredulity and indignation the enormities they report, I conclude that what England lacks today is, quite simply, sense.

The most intimidating world leader was Lyndon Johnson, who became U.S. President when John Kennedy was assassinated. He exulted in this power and liked to inspire fear.