Laudator Temporis Acti

Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939), Great Trade Route (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1937), pp. 328-329:

The world is dying because all across it has run the terrible mania for putting everybody but oneself up against a wall. Everybody. . . . Alle Juden, alle Christen, alle Franzosen. . . . Every Jew, Every Wop, every Dago. . . . Tous les Etrangers, les anglais, les boches, les américains. . . . From every State in the world, in every tongue, that one cry mounts to Heaven. . . . That shibboleth has run across the world with a rapidity ten . . . no, but a thousand . . . times greater than the mania that set all Christendom warring against Saracens, Provençaux, Bulgarians, and Moors . . . for the greater glory of the Redeemer and the recovery of His birthplace.

You must kill, you must kill, you must kill. . . . In the first place for the benefit of your fellow-countrymen. . . . I beg pardon, I mean citizens. . . . Then what? You don't much prosper because you have killed your world markets. . . . So what? . . . I will tell you what.

The dizzy air trembles above every one of the nations of Christendom and Heathenesse with yelled aspirations to Heaven for the blood of every inhabitant of every other nation. . . . But beneath that there is another note. . . . In every one of those nations half or part of the nation is beginning to yell for the putting up against the wall of the other half or part . . . and both halves or parts are trembling. In France the whole population is filled with anxiety. In every street Royalists, Fascists, Socialists, Communists are, each within their group, inciting the other to acts of violence . . . and trembling at the thought of what will happen to them if the other fellows win. Over the whole of this country spreads the mighty unease, the Right trembling and arming itself against a Left that trembles at the thought of what the Right is preparing against it . . . and yelling that all the Right must be put against a wall.