Friday, July 20, 2007

Meet Mr. History

Dry Bones cartoon: Meet Mr. History.
Most of us are way too young to remember 1938. That's why I decided to come up with a new character. Mr. History. Problem is, that as a cartoon character he's funnier if he doesn't remember history. In this case he does not remember Neville Chamberlain. The Tony Blair of 1938.

So the story goes like this. The Nazis wanted "The return of Occupied Territories" (German speaking areas) which were part of Czechoslovakia. The Czechoslovakians, pressured on all sides, had "agreed" to exchange "Land for Peace". So the Brits sent their then Prime Minister to the region to work out the details with Adolf Hitler.

In explaining the "Peace" agreement he had secured in the region, (which led to the massive loss of life in WW2) Chamberlain said :

"We did not go there to decide whether the predominantly German areas in the Sudetenland should be passed over to the German Reich. That had been decided already. Czechoslovakia had accepted the Anglo-French proposals. What we had to consider was the method, the conditions and the time of the transfer of the territory. The second point to remember is that time was one of the essential factors. All the elements were present on the spot for the outbreak of a conflict which might have precipitated the catastrophe. We had populations inflamed to a high degree; we had extremists on both sides ready to work up and provoke incidents; we had considerable quantities of arms which were by no means confined to regularly organised forces. Therefore, it was essential that we should quickly reach a conclusion, so that this painful and difficult operation of transfer might be carried out at the earliest possible moment and concluded as soon as was consistent, with orderly procedure, in order that we might avoid the possibility of something that might have rendered all our attempts at peaceful solution useless. . . ."
-Read Chamberlain's 1938 speech.

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So are we in a replay of British/Western appeasement? What do you think? And while we're at it what do you think of Mr. History?

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