Word: briffault
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...rage at the methods, of the massive, muddling, Machiavellian empire of George VI. First was Howe's own England Expects Every American To Do His Duty. Next was Margaret Halsey's good-natured account of her stay in England, With Malice Toward Some. Most recent is Robert Briffault's The Decline and Fall of the British Empire...
Author of the best-selling novel Europa, Robert Briffault was born in London 62 years ago, practiced medicine in New Zealand, was twice decorated during the War. When the Munich Pact was signed, he returned his decorations to the King. Under its grand title and despite isolated passages of startling invective, The Decline and Fall of the British Empire seems petty, and its criticism is so undiscriminating that readers may fear Briffault would not like the English even if they were good...
There have been other observers of human behavior who hold opposite views from the learned professor. Says Anthropologist Robert Briffault, "stupidity is deliberately, laboriously, vigilantly cultivated by the established institutions of medievalism, barbarism, and savagery, whose survival in a world of multiplied intelligence requires that stupidity -a stupidity which is an artificial product. It is not innate, it is not inevitable." Said famed Political Economist John Stuart Mill, "of all the vulgar modes of escaping from the consideration of the effect of social and moral influences on the human mind, the most vulgar is that of attributing the diversities...
...readers, prodded as they are, are likely to miss Author Briffault's point. At the front Julian sees a coward's drunken action win a V.C. Nurses who served with "Martyr" Edith Cavell show no sympathy for her admirers. Meeting Lenin on his way back to Russia to guide the revolution, Julian wishes him every success. Briffault's spokesman-hero, written down as missing after a hopeless attack, recovers in a German hospital, goes to Russia rather than return to perfidious England after the Armistice. There he finds Zena again, marries her. Though he survives both...
Taking up the fortunes of Julian Bern, cosmopolitan young English intellectual, where Europa dropped them. Author Briffault discovers his hero holidaying in Belgium with Zena, his current mistress. War has been declared, and the German invasion quickly comes too close for comfort. Julian and Zena escape to England, hoping to live there quietly as spectators of a world gone mad. They soon find both England and their chosen role impossible. Zena goes back to her native Russia; Julian despairingly enlists. Thereafter the narrative is governed less by probability than by convenience: coincidences pop up as required, scenes shift and actors...