Word: vansittartism
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...Lord Vansittart who wrote, but he was quoting not himself but Velleius Paterculus, a 1st-Century Roman historian. He added similar testimony from Tacitus, Seneca, Symmachus, Claudian, Nazarius, Ammianus Marcellinus, Ennodius, Quintilian and Josephus. This battery of authorities punctuates Vansittart's latest book on Germany: Bones of Contention (Knopf; $2.75), which was published in Britain last March and appears in the U.S. this week...
...Lord Vansittart, long an exponent of intelligent toughness, observed that nothing could be "more ridiculous than trying major war criminals-those big shots-with cumbrous machinery." To him, the only problems were "the location of the gallows and the length of the drop...
...Lord Vansittart, Britain's No. 1 advocate of Schrecklichkeit . . ." (TIME...
Nonsense. If TIME's writer had taken the trouble to read anything Vansittart has written, he would not have used so silly a word. Such misrepresentations of "Vansittartism" date from the embarrassed retorts of English appeasers of a few years ago to "Van's" vigorous realism about Germany. One would think that his recent book-which has a very clear chapter about what "Vansittartism" is and is not-was enough to dispose of the myth that there is anything schrecklich about his proposals...
...Whose nonsense? Let Reader Lynd reread Vansittart's larruping Lessons of My Life. That sizzling tract advocates for Germany the kind of Schrecklichkeit the FBI advocated for Capone...