Every Crisis an Opportunity [1951]

The causes of national failure when one looks through history are of two opposite kinds: feebleness and fanaticism. Feeble nations are too lazy to take necessary precautions; fanatical nations are too frantic to think precautions necessary. Failure to meet a difficult situation may be of two kinds. There may be zeal without discretion, or there may be apparent discretion without zeal. The nation that meets a crisis adequately has enough zeal to see through the sophistries of apparent discretion, but 10 enough discretion to avoid gestures that look heroic, but are pretty sure to prove futile. The Western world at the present moment is at a crisis as important and as difficult as any that has ever occurred in human history. Remembering 1940, it is hardly to be expected to endure such gibes with patience, or that they can do anything to restore that harmony between our nations upon which the hopes of the world depend.