At VodkaPundit, Stephen Green has given us another "required reading" assignment.
This time Stephen tells us to read Niall Ferguson's commentary in today's Los Angeles Times, "London, Bloody but Unbowed."
Here's a teaser:
London can take it.
[. . .]
The first bombs of the German Blitz fell on central London on Aug. 24, 1940, and there were recurrent waves of aerial attack throughout the war, culminating in the V1 flying bomb and V2 rocket campaigns of 1944 and '45. All told, German air attacks killed around 43,000 British civilians, a large proportion of them Londoners.
[. . .]
So when I heard the news of Thursday's events, my first thought was that people have bombed London before, and some have lived to regret it.
[. . .]
But though they may seem softer, today's Londoners have lived through horrifying scenes as well; the Germans were not the last people to bomb London. The Irish Republican Army's mainland bombing campaign is still fresh in the memory of virtually every grown man and woman in the city.
[. . .]
No, whoever the perpetrators were, I am confident they will not achieve their aim of disrupting London life. More than that: I am certain they will live — though perhaps not for very long — to regret following in the cloven hoof-prints of the Luftwaffe and their Irish imitators.
London can take it. And dish it out.
Stephen has once again chosen an outstanding reading assignment. Read the whole thing.
By the way, Niall Ferguson is a professor of history at Harvard University and a Senior Research Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford.
Comments