“The names of great centuries
and epochs in human history are always given to them by their remote
descendants. Few men realized while they lived it that the age of Augustus was
the high point in a thousand years of history. When XX Legio Valeria Victrix left
Britain in A.D. 403, none of its men realized that the golden eagles of Rome
would never return to the island, or that they were part of the decline and
fall of the Roman Empire. Certainly no Renaissance man knew he was living in a
century that other men would call the “rebirth,” just as his
great-great-great-grandfather had no knowledge that he was part of the Middle
Ages. Thus we do not know what to call our time, what label to give the
remarkable and extraordinary events that we not only witness but live.” –
Theodore H. White, FIRE IN THE ASHES: EUROPE IN MID-CENTURY (1953)
“A whisper of suspicion from
on high, a gout of irritation . . . exaggerated and repeated by thousands of
skilful and ambitious men until it reaches an echo that drums, deafens and
freezes the thinking of the very men who started it.” – Ibid.
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