The Orwell Diaries

(Orwell's press card photo, 1933, via Wikipedia)

I hate to publicize a competitor, but did you know that George Orwell has a blog? Here's the start of his post last Thursday:

The French have surrendered. This could be foreseen from last night’s broadcast and in fact should have been foreseeable when they failed to defend Paris, the one place where it might have been possible to stop the German tanks. Strategically all turns on the French fleet, of which there is no news yet…

Considerable excitement today over the French surrender, and people everywhere to be heard discussing it. Usual line, “Thank God we’ve got a navy”. A Scottish private, with medals of the last war, partly drunk, making a patriotic speech in a carriage in the Underground, which the other passengers seemed rather to like. Such a rush on evening papers that I had to make four attempts before getting one.

OK, as you might have guessed, these are actually posts from George Orwell's diary, 70 years ago to the day. That one was originally written June 17, 1940. It's a neat idea, isn't it? Each "blog post" is that day's diary entry. It's as if you were reading about these events in real-time. And, obviously, it's a fascinating period of time.

Many of the "posts" right now concern worries about a possible German invasion of Great Britain. Think we have problems now? That must have been absolutely terrifying. But the British held up under the strain. Indeed, it was perhaps their finest hour. (Winston Churchill's "This was their finest hour" speech was delivered to Parliament the following day, June 18, 1940.)

Here you can follow along and relive those events of 70 years ago with George Orwell.

It is impossible even yet to decide what to do in the case of German conquest of England. The one thing I will not do is to clear out, at any rate not further than Ireland, supposing that to be feasible. If the fleet is intact and it appears that the war is to be continued from America and the Dominions, then one must remain alive if possible, if necessary in the concentration camp. If the U.S.A is going to submit to conquest as well, there is nothing for it but to die fighting, but one must above all die fighting and have the satisfaction of killing somebody else first.

We must remember that it's in times like this that nations either rise to the challenge or falter and fail. Do we live in difficult times? Well, this is nothing like World War II or even the Great Depression. So, can we show even half the courage our ancestors did? Or have we become timid little people, gullible, frightened of shadows, and easily led by demagogues?

We've certainly failed to show much courage or common sense so far, in the first decade of the 21st Century. Can we recover our nerve now? I guess we'll see. Given the current teabagger lunacy, the anti-immigrant hysteria, the "birther" idiocy - and, just basically, Fox "News" making money hand over fist - I can't say that I'm optimistic. But I hope I'm wrong.