On this
momentous date, when we commemorate both the attack on the Twin Towers twelve
years ago and General Pinochet’s coup d’état
of 1973 in Chile (yes, indeed: him that ‘brought Democracy to Chile’ in the
Iron Lady’s immortal words), it is perhaps a useful thing to remind ourselves
that not all evil actually has a purpose. Or, in the words of the inimitable
Hector Hugh Munro:
Spayley had grasped the fact that people will do things from a sense of
duty which they would never attempt as a pleasure. There are thousands of
respectable middle-class men who, if you found them unexpectedly in a Turkish
bath, would explain in all sincerity that a doctor had ordered them to take Turkish
baths; if you told them in return that you went there because you liked it,
they would stare in pained wonder at the frivolity of your motive. In the same
way, whenever a massacre of Armenians is reported from Asia Minor, every one
assumes that it has been carried out "under orders" from somewhere or
another; no one seems to think that there are people who might like to
kill their neighbours now and then.
[Saki: ‘Filboid
Studge, the story of a mouse that helped’.]
 |
| Armenia 1915 |
That looks horrific. Human beings can be such brutes. Perhaps the monkeys are better off eh?
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