{"product_id":"2940013762794","title":"The Last Enemy","description":"OXFORD has been called many names, from 'the city of beautiful nonsense'\u003cbr\u003eto 'an organized waste of time,' and it is characteristic of the place\u003cbr\u003ethat the harsher names have usually been the inventions of the\u003cbr\u003eUniversity's own undergraduates. I had been there two years and was not\u003cbr\u003eyet twenty-one when the war broke out. No one could say that we were, in\u003cbr\u003emy years, strictly 'politically minded.' At the same time it would be\u003cbr\u003efalse to suggest that the University was blissfully unaware of impending\u003cbr\u003edisaster. True, one could enter anybody's rooms and within two minutes be\u003cbr\u003eengaged in a heated discussion over orthodox versus Fairbairn rowing, or\u003cbr\u003ewhether Ezra Pound or T. S. Eliot was the daddy of contemporary poetry,\u003cbr\u003ewhile an impassioned harangue on liberty would be received in embarrassed\u003cbr\u003esilence. Nevertheless, politics filled a large space. That humorous\u003cbr\u003etradition of Oxford verbosity, the Union, held a political debate every\u003cbr\u003eweek; Conservative, Labour, and even Liberal clubs flourished; and the\u003cbr\u003eBritish Union of Fascists had managed to raise a back room and\u003cbr\u003etwenty-four members.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut it was not to the political societies and meetings that one could\u003cbr\u003elook for a representative view of the pre-war undergraduate. Perhaps as\u003cbr\u003egood a cross-section of opinion and sentiment as any at Oxford was to be\u003cbr\u003efound in Trinity, the college where I spent those two years rowing a\u003cbr\u003egreat deal, flying a little--I was a member of the University Air\u003cbr\u003eSquadron--and reading somewhat. We were a small college of less than two\u003cbr\u003ehundred, but a successful one. We had the president of the Rugby Club,\u003cbr\u003ethe secretary of the Boat Club, numerous golf, hockey, and running Blues\u003cbr\u003eand the best cricketer in the University. We also numbered among us the\u003cbr\u003epresident of the Dramatic Society, the editor of the Isis (the University\u003cbr\u003emagazine), and a small but select band of scholars. The sentiment of the\u003cbr\u003ecollege was undoubtedly governed by the more athletic undergraduates, and\u003cbr\u003ewe radiated an atmosphere of alert Philistinism. Apart from the scholars,\u003cbr\u003ewe had come up from the so-called better public schools, from Eton,\u003cbr\u003eShrewsbury, Wellington, and Winchester, and while not the richest\u003cbr\u003erepresentatives of the University, we were most of us comfortably enough\u003cbr\u003eoff. Trinity was, in fact, a typical incubator of the English ruling\u003cbr\u003eclasses before the war. Most of those with Blues were intelligent enough\u003cbr\u003eto get second-class honours in whatever subject they were 'reading,' and\u003cbr\u003ecould thus ensure themselves entry into some branch of the Civil or\u003cbr\u003eColonial Service, unless they happened to be reading Law, in which case\u003cbr\u003ethey were sure to have sufficient private means to go through the lean\u003cbr\u003eyears of a beginner's career at the Bar or in politics. We were held\u003cbr\u003etogether by a common taste in friends, sport, literature, and idle\u003cbr\u003eamusement, by a deep-rooted distrust of all organized emotion and\u003cbr\u003estandardized patriotism, and by a somewhat self-conscious satisfaction in\u003cbr\u003eour ability to succeed without apparent effort. I went up for my first\u003cbr\u003eterm, determined, without over-exertion, to row myself into the\u003cbr\u003eGovernment of the Sudan, that country of blacks ruled by Blues in which\u003cbr\u003emy father had spent so many years. To our scholars (except the Etonians)\u003cbr\u003ewe scarcely spoke; not, I think, from plain snobbishness, but because we\u003cbr\u003efound we did not speak the same language. Through force of circumstance\u003cbr\u003ethey had to work hard; they had neither the time nor the money to\u003cbr\u003ecultivate the dilettante browsing which we affected. As a result they\u003cbr\u003etended to be martial in their enthusiasms, whether pacifistic or\u003cbr\u003epatriotic. They were earnest, technically knowing, and conversationally\u003cbr\u003euninteresting.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNot that conversationally Trinity had any great claim to distinction. To\u003cbr\u003espeak brilliantly was not to be accepted at once as indispensable; indeed\u003cbr\u003eit might prove a handicap, giving rise to suspicions of artiness. It\u003cbr\u003ewould be tolerated as an idiosyncrasy because of one's prowess at golf,\u003cbr\u003ecricket, or some other college sport that proved one's all-rightness. For\u003cbr\u003ewhile one might be clever, on no account must one be unconventional or\u003cbr\u003edisturbing--above all disturbing. The scholars' conversation might well\u003cbr\u003ehave been disturbing. Their very presence gave one the uneasy suspicion\u003cbr\u003ethat in even so small a community as this while one half thought the\u003cbr\u003eworld was their oyster, the other half knew it was not and never could\u003cbr\u003ebe. Our attitude will doubtless strike the reader as reprehensible and\u003cbr\u003esnobbish, but I believe it to have been basically a suspicion of anything\u003cbr\u003eradical--any change, and not a matter of class distinction.","brand":"WDS Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47152665034992,"sku":"2940013762794","price":3.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013762794_p0.jpg?v=1763589944","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013762794","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}