"The Major won't have forgotten."

From Gaudy Night (1935), by Dorothy Sayers:

Padgett: Wot this country wants is an 'Itler.

Miss Edwards (Tutor in Biology at an Oxford College for women): I suppose they [murderers] ought to be kept in hospitals at vast expense, along with other unfit specimens.  Speaking as a biologist, I must say I think public money might be better employed.  What with the number of imbeciles and physical wrecks we allow to go about and propagate their species, we shall end by devitalizing whole nations.

Dean: Miss Schuster-Slatt would advocate sterilization.

Miss Edwards: They're trying it in Germany, I believe.

Miss Hillyard: Together with the relegation of woman to her proper place in the home.

Lord Peter Wimsey: But they execute people there quite a lot, so Miss Bartyon can't take over their organization lock, stock, and barrel.

Miss Edwards: Bosh!  You can't carry through any principle without doing violence to somebody.  Either directly or indirecectly.  Every time you disturb the balance of nature you let in violence.  And if you leave nature alone you get violence in any case.  I quite agree that murderers shouldn't be hanged - it's wasteful and unkind.  But I don't agree that they should be comfortably fed and housed while decent people go short.  Economically speaking, they should be used for laboratory experiments.

Peter: To assist the further preservation of the unfit?

Miss Edwards: To assist in establishing scientific facts.

Padgett: I says to my wife when I 'eard you was 'ere, 'I'll lay you anything you like,' I says, 'the major won't have forgotten.'

Peter: By jove, no.  Fancy finding you here!  Last time I saw you, I was being carried away on a stretcher.

Padgett: That's right, sir.  I 'ad the pleasure of 'elping to dig you out.

Peter: I know you did.  I'm glad to see you now, but I was a dashed sight gladder to see you then.

Padgett: Yes, sir.  Gorblimey, sir - well, there!  We thought you was gone that time.  I says to Hackett...'Lor' lumme!' I says, 'there's old Winderpane [referring to Peter's monocle] gawn' - excuse me, sir - and he says, ''Ell! wot ruddy luck!' So I says, 'Don't stand there grizzlin' - maybe 'e ain't gawn after all.'  So we-

Peter: No, I fancy I was more frightened than hurt [referring to an incident which, combined with his overall service, left him shell-shocked and catatonic for a year after the war, which recurs frequently under times of stress.]  Unpleasant sensation, being buried alive.

Padgett: Well, sir!  W'en we finds yer there at the bottom o' that there old Boche dug-out with a big beam acrost yer, I says to Hackett, 'Well,' I says, ''e's all 'ere, anyhow.'  And he says, 'Thank gawd for Jerry!' 'e says - meanin', if it 'adn't been for that there dug-out -

Peter: Yes, I had a bit of luck there.  We lost poor Mr. Danbury, though.

Oh!  What a lovely war it was and was again.

I love Gaudy Night with a fiery passion, but it has the ability to horrify me at the way the threats of World War Two were not seen or even encouraged, as seen in the above quotations. The last one, I think, helps show why - after a war which left even the strongest survivors psychologically and/or physically so badly damaged, and took millions of England's men, no one wanted war (and rightly so).  Additionally, many academics and intellectuals in the UK and the US were philosophically sympathetic to the Nazi ideals, if a few questions of method were raised, well, it was only the dissidents who were being quashed.

Oh!  What at lovely...

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