PEOPLE AND THINGS
By HAROLD NICOLSON
SIR ARNOLD WILSON adorns the sombre loneliness of his mind with a comradely gift for quotation. There are those, I know, who contend that Sir Arnold quotes too often and too long. I do not share these criticisms; and in fact I enjoy his quotations, even when they come from Milton or the Book of Judges. Yet I confess that there are moments when I have suspected Sir Arnold Wilson of fitting his facts to his quotation rather than his quotation to his facts. Last week, for instance, he wrote a letter to The Times newspaper in which he described the prevailing mood of the British people as being, in the words of Sir Philip Sidney, " the confidence of men unwonted to be overcome." That, un- doubtedly, is a stirring snatch of sixteenth-century prose. Is it an apt description of the spirit of Britain at the outset of this ghastly 1939? Sir Arnold has walked and talked over most of England, and can claim to have exceptional know- ledge of what ordinary people are feeling. Does he really maintain that they are feeling confident? That is not my impression. My impression is that north of the Tees people are feeling gloomily resolute; and that south of the Tees the mood is one of anxious, even strained, perplexity.
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