Warm and Witty Side of Attila the Hun Read Online Free PDF Page A

teens. His Christian adherence notwithstanding, both he and his political opponents were acutely aware of the ambiguous status attending upon his ethnic background. In one somewhat confrontational exchange in the House of Commons, one MP sought to put him "in his place" by contrasting Disraeli's recent British pedigree with his more deeply rooted one. "I remind you, Mr. Disraeli," he said, "that my ancestors were present at the signing of the Magna Carta ."
    "I commend you for your ancestors," Disraeli replied. "Mine were present at the proclamation of the Ten Commandments.”
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    On occasion tragedy can segue to humor. A good example of this can be seen in the death of the prime minister of Australia , Harold Holt, in December of 1967. Holt and some friends were walking along a beach known for its dangerous undertow (or “riffs”) when he spontaneously stripped off his shirt and plunged in for a swim. He was never seen again. Two days later the government pronounced him dead. No remains were ever recovered—"If you drown out here you become part of the food chain pretty quickly," one Australian observed—but Holt was later commemorated in the capital city of Canberra with the dedication of a public facility in his name. It is a municipal swimming pool. (Perhaps this tells us something about Australians.)

    Ramsey MacDonald, the first Socialist prime minister of Britain (in 1929 and again from 1931 until 1935), was well known for the impenetrability of his rhetoric. His turgid, convoluted, desultory speeches often left his audiences applauding politely in stunned confusion. (Winston Churchill once commented that one of MacDonald’s speeches was “… like the peace of God. It passeth all understanding.” A good example of this is the following excerpt from a speech he delivered to the House of Commonsregarding the unemployment problem. (Needless to say, the author did not record this from memory. He looked it up.)
    "Schemes must be devised, policies must be devised if it is humanly possible to take that section, those unemployed who are not shortly to be reabsorbed into industry, and to regard them not as wastrels, not as hopeless people, but as people for whom occupation must be invented somehow or another, and that occupation, although it may not be in the factory or in large-scale industrial activity or in large-scale organized industrial groups, nevertheless will be quite as effective for themselves mentally, morally, spiritually, physically, than, perhaps, if they were to have been included in this enormous mechanism of humanity which is not always producing the best result, and which, to a very large extent, fails in producing those good results that so many of us expect to see from a higher civilization based upon national wealth which, when comprehended, or apprehended, must needs lead to an inevitable conclusion. We are faced with the question of what to do in respect to this question, to that question, and to the other question, but perfectly obviously, after we have faced the more superficial aspects of the several questions, we need to know in relation to a complete plan what we are actually giving and what we are actually getting. Therefore, when the departmental, or rather, the compartmental, exploration has gone on to a certain extent, it cannot be completed until somebody, coordinating all the problems, sets out in one statement and declaration the complete scheme, once devised, that the House (of Commons) can pass to give hope for the future—until that scheme has been placed before you, you cannot possible hope to complete your examination of the departmental, or rather, the compartmental problems and questions. This is indeed itself a problem that must be faced."
    If the reader can make heads or tails of this excerpt... well, to quote Rudyard Kipling, you're a better man than I am, Gunga Din.
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    Engelbert Dollfuss was chancellor (i.e., prime minister) of Austria