Bungling Tinkers!, by Sir Sidney Low

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SUCH a “settlement” could not endure. The wars and rebellions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were attempts to unmake its articles or to repair its omissions. The revolutionary outbreaks of 1848, the Hungarian war of independence of 1849, the Polish insurrection of 1863, the Crimean war [of 1853-56], the Franco-Austrian war of 1859, the war between the Germanic Powers and Denmark in 1864, and that between those Powers themselves two years later, the Franco-Prussian war, the wars between Russia and Turkey and Greece and Turkey, and those of Serbia, Greece, and Bulgaria against their Ottoman enemy and one another, from which this last and greatest war of all has developed, — these are episodes in the struggle to attain, or to repress, national aspirations after unity or freedom, or both.

by Sir Sidney Low 1857-1932

From ‘The Spirit of the Allied Nations’ by Sir Sidney James Mark Low (1857-1932).

Précis

The legacy of the Congress was a ferment of dissatisfaction, said Low, which had manifested itself in sixty years of revolution and war; the Great War itself was only the last and most catastrophic in a series of conflicts to arise out of the political elite’s vain efforts to snuff out national, democratic and liberal movements across the Continent.

Questions for Critics

1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?

2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?

3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?

Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.

Précis

Questions for Critics

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