Our [political] representatives are uncouth, unpleasant to the eye... How could it be otherwise. We do not choose them for their intellect, their artistic intelligence, their altruism, the mellifluousness of their voices, their physical beauty, their abstract wisdom, their seasoned knowledge of the values of Life. We choose beings who hypnotically suggest that they and they only can fill our individual purses, our maws, our stores, our banking-accounts with property that at the moment of their appeal for our suffrages belongs to the heathen stranger... our fellow-countrymen.
We elect them because they assure us that they will help us to take the bread out of our brother orphan's mouth and we get the rulers –– and the double-crossing –– that we deserve.
And is it then worth while? Or good enough? Those fellows have got us all into this mess. It is time we put an end to them. It is time, that is to say that we made our voices heard... we moderate people who read or write books, visit picture galleries, listen to concerts... We who are the backbone of our countries, asking nothing of them and giving unceasingly. There is not one of us who wants anyone murdered either wholesale or as individuals... And we are the people who shall survive, who shall come out of the gas-filled cellars and start again at the weary task of rebuilding our civilisations... we who have never yet seen any civilisation at all...
The Great Trade Route (1937)
Use the link below to visit THE FORD MADOX FORD SOCIETY, an international organization founded in 1997 'to promote knowledge of and interest in the life and works of Ford Madox Ford':
http://www.fordmadoxfordsociety.org/
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A Call: The Tale of Two Passions (1910) by FORD MADOX FORD
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