Saturday, December 06, 2008

This made me smile

While researching for future Churchill Series posts I came upon an address historian John Plumpton delivered before the Churchill Society for the Advancement of Parliamentary Democracy.


It includes the following - - -


Arguments about the importance of history and attempts to shape it and control it are certainly not new.


In 1927 the then mayor of Chicago, William Hale Thompson, launched an attack on allegedly pro-British textbooks in the city’s schools.


Chicagoans, more interested in the services provided by Al Capone, paid little attention.


Political cartoonists had a field day with it. In one cartoon, a police officer pulled over a suspicious-looking truck that had just arrived from Canada.


Demanding to know what the driver was carrying, he got the response.


“Only booze, officer.”


“Drive on, brother,” said the policeman. “I thought it was history books.”

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Plumpton’s entire address is here.


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