Lights Out
19th September 2022
One London evening in 1914, just after Great Britain had declared war on Germany, British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey was in his parliamentary office talking to a journalist. This is not always advisable for today’s politicians, but in those days statesmen from Westminster and hacks from Fleet Street took dinner at the same club, or at least within the same social set, and his confidant was John Alfred Spender, editor of the influential Westminster Gazette. “The lamps are going out all over Europe,” said Sir Edward mournfully. “We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.” A quotable quote, certainly, as long as we bear one thing in mind: Sir Edward was speaking figuratively.
Almost a quarter of a century later, Winston Churchill updated the phrase during a speech broadcast in America just before World War II, saying that “the lights are going out” across Europe, and referring of course to the rise of Hitler. Once again, he spoke figuratively. Eighty years after that, a man who has been called “literally Hitler” made a speech to the United Nations. In that speech, Donald Trump was not being figurative when he informed delegates that following the German energy model of almost complete reliance on power supplied by Vladimir Putin’s Russia would be ruinous. The German delegation openly mocked him. This has turned out to be unwise, particularly when you are from the country that invented the word schadenfreude.