On Virtues by Sheldon Whitehouse

Author:Sheldon Whitehouse [Whitehouse, Sheldon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Adams Media, an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.
Published: 2012-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Who is in charge of the clattering train?

The axles creak and the couplings strain;

and the pace is hot and the points are near,

and Sleep has deadened the driver’s ear;

and the signals flash through the night in vain,

For Death is in charge of the clattering train.

—A STANZA FROM EDWIN JAMES MILLIKEN’S “DEATH AND HIS BROTHER SLEEP”

Winston Churchill quoted this poem in his 1948 book The Gathering Storm on the events leading up World War II, expressing the distress of those who saw England hurtling unprepared toward war. The currency of this image prewar is suggested by the famous CBS correspondent Edward R. Murrow telling his American radio audience that the sentiment of the British people was that “the machinery is out of control, that we are all passengers on an express train traveling at high speed through a dark tunnel toward an unknown destiny. We sit and talk as convincingly as we can, speaking words someone else has used. The suspicion recurs that the train may have no engineer, no one who can handle it.”

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