Just ahead of Episode Twelve of Lord of the World, a thank you for all your kind comments about this first serialisation of 2025 and about all our other Tales for Our Time. Seven-and-a-half years ago now, we launched this series of audio adventures on a whim, threw it together somewhat hastily, and learned on the job. So we're enormously grateful for your appreciation of it.
John Cashman, a Steyn Clubber from New England, notes the similarities between Robert Hugh Benson's rising young American senator of whom little is known and a certain other rising young American senator of whom little was known:
The theatrics with the presentation by Felsenburgh, the large worshiping crowd, the media all on board, reminded me of a campaign rally by Obama. I was expecting to see the comment hope and change.
You said it, John. Many of Obama's most risible bromides - "We are the ones we have been waiting for" - ring very Bensonian. In tonight's episode, the "fundamental transformation" promised by an actual American senator is about to get underway:
This was now their work—to carry into effect the new principle that had suddenly become incarnate in this grey-haired young American—the principle of Universal Brotherhood. It would mean enormous labour; all foreign relations would have to be readjusted—trade, policy, methods of government—all demanded re-statement. Europe was already organised internally on a basis of mutual protection: that basis was now gone. There was no more any protection, because there was no more any menace. Enormous labour, too, awaited the Government in other directions. A Blue-book must be prepared, containing a complete report of the proceedings in the East, together with the text of the Treaty which had been laid before them in Paris, signed by the Eastern Emperor, the feudal kings, the Turkish Republic, and countersigned by the American plenipotentiaries.... Finally, even home politics required reform: the friction of old strife between centre and extremes must cease forthwith—there must be but one party now...
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Please join me tomorrow for Part Thirteen of Lord of the World.