A 74 Year-Old Tolkien Thought

Hi everyone,

I just wanted to share this excerpt from Tolkien's Letter #81 to Christopher Tolkien, written in September of 1944 - 74 years ago! As the season of fall sports begins, I thought this would be an interesting share because he is comparing the somewhat dramatic behavior of the wartime press to the behavior of football spectators.

"I cannot understand the line taken by BBC (and papers, and so, I suppose, emanating from Ministry] O[f] information]) that the German troops are a motley collection of sutlers and broken men, while yet recording the bitterest defence against the finest and best equipped armies (as indeed they are) that have ever taken the field. The English pride themselves, or used to, on 'sportsmanship' (which included 'giving the devil his due'), not that attendance at a league football match was not enough to dispel the notion that 'sportsmanship' was possessed by any very large number of the inhabitants of this island. But it is distressing to see the press grovelling in the gutter as low as Goebbels in his prime, shrieking that any German commander who holds out in a desperate situation (when, too, the military needs of his side clearly benefit) is a drunkard, and a besotted fanatic. "

-Melian