Submitted by Hal G. P. Colebatch, Jul 30, 2008 10:26

I disagree with Shalom Freedman. Waugh wrote less directly political material than Orwell, but what he did write in this vein, such as "Robbery Under Law" and some passages towards the end of "Sword of Honour," was very powerful and impeccably anti-totalitarian. He never said anything as foolish as Orwell did in 1939 to the effect that the manufacture of Bren machine-guns by Britain was some sort of capitalist plot, or later that the allied occupation of Madagascar in World War II was morally indistinguishable from the Soviet invasion of Finland. Further, he was aware of the atrocities committed by the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, which Orwell tended to gloss over or even ridicule reports of. Certainly Orwell learned better, but there were some foolish things in his early writings. Incidentally, Waugh said after his only meeting with Orwell that "he is very close to God."

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