Let's hear what Wi nston Church ill had to say on the subj ect, when he addressed the H ouse of Commons on 13 M ay 1940. If a battle between past and present is allowed to b reak out, Churchill sai d , there w i l l b e ' n o su rvival fo r t h e u rge a n d impulse of the ages, that manki nd will move forward towa rds its goal ' . 1 I n other words, we'll lose the future .
W e know what came next: G reat B ritain a s a space did not sufer the insult of occupation, but only because the B ritish leaders avo ided a chronopolitical battle over the TEM PO of the B attle o f B ritain.
Th at was an odd lesson i n hi story ; b ut it was also a lesson in geopol itics, in which the perspective of the C H RO N IC temporali ty of events was undefeated by the prospect of the panicky instantaneity b eh i n d a ' fu turism ' whose fascist origins were all too o bvio us, starting with M arinetti' s tracts celeb rating the G reat War as ' the wo rl d ' s hygiene' . The cult o f the acceleration of history ended app rop riately enough fo r the fu tu ri sts in the B l itz, that lightning war of the failed i nvasi on o f the sky as well as o f the B ritish I sles.
THE GREAT ACCELERATOR
1 Winston Churchill, Address to the Home of Commom, 13 May 1940.
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