Politics & Power Quote by Richard Le Gallienne

Le Gallienne’s line lands like a quiet accusation: the default setting of collective identity is suspicion. He doesn’t frame prejudice as a rare moral failure but as a standing readiness, an always-on posture that nations keep at the hip like a weapon. “Ever ready” is the needle here. It suggests not just willingness but eagerness, the way a rumor feels like relief when it confirms what you were already prepared to think.

As a poet writing in the long shadow of empire and at the hinge of two world wars, Le Gallienne is catching a modern pathology in mid-bloom. The late 19th and early 20th centuries packaged race and nation as hard categories with “scientific” backing, while mass media and propaganda made it easier to distribute simple stories about complicated people. In that environment, believing the worst isn’t merely ignorance; it’s social glue. Shared contempt becomes a shortcut to belonging. If “they” are treacherous, “we” don’t have to interrogate our own motives.

The subtext is less about individual bigotry than about the psychological convenience of stereotypes at scale. The “worst” is attractive because it simplifies geopolitics into morality play: heroes at home, villains abroad. That story justifies borders, budgets, and brutality without ever having to name self-interest. Le Gallienne’s elegance is also his sting: by pairing “races” with “nations,” he implies that the impulse isn’t tied to one era or flag. It’s a recurring human tactic, dressed in whatever identity happens to be in fashion.