He ought to be the Minister of Supply if we are in for a crisis. His energy and fiery brain seem unimpaired with age. He is certainly not dismayed by our difficulties. He says that our rulers are now beginning to get frightened... He said that sometimes he couldn't sleep at night thinking of our dangers, how all this wonderful Empire which had been built up so slowly and so steadily might all be dissipated in a minute. He was just the stuff required in an emergency. The thing is to say when the emergency has arrived.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "He ought to be the Minister of Supply if we are in for a crisis. His energy and fiery brain seem unimpaired with age. He is certainly not dismayed by our difficulties. He says that our rulers are now beginning to get frightened... He said that sometimes he couldn't sleep at night thinking of our dangers, how all this wonderful Empire which had been built up so slowly and so steadily might all be dissipated in a minute. He was just the stuff required in an emergency. The thing is to say when the emergency has arrived." in the context of "General Ironside's diary entry (6 December 1937), quoted in Colonel Roderick Macleod and Denis Kelly (eds.), Time Unguarded: The Ironside Diaries, 1937–1940 (1962), p. 42" to mean that wisdom is timeless.