We sit by and watch the Barbarian. We tolerate him in the long stretches of peace, we are not afraid.  We are tickled by his irreverences; his comic inversion of our certitudes and our fixed creed.  We laugh.  But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond; and on those faces there is no smile.

- Hilaire Belloc












we sit by and watch the Barbarian