Faced with a similar disaster, would the British react with the same stoicism as that lately shown by the Japanese after the earthquake and tsunami? Ian Jack asks the question and leans towards a peculiar answer to it:
Britain hasn't known a calamity on this scale since the war. In the terrorist bombings of 2005, Londoners were congratulated on their "blitz spirit" simply because on one night they walked home from work. Would we react as well as the Japanese, or as the people of New Zealand and Queensland coped earlier this year, with an earthquake and floods? We don't know, though the fact of asking the question suggests the answer might not be as positive as it would have been when [Terence] Rattigan's Flare Path was first staged.
I don't claim to know the answer, but without some relevant substantive evidence, I don't see how just asking the question suggests any answer to it at all.