The "Statesman's Year Book" was in a shelf above my head, and, carelessly pulling it, I simultaneously pulled three-quarters of the shelf's contents in a dusty cataract over my unprotected form. Which meant that they had to be put back again.
A gaudily-coloured volume, its hues somewhat dimmed with the dust of years, caught my eye. It was called "Holiday Haunts, 1938," and it seemed to belong to a different world than this. For here were pictures of bustling promenades across the Channel, of beaches alive with pretty girls in swim-suits, of lovely, lonely hills, of men fishing in quiet rivers - of all the things, in fact, that once spelt "holiday" to millions of people, and seem nowadays as if they will never return.
I thought of the various places where I myself had spent a happy few weeks in the past. Most of them are as inaccessible to me now as the moon. Also I thought of the places I had never seen, but had planned to see, maybe, last year, and this year, and next year - places like Rome and Vienna and Budapest.
Shall I ever see them now, I wonder. Or is it not a probability that, however this war will end and however soon, it will leave a legacy of bitterness that will make another country as unpleasant as, only a few years ago, it was delightful?
The Irish Times, June 21st, 1941