Flight

   I don't think we know anyone who

   did not recognize his immediate

   and complete withdrawal of proof

   of a national self-interest in a

   safer Middle East as the gesture

   of a tormented mentality's decom-

   position under pressures of expo-

   sure. An unforgettably transpar-

   ent imitation of escape, less a

   displacement than a scavenging.

And cold the sense and lost the motive of action.

T.S. Eliot

Four Quartets

  East Coker, iii

1943

op. cit.

Valéry Lorenzo

Peregrine