Dr Seuss: parables for today's international relations

Dr Seuss also took aim at anti-Semitism, both in Europe and America, a phenomenon on the rise in this day and age, even if it’s dressed up as concern for Palestinians.

If certain elements of the media choose to insist that the war on terror is “playing into the hands of Al Qaeda” and its affiliates, more sanguine observers can take consolation from the fact that some journalists in WWII claimed any Allied strategies for taking action against the Nazis were what “Hitler loves to hear”.

Dr. Seuss’s wartime cartoons stand as a beacon against the cynicism and defeatism that afflicted America and made it largely blind, or at least unwilling, to confront the Nazi menace during the early stages of WWII.

The toll exacted by America’s initial lethargy 60 years ago serves as a vital warning to those who would today avoid getting involved with “far away countries about which we know nothing”.

Vladimir Nabokov spoke of “the absolute abyss yawning between the barbed-wire tangle of police states and the spacious freedom of thought we enjoy in America and Western Europe”.

One might add Australia to this list and hope that our leaders acquaint themselves with Dr. Seuss’s wartime cartoons.