How Big Brother Got There

Constantine Fitzgibbon was twenty years old and a student at Oxford when Hitler’s troops marched across the Polish border. While it is apparent that the last feeble twitches of the Oxford Pledglings of the thirties did not noticeably influence the young American—he volunteered, and fought for six years with the British and American armies—they may have implanted the understanding and the fear of political pacifists which has culminated in his quiet, terrible little novel, When the Kissing Had to Stop (Norton, $3.95).

Mr. Fitzgibbon’s title, and his theme are taken from Robert Browning’s “. . . As for Venice and its people, merely born to bloom and drop,/Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop:/What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?” His story is concerned with the undramatic, unalarming, prosaically- Parliamentary months which bring about a day when the kissing had to stop in Britain; which is the day Britain becomes a Soviet satellite, the Communists stop kissing the pacifists, and the pacifists stop puckering up.

About the Author

Aloïse Buckley Heath

Aloïse Buckley Heath (1918–1967) was the sister of National Review’s founder, William F. Buckley Jr.

Constantine Fitzgibbon was twenty years old and a student at Oxford when Hitler’s troops marched across the Polish border. While it is apparent that the last feeble twitches of the Oxford Pledglings of the thirties did not noticeably influence the young American—he volunteered, and fought for six years with the British and American armies—they may have implanted the understanding and the fear of political pacifists which has culminated in his quiet, terrible little novel, When the Kissing Had to Stop (Norton, $3.95).

Mr. Fitzgibbon’s title, and his theme are taken from Robert Browning’s “. . . As for Venice and its people, merely born to bloom and drop,/Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop:/What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?” His story is concerned with the undramatic, unalarming, prosaically- Parliamentary months which bring about a day when the kissing had to stop in Britain; which is the day Britain becomes a Soviet satellite, the Communists stop kissing the pacifists, and the pacifists stop puckering up.