Quote:
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It is only by revolution that the native genius of the English people can be set free. Revolution does not mean red flags and street fighting, it means a fundamental shift of power.
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This is Orwell, in
The Lion and the Unicorn (an oft-misquoted and mis-used essay by such as John Major). He highlights how it's not in the struggles of Tolkien's 'be-whiskered men' that the hidden side of the English can be set free, but in changes in society, changes such as those which happened post WWI and WWII, and which also happened after the Battle of Bywater. That quote rings a bell thinking about The Hobbits. They were stirred, they took it upon themselves to fight back, and The Shire was remade with both the Elvish beauty of Sam's gift and in the practical way of rebuilding Hobbit holes, and lining them with brick to make them more comfortable (echoes of 'Homes For Heroes' and the important welfare reforms of the Labour government post-1945). And probably most importantly, Aragorn takes the step of protecting The Shire by not allowing Men to enter it (me wonders what happened when they had to build a lengthy by-pass for the road to the Grey Havens
).