From Fitzroy's Private Diary (Extract 154)

The festive season has turned up with its unwelcome regularity. While I’m all for brushing along tolerably with other members of the species, I simply cannot embrace this whole ‘goodwill to all men’ nonsense. I mean, I appreciate the sentiment. I understand people aspiring to create a heavenly paradise on Earth (although it sounds like a deathly bore to me, and I’d doubtless be the snake in the garden). Indeed, I spend my working hours attempting to attain world peace, but it’s not the kind of peace brought about by open arms and blind acceptance.

The problem with the doctrine of seeing all men as brothers, etcetera, etcetera, is that not all families get along, not by any means. Take mine for instance (and yes, please do take them). Also, there are some thoroughly unpleasant rotters in the world, who will always be out for themselves, prepared to lie, scheme, murder, etc., for their own self aggrandisement and prosperity.

In short, you can’t have peace without people like me who go out and tackle the rotters. I’m aware that I’m not, in the general sense, a very nice man, or even a good man, given the things I’ve done (Alice says I’m a good man who does bad things for all the right reasons, but that’s getting far too metaphorical for me). To have your peaceful garden, you need tigers like myself to root out and destroy the monsters.

I even believe not all men are born good. Sometimes, even with the good ones, something goes wrong. Perhaps it’s what they’re taught as a child, deliberately, or by the deprivations of their upbringing. Or, perhaps, they’re born with an insatiable desire for power because their brain is fitted back to front, or they’re attempting to make up for some other intimate inadequacy. I really don’t know.

I do know that not all men deserve our goodwill. Not a popular theme at this time of the year, so I shall keep it between my diary and myself, and the few others who understand the sentiment.

And as for all men being brothers – why, that would make all women our sisters! Given my fondness for the opposite sex, it doesn’t bear thinking about!