It would be a tragedy and a betrayal of our national interest if, just as our competitors pick up the pace, we start giving succour to those nations and industries that want to slow down an endeavour on whose success all our destinies depend.
For now, maybe we can take succour and courage from the sense that those death-squad days are falling away from us, the alpha male workhorses of Souness and Allardyce's era gradually being eased out of the critical firmament by the likes of Frank Lampard and Rio Ferdinand, Golden Generation voices that can talk with real authority about being Premier League footballers.
In the performance Drummond uses this story as a framework and various works from the exhibition as props to explore our relationship with art; whether we are making it, finding succour in it or just buying it.
Aquinas (1270/1917, II II, 30, 3), for example, maintains that "mercy is the heartfelt sympathy for another's distress, impelling us to succour him if we can".
He continued: "We are clear any action we take must not provide any succour to Assad's regime".
We pay them for their empathetic succour, after all.
In this week's sortie into Melanie Phillipsworld, we find the old girl giving succour to Mitt Romney.
Why do we look to the histories for succour and sustenance?
She is able to accommodate change – perhaps even to find succour in it – and we may breathe a sigh of relief.
Our generations are so often pitched against each other that having an older person acknowledge how difficult things are is not only an unexpected succour, but confirmation that we are not just a bunch of whiny, entitled special snowflakes who don't know we're born, but a generation that is slowly being robbed.
