Tolkien's Message to the Shire People

The Shire people are kind of good average people, but they're totally naive. They don't understand at all the true nature of evil, the true danger of evil. And even if they understand a little, they just want to hide from it. It seems scary. So they're just going to stay home and hope that someone else will save them. That's what people are doing right now against the great evils we are facing.