| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from War and the Future by H. G. Wells: devoted brains, how they are getting new views about the duties
of labour, religion, morality, monarchy, and any other notions
that the gentleman at home happens to fancy and wished to push.
Now that is not at all the impression of the khaki mentality I
have reluctantly accepted as correct. For the most part the man
in khaki is up against a round of tedious immediate duties that
forbid consecutive thought; he is usually rather crowded and not
very comfortable. He is bored.
The real horror of modern war, when all is said and done, is the
boredom. To get killed our wounded may be unpleasant, but it is
at any rate interesting; the real tragedy is in the desolated
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Nada the Lily by H. Rider Haggard: stone Witch. I climbed, and as I went the rays of the sun lit upon her
face, and I rejoiced to see them. But, when I drew near, the likeness
to the face of a woman faded away, and I saw nothing before me but
rugged heaps of piled-up rock. For this, Umslopogaas, is the way of
witches, be they of stone or flesh--when you draw near to them they
change their shape.
"Now I was on the breast of the mountain, and wandered to and for
awhile between the great heaps of stone. At length I found, as it
were, a crack in the stone thrice as wide as a man can jump, and in
length half a spear's throw, and near this crack stood great stones
blackened by fire, and beneath them broken pots and a knife of flint.
Nada the Lily |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Republic by Plato: Say five years, I replied; at the end of the time they must be sent down
again into the den and compelled to hold any military or other office which
young men are qualified to hold: in this way they will get their
experience of life, and there will be an opportunity of trying whether,
when they are drawn all manner of ways by temptation, they will stand firm
or flinch.
And how long is this stage of their lives to last?
Fifteen years, I answered; and when they have reached fifty years of age,
then let those who still survive and have distinguished themselves in every
action of their lives and in every branch of knowledge come at last to
their consummation: the time has now arrived at which they must raise the
The Republic |
