| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer: I sat in Smith's room that night for some time, he pacing the floor
smoking and talking.
"Eltham has influential Chinese friends," he said;
"but they dare not have him in Nan-Yang at present.
He knows the country as he knows Norfolk; he would see things!
"His precautions here have baffled the enemy, I think.
The attempt in the train points to an anxiety to waste no opportunity.
But whilst Eltham was absent (he was getting his outfit in London,
by the way) they have been fixing some second string to their fiddle here.
In case no opportunity offered before he returned, they provided
for getting at him here!"
The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: persuasive, and often, in its texture, romantic.
And often romantic! . . . The matter in hand, however, is to
keep these reminiscences from turning into confessions, a form of
literary activity discredited by Jean Jacques Rousseau on account
of the extreme thoroughness he brought to the work of justifying
his own existence; for that such was his purpose is palpably,
even grossly, visible to an unprejudiced eye. But then, you see,
the man was not a writer of fiction. He was an artless moralist,
as is clearly demonstrated by his anniversaries being celebrated
with marked emphasis by the heirs of the French Revolution, which
was not a political movement at all, but a great outburst of
A Personal Record |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War by Frederick A. Talbot: the motor of the machine at 1,000 yards' range. This offensive
arm is now being manufactured, so that it is likely to be seen in
the near future as the main armament of aeroplanes.
At the moment widespread efforts are being made in the direction
of increasing the offensive efficiency of aircraft. It is one of
the phases of ingenuity which has been stimulated into activity
as a result of the war.
CHAPTER XII
BATTLES IN THE AIR
Ever since the days of Jules Verne no theme has proved so popular
in fiction as fighting in the air. It was a subject which lent
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