18 July 2008

Sneaking some Orwell

The people who write that kind of stuff never fight; possibly they belivve that to write is a substitue for fighting. It is the same in all wars; the soldiers do the fighting, the journalists do the shouting; and no true patriot ever gets near a front-line trench, except in the briefest of propaganda tours. Sometimes it is s comfort to me to think that the aeroplane is altering the condition of war. Perhaps when the next great war comes we may see the sight unprecedented in all history; a jingo with a bullet-hole in him.

-Homage to Catalonia, p. 66