The soldier here, as everywhere in Canada, appeared to be put forward, and by his best foot. They were in the proportion of the so...ldiers to the laborers in an African ant-hill.... On every prominent ledge you could see England's hands holding the Canadas, and I judged from the redness of her knuckles that she would soon have to let go.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Both Napoleon and Hitler controlled continental Europe. Neither could defeat Britain so long as she retained her mastery at sea, a...nd for that reason both abandoned their projected invasion of the British Isles. But Britain could not hope to overcome her enemy without the help of major land-powers on the Continent. Spain in the 1800s was the equivalent to North Africa in the early 1940s, sideshows where alone the enemies grappled on land. Both dictators turned to a strategy of economic stranglehold of Britain, in the 1800s by attempting to close all European ports to British, in the 1940s by unlimited submarine warfare. In both wars the dictators invaded Russia to render her powerless so that they could turn all their strength against Britain, and both campaigns had the opposite result, that Russia became a victorious ally who enabled Britain to survive. The analogy breaks only in the attitude of the United States, in the first war a temporary enemy, in the second an incomparable ally.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Ere I could Give him that parting kiss which I had set... Betwixt two charming words, comes in my father, And like the tyrannous breathing of the north Shakes all our buds from growing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When we affect to condemn savages, we should remember that by doing so we asperse our own progenitors; for they were savages also.... Who can swear that among the naked British barbarians sent to Rome to be stared at more than 1500 years ago, the ancestor of Bacon might not have been found?--Why, among the very Thugs of India, or the bloody Dyaks of Borneo, exists the germ of all that is intellectually elevated and grand. We are all of us--Anglo-Saxons, Dyaks and Indians--sprung from one head and made in one image.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You look out from the ramparts of the citadel beyond the frontiers of civilization.... It is but a few years since Bouchette decla...red that the country ten leagues north of the British capital of North America was as little known as the middle of Africa. Thus the citadel under my feet, and all historical associations, were swept away again by an influence from the wilds and from Nature, as if the beholder had read her history,--an influence which, like the Great River itself, flowed from the Arctic fastnesses and Western forests with irresistible tide over all.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If we were doing this in the Falklands they would love it. It's part of our heritage. The British have always been fighting wars.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But among all our Methods of moving Pity or Terror, there is none so absurd and barbarous, and what more exposes us to the Contemp...t and Ridicule of our Neighbours, than that dreadful butchering of one another, which is so very frequent upon the English Stage. To delight in seeing Men stabbed, poisoned, racked, or impaled, is certainly the Sign of a cruel Temper: And as this is often practised before the British Audience, several French Criticks, who think these are grateful Spectacles to us, take Occasion from them to represent us a People that delight in Blood.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If this creature is a murderer, then so are we all. This snake has killed one British soldier; we have killed many. This is not mu...rder, gentlemen. This is war.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is very considerably smaller than Australia and British Somaliland put together. As things stand at present there is nothing mu...ch the Texans can do about this, and ... they are inclined to shy away from the subject in ordinary conversation, muttering defensively about the size of oranges.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »