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Who shall call me ungentle, unfair,
I long'd so heartily then and there
To give him the grasp of fellowship;
But while I past he was humming an air,
Stopt, and then with a riding whip,
Leisurely tapping a glossy boot,
And curving a contumelious lip,
Gorgonised me from head to foot
With a stony British stare.
--
Part I, section xiii, stanza 2.

 

Alfred Tennyson (Lord)

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Hit in the head you will die quickly and cleanly even sweetly and fittingly except for the white blinding flash that never stops, unless perhaps it is only the frontal bone or your optic nerve that is smashed, or your jaw carried away, or your nose and cheek bones gone so you can still think but you have no face to talk with. But if you are not hit in the head you will be hit in the chest, and choke in it, or in the lower belly, and feel it all slip and slide loosely as you open, to spill out when you try to get up, it's not supposed to be so painful but they always scream with it, it's the idea I suppose, or have the flash, the slamming clang of high explosive on a hard road and find your legs are gone above the knee, or maybe just a foot gone and watch the white bone sticking through your puttee, or watch them take a boot off with your foot a mush inside it, or feel an arm flop and learn how a bone feels grating, or you will burn, choke and vomit, or be blown to hell a dozen ways, without sweetness or fittingness: but none of this means anything. No catalogue of horrors ever kept men from war. Before the war you always think that it's not you that dies. But you will die, brother, if you go to it long enough.

 

Ernest Hemingway

 

What is government? Government is the boot. The boot steps here and there, careful to avoid a blade of grass, to nurture it, coddle it, water it. The boot spots a snail heading toward its grass - slowly, surely. The boot smashes down on the snail and twists and laughs at its squelching noises, its last grasp for breath. The boot seeks a new snail - heading slowly toward the blade, sometimes simply minding its own business entirely - and smashes it too, like the first. The boot goes on and on - smashing, twisting, smashing, twisting - until finally it tires too of the blade of grass. The boot stops for only a moment and twists itself back down toward these carcasses lying about its yard. 'How sad,' it says to itself, 'that some otherworldly spirit, possessing me, could do this!' It goes to take a step, lets down onto the ground, and feels a dead snail. It instantly picks itself up, feeling proud - not that it will not stomp the snails in the future, but that it at least is starting to feel remorse for their deaths. It smashes the shells and bodies of hundreds of thousands of millions of snails, only to understand its weakness as originating from someplace else entirely; and then it has the audacity to smash even more.

 

Alan Watts

 

Equity is a roguish thing. For Law we have a measure, know what to trust to; Equity is according to the conscience of him that is Chancellor, and as that is larger or narrower, so is Equity. 'T is all one as if they should make the standard for the measure we call a "foot" a Chancellor's foot; what an uncertain measure would this be! One Chancellor has a long foot, another a short foot, a third an indifferent foot. 'T is the same thing in the Chancellor's conscience.

 

John Selden

 

"Here is the hatchet of war, of enmity, of bad feeling, which I now bury in Arrowe," said the Chief, at the same time plunging a hatchet in the midst of a barrel of golden arrows."

"From all corners of the earth," said the Chief as soon as the cheering had subsided "you have journeyed to this great gathering of World Fellowship and Brotherhood. Today I send you out from Arrowe to all the World, bearing my symbol of Peace and Fellowship, each one of you my ambassador bearing my message of Love and Fellowship on the wings of Sacrifice and Service, to the end of the Earth. From now on the Scout symbol of Peace is the Golden Arrow. Carry it fast and far so that all men may know the Brotherhood of Man."

"To THE NORTH—From the Northlands you came at the call of my horn to this great gathering of Fellowship and Brotherhood."
"Today I send you back to your homelands across the great North Seas as my Ambassadors of Peace and Fellowship among the Nations of the World."
"I bid you farewell."

"TO THE SOUTH—From the Southland you came at the call of my horn to this great gathering of Fellowship and Brotherhood."
"Today I send you back to your homes under the Southern Cross as my Ambassadors of Peace and Fellowship among the Nations of the World."
"I bid you farewell."

"TO THE WEST—From the Westlands you came at the call of my horn to this great gathering of Fellowship and Brotherhood."
"Today I send you back to your homes in the Great Westlands to the Pacific and beyond as my Ambassadors of Peace and Fellowship among the Nations of the World."
"I bid you farewell."

"TO THE EAST—From the Eastlands you came at the call of my horn to this great gathering of Fellowship and Brotherhood."
"Today I send you back to your homes under the Starry Skies and Burning Suns to your people of the thousand years, bearing my symbol of Peace and Fellowship to the Nations of the Earth, pledging you to keep my trust."
"I bid you farewell."

 

Sir Robert (B-P) Baden-Powell

 

The Cardinal rose with a dignified look,
He call’d for his candle, his bell, and his book:
In holy anger, and pious grief,
He solemnly curs’d that rascally thief!
He curs’d him at board, he curs’d him in bed,
From the sole of his foot to the crown of his head!
He curs’d him in sleeping, that every night
He should dream of the devil, and wake in a fright;
He curs’d him in eating, he curs’d him in drinking,
He curs’d him in coughing, in sneezing, in winking;
He curs’d him in sitting, in standing, in lying;
He curs’d him in walking, in riding, in flying;
He curs’d him in living, he curs’d him in dying!
Never was heard such a terrible curse!
But what gave rise
To no little surprise,
Nobody seem’d one penny the worse!

 

Richard Harris Barham