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Yet I wondered fancifully if he had seen more clearly than they did, had sensed the threat which my presence implied – the approaching disintegration of his society and the destruction of his beliefs. Here especially it seemed that the evil that comes with sudden change would far outweigh the good.  While I was with the Arabs I wished only to live as they lived and, now that I have left them, I would gladly think that nothing in their lives was altered by my coming.  Regretfully, however, I realize that the maps I made helped others, with more material aims, to visit and corrupt a people whose spirit once lit the desert like a flame.

Even in war it is necessary to love another.

‘A general will say, "Order the 87th to advance." And if they are not enough or are hacked down, he will send in another regiment. He sees no faces, hears no pitiful cries which will never be answered, only flags, pins on maps.’

‘Men, Mr Blythe. Ordinary, everyday men — you'd never notice any of them in a street or working in the fields in England right? [...] But they are your answer. They are the strength of a ship. So let them not die to no good purpose.’

God and the navy we adore, when danger threatens but not before!

There will always be slaves, no matter what people promise and pretend.

He saw himself reflected in other people's faces, and the horror and the pity he saw there had never ceased to wound him.

[Re the Piat anti-tank weapon] Like many British inventions, it looked improbable, unwieldy, and unsafe - and it worked.

He was ashamed and embarrassed, angry too that such a man could end like this. If peace did eventually come, there would be many more redcoats begging in the streets.

You know how sailors love to create mystery where there is none.

It was a harsh school, right enough ... but a lot of good had come from it.The petty tyrants and bullies were fewer now, for braggarts had little to sustain them in the face of an enemy broadside.

We all have kindly impulses, fostered by two thousand years of Christian teaching, gentle Jesus, and love thy neighbour, but we have the killer instinct, too, the murderous impulse of the hunter...