| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Cavalry General by Xenophon: freebooter is no less natural and appropriate to landsmen--I do not
say, to those who can till and gather in the fruit of their fields,
but to those who find themselves deprived of sustenance; since there
is no alternative--either men must till their fields or live on the
tillage of others, otherwise how will they find the means either of
living or of obtaining peace?[11]
[11] Cf. "Econ." v. 7.
Here, too, is a maxim to engrave upon the memory: in charging a
superior force, never to leave a difficult tract of ground in the rear
of your attack, since there is all the difference in the world between
a stumble in flight and a stumble in pursuit.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Last War: A World Set Free by H. G. Wells: both sides preferred to reserve these machines for scouting....
After a day or so of digging and scheming, Barnet found himself
in the forefront of a battle. He had made his section of rifle
pits chiefly along a line of deep dry ditch that gave a means of
inter-communication, he had had the earth scattered over the
adjacent field, and he had masked his preparations with tussocks
of corn and poppy. The hostile advance came blindly and
unsuspiciously across the fields below and would have been very
cruelly handled indeed, if some one away to the right had not
opened fire too soon.
'It was a queer thrill when these fellows came into sight,' he
The Last War: A World Set Free |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Last War: A World Set Free by H. G. Wells: if he gave way to so natural a proclivity, assuredly on the
fourth night of the great flank march he was aroused, for that
was the night of the battle in the air that decided the fate of
Holland. The aeroplanes were fighting at last, and suddenly
about him, above and below, with cries and uproar rushing out of
the four quarters of heaven, striking, plunging, oversetting,
soaring to the zenith and dropping to the ground, they came to
assail or defend the myriads below.
Secretly the Central European power had gathered his flying
machines together, and now he threw them as a giant might fling a
handful of ten thousand knives over the low country. And amidst
The Last War: A World Set Free |
