Catholics From England

"Patterson-Knight, my "Q" staff officer, who had been at Shwegyin for some days supervising embarkation and was a conspicuous figure in his exquisitely cut, but by now somewhat soiled, jodhpurs, took a tommy gun and went into the fray. About an hour later he came back and exchanged the tommy-gun for a rifle, explaining that "The little yellow baskets are a bit farther off now!""

"He would have been a brave American who would have stood up to Joe Stilwell to his face."

"Armies do not win wars by means of a few bodies of super-soldiers but by the average quality of their standard units. Anything, whatever short cuts to victory it may promise, which thus weakens the army spirit, is dangerous. Commanders who have used these special forces have found, as we did in Burma, that they have another grave disadvantage- they can be employed actively for only restricted periods. Then they demand to be taken out of the battle to recuperate, while normal formations are expected to have no such limitations to their employment. In Burma, the time spent in action with the enemy by special forces was only a fraction of that endured by the normal divisions, and it must be remembered that risk is danger multiplied by time."

"Private armies, and for that matter private air forces- are expensive, wasteful, and unnecessary."

"In these pages I have written much of generals and of staff officers; of their problems, difficulties, and expedients, their successes and their failures. Yet there is one thought that I should like to be the over-all and final impression of this book- that the war in Burma was a soldier's war. There comes a moment in every battle against a stubborn enemy when the result hangs in the balance. Then the general, however skillful and farsighted he may have been, must hand over to his soldiers, to the men in the ranks and to their regimental officers and leave them to complete what he has begun. The issue then rests with them, on their courage, their hardihood, their refusal to be beaten either by the cruel hazards of nature or by the fierce strength of their human enemy. That moment came early and often in the fighting in Burma; sometimes it came when tired, sick men felt alone, when it would have been so easy for them to give up, when only will, discipline and faith could steel them to carry on. To the soldiers of the many races who, in the comradeship of the Fourteenth Army, did go on, and to the airmen who flew with them and fought over them, belongs the true glory of achievement. It was they who turned Defeat into Victory."

"...any Japanese officer wishing to commit suicide would be given every facility."

"For them I had none of the sympathy of soldier for soldier that I had felt for Germans, Turks, Italians, or Frenchmen that by the fortune of war I had seen surrender. I knew too well what these men and those under their orders had done to their prisoners. They sat there apart from the rest of humanity. If I had no feeling for them, they, it seemed, had no feeling of any sort, until Itagaki, who had replaced Field-Marshal Terauchi, laid low by a stroke, leaned forward to affix his seal to the surrender document. As he pressed heavily on the paper, a spasm of rage and despair twisted his face. Then it was gone, and his mask was as expressionless as the rest. Outside, the same Union Jack that had been hauled down in surrender in 1942 flew again at the masthead. The war was over."

"The strength of the Japanese Army lay, not in its higher leadership which once its career of success had been checked became confused, nor in its special aptitude for jungle warfare, but in the spirit of the individual Japanese soldier. He fought and marched till he died. If five hundred Japanese were ordered to hold a position, we had to kill four hundred and ninety-five before it was ours- and then the last five had killed themselves. It was this combination of obedience and ferocity that made the Japanese Army, whatever its condition, so formidable, and which would make any army formidable. It would make a European army invincible."

"The more modern war becomes, the more essential appear the basic qualities that from the beginning of history have distinguished armies from the mobs. The first of these is discipline."

"Obviously we're English middle-class chaps - there's not much voodoo chile about us."

"It is actually, in a way, an incredibly mundane experience. Not everyone has a heart attack but everyone has something or other, so I'm not remotely special. Just because I write songs doesn't make it a better or worse near-death experience."

"Re-awakening isn't easy when you're tired. Don't push me: I was taught self-expression when I was a child"

"The streets seemed very crowded, I put on my bravest guise I know you know that I am acting, I can see it in your eyes."

"These words are not enough to save my soul, they just mock me from the mirror."

"She's here now, perfume coiled like a thuggee scarf"

"If we were always here and now, electric shiver in the spine, how could we turn away, see life as grey and drab? How come we don't see what we have?"

"Edwardus Primus Scotorum Malleus hic est, 1308. Pactum Serva"

"Perhaps he will be rightly called a leopard. If we divide the name it becomes lion and pard; lion, because we saw that he was not slow to attack the strongest places, fearing the onslaught of none. ... A lion by pride and fierceness, he is by inconstancy and changeableness a pard, changing his word and promise, cloaking himself by pleasant speech."

"Here is Edward the First, Hammer of the Scots, 1308. Keep the Vow."

"Terra Walliae cum incolis suis, prius regi jure feodali subjecta."

"In Edward the line of English Kings begins once more. After two hundred years of foreign rule, we have again a King bearing an English name and an English heart—the first to give us back our ancient laws under new shapes, the first, and for so long the last, to see that the Empire of his mighty namesake was a worthier prize than shadowy dreams of dominion beyond the sea. All between them were Normans or Angevins, careless of England and her people. Another and a brighter æra opens, as the lawgiver of England, the conqueror of Wales and Scotland, seems like an old Bretwalda or West-Saxon Basileus seated once more upon the throne of Cerdic and of Æthelstan."

"When you get rid of a turd, you do a good job."

"He was so handsome and great, so powerful in arms, That of him may one speak as long as the world lasts. For he had no equal as a knight in armour For vigour and valour, neither present nor future."

"Edward had friends, but no favourites; he picked out suitable or congenial men as he pleased, but it never enterred his mind to "pack" his court. He was the king. He used aliens freely and had foreign friends, but he did not put them in positions of permanent trust at the centre of affairs, nor did he admit them to the intimate places of household administration. There were few foreign clerks in the wardrobe during his reign. The court was so English that the large number of aliens in Edward's service raised no outcry."

"With the single exception of the accession of Elizabeth, no such fortunate event ever occurred in English history as that which placed Edward I. upon his father's throne. By him the bases were settled upon which the English constitution rests. With marvellous sanity he comprehended the purport of every true thought which was floating on the surface of the age in which he lived. Perhaps no man, excepting Cromwell, possessed of equal capacity for government, ever showed less inclination to exercise arbitrary rule. He knew how to mould his subjects to his own wise will, not by crushing them into unwilling obedience, but by inspiring them with noble thoughts. When he first reached man's estate, he found his countrymen ready to rush headlong into civil war. When he died, he left England free as ever, but welded together into a compact and harmonious body. There was work enough left for future generations to do, but their work would consist merely in filling in the details of the outline which had been drawn once for all by a steady hand. All the main points of the constitution were accepted at his death. That the law was to be supreme; that that law was to be obtained from a body which should represent all the various classes and interests of the kingdom, and which was therefore most likely to look with fairness upon all; that power was to be lodged in the hands of the Government sufficient to combat against anarchy, whilst it was powerless to encroach upon the rights of the subjects—were means fully acknowledged by that great King, and brought out by him into practical operation."

"In his own time, and amongst his own subjects, Edward was the object of almost boundless admiration. He was in the truest sense a national king. At the moment when the distinction between conquerors and conquered had passed away, and England felt herself once more a people, she saw in her ruler no stranger, but an Englishman. The national tradition returned in more than the golden hair or the English name which linked him to her earlier kings. Edward's very temper was English to the core. In good as in evil he stands out as the typical representative of his race, wilful and imperious as his people, tenacious of his rights, indomitable in his pride, dogged, stubborn, slow of apprehension, narrow in sympathy, but in the main just, unselfish, laborious, conscientious, haughtily observant of truth and self-respect, temperate, reverent of duty, religious."

"No king laid more emphasis on his duty to hold his own and to recover what he had lost. And it was a social duty, to be enforced on him by his counsellors if he neglected it himself. In matters touching his state he insisted on discussion in council, sometimes in parliament, before he had made a decision... The king takes good and learned counsel. He and his vassals are one. Justice must be observed, self-help restrained, corruption—the curse of social relationships everywhere—investigated and punished."

"A strange tenderness and sensitiveness to affection lay in fact beneath the stern imperiousness of his outer bearing... He is the first English king since the Conquest who loves his people with a personal love, and craves for their love back again. To his trust in them we owe our Parliament, to his care for them the great statutes which stand in the forefront of our laws."

"Which puissant Princes raigne and life, wee cannot heere shut up with a nobler Euloge, than that where-with our Great and Judicious Antiquary [William Camden] hath already deportrayed him, as a Prince of chiefe renowne, to whose heroicke minde God proportioned (as a most worthy Mansion) a bodie answerable, so that as well in beautie and goodly presence, as in wisedome and valour, hee was sutable to the height of his Regall Dignitie, whose flourishing youth his Destinie did exercise with many warres and troubles of the State, so to frame & fit him for the British Empire; which, being King, he so managed with the glory of his Welsh and Northern victories, that by due desert he is to be reputed a chiefe honour of Britannie."

"Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows, While proudly riding o’er the azure realm In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes; Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm; Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind’s sway, That, hush’d in grim repose, expects his evening prey."

"You wretches detestable on land and sea: you who seek equality with lords are unworthy to live. Give this message to your colleagues: rustics you were, and rustics you are still; you will remain in bondage, not as before, but incomparably harsher. For as long as we live we will strive to suppress you, and your misery will be an example in the eyes of posterity. However, we will spare your lives if you remain faithful and loyal. Choose now which course you want to follow."

"I am your leader: follow me."

"Richard II’s reign was a personal and political tragedy. As a ruler, he was rigid, inept, inconsistent, paranoid, untrustworthy and vindictive — yet he was also a refined patron of the arts and the boy king who bravely faced the terrifying rebellious mobs of the Peasants’ Revolt. Richard’s tragedy was to succeed to the throne as an unprepared, callow and foolish child in the shadow of his grandfather Edward III, one of the most heroic of English kings, and his father, the Black Prince, paragon of knighthood."

"Edward the third, your King of rich renowne, Against the French did use his conquering sworde: Mauger their beardes, he did possesse their Crowne, The French were faine, to serve him as their Lord. Take courage then, maintaine your Countries right, Gainst Rabsica, in Gods name enter fight."

"Few were the blemishes which may be thought to tarnish the lustre of this reign of Edward the Third. Few and short were the struggles between him and his people; for as he was fierce and terrible to his enemies, he was amiable and indulgent to his subjects. He not only observed the laws, but he made the sense of the nation, in some measure, a law to him. On this principle, in which, to a considering mind, there will appear as much wisdom as goodness, he removed a son, nay a favorite mistress from court."

"The greatest of all the Plantagenet kings was Edward III. Edward inherited the throne as a teenage puppet king under his mother and her lover Roger Mortimer, who were responsible for the removal of Edward II. He soon shook off their influence, and the next three, triumphant decades of his reign are described in Part VI, 'Age of Glory.' In these years, the Plantagenets expanded in every sense. Under the accomplished generalship of Edward, his son the Black Prince, and his cousin Henry Grosmont, England pulverized France, and Scotland (as well as other enemies, including Castile), in the opening phases of the Hundred Years' War. Victories on land at Halidon Hill (1333), Crécy (1346), Calais (1347), Poitiers (1356) and Najera (1367) established the English war machine – built around the power of the deadly longbow – as Europe's fiercest. Success at sea at Sluys (1340) and Winchelsea (1350) also gave the Plantagenets confidence in the uncertain arena of warfare on the water. Besides restoring the military power of the English kings, Edward and his sons deliberately encouraged a national mythology that interwove Arthurian legend, a new cult of St George and a revival of the code of knighly chivalry in the Order of the Garter. They created a culture that bonded England's aristocracy together in the common purpose of war. By 1360, Plantagenet kingship had reached its apotheosis. Political harmony at home was matched by dominance abroad. A new period of greatness beckoned."

"...an English ship we had, noble it was and high of tower, it was held in dread throughout Christendom: the rudder was neither oak nor elm but Edward the Third, the noble knight."

"Here lies the glory of the English, the flower of kings past, the pattern for kings to come, a merciful king, the bringer of peace to his people. Edward III, who attained his jubilee. The undefeated warrior, a second Maccabeus, who prospered while he lived, revived sound rule, and reigned valiantly, now may attain his heavenly crown."

"He was the flower of earthly warriors, under whom to fight was to rule, to go forth was to prosper, to contend was to triumph ... Against his foes he was grim as a leopard, toward his subjects mild as a lamb."

"This diplomatic revolution, part of the growing bureaucratization of government, was complemented by a revolution in political ideas that we can measure in the changing use of the term “state.” In the fourteenth century the Latin term status (and vernacular equivalents such as estat or state) was mainly used with reference to the standing of rulers themselves, much as we would today use the term “status.” Thus the chronicler Jean Froissart, describing King Edward III entertaining foreign dignitaries in 1327, recorded that his queen “was to be seen there in an estat of great nobility.” Gradually, however, usage was extended to include the institutions of government. In the works of Machiavelli, written in the 1510s, lo stato becomes an independent agent, separate from those who happen to be its rulers. In a similar vein, Thomas Starkey, the English political commentator of the 1530s, claimed that the “office and duty” of rulers was to “maintain the state established in the country” over which they ruled. The thrust of such arguments was to limit the power of kings by postulating their higher obligation to the common good. In radical hands this implied that subjects had the right to overthrow tyrannical rulers, which is what happened in the English civil wars of the 1640s and Europe’s bitter wars of religion. Responding to this crisis of governance,Thomas Hobbes moved the debate to a different level, defining the state as “an artificial man” abstractly encapsulating the whole populace, who enjoys absolute sovereignty (his “artificial soul . . . giving life and motion to the body”) which is exercised in practice through a sovereign ruler. This gradual but dramatic word shift, from the medieval state of princes to the person of the Hobbesian state, was hugely important for political thought. It also reinforced the decline of dynastic summitry: diplomacy, like governance, was no longer regarded as the sole prerogative of princes."

"The royal hero of this time was Edward I, a tall and relentless king who was said to be so fierce that he once literally scared a man to death. Under Edward's belligerent leadership, the English were finally induced to cease fighting one another and turn their attentions on their neighbours: Scotland and Wales. Edward I's brutal attempts to become the master not only of England but the whole of Britain are the subject of the 'Age of Arthur.' The popularity of Arthurian tales and relic-hunting increased as a new mythology of English kingship was explored. Edward cast himself as the inheritor of Arthur (originally a Welsh king) who sought to reunite the British Isles and usher in a great new age of royal rule. Despite flurries of outrage form his barons, who began to organize political opposition through the nascent political body known as parliament, Edward very nearly succeeded in his goals, and his influence over England's relations with Scotland and Wales has never entirely waned."

"On the 21st September [1274] Burnell was made Chancellor. From that date, and with the able assistance of that minister, began the series of legal reforms which have gained for Edward the title of the English Justinian; a title which, if it be meant to denote the importance and permanence of his legislation and the dignity of his position in legal history, no Englishman will dispute."

"...our progenitors, the kings of England, have before these times been lords of the English sea on every side...and it would very much grieve us if in this kind of defence our royal honour should be lost."

"But the chiefe advantage which the people of England reaped, and still continue to reap, from the reign of this great prince, was the correction, extension, amendment, and establishment of the laws, which Edward maintained in great vigour, and left much improved to posterity: For the work of wise legislation commonly remain; while the acquisitions of conquerors often perish with them. This merit has justly gained to Edward the appellation of the English Justinian."

"Edward, however exceptionable his character may appear on the head of justice, is the model of a politic and warlike King: He possessed industry, penetration, courage, vigour, and enterprize: He was frugal in all expences that were not necessary; he knew how to open the public treasures on a proper occasion; he punished criminals with severity; he was gracious and affable to his servants and courtiers; and being of a majestic figure, expert at all bodily exercises, and in the main well proportioned in his limbs, notwithstanding the great length and the smallness of his legs, he was as well qualified to captivate the populace by his exterior appearance, as to gain the approbation of men of sense by his more solid virtues."

"It is true that Edward I has been far less roughly handled by historians than have some of the English kings. He has not suffered the fate of Charles I, who has been arraigned, tried and sentenced over and over again since he faced his judges in Westminster Hall, although in these later proceedings not his life but his reputation has been at stake. On the other hand, Edward's posthumous career among scholars has not been as spectacular as that of the Conqueror, but it is not entirely unremarkable. During the last two centuries he has been turned from a strong ruler into a national king; from a national king into an aspiring tyrant; and now from an aspiring tyrant into a conventional, if competent, lord. That these changes represent a growth of knowledge about him and his age is clear enough. What is no less important, they represent a growth of understanding as well."

"...we benignly wish that all and each of the natives of the kingdom who will subject themselves willingly to us, as the true King of France according to wise counsel, before next Easter, offering due fidelity etc. to us, as King of France, performing their duties...should be admitted to our peace and grace and to our special protection and defence."

"A prince unequalled by any who had reigned in England since the Conqueror for prudence, valour and success."

"The laws the Irish use are detestable to God, and so contrary to all law that they ought not to be deemed law."

"Whan Kyng Philip of Frauns was fled thus cowardly fro the sege of Caleys, thei of the same town offered the town to Kyng Edward withoute any poyntment. And he lay in the town a month, considering the strong disposicion thereof. Thanne, at instauns of the Pope, was taken trews betwix the two Kyngis for a yere. Aboute the fest of Seynt Michael, the Kyng took the se into Ynglond and there had he grete tempest, and mervelous wyndes; and thanne he mad swech a compleynt onto oure Lady, and seide, "O blessed Mayde, what menyth al this? Evyr, whan I go to Frauns, I have fayre wedir, and whanne I turne to Ynglond intolerable tempestes.""