Novelists From England

"When factory farmers tell us that animals kept in 'intensive' (i.e. concentration) camps are being kindly spared the inclemency of a winter outdoors, and that calves do not mind being tethered for life on slats because they have never known anything else, an echo should start in our historical consciousness: do you remember how the childlike blackamoors were kindly spared the harsh responsibilities of freedom, how the skivvy didn't feel the hardship of scrubbing all day because she was used to it, how the poor didn't mind their slums because they had never known anything else?"

"To us it seems incredible that the Greek philosophers should have scanned so deep into right and wrong and yet never noticed the immorality of slavery. Perhaps three thousand years from now it will seem equally incredible that we do not notice the immorality of our oppression of animals."

"Reason can always disarm the irrational. If reason finds itself to be irrational, it can disarm it; and if one finds reason and discovers that eating animals is immoral, unnecessary, and done largely for superstitious reasons, then one is delivered from the compulsion to do it."

"Whenever people say "we mustn't be sentimental" you can take it they are about to do something cruel. And if they add, "we must be realistic," they mean they are going to make money out of it."

"Uh-unh. Islam has nothing to do with it. Saddam doesn't care a fig for the hadith, the codified teachings of the Prophet. He prays on camera when it suits him. No, you have to go back to Nineveh and Assyria. He doesn't mind how many have to die, so long as he thinks he can win."

"Not really. There's a quantum leap in moral philosophy when you cross the Jordan."

"What you are saying," suggested Martin, "is that Iraq decided to use Model-T Ford technology, and because everyone assumed they'd go for Grand Prix racers, no one noticed."

"Martin laughed. "President Bush," he said, "and all the people around him will act according to their upbringing. Which is based on the Judeo-Christian moral philosophy supported by the Greco-Roman concept of logic. And Saddam will react on the basis of his own vision of himself.""

"In Moscow, the warrant officer radio operator removed his headphones and nodded toward the teleprinter. "Faint but clear," he said. The printer began to chatter, sending out a screed of paper covered with a jumble of meaningless letters. When it fell silent, the officer beside the radio tore off the sheet and fed it through the decoder, already set to the formula of the agreed one-time pad. The decoder absorbed the sheet, its computer ran through the permutations, and it delivered the message in clear. The officer read the text and smiled. He telephoned a number, identified himself, checked the identity of the man he was addressing, and said: "Aurora is 'go.'""

"The man with ten minutes to live was laughing."

"You got it, son. People forget—the old Model-T Ford may be old, but it worked. It got you there. It carried you from A to B. And it hardly ever broke down."

"The British Secret Intelligence Service works out of Century House, a rather shabby building south of the Thames between the Elephant and Castle and the Old Kent Road. It is not a new building and not really up to the job it is supposed to do and so labyrinthine inside that visitors really do not need their security passes; within seconds, they get lost and end up screaming for mercy."

"They also drew their £1000 in five gold sovereigns and the "goolie chit." This remarkable document was first introduced to the Americans in the Gulf War, but the ritish, who have been flying combat in those parts since the 1920s, understood them well. A goolie chit is a letter in Arabic and six kinds of Bedouin dialect. It says in effect, "Dear Mr. Bedou, the presenter of this letter is a British officer. If you return him to the nearest British patrol, complete with his testicles and preferably where they ought to be and not in his mouth, you will be rewarded with £5000 in gold." Sometimes it works."

"Rawlings was a burglar and a thief, but like much of the London underworld he would not have anyone "trash" his country. It is a fact that convicted traitors in prison, along with child molesters, have to be kept in seclusion because professional "faces," if left alone with such a man, are likely to rearrange his component parts."

"Scum they might be; many would otherwise have been hanged or deported, but firm discipline and fair treatment would soon change that. The hard men who would never break, Adam would take on himself to train. They often proved to be the best sailors, especially those who had never known anything but poverty and oppression."

"Always the same picture, the narrow waters of Carrick Roads in Falmouth, the murky hump of Pendennis Castle lying across the starboard bow of the ship flying an admiral's flag: his flag — the knowledge of that had been quite definite, as it so often was in dreams. The squadron had been all around him, ready to weigh, or still shortening their cables. About to leave Falmouth, as he had done so many times."

"As the wind and quarter-sea had mounted the Indomitable, big though she was, had seemed to bound from trough to trough like the lion she followed, sail and spindrift pouring from the bulging canvas like tropical rain."

"Seven years. It seemed impossible. So much had happened since that time. Friends killed: fine ships lost or battered into hulks in every corner of the world and across the ocean."

"Adam grasped the rail as gun by gun the American began to retaliate [...] He winced as he felt the iron smashing into the hull or through the rigging overhead."

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

"Wars were not made by young men, he thought, yet they had to fight them."

"Damnation on doubt. It kills more good sailors than round shot!"

"Designed originally as a third-rate of sixty-four guns, she had been cut down to her present seize by the removal of most of her upper deck and corresponding armament. But her forty twenty-four pounders remained, with an additional four eighteen-pounders for bow and stern-chasers."

"'Remember, Thomas a victory now will put heart into the ordinary people at home. They've had much to bear over the years.It's not only sailors who suffer in a war, you know.'"

"They don't have to fight wars! it mmight knock some sense into therir heads if they did!"

"‘I am telling you you must not care, sir. The three men died, but they helped to give us a small advance knowledge which we may use against the enemy. At the conference tomorrow they would all answer the same. A few lives to save the many is any captain's rule.’"

"The French man-of-war was small and agile, and from the deck of the fishing boat looked as big as a frigate. She was carrying so much sail it made Browne feel that their own boat was unmoving ..."

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

"Routine and discipline. It held the ship together no less securely than copper and tar."

"You wait and you wait, you try to see things through the eyes of the enemy, and when it eventually happens it is all suddenly different. Many people at home believe their sailors fight for Kings and country, to protect their loved ones, and so they do. But when the guns begin to thunder, and the enemy is right there alongside rising above the smoke like the devil's fury, it is John who calls for Bill, one messmate seeking another, as the bonds of sailormen are stronger than symbols beyond their ship."

"Every ball was finding a target; and there were wild cheers as the American's forecastle was blasted to splintered, and one of her bow-chasers was hurled aside on to its crew."

"Now he could see the difference. One hundred and eighty feet overall, and of some fourteen hundred tons, her broad beam betrayed that she had been built originally for the line of battle. Her sail plan had changed little, he thought. With a wind over the quarter she would run like a deer if properly handled."

"Released from the land Indomitable heeled over to the thrust of canvas and rudder, the sea almost brushing her lee gunports while she came about, sails thundering as fore and mainsails were hauled and beaten into submission."

"We cannot always know the man who leads, just as I am no longer privileged to recognize the face of every sailor and marine who obeys."

"Bolitho heard the blare of a trumpet and saw the sun gleam across black-plumed helmets and breast-plates as the horses changed formation and cantered into another wall of dust."

"I have always said that a captain should act on his own initiative if his set orders tell him nothing."

"...the American's upper yards and punctured sails rose above the fog of gunfire like a cliff."

"'Do more than think about it. You are a flag-officer, and must not involve yourself with the affairs of subordinates. You command, they obey, it is the order of things, as well as you know.'"

"‘He doesn't understand. The navy is my life. My only life, now. The war will not last for ever, but until it ends I shall stand in the line-of-battle as I have been entrusted to!’"

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

"...on this September morning in 1812, while the Indomitable held her same course under reduced canvas, the ship's small drummers and fifers marched and countermarched up and down the crowded gundeck, the familiar tune Portsmouth Lass lively enough to set a man's foot tapping, or purse his lips in a silent whistle."

"There she was, Beer's Unity, with almost every sail set and filled so that she appeared to be leaning forward into the surging spray beneath her beakhead. The huge broad-pendant straight out like painted metal, a picture of naval strength at its best."

"Even in war it is necessary to love another."

"‘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.’"

"He stared into darkness, seeing the last of the horizon. Then he touched the weathered quarterdeck rail. Aloud he said ‘We'll fight very soon, my girl. You and me. Never ask the bloody reason, only fight and win!’"

"‘Never speak of a last letter to anbody, doi you hear me? for it may well be your last, if you dwell on it too much!’"

"Each gun-captain was a king, every breech a small demanding kingdom."

"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."

"No wonder the lookout was amazed. There were deozens of them, some moored in pairs, others, possibly gun-brigs or bombs, anchored separately, a veritable armada of small ships [....] and there they were, like a phalanx of Roman soldiers on the march, six lines of small vessels under sail. In the bright glare even the pendants and ensigns looked stiff, like lances."

"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."