You may take the most gallant sailor, the most intrepid airman, or the most audacious soldier, put them at a table together- what do you get? The sum of their fears.
When I look round to see how we can win the war, I see that there is only one sure path . . . and that is absolutely devastating, exterminating attack by very heavy bombers from this country upon the Nazi homeland.
If we look to our responsibility to the generations yet unborn who will come after us, how can we fail to recognize that peace and freedom are inextricably bound up one with another and that the threat to one is a threat to both
Bearing ourselves humbly before God... we await undismayed the impending assault.... be the ordeal sharp or long, or both, we shall seek no terms, we shall tolerate no parlay; we may show mercy - we shall ask for none.
For good or for ill, air mastery is today the supreme expression of military power and fleets and armies, however vital and important, must accept a subordinate rank.
We see nothing but good and hope in a richer, freer, more contented European commonalty. But we have our own dreams and our own task. We are with Europe, but not of it. We are linked, but not comprised. We are interested and associated, but not absorbed.
... I think it would be so much better for me to learn something which would be useful to me in the army, as well as affording me exercise and amusement.
One is quite astonished to find how many things there are in the landscape, and in every object in it, one never noticed before. And this is a tremendous new pleasure and interest which invests every walk or drive with an added object. So many colours on the hillside, each different in shadow and in sunlight; such brilliant reflections in the pool, each a key lower than what they repeat; such lovely lights gilding or silvering surface or outline, all tinted exquisitely with pale colour, rose, orange, green or violet.
Science unfolded her treasures and her secrets to the desperate demands of men, and placed in their hands agencies and apparatus almost decisive in their character. Reflecting on the outcome of World War I, and an ominous future.
There is, therefore, wisdom in reserving one's decisions as long as possible and until all the facts and forces that will be potent at the moment are revealed.
The air is an extremely dangerous, jealous and exacting mistress. Once under the spell most lovers are faithful to the end, which is not always old age. Even those masters and princes of aerial fighting, the survivors of fifty mortal duels in the high air who have come scatheless through the War and all its perils, have returned again and again to their love and perished too often in some ordinary commonplace flight undertaken for pure amusement.