| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: power alone, and to face it long before we had had an opportunity to
assemble our resources and equip our armies. The world was preserved from
all these calamities because the destroyer and the convoy solved the
problem of the submarines, and because back of these agencies of victory
lay Admiral Beatty's squadrons, holding at arm's length the German
surface ships while these comparatively fragile craft were saving the
liberties of the world."
Yes. The High Seas Fleet of Germany, costing her one billion five hundred
million dollars, was bottled up. Five million five hundred thousand tons
of German shipping and one million tons of Austrian shipping were driven
off the seas or captured; oversea trade and oversea colonies were cut
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy: unfolded, and together they tried to read it by the dim red firelight.
So intent were they upon this, so wrapt up in the cause, the business
they had so much at heart, so precious was this document which came
from the very hand of their adored leader, that they had eyes and ears
only for that. They lost count of the sounds around them, of the
dropping of the crisp ash from the grate, of the monotonous ticking of
the clock, of the soft, almost imperceptible rustle of something on
the floor close beside them. A figure had emerged from under one of
the benches; with snake-like, noiseless movements it crept closer and
closer to the two young men, not breathing, only gliding along the
floor, in the inky blackness of the room.
The Scarlet Pimpernel |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Russia in 1919 by Arthur Ransome: work to prepare a retort of a different kind. They arranged
a house for the Berne delegates to live in, but at the same
time they prepared to emphasize the difference between the
two Internationals by the calling of an anti-Berne
conference which should disclaim all connection with that
old International which they considered had gone into
political bankruptcy at the outbreak of the European war.
THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE ON THE RIVAL PARTIES
February 26th.
In the afternoon I got to the Executive Committee in time to
hear the end of a report by Rykov on the economic position.
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