The spirit of the nation is a great force, but it is one which cannot be always on the alert, and while it sleeps, the part of noble institutions is … - F. S. Oliver

[W]e have ever in our minds what our easy-going fellow-countrymen are so apt to forget—that an unceasing and desperate struggle for existence—nation against nation—is forever going on; and that it is waged for the most part by very able men, underground, in the chanceries of the world. It has never been otherwise and, so far as we can see, it never will be otherwise; for the nations of the world are like the wild creatures of the jungle and the veld, each one eternally on its guard against the others.

Danger is the inseparable companion of honour. The greatest deeds in history were not done by people who thought of safety first. It is possible to be too much concerned even with one's own salvation. There will not be much hope left for humanity when men are no longer willing to risk their immortal as well as their mortal parts. With all the temptations, dangers and degradations that beset it, politics is still, I think, the noblest career that any man can choose.

The only two men who really seem to understand that we are at war are Winston and Lloyd George. Both have faults which disgust one peculiarly at the present time, but there is a reality about them and they are in earnest, which the others aren't.