Elizabeth Bowen Quotes
Sins cut boldly up through every class in society, but mere misdemeanours show a certain level in life.
Bowen, Elizabeth. The Death of the Heart. Victor Gollancz, 1938.
Theoretically every male citizen was supposed to serve in the Militia at that time. But if one did not, the penalty was a small fine. It became a status symbol. Those middle and upper class men who could get commissions as officers would serve, but those who did not have the political connections or the money to equip his own troops, would rather pay the fine than serve with men he thought beneath him. There is a , romantic American myth about the Militiamen in Colonial and Revolutionary America—the citizen soldiers who would leave their farms and rise to the military necessity of the day. However, not only were the militia very hard to muster to duty, but most actually didn’t own or have experience with firearms, and the prevailing opinion of knowledgeable military leaders from George Washington on down was that the militia were not very good soldiers. See {613015}, {613016}, {613022}, {613027}, {621987}, {621988}, {613030}, {613033}, & {613056}
Describing American diplomats in England:
Chivalry was a set of rules that regulated the behavior of knights especially as to their behavior in battle. It was the Medieval equivalent of the Geneva Convention. At the time knights fought against knights and peasants fought against peasants. After time the fighting was mixed. Previously, if a knight was subdued by other knights, he would surrender and promise to fight any more and that would be honored. But when a small group of peasants brought down a knight in armor, he could not surrender. He had probably killed other lightly armored peasants who were friends, and the peasants did not trust the knights. So typically, the peasants just killed the fallen knight. Social class determined the concepts of honor, fairness, trust, and chivalry came to an end.
Elizabeth Bowen CBE was an Anglo-Irish novelist and short story writer notable for her fiction about life in wartime London.
