The men i killed

The first Orwell book is turning out to be very apropos. What i'm reading right now was written in the mid-thirties, 1937 to be precise. He had returned from fighting in the Spanish civil war, after being shot in the throat. The bullet passed right through his neck missing both the cartoid artery and his spine but severing one vocal cord.

It wasn't Orwell that said that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it's mistakes. However, he did say this:

"The two facts which even now are not very widely grasped, and which should be made the centre of all anti-war agitation, are:

1. That war against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.
2. That every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defence against a homicidal maniac ("militarist" Germany in 1914, "Fascist" Germany next year or the year after)."

That's from a review of, "The Men I Killed" by Brigadier-General F. P. Crozier, CB, CMG, DSO, and was published in New Statesman and Nation, 28th August 1937. He even predicted the year that England would enter the war...