Nicholas Rankin > Quotes

“The great offensives of the future would be psychological, and . . . the most deadly weapon in the world was the power of mass-persuasion . . . In”
― Nicholas Rankin, A Genius for Deception: How Cunning Helped the British Win Two World Wars

“In war, Shaw says, keeping a cool head is better than seeing red: ‘Hatred is one of the things you can do better at home. And you generally stay at home to do it.’ This idea may have come out of his talks with C. E. Montague, who observed in Disenchantment: ‘Hell hath no fury like a non-combatant.’ Serving soldiers understood that the morality of war was different from the morality of peace, ‘just as the morality of an interview with a tiger in the jungle is distinct from the morality of an interview with a missionary.’ Shaw was not a pacifist, and he saw that people went to fight out of solidarity, not selfishness: ‘It is not that you must defend yourself or perish: many a man would be too proud to fight on those terms. You must defend your neighbour or betray him: that is what gets you . . .’ George”
― Nicholas Rankin, A Genius for Deception: How Cunning Helped the British Win Two World Wars