John Ellis > Quotes

“Your dispatch is received, and if genuine, which its extraordinary character leads me to doubt, I have to say in reply that I regard the levy of troops made by the administration for the purpose of subjugating the states of the South, as in violation of the Constitution, and as a gross usurpation of power. I can be no party to this wicked violation of the laws of the country, and to this war upon the liberties of a free people. You can get no troops from North Carolina.”
― Governor John Ellis

“By now, he was also a 'Protestant Atheist', which he remained all his life.”
― John Ellis, Quantum Reflections

“A French officer . . . felt that there was a reverse correlation between xenophobia and proximity to the enemy:
Hatred of the enemy diminished as one passed from the interior to the front, where it tapered still more as one went from staffs to field headquarters, from headquarters to batteries, from batteries to the battalion command post, and finally from there to the infantryman in the trench and observation sap, where it reached its lowest ebb.
Or, as C.E. Mentague put it, rather more tersely: "War hath no fury like a noncombatant.”
― John Ellis, Eye-Deep In Hell: Trench Warfare In World War I