I didn't realise at all how loose my moral and nervous fibre had
become until I reached the practical side of my investigations and was
face to face with the necessity of finding out just how it felt to use a
glider and just what a man could do with one.
I got into this relaxed habit of living in spite of very real
tendencies in my nature towards discipline. I've never been in love with
self-indulgence. That philosophy of the loose lip and the lax paunch
is one for which I've always had an instinctive distrust. I like bare
things, stripped things, plain, austere and continent things, fine lines
and cold colours. But in these plethoric times when there is too much
coarse stuff for everybody and the struggle for life takes the form of
competitive advertisement and the effort to fill your neighbour's eye,
when there is no urgent demand either for personal courage, sound nerves
or stark beauty, we find ourselves by accident. Always before these
times the bulk of the people did not over-eat themselves, because they
couldn't, whether they wanted to do so or not, and all but a very few
were kept "fit" by unavoidable exercise and personal danger.
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