Am I overdone, emotional? Is it only the impact of the strenuous conditions upon a frame unfitted by nature and its career for present hardship? Itmay be that there is nothing on the barrack square which can injure a wholesome man. I do not swear thecontrary. Perhaps:-- but recollect I amcoming through easier than my companions. Alone of the hut I’ve energy at the moment to protest. If time has made me more worn than them, alsoit has made me deeper. Man’s emotions,like water plants, sprout far-rooted from hisbasic clay pushfully into the light. If very luxuriant they dam life’s current. But these fellows’ feelings, because of theiryoungness, seem like shallops on a river, splashlyimportant, but passing without trace, leavingtheir surface clean, weedless, purling over the sunlit stones. Whereas to root out one of my thoughts—what upstirringof mud, what rending of fibre in the darkness.
I am not frightened of ourinstructors, nor of their overdriving. Tocomprehend why we are their victims is to riseabove them. Yet despite mybackground of achievement and understanding, despite my willingness (quickened by a profound dissatisfaction with what I am)that the R.A.F. should bray me and re-mould me after its pattern : still Iwant to cry out that this our long-drawn punishing can subserve neitherbeauty nor use.
Excerpt from T.E.Lawrence, The Mint (published 1955)
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