Homage To Catalonia

the New Statesman was treating us to tales of Fascist barricades made of the bodies of living children

I remember wondering whether I was frightened, and deciding that I was not.

These were more popular than the others because they were lighter to carry and less nuisance in a trench, also because they were comparatively new and looked efficient. Actually they were almost useless.

From the hotel window I watched it without enthusiasm.

it produced a shortage of everything and a dismal dull life for everybody,

various sections of the liberal bourgeoisie–the very people who are the supporters of Fascism when it appears in a more modern form.

The Daily Mail, with its tales of red revolution financed by Moscow, was even more wildly wrong than usual.

One of the most horrible features of war is that all the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.

I found exquisite green frogs the size of a penny, so brilliant that the young grass looked dull beside them.

’This is not a war,’ he used to say, ’it is a comic opera with an occasional death.’