Book Tag- Churchill Edition

Jen, at Little Country Lost, has joggled my morning by tagging me for a book post, the rules being to open the nearest book to page 123, read the first five lines, and post the next three lines. Fortunately, doing so does not make me blush and wish I had better taste, as Winston Churchill's World Crisis comes readily to hand.

"The entry of Great Britain into war with the most powerful military Empire which has ever existed was strategically impressive. Her large fleets vanished into the mists at one end of the island,. Her small Army hurried out of the country at the other. By this double gesture she might seem...to divest herself of all her means of defence....Yet these two movements, dictated by the truest strategy, secured at once our own safety and the salvation of our Allies. The Grand Fleet gained the station whence the control of the seas could be irresistibly asserted. The Regular Army reached in the nick of time the vital post on the flank of the French line. Had all our action been upon this level, we should today [1927] be living in an easier world."

As we contemplate our 200,000 soldiers in Iraq, and our casualties of 60,000, perhaps we should occasionally remember that in the first shock of the Great War, three millions of troops were hurled upon one another, and in a single day 60,000 men were lost by just one of the armies. Yet never during that war did the British resort to torture. There's a lesson in there someplace.

And now I'm hoping that Frank, at Orphan Road will accept the tag and find some interesting book to hand.