The British are proud of their ability to create a muddle and then muddle through all difficulties. I must shake the British pride: muddle is not an exclusively British institution. Read descriptions, for instance, of the over-organized, wonderfully systematic and "thorough" German war machine during the last war.
George MikesI said in my earlier book, and find no reason for retracting my statement, that the famous Jewish sense of humour got lost in transit to Israel.
George MikesEnglish humor resembles the Loch Ness Monster in that both are famous but there is a strong suspicion that neither exists.
George MikesJapan suffered terribly from the atomic bomb but never adopted a pose of moral superiority, implying: 'We would never have done it!' The Japanese know perfectly well they would have used it had they had it. They accept the idea that war is war; they give no quarter and accept none. Total war, they recognize, knows no Queensberry Rules. If you develop a devastating new weapon during a total war, you use it; you do not put it into the War Museum.
George Mikes