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But unfortunately Locke treated ideas of reflection as if they were another class of objects of contemplation beside ideas of sensation.

The sense of war, the extraordinary bravery of the Allied armies, the numbers, the losses, the real suffering that disappears in time and commemorative oratory, are not marked out in any red guidebook of the emotions, but they are present if you look.

A battle lost or won is easily described, understood, and appreciated, but the moral growth of a great nation requires reflection, as well as observation, to appreciate it.

In history, the moments during which reason and reconciliation prevail are short and fleeting.

We have a tendency to think of war as this quasi-mystical thing, and that interpretation flattens the experience - by using different perspectives, I wanted to open a place for readers to compare and contrast, to make judgments, to engage.

The war was a mirror; it reflected man's every virtue and every vice, and if you looked closely, like an artist at his drawings, it showed up both with unusual clarity.

To reflect is to disturb one's thoughts.

Winners of wars get a standing start in the post-war stakes of remembrance.

The nature of the human mind is such that unless it is stimulated by images of things acting upon it from without, all remembrance of them passes easily away.

Every country has its own perspective on the Second World War. This is not surprising when experiences and memories are so different.