You have to run risks. There are no certainties in war. There is a precipice on either side of you — a precipice of caution and a precipice of over-daring.

When danger is far off we may think of our weakness; when it is near we must not forget our strength.

It always looks so easy to solve problems by taking the line of least resistance.

Nowadays we are assailed by a chorus of horrid threats. The Nazi government exudes through every neutral state inside information about the frightful vengeance they are going to wreak upon us, and they also bawl it around the world by their propaganda machinery. If words could kill, we shall be dead already.

Before the war it had seemed incredible that such terrors and slaughters, even if they began, could last more than a few months. After the first two years it was difficult to believe that they would ever end.

There is no doubt the charge was an awful gamble and that no normal precautions were possible. The issue as far as I was concerned had to be left to Fortune or to God – or to whatever may decide these things. I am content and shall not complain.

I am weary of a task which is done and I hope I shall not shrink when the aftermath ends. My only wish is to live peacefully out the remaining years – if years they be.

Danger gathers upon our path. We cannot afford – we have no right – to look back. We must look forward… The stronger the advocate of monarchical principle a man may be, the more zealously he must now endeavor to fortify the Throne and to give to His Majesty’s successor that strength which can only come from the love of a united nation and Empire.

Here life itself, life at its best and healthiest, awaits the caprice of the bullet ... Existence is never so sweet as when it is at hazard.