George Orwell was injured in the Spanish war and they wouldn’t let him join in the fighting of the Nazis. On July 6th, 1940 George Orwell wrote:
“What is so terrible about this kind of situation is to be able to do nothing. The govt won’t use me in any capacity, not even a clerk, and I have failed to get into the army because of my lungs. It is a terrible thing to feel oneself useless and at the same time on every side to see halfwits and profascists filling important jobs.”
Further there is interesting short letter where George Orwell writes his autobiography. It’s succinct and factual, he concludes there:
“Outside my work the thing I care most about is gardening, especially vegetable gardening. I like English cookery and English beer, French red wines, Spanish white wines, Indian tea, strong tobacco, coal fires, candlelight and comfortable chairs. I dislike big towns, noise, motor cars, the radio, tinned food, central heating and “modern” furniture. My wife’s tastes fit in almost perfectly with my own. My health is wretched, but it has never prevented me from doing anything that I wanted to, except, so far, fight in the present war. I ought perhaps to mention that though this account that I have given of myself is true, George Orwell is not my real name.”
Above all George Orwell was a honorable man and it’s this sense of honor that is missing today, it’s lost to the modern virtues.
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