If There Is A War

For Every Once Upon A Time There Must Be A Story To Follow, Because If A Story Doesn't, Something Else Will, And It Might Not Be As Harmless As A Story.

Gradually, At Various Points In Our Childhoods, We Discover Different Forms Of Conviction. There's The Rock-hard Certainty Of Personal Experience ("i Put My Finger In The Fire And It Hurt,"), Which Is Probably The Earliest Kind We Learn. Then There's The Logically Convincing, Which We Probably Come To First Through Maths, In The Context Of Pythagoras's Theorem Or Something Similar, And Which, If We First Encounter It At Exactly The Right Moment, Bursts On Our Minds Like Sunrise With The Whole Universe Playing A Great Chord Of C Major.

If There Is A War To Be Fought, We Don’t Consider Cost One Of The Factors In Deciding Whether Or Not To Fight.

She Longed For Cutlasses, Pistols, And Brandy; She Had To Make Do With Coffee, And Pencils, And Verbs.

As Jane Austen Might Have Put It: It Is A Truth Universally Acknowledged That Young Protagonists In Search Of Adventure Must Ditch Their Parents.