From, 'Homage to Catalonia', by, George Orwell.

Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou be like unto him.

Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit.

--Proverbs XXVI. 5-6

*

Chapter 1


In the Lenin Barracks in Barcelona, the day before I joined the militia,
I saw an Italian militiaman standing in front of the officers' table.

He was a tough-looking youth of twenty-five or six, with reddish-yellow
hair and powerful shoulders. His peaked leather cap was pulled fiercely
over one eye. He was standing in profile to me, his chin on his breast,
gazing with a puzzled frown at a map which one of the officers had open
on the table. Something in his face deeply moved me. It was the face of
a man who would commit murder and throw away his life for a friend--the
kind of face you would expect in an Anarchist, though as likely as not
he was a Communist. There were both candour and ferocity in it; also the
pathetic reverence that illiterate people have for their supposed
superiors. Obviously he could not make head or tail of the map;
obviously he regarded map-reading as a stupendous intellectual feat. I
hardly know why, but I have seldom seen anyone--any man, I mean--to whom
I have taken such an immediate liking. While they were talking round the
table some remark brought it out that I was a foreigner. The Italian
raised his head and said quickly:

'_Italiano?_'

I answered in my bad Spanish: '_No, Inglés. Y tú?_'