One of my biggest passions is Military Intelligence MI5, MI6 and KGB (true stories not your James Bond crap). I came across this little gem of a passage in a book called Inside Intelligence by Anthony Cavendish.
At first I thought it was funny, but the more I read it, the more I understood how true it is.
Let me know your thoughts.
In the bitter cold of the Russian winter, in a small village, some hundreds of kilometers east of Moscow, during a howling gale and darkness falling, a Russian peasant is wandering home to his meagre village.
Suddenly he stops and sees a small game bird on the ground nearly dead from the cold and privation. The peasant picks up the bird and warms it. The bird soon recovers and the peasant wonders what to do next.
At that moment a herd of cattle come by and one of them drops a large dollop right in front of him. Realizing that if he puts the bird in the steaming dollop, the bird will stay warm until morning and then be able to fly away, he does this and then goes home.
But a second peasant comes along after the first one has gone and hears the bird chirping hapily to itself in the steaming mess. This peasant seizes the bird, breaks its neck and takes it home for supper.
This old intelligence story has 3 morals:
1 Do not believe that everybody who drops you in the shit is your enemy.
2 Do not believe that everybody who gets you out the shit is your friend.
3 Whenever you are in the shit keep quiet about it.