It took me awhile to figure out where to begin to look for this quote, and when I thought about how few people would have addressed him as "John Ronald" and thought similarly enough to want him to speak for them, I found the answer quite quickly. It was G. B. (Geoffrey Bache) Smith, one of the members of the T.C.B.S., in a letter written shortly before his death in WWI. It begins as follows:
Quote:
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My chief consolation is that if I am scuppered tonight - I am off on duty in a few minutes - there will still be left a member of the great T.C.B.S. to voice what I dreamed and what we all agreed upon. For the death of one of its members cannot, I am determined, dissolve the T.C.B.S. Death can make us loathsome and helpless as individuals, but it cannot put an end to the immortal four!
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'Mercy!' cried Gandalf. 'If the giving of information is to be the cure of your inquisitiveness, I shall spend all the rest of my days in answering you. What more do you want to know?' 'The whole history of Middle-earth..
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