"The first reactions are often instinctive. So one of the first things we said was that the Chinese had no right to inspect the plane, and that we had a sovereign right to. I don't know what the legal position is, but it was surely psychologically absolutely the unwise thing to do."

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I am by nature the most intolerant and insular Englishman... If you happen to be a person like that and you learn from evidence (which you are prepared to accept) that in the past you have been a Chinese, an Egyptian, a Persian, a Red Indian... you begin to assume a somewhat less exclusive view of these our fellow men.

— Hugh Dowding, 1st Baron Dowding