Bruce Fairchild Barton

“ Every boy who comes out of college, if he amounts to anything, has a deep-seated conviction that the world is pretty much wrong and that he is peculiarly set apart to put it right. It's because Germany is just a college graduate among the nations that she talks like that—just a vigorous, lusty youngster who has studied a little too hard and not played football quite enough. ”

“ No American would have sunk a boat full of women and children; no American theater audience would have cheered at jokes about it; no American school children would have been given a holiday to celebrate such a sinking. We just aren't built that way, Wilhelm, and if you and I are going to be friends again, you've got to make an effort to understand that. ”

“ Of course I know that you have been hearing regularly from Ambassador von Bernstorff; but Mr. von Bernstorff is in a difficult place to secure any real information. He is in Washington, completely surrounded by politicians; he never meets us common Americans. It is easy in Washington to get the idea that the American people are very much interested in politics and politicians, whereas the truth is that we care almost nothing about politics and absolutely nothing about politicians. ”

“ We love our wives and are interested in our business, and want to raise our sons to be a little better men than we are; and while we aren't too proud to fight, as your English cousin George can tell you if you ask him to look up his records, we do think that a lot of fighting can be avoided if one doesn't take politicians like yours and our own too seriously.
You and I were pretty good friends, Wilhelm, before the war. ”

“ A little boy of twelve, in a school kept by an American lady near Brussels, cried out "Vive la France" to some passing soldiers he took to be French. They halted and shot him at once.
"Are the Germans cruel?" Dr. Grenfell was asked, and he answers: "Systematically so. It is part of 'frightfulness.'"
Perhaps our reports of your "frightfulness" policy have been colored by the awful tension of men's minds; we hope so, Wilhelm. But we can't forget that after the Boxer outrages you ordered your soldiers so to conduct themselves that no Chinese would ever dare to look a German in the face again. ”

“ Then, when you were checked at the Marne, it was perfidious England who had leagued the nations against you. To crush England–that was the real reason for the war. And your people believed it.
Now it's for the freedom of the seas that you must take Verdun—and your people apparently still believe.
But in dealing with me, Wilhelm, after the war, if you'll lay the cards face up on the table right from the start, we'll get on a good deal faster.
Business, Wilhelm, is nothing but credit. That's old stuff, of course, but true. Money is only scraps of paper ”

“ Putting it as kindly as I can, it still seems to me that in your passion for efficiency you have developed in the Prussian character a certain ruthlessness that gives scant regard to the rights of the weak in the world. ”