Various

“ I know that the American Ambulance is the most remarkable hospital that the world has seen. I know that you, since the beginning of the war, have brought the aid of medical science to wounded men and that you have given not only money, but an institution, all ready, complete and of the most modern type, and, even more, that you have sent there your best surgeons and a small army of orderlies and nurses. ”

“ Does any one think that the steam-roller of admirably organized and Government-fostered German competition would pause if we lay in the road; that if we received a check, Anglo-Saxon cousinship and fair play would always mitigate British competition; or that then not a single European merchant in South America would ever again use scorn and detraction against our goods, or encourage, through influence with the press, prejudice due to "Yankee peril" nonsense? In short, is it likely that all our competitors would suddenly love us just because we were in trouble? ”

“ Unless we profit with the utmost prudence, with the greatest circumspection, by the present rare opportunity which history offers us to set the finishing touches to our unification, to render our land and sea frontiers immeasurably more secure than they are, to harmonize our foreign with our domestic policy, we shall experience after the close of the war the darkest and most difficult days of our existence. The crisis through which we are passing is the gravest we have yet encountered. Let us make it a crisis of growth, not a symptom of irreparable senile decay. ”

“ Belgium, once comfortably well-to-do, is now waste and weeping, and her children are living on the bread of charity sent them by neighbors far and near. And France—the German Army, like a wild beast, has fastened its claws deep into her soil, and every effort to drag them out rends and tears the living flesh of that beautiful land. The beast of prey has not leaped to our shores—not a hair of Britain's head has been touched by him. ”

“ The German ideal—we have had it poured out by German professors and publicists since the war began—is that of the Germans as a superior people, to whom all things are lawful in the securing of their own power, against whom resistance of any sort is unlawful—a people establishing a domination over the nations of the Continent, imposing a peace which is not to be liberty for every nation, but subservience to Germany. ”

“ On her must rest for all time the appalling responsibility for having plunged Europe into this war. One essential condition of peace must be the restoration to Belgium of her independence and reparation to her for the cruel wrong done to her. England claims for herself and her allies claim for themselves, and together will secure for Europe, the right of independent sovereignty for the different nations, the right to pursue a national existence in the light of general liberty. ”

“ The aim of Germany is to have the seas, as well as the narrows, kept permanently open for the free use of all nations in times of war as well as in times of peace. The sea is nobody's property and must be free to everybody. The seas are the lungs from which humanity draws a fresh breath of enterprise, and they must not be stopped up. ”

“ But you, you have thought that, if it is good to establish a hospital, that alone was not enough, and that each day would bring new wounded to replace those who, cured, took up their guns again and returned to the field of battle. And since at the American Ambulance the wounded are cured quickly, the very excellence of your organization, the science of your surgeons, and the greatness of your sacrifices all bring upon you other and new sacrifices to be made.
But the word "sacrifice" is badly chosen. You do not make sacrifices, for you are strong and you are good. ”

“ When, after that, Germany invaded Belgium we were bound to oppose Germany with all our strength, and if we had not done so at the first moment, is there any one who now believes that when Germany attacked the Belgians, when she shot down combatants and non-combatants in a way that violated all the rules of war of recent times and the laws of humanity of all time—is there any one who thinks it possible now that we could have sat still and looked on without eternal disgrace? ”

“ For all of us who are serving the State at home or in whatever capacity, whether officials, or employers, or wage earners, doing our utmost to carry on the national life in this time of stress, there is the knowledge that there can be no nobler opportunity than that of serving one's country when its existence is at stake, and when the cause is just and right; and never was there a time in our national history when the crisis was so great and so imperative, or the cause more just and right. ”

“ We are inundated with German letters, telegrams, newspapers, and private communications from German commercial houses, all asserting that Germany will win, and that Italy should keep neutral, to be on the winning side.
We are not of that opinion. We cannot lose sight of England. Germany knows that England represents her great final danger, hence the bitterness with which she speaks of England in all the above communications. England is not playing a game of bluff. She is not impotent by land, as Germany says, and may give Germany a mortal blow by sea. ”

“ How can one help seeing that such aggression, if hideously successful in Europe, would, with as little loss of time as possible, proceed to apply itself to the American side of the world, and how can one, therefore, not feel that the Allies are fighting to the death for the soul and the purpose and the future that are in us, for the defense of every ideal that has most guided our growth and that most assures our unity? ”

“ So while the flames leaped high from the burning city, reddening the sky for miles, while old men prayed, while women wept, while little children whimpered, the sound of martial music was heard down the street near the bridge. The infantry packed in close formation, the red light from the fire shining on their helmets, were doing the goose step up the main street to the station—the great German army had entered the city of Gerbéviller with the honors of war. ”

“ Through him I learned to know Belgium, today all the world knows. Her cities are laid waste now and her people scattered, but her people will return and rebuild the cities, and the enemy will be dust. The day will come when the war will be far distant, a thing of the past, remote, forgotten, but never, while men endure or heroism counts, will it be forgotten what the Belgians did for Liberty's sake and for the sake of Albert, their King. ”

“ The American is unwilling to be either stiff or subservient. He does not wish to be accounted of less value as a merchant than the officer or official; wishes to do what he likes and to call the President an ox outright if he pleases. Leave him as he is; and do not continually hurt the empire and its swarms of emigrant children by the attempt to force strangers into the shell of your will and your opinion.
Is it not possible that the American is analyzing the origin of the war in his own way? That he looks upon Belgium's fate with other eyes than the German? ”

“ Looking at the battle at a distance of about 2,000 yards from the enemy's line, the stillness of what one sees is in marked contrast to the turmoil of shells passing overhead. The only movement is the cloud of smoke and earth that marks the burst of a shell. Here and there long white lines are visible, when a trench has brought the chalky subsoil up to the top, but the number of trenches seen is very small compared to the number that exist, for one cannot see into the valleys, and the top of the ground is an unhealthy place to choose for seating a trench. ”

“ We cannot explain to ourselves that a neutral power should suffer the selling of arms and ammunition by its citizens to one of the belligerent parties, when no such selling to the other party is practically feasible; we cannot understand why America should meekly submit to the dictates of England, declaring all foodstuffs and manufacturing materials contraband of war, with not even a show of right and with the clear and openly proclaimed intention of starving Germany and Austria-Hungary ”

“ Germany does not strive for territorial aggrandizement in Europe; she does not believe in conquering and subjugating unwilling nations—this on account of a spirit of justice and her knowledge of history. No such attempts have ever been permanently successful.
Belgium commands the main outlet of Western German trade, is the natural foreland of the empire, and has been conquered with untold sacrifice of blood and treasure. ”

“ Personally I feel so strongly on everything that the war has brought into question for the Anglo-Saxon peoples that humorous detachment or any other thinness or tepidity of mind on the subject affects me as vulgar impiety, not to say as rank blasphemy; our whole race tension became for me a sublimely conscious thing from the moment Germany flung at us all her explanation of her pounce upon Belgium for massacre and ravage in the form of the most insolent, 'Because I choose to, damn you all!' recorded in history. ”

“ It is very edifying that American pacifists are exerting themselves against the current of militarism which appears to spread in their country; but wouldn't it be better still, more to the purpose and certainly practically more urgent, to insist upon a truly neutral attitude of the great republic, to protest against her feeding the war by providing one belligerent side with its implements? Do American pacifists really fail to see that their country by such proceedings disables herself from being the peacemaker of the future? ”

“ Will Japan follow the luring cry? Any price will be paid for it. What is Indo-China to the Frenchmen, whose immense colonial empire is exploited by strangers, if thereby they can purchase the bliss of no longer being "the victims of 1870"? And the yellow race that co-operated on Europe's soil in the most momentous decision of all history would live in splendor such as had never before been seen, and could keep China, the confused, reeling republic, for at least a generation in its guardianship. ”

“ The world then was in formation. Will a new Europe, a new society, a new humanity, take form from the prodigious shock by which our imagination is confounded?
We can at least seek to understand what we cannot hinder.
This war was not a matter of blind fate, but had been foreseen for a long time. What are the forces that have set the nations in movement? I do not seek to establish responsibility. Whosoever it may be, those who have let loose the conflict have behind them peoples of one mind. ”

“ And now France is fighting not so much to recover her lost provinces, she is fighting to recover her self-respect and her national independence; she is fighting to shake off this nightmare that has been on her soul for over a generation, [cheers,] a France with Germany constantly meddling, bullying, and interfering. And that is what would happen if Russia were trampled upon, France broken, Britain disarmed. We should be left without any means to defend ourselves. ”

“ I know that automobiles, admirably adapted to the service, carried the wounded. And yet I do not know all. I know only by instinct of the devotion of your young girls, of your women, and of your young men, belonging often to prominent families, who served as stretcher bearers and orderlies.
I am not ignorant of the fact that they count by the hundreds those who have been cured at the American Ambulance at Neuilly, nor of the further fact that the rate of mortality is extremely low, although they have sent you those most gravely injured. I know that it is all free ”

“ The Japs do not care one straw who wins in Europe; they seized upon their own opportunity for their own purposes. England only gets her deserts; but how do Americans feel about it? Can America be absolved from a certain amount of responsibility for what may soon prove imminent danger to herself? Has not her partiality for England given encouragement to methods of warfare unprecedented in the history of civilized nations and fruitful of evil consequences to neutral nations? ”

“ General Foch has written:
"Discipline for a leader does not mean the execution of orders received in so far as they seem suitable, just reasonable, or even possible. It means that you have entirely grasped the ideas of the leader who has given the order and that you take every possible means of satisfying him. Discipline does not mean silence, abstention, only doing what appears to you possible without compromising yourself; it is not the practice of the art of avoiding responsibilities. ”

“ Przemysl is admitted to be the first spectacular success of the war on the side of the Allies. It is not surprising that the nation is proud and delighted, yet so generous is the Russian mind that there mingle with its triumph admiration and sympathy for the garrison which was compelled to surrender after a long, brave resistance. Popular imagination has been thrilled by the story of the last desperate sortie, which will take a high place in the history of modern war. ”

“ There used to be apparently very little hope of our shaking the tree and gathering the golden fruit of foreign enterprise unless forced to it by the collapse, through dire hard times, of the wonderful home market which has made spoiled children of our manufacturers. Now comes this war. It forces upon us a wonderful, a unique opportunity to gain and hold our proper place in the finance, trade, and enterprise of Latin America. The richness of the field is often exaggerated, but its cultivation is certainly worth the effort of men of foresight. ”

“ If countries like Russia and France, with their huge armies, and the most powerful navy in the world could not face this terrible military machine, if it breaks that combination, how can America step in? It would be more than America can do to defend her own interests on her own continent if Germany is triumphant. ”

“ And this is not merely a question of ground, but one of increasing moral superiority, for it is in the unsuccessful counter-attacks that losses are heavy, and these and the sense of failure affect the morale of an army sooner or later.
Will the French push through the line? Will a hole be made, or is the enemy like a badger, who digs himself in rather faster than you can dig him out? I cannot tell; it would indeed be an astonishing measure of success for a first attempt, and the enemy may require a great deal more hammering at many points before he has definitely had enough at any one point. ”

“ I fear that more than I do even von Hindenburg's strategy, efficient as it may be. That is the spirit in which a country should meet a great emergency, and instead of mocking at it we ought to emulate it. I believe we are just as imbued with the spirit as Germany is, but we want it evoked. [Cheers.] The average Briton is too shy to be a hero until he is asked. The British temper is one of never wasting heroism on needless display, but there is plenty of it for the need. There is nothing Britishers would not give up for the honor of their country or for the cause of freedom. ”