Cold War

“ In some respects the Cold War is not novel. It resembles the intercivilizational wars of the past in which competing civilizations with definite moral and political foundations fought one another for final survival. ”

“ If the extraterrestrials throw their weight, their scientific progress, into the balance on the side of the Soviet complex, the West will have lost the cold war. Every neutral in the world will jump on the bandwagon. ”

“ The Cold War is over, but our Nation is faced with a host of new and more complex challenges to peace and stability in the world. Yet we face the future in a position of strength and with a powerful and ready military force. ”

“ The whole success of the proposed program hangs ultimately on recognition by this Government, the American people, and all free peoples, that the cold war is in fact a real war in which the survival of the free world is at stake. ”

“ The task of building the peace lies with the leaders of every nation, large and small. For the great powers have no monopoly on conflict or ambition. The cold war is not the only expression of tension in this world--and the nuclear race is not the only arms race. Even little wars are dangerous in a nuclear world. The long labor of peace is an undertaking for every nation--and in this effort none of us can remain unaligned. To this goal none can be uncommitted. ”

“ Our most powerful adversary, the Soviet Union, seemed to be winning the Cold War, as it marched into Afghanistan, strengthened its terrifying arsenal, and claimed more victories in proxy wars in the Third World, as many of our allies seemed to have become demoralized in that "long, twilight struggle," and less resolved to defend themselves against an expansionist and implacably hostile foe. ”

“ In the past century alone, through two world wars and the long, tense struggle of the Cold War; on the front lines in Korea, Vietnam, Beirut, Grenada, Panama, Somalia, Haiti, the Persian Gulf, and the Balkans, our brave men and women in uniform have risked their lives to protect U.S. interests, assist our allies, promote peace, and advance our ideals. ”

“ Now, there are some in our country who argue that with the Cold War, America should turn its back on the rest of the world. Many around the world were afraid we would do just that. But I took this office on a pledge that had no partisan tinge to keep our nation secure by remaining engaged in the rest of the world. ”

“ And I think--I've tried to be very sensitive to that--I think we have--and to make sure that we fulfilled our responsibilities. I think that, on the one hand, people are glad that we won the cold war, if you will; they're glad that the forces of freedom won. ”

“ Second, the enclosing fact of the Cold War, symbolized by the presence of the Bomb, brought awareness that we ourselves, and our friends, and millions of abstract "others" we knew more directly because of our common peril, might die at any time. ”

“ Many personal anecdotes, from the deeply sad and poignant to the trivial and absurd, have been written about WW2, Korea, Viet Nam, and the other confrontations between the U S and the Soviets. The Cold War, in as many of its facets as possible, needs to be written about, including memoirs such as this, and they should be entered into the nation's lore so that students may view their many perspectives. ”

“ As they targeted one of the most secretive countries in the world, it is a tribute to these remarkable men and women that, beginning in the 1960s, there were virtually no further Soviet military surprises of strategic importance. ”

“ Soon the highways of Europe resounded with the hoof-beats and the tramp of marching hosts, with the rattle of arms and the rumble of artillery. Of such a war, once begun, no man could predict the end. But the world realized that it was a catastrophe of unparalleled proportions, a failure of civilization in its stronghold, a disaster to humanity. ”

“ We moved from war to peace in 1918-19 through a gradual series of experiences: relief from fear, even from anxiety, growing hope, moral certainty, real conviction, the armistice, the surrender of ships, the peace conference, civil unrest, the return of troops, and so forth. We moved from peace to war in the space of a single night’s experience. Who slept in the night of August 4th awoke the next morning to war. The more sanguine might hug the dream of a quick walk-over for the Allied Armies ”

“ But this country which I have been in part describing is now the scene of one of the greatest calamities that can afflict mankind. After seventy years of almost uninterrupted peace, it has become the scene of a civil war, more gigantic, perhaps, than any that we have any record of with regard to any other nation or any other people; for the scene of this warfare is so extended as to embrace a region almost equal in size to the whole of Europe. ”

“ But whatever may be the fate of the present crisis, whether it be doomed to the horrors of prolonged strife, or shall soon brighten into the radiance of enduring concord, I cannot doubt that the Nations are gravitating, with resistless might, even through fire and blood, into peaceful forms of social order, where the War System will cease to be known. ”

“ Should we now seek to imagine the worst possible effects of a defeat, we shall find that they resemble, line for line, with the exception of imperialistic annexations, the same picture that presented itself as the irrefutable consequence of victory: the effects of war today are so far reaching, so deeply rooted, that its military outcome can alter but little in its final consequences. ”

“ Now, when the Russian war is all over, the treaty of peace definitely settled, I thought it would be worth while to examine that matter: for the cloud of battle has lifted up, and we can look back, and learn the causes of the conflict; look round, and see the dead bodies, the remnants of cities burned, of navies sunk; can look forward, and calculate what loss or gain thence accrues to mankind ”

“ Naught other than the infatuation of the dizzy, competitive war dance of mutual destruction—each nation blindly driven by all, and all by each.
We as Americans profess to find in the conduct of Russia, in the militarism of England and Germany and France, examples of militarism run rampant. How our hearts have warmed within us when we have thought of our own republic as the happy envied nation, free from the burden of militarism! ”

“ All but the troops. The remaining troops stayed behind as best they could, a few thousand here, a platoon there. No one knew exactly where they were; they stayed where they could, moving around at night, hiding in ruins, in sewers, cellars, with the rats and snakes. It looked as if the Soviet Union had the war almost won. Except for a handful of projectiles fired off from the moon daily, there was almost no weapon in use against them. They came and went as they pleased. The war, for all practical purposes, was over. Nothing effective opposed them.
And then the first claws appeared. ”

“ To watchers of the present conflict it seems an intolerable thought that, after the fighting is done, we should once more return to a condition of “armed peace,” with jealous, distrustful, and revengeful Powers piling up armaments and plotting singly or in groups against their neighbors until Europe is plunged into another war more terrible, more bloody, and more costly than this. ”

“ On the day after the armistice—the very day when our war with just Germans was over, when the deeper, realer, more intimate, more desperate war Germany had precipitated upon all nations with themselves, begins, why should the men and women who had been working every afternoon for the men of this nation, in the Red Cross, talk about reducing to a peace basis? ”

“ Only forty odd years have elapsed since then, and here we have a world war, with several tens of millions of people tearing at each other's throats, with Europe continuously flooded with blood for more than four years, all her economic life sacrificed to that war, universal destruction in honour of it. ”

“ Great Expectations and their Tardy Fulfilment, thus in headline fashion might one summarise the story of 1919, with Peace, the world's desire, waiting for months outside the door of the Conference Chamber, with civil war in Germany, Berlin bombed by German airmen, and anarchy in Russia, and here at home impatience and discomfort, aggravated in the earlier months by strikes and influenza, the largely increased numbers of unemployed politicians, the weariest and dreariest of winter weather. ”

“ Just at the moment when the President's appeal to the entire belligerent world coincided with the spontaneous statement of our group, in which we gave a solemn proof of our willingness to conclude a just peace and one acceptable by our enemies, a fresh and larger minefield was laid down in the North Sea on the route of the world's traffic, and, casting ridicule on the noble initiative of the United States, a war of destruction against our groups of Powers was announced by the Entente. ”

“ Then will come the catastrophe. All Europe will be called to arms, and sixteen to eighteen million men, the flower of the nations, armed with the best instruments of murder will make war upon each other. ”

“ Without indulging in any utopian dreams as to the possibility of inaugurating an era of universal peace, it may, I think, be held that, in spite of the wars which have occurred during the last half century, not merely an ardent desire for peace, but also a dislike—I may almost say a genuine horror—of war has grown apace amongst the civilised nations of the world. ”

“ What were the unseen and unnoted conditions that, within little more than a week’s time, induced all the leading nations of Europe to cast down the gage of battle and spring full-armed into the arena, bent upon a struggle which threatened to surpass any that the world had ever seen? ”

“ I remember being told by a right hon. gentleman, in the course of a private conversation in the House, that 'if an angel came down from heaven to write my dispatches, I could not prevent Europe from a war in six months'. Well, Sir, not months, but years, rolled by, and no war took place. It was the anxious desire of the Government of Earl Grey to prevent war; and the maintenance of peace was one of the objects at which they expressly aimed, and succeeded. ”

“ And, with the usual irony of war, it remains doubtful whether Germany and Russia, the defeated, will not be the gainers; for the victors are already busy fastening on themselves the chains they have struck from the limbs of the vanquished. ”

“ In this way Russia advanced and prospered,—by the ascendency that organized intelligence will ever command over a policy of mere sentimental or unreflective expediency,—until 1853, when another crisis was impending in the East, which produced a great European war, and terminated the long peace that had existed since 1815. ”

“ But the world is not merely threatened by the prospect of future wars. It is filled with wars at the present moment. There are quarrels and bickerings between most of the newly liberated states in eastern Europe; there is a war, sometimes avowed and sometimes underground, between Communist Russia and all her neighbours and rivals, a war whose tentacles reach far throughout Europe and Asia; and there are wars against the British and French in various parts of the East. ”

“ For can the most optimistic of us truthfully declare, as he casts his eye over the world, as he looks from Middle Europe to the Far East, from Russia to Mexico, from the Balkans to Egypt, or from Asia Minor to the confines of India, that we need not even consider the possibility of a war within his own generation? ”

“ Gradually, I dreamed, the firearms became more and more destructive, while all the elements, and everything in existence, were pressed into the service of war; and so absorbed were my human beings in the perfecting of war that they invented a subsidiary state of affairs called 'Peace,' which, on referring to these creatures' dictionaries, I found to be 'An interval necessary to the effective preparation of war.' The nations were never altogether in their element during these intervals; and, of course, any protracted peace meant the gradual impoverishment of the soil for want of the fertiliser. ”

“ In spite of tremendous losses the Soviets still outnumbered us and, if pushed too far, might start the long-awaited march into the vacuum left by the dying populations of Asia and the evacuation of our bases, daring us to start an all-out war. ”

“ And while it is hard to conceive of a cause more just than the defeat of the Third Reich and the Axis powers, World War II was a conflict in which the total number of civilians who died exceeded the number of soldiers who perished. ”

“ Does not every American feel that assurance has been added to our hope for the future peace of the world by the wonderful and heartening things that have been happening within the last few weeks in Russia? ”

“ Highly relevant today, World War II has much to teach us, not only about the profession of arms, but also about military preparedness, global strategy, and combined operations in the coalition war against fascism. ”

“ An ignominious war has been declared against a weak country, and in Russia the indignation, which I fully share, is tremendous. I fear that very soon I shall be unable to resist the pressure exercised upon me and that I shall be forced to take measures which will lead to war. To prevent such a calamity as a European war would be, I urge You in the name of our old friendship to do all in Your power to restrain Your ally from going too far. ”

“ We'll chase it flying like a rat
For some fort-guarded Ararat,
And leave it flotsam for Jemima's broom.
Evoe.
Peace: Old and New Style.
Now that the Allies have all agreed not to make separate peaces, we can look forward to the War stopping all at once, and not just a bit at a time, though of course the calendar of the Russians will allow them the option of keeping at it for twelve days after the others have finished. ”