Allies

“ Guarding neutrality, we might have counted toward a speedy and democratic peace. In the war, we are a rudderless nation, to be exploited as the Allies wish, politically and materially, and towed, to their aggrandizement, in any direction which they may desire. ”

“ Now what is the issue for which we are fighting? In due time the terms of peace will be put forward by our Allies in concert with us—in accordance with the alliance that exists between us—and published to the world. ”

“ Their allies are no more. Their fortresses, their capitals, their magazines, their arsenals, twoo hundred and eighty stand of colors, seven hundred field-pieces, five grand strongholds are in our power. ”

“ We are fighting things out amongst ourselves, in all the belligerent countries, and the most crying need of the Allies to-day is a leader who can crystallize their own truest thoughts and ideals for them. ”

“ United in the pursuits of this supreme object the Allies are determined, individually and collectively, to act with all their power and to consent to all sacrifices to bring to a victorious close a conflict upon which they are convinced not only their own safety and prosperity depends but also the future of civilization itself. ”

“ The allies, whose indolence maintained them, while they thus went sailing about everywhere, and incessantly bearing arms and acquiring skill, began to fear and flatter them, and found themselves after a while allies no longer, but unwittingly become tributaries and slaves. ”

“ And Europe, I hope, also realises the awful moral situation of a nation which wholly sympathises with the Allies, but whose sons, by the mere mechanical organisation of militarism, are forced to fight against those whom they consider as Allies, and whom they love as brethren! ”

“ The plan of the Allies consisted in operating in a mass and in avoiding all partial actions. Nothing was more contrary to their interests and their plan than to expose the success of their cause in a doubtful battle with a nearly equal force, in which all the probabilities were against them. ”

“ Oh, come as comes the morn!
Serene and strong and full of faith, America, arise,
With steady hope and mighty help to join thy brave Allies.
O dearest country of my heart, home of the high desire,
Make clean thy soul for sacrifice on Freedom's altar-fire;
For thou must suffer, thou must fight, until the war-lords cease,
And all the peoples lift their heads in liberty and peace. ”

“ Parties of forty or sixty men, swiftly moving about, will do more than any column. If you lose two or three, what of it—it is the chance of war. Native allies above all things, at whatever cost. It is the country of the irregular, not of the regular. ”

“ It is a problem with every town, state and nation. And now very conspicuously, it is a problem with three great groups, namely the Allies, The Central Empires and The Neutrals; in a word it is a great international problem. ”

“ Clausewitz (1780–1834) , On War. [90]
Allies in relation to 'the extent of the means of defence':
'We may further reckon allies as the last support of the defensive. Naturally we do not mean ordinary allies, which the assailant may likewise have; we speak of those essentially interested in maintaining the integrity of the country. ”

“ THIS picture represents two men whom the accidents of diplomacy and intrigue have placed upon the thrones of two small nations of southeastern Europe. The peoples whom they respectively rule have every conceivable reason for desiring the triumph of that principle of international right for which the Allies stand in this war, and which is the only possible defense of small nationalities. ”

“ And Love, and man’s unconquerable mind.’ But in this war we have still mightier allies than these. All the forces that make for truth, for humanity, for honour, for justice, for freedom, are our allies. ”

“ Is it safe, think you, to give all 74these allies—whom we have successfully won over to our side, but who feel strangely out of place, I doubt not, in our ranks—to give them time, I say, to realize how unnatural is their position? ”

“ The enabling me to fullfil my engagements with my Allies in all events, will not only effectually secure and continue to my People the advantages stipulated for them by Treaties, but may greatly contribute to the obtaining a general pacification. ”

“ An ally is more independent still, as he may differ on every point except the specific ground of union. The Allies who overthrew Napoleon were united only against him. Allies are regarded as equals; adherents and disciples are followers. ”

“ It extends to its allies in the struggle for financial and economic freedom, assurances of its loyalty to the principles which animate the allied forces and the promise of honest and hearty cooperation in every effort for their success. ”

“ The defensive, in general, may count more on foreign aid than the offensive; he may reckon the more certainly on it in proportion as his existence is of importance to others, that is to say, the sounder and more vigorous his political and military condition.' [91] Influence of the political object on the military:
'Even in wars carried on without allies, the political cause of a war has a great influence upon the method in which it is conducted. ... The reciprocal action, the rivalry, the violence and impetuosity of war lose themselves in the stagnation of weak motives, and ... ”

“ The year 1915 was one of meager results, the advantages remaining on the side of the Central Powers, with this understanding, however: The Allies were growing stronger because Great Britain was making rapid progress in marshaling her resources for war. ”

“ Thus the whole empire was enringed with enemies: on the east an opposing civilisation and religion; on the north and south barbarian tribes in perpetual confusion and conflict with each other. Such was the great realm of disorder which surged and heaved to the north and south of the empire; and such the second great enemy which in future times was to occupy the Christian Church, and at present offered the strongest contrast to that moral polity of peace and goodwill, of loyal submission, patient endurance, and heroic fortitude, which was spreading daily in the empire. ”

“ It is, perhaps, the most efficient organization of modern times; and its purpose only is death. Those who cast it loose upon Europe are military-mad. And they are only a very small part of the German people. ”

“ Lancers, the only French troops yet to reach Belgian soil, and a small
body of infantry, without artillery.
Yet, rapid as the action of the Allies was, it was not as rapid as the downward sweep of the German horde that rushed to meet them.
There was a crash, as if rock were hurled upon rock, as the Lancers, the flower of the French cavalry, scarce seated in the saddle, rushed forward to save the pickets, to encounter the first blind ford of the attack and to give the Belgian infantry, farther in, time to prepare for defense. ”

“ This empire, though outnumbered in some few of these nations by other Christian Communions, yet has no one other set over against it, equally wide-spread, united, and claiming like it universality. And its functions, though necessarily exercised in this world, sometimes in friendship with, sometimes in opposition to, the civil power, have to do exclusively with man's relations to the unseen world. ”

“ They know that there are other ways of killing a man than by hitting him with a piece of shrapnel. One way is to tell the truth about him. In this entire war nothing hit Germany so hard a blow as the publicity given to a certain remark about a scrap of paper. But from the government the army would not tolerate any interference. It said: "Do you want us to run this war or do you want to run it?" Each army of the Allies treated its own government much as Walter Camp would treat the Yale faculty if it tried to tell him who should play right tackle. ”

“ The automobile which Gerald Morgan, of the London Daily Telegraph, and I shared was of surpassing beauty, speed, and comfort. It was as long as a Plant freight-car and as yellow; and from it flapped in the breeze more English, Belgian, French, and Russian flags than fly from the roof of the New York Hippodrome. Whenever we sighted an army we lashed the flags of its country to our headlights, and at sixty miles an hour bore down upon it.
The army always first arrested us, and then, on learning our nationality, asked if it were true that America had joined the Allies. ”

“ They were making a turning movement to attack the German right, and were being hurried forward. They had just driven the German rear-guard out of Chaudun, and said that the fighting was still going on at Soissons. But the only sign I saw of it were two Turcos who had followed the Germans too far. They lay sprawling in the road, and had so lately fallen that their rifles still lay under them. Three miles farther I came upon the advance line of the French army, and for the remainder of the day watched a most remarkable artillery duel, which ended with Soissons in the hands of the Allies. ”

“ Man the Creator, the Protector, the Destroyer: builder of shrines, burner of saints, good father, good soldier, good killer.... Man, the creature of choice.
5 nations remaining, sparse ruddy fruit of a thousand wars, nurtured by a billion dead. Five, the bloody consequence of union into pack, into tribe, into fief, to kingdom, empire and nation. The threads of history gathered finally into five flags, entwined in alliance at this point in time by a searing wind: Pan-American, Sino-Russian, Afro-Arabian ... racial armies, sons of the first beast to kill from anger, fathers of the unborn. ”

“ It is a law and requisite of civilized existence that men live in political continuous societies, forming organized units called states or nations, whose constituents bear, enjoy and suffer, advance and retrograde together, in peace and in war. The citizen or native of hostile country is thus an enemy, as one of the constituents of the hostile state or nation, and as such is subjected to the hardships of war. ”

“ Once admit the Union, once more acknowledge the authority of the national Government, and, instead of devoting your houses and streets and roads to the dread uses of war, I and this army become at once your protectors and supporters, shielding you from danger, let it come from what quarter it may. I know that a few individuals cannot resist a torrent of error and passion, such as swept the South into rebellion, but you can point out, so that we may know those who desire a government, and those who insist on war and its desolation. ”

“ This strife is not a strife between two hostile camps, but a war of tyranny against freedom, of barbarians against the collective might of a free nation. Therefore must the whole people arise with the army. If these millions sustain our army, we have gained freedom and victory for universal Europe, as well as for ourselves. Therefore, O strong, gigantic people, unite with the army, and rush to the conflict. ”

“ But, as soon as that war had ended, discerning men began quickly to realize that fact. Jealousies between nations, jealousies in abeyance while those nations were fighting a common war for independence, quickly had their marked effect upon the relations of these nations to one another and upon the respect which they showed to the commands of the government of the federation of which all those nations were members. ”

“ I will say only in general, that the cabal of your enemies fails in all the attempts it has made to engage this Republic to put herself in the breach for them. The Republic is firmly determined to the most perfect neutrality, if there be war; and I wait only the letters of the honorable Commissioners at Paris, whom I have requested to propose a friendship and commerce direct and avowed between your States and theirs. ”

“ But war, as such, cannot occur except in a system of competing States, which have relations with each other through the channels of diplomacy.
War is a function of this system of States, and could not occur except in such a system. Nations organized for internal administration, nations organized as a federation of free communities, nations organized in any way except that of a political centralization of a dynasty, or the reformed descendant of a dynasty, could not possibly make war upon each other. ”

“ Extend the principles of that alliance, and the nations are no more. There are only kings. It divides society horizontally, and leaves the sovereigns above, and all the people below; it sets up the one above all rule, all restraint, and puts down the others to be trampled beneath our feet. ”

“ The task of making our own country detailedly fit for peace was abandoned in favor of a feverish concern for the management of the war, advice to the fighting governments on all matters, military, social and political, and a gradual working up of the conviction that we were ordained as a nation to lead all erring brothers towards the light of liberty and democracy. ”

“ All which considerations, are of much greater force, where a war is managed by an alliance of many confederates, which, in a variety of interests among the several parties, is liable to so many unforeseen accidents. ”

“ The obvious comment is, "Well, there is a nation organised to win a war—that is the sort of nation which the men in the opposite trenches have behind them. A nation which has organised itself for war, and is already organising itself for peace after the war" ”

“ When we have so carried on this war as to end all wars, a golden age will come, and with it the Parliament of Mankind, the Federation of the World, a little international army policing the land, a little international navy policing the seas, an international supreme court deciding disputes between peoples. ”

“ States were everywhere so subdivided, governments were everywhere so weak, that, in most parts of Europe, every man who had the needful force at his command simply did that which was right in his own eyes. ... Every man claimed the right of private war against every other man who was not bound to him by some special tie as his lord or his vassal. ”