War material

“ The war made their task comparatively easy, and if it diminished their strength, it made their material more workable. The foreign invasion operated like a powerful electric current, and fused the scattered particles of French nationalism into a solid bulk. ”

“ We will see the war through as to material, and better than ever now. For they have put us in possession of regions providing raw materials which are necessary in order to be able to last through this war under all circumstances. ”

“ It's with us only that they make battles. It is we who are the material of war. War is made up of the flesh and the souls of common soldiers only. It is we who make the plains of dead and the rivers of blood, all of us, and each of us is invisible and silent because of the immensity of our numbers. The emptied towns and the villages destroyed, they are a wilderness of our making. Yes, war is all of us, and all of us together." ”

“ It will involve the organization and mobilization of all the material resources of the country to supply the materials of war and serve the incidental needs of the nation in the most abundant and yet the most economical and efficient way possible. ”

“ It is still on the cards that when the definitive history of the war shall be written, its outcome may be ascribed to one or the other of these novel weapons—the creation of American inventive genius. ”

“ THE cool way in which they discussed battleships, submarines, aerial bombs, torpedoes, and all the rest of the wonderful up-to-date machine contrivances and devices for the abrupt and violent introduction of foreign substances into the bodies of their fellow mortals would have been peculiarly edifying to the contemplative mind of a philosopher. For, come to think of it, that is just what war is—the introduction of foreign substances into men's bodies with violent and disruptive intent. ”

“ 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. ”

“ While the guns roar from the North Sea to the Mediterranean, and the greatest armed host that history has ever known is still locked in a life-and-death struggle on a dozen fronts, another war, more potent and permanent perhaps than the one which now engulfs Europe, lurks beyond the distant horizon of peace. ”

“ From the ends of the earth have come all these men, all these munitions, all this food and tents and iron and steel and rubber and gas and oil. And there it centers for the hour of its need on this one small sector of the front; indeed on every small sector of the long, long trail, these impedimenta of war come hurrying to their deadly work. And it is not one man; not one nation even, not one race, nor even one race kindred that is assembling this endless caravan of war. ”

“ But if the bayonet, the lance, and even the cannon offered less to the eye, the true source of the grandeur of war was there—the power, the tremendous impulse, the materiel of those shocks which convulse nations—the marshalled strength, fierce science, and stern will, before which the works of man perish like chaff before the wind, and the glory of nations vanishes like a shade. ”

“ Aside from a few bruised shins and torn coats and missing caps, there had been no casualties worth mentioning. It was not a country-wide war. It was, indeed, a war of which no history save this veracious chronicle, gives any record. ”

“ To smooth the scarred and broken earth, and plant
The fields again. But—if we must—
We'll deal first with those war-lords, break
Their knees and bring them to the dust.
For France's sake
We'll fight until we drop. ”

“ But whether wars result from sheer temper, national "hot fits," or not, it is quite certain that the lengthy preparation for war, the condition of armed peace, the burden of armaments which is almost worse than an occasional war, does not result therefrom. ”

“ Splendor of arms, of banners, of equipages, of ceremonies, and the elaborate forms of intercourse with enemies through conferences, armistices, treaties of peace, &c., having tamed the savagery of war into connection with modes of intellectual grandeur, and with the endless restraints of superstition or scrupulous religion,—a permanent light of civilization began to steal over the bloody shambles of buccaneering warfare. ”

“ That which has driven the masses of Europe into the trenches and to the battlefields is not their inner longing for war; it must be traced to the cut-throat competition for military equipment, for more efficient armies, for larger warships, for more powerful cannon. ”

“ Day after day the American troops moved slowly forward, over rugged, difficult ground, broken by ravines and steep hills, through dense underbrush, in the face of deadly fire from artillery and nests of machine guns hidden in every vantage point, through incessant rain and mud and fog and penetrating cold, pushing the enemy steadily back, until they reached Sedan, cut the German Army’s most important line of communication, and so brought the end of the war in sight. ”

“ It is especially in the domain of war that we, the bearers of men's bodies, who supply its most valuable munition, who, not amid the clamour and ardour of battle, but singly and alone, with a three-in-the-morning courage, shed our blood and face death that the battlefield may have its food—a food more precious to us than our heart's blood; it is we especially who, in the domain of war, have our word to say—a word no man can say for us. ”

“ And being no stranger to the art of war, I gave him a description of cannons, culverins, muskets, carabines, pistols, bullets, powder, swords, bayonets, sieges, retreats, attacks, undermines, countermines, bombardments, sea fights; ships sunk with a thousand men, twenty thousand killed on each side; dying groans, limbs flying in the air, smoke, noise, confusion, trampling to death under horses’ feet ”

“ A volume would be necessary to discuss all the circumstances under which a nation may develop more or less strength, either by its gold or iron, and to determine the cases when war may be expected to support war. This result can only be obtained by carrying the army into the territory of the enemy; and all countries are not equally capable of furnishing resources to an assailant. ”

“ You have got to move obvious necessaries, such as food and fuel and housing-timber and spare clothes; and human frames—that to marching men are heavier at the end of a long day than anything in the world; and rifles, bayonets and bombs, the ultimate ratio decidendi of all operations; and shells that look like death, and weigh as much as a model bungalow; and frowning Frankensteins of guns that look like the Day of Judgment, and weigh as much as a small foundry; and the wounded who come back with the Cross, steeped in blood, to stand as a fit symbol of their sacrifice. ”

“ In the middle of the twenty-second century, every nation had a standard defense. The weapons of war of each were equal--not in proportion to size, but actually, since man-power no longer counted high. ”

“ There is much in "the pomp and circumstance of glorious war" to stimulate the combatants: wisdom has all the stern reality of the conflict, without any of its inspiring accompaniments—the martial strain, the glittering ranks, the floating banners, the roar of artillery, the shout of charging squadrons, and the clash of resounding steel. ”

“ Following on closely with the signs in the heavens, there appears also the awakening to national aspirations and rivalries in Europe, out of which has grown the arming of the nations. The beginning of the modern race of armaments may be dated from those stirring and eventful years of 1830 to 1848. We have seen the resources of the soil and the inventive genius of man devoted to preparations for war on a scale never before thought of. ”

“ If the terrible instruments of destruction now possessed by the nations seem to shorten wars, will not, on the other hand, the battles be more deadly? And in this century, when the unexpected plays such an important role, may not war bring about the most sudden and unforseen results? ”

“ But any one who has at all studied the ancient historians and the annals of our earliest career as a people, will not fail to recognise, as so many constituent parts combining to form the equipment of war, most of those weapons that were adopted among various races, the contests and the union of which was to give birth to modern nations. ”

“ Peace and Plenty are represented much as such things look on the eve of a congress of military powers, Peace meaning the forces held in readiness, and Plenty, in this case, referring principally to the war-chest, a plentiful supply of artillery, powder, shell and shot, and other offensive materials. ”

“ Indeed every nation, of a military disposition, and addicted to warlike pursuits, considers war not merely as a means of repelling the attacks of [pg 262] enemies, or of gaining plunder or territory by being itself the invader. ”

“ Instead of improving, however, many nations renowned for their knowledge in the art of war, have totally neglected their military institutions in time of peace, and as a very natural consequence, frequently drawn upon themselves invasion, defeat, and ruin. ”

“ Day by day the pressure of armaments is growing greater, and we may almost hope that the very fiendish nature of modern weapons may bring about a blessed reductio ad absurdum, and leave war as a thing ludicrous, and not to be contemplated by sane men! ”

“ When we do realise this, then shall we cast the ancient balsams, solvents, and coagulants to the winds and set about developing the mental and mechanical sides of war in days of peace, so that, should wars become inevitable, we may win them with the minimum of human loss. ”

“ And these fellows are the best of the nation—young, sturdy, handsome, awaiting their baptism of fire with a quiet confidence. They know, too, what that means. This war has left them no illusions. High explosives, gas, liquid fire, are common to their talk over tea table or dinner. ”

“ Each power sought to keep its preparations secret, to hold new weapons in reserve, to anticipate and learn the preparations of its rivals. The feeling of danger from fresh discoveries affected the patriotic imagination of every people in the world. ”

“ Without exception, each civilization has contained the forces and equipment needed for its own annihilation. At no time reported by history has this formulation been more obvious than during the decades immediately following war's end in 1945. ”

“ For generations to come the soil of France will be disclosing to the peasants who till her fields, the fragments of war's destructive power and the bones of heroes who bled and died.
On the battlefields I saw innumerable [105] quantities of equipment, together with guns and ammunition, which had cost millions to produce but were valueless in so far as their future use was concerned. I saw the Place de la Concorde and the Tuileries Garden in Paris packed with one thousand captured German guns and more than a score of Boche planes and observation balloons. ”

“ It must be armaments and nothing but armaments with them. If there had been any possibility of success in that we should not now be entering upon the 8,000th or 9,000th war of written history. Armaments may be necessary, but they are not enough. Our plan is armaments plus education ”

“ The Ssŭ K‘u Ch‘üan Shu (ch. 99, f. 1) remarks that the oldest three treatises on war, Sun Tzŭ, Wu Tzŭ and the Ssŭ-ma Fa, are, generally speaking, only concerned with things strictly military — the art of producing, collecting, training and drilling troops, and the correct theory with regard to measures of expediency, laying plans, transport of goods and the handling of soldiers [2] — in strong contrast to later works, in which the science of war is usually blended with metaphysics, divination and magical arts in general. ”

“ One of the old, glamorous features of war survives in these glowing braziers, spreading their genial rays among the little houses and lighting the faces of the men who stand or squat in encircling groups around the coals, which dry wet clothes, slake the moisture of a section of earth, make the bayonets against the walls glisten, and reveal the position of a machine-gun with its tape ready for firing. ”

“ Nations shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nations shall not lift up swords against nations, nor shall they learn war any more.’ This prophecy was rather hasty. ”

“ Warriors of the Paint-Brush When the great European war broke out, it was very evident that the Entente Allies would have to exercise every resource to beat the foe which had been preparing for years to conquer the world. But who ever imagined that geologists would be called in to choose the best places for boring mines under the enemy: that meteorologists would be summoned to forecast the weather and determine the best time to launch an offensive; that psycologists would be employed to pick out the men with the best nerves to man the machine-guns and pilot the battle-planes? ”

“ Damage in respect of all property, wherever situated, belonging to any of the Allied or Associated States or their nationals, with the exception of naval and military works or materials, which have been carried off, seized, injured, or destroyed by the acts of Germany or her allies on land, on sea, or from the air, or damage directly in consequence of hostilities or of any operations of war. ”