War path

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ “If the Lord sends us war, we have got to face it like men, but God forbid we should manufacture war, and use it as an escape from our domestic difficulties. You can't expect a blessing on that.” ”

“ "Men, since the beginning of time have sought peace. Various methods through the ages have been attempted to devise an international process to prevent or settle disputes between nations. From the very start workable methods were found in so far as individual citizens were concerned, but the mechanics of an instrumentality of larger international scope have never been successful.
"Military alliances, balances of power, leagues of nations, all in turn failed, leaving the only path to be by way of the crucible of war. The utter destructiveness of war now blots out this alternative. ”

“ In these great bases, in the marvellous railway organisation, in the handling of the vast motor transport in all its forms, in the feeding and equipment of the British Army, we have the scaffolding and preparation of war, which, both in the French and English Armies, have now reached a perfection undreamt of when the contest began. But the war itself—the deadly struggle of that distant line to which it all tends? It is in the flash and roar of the guns, in the courage and endurance of the fighting man, that all this travail of brain and muscle speaks at last. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We are at war, and I shall not say one single sentence with regard to the policy of the war or its origin, and I know not that I shall say a single sentence with regard to the conduct of it; but the fact is that we are at war with the greatest military Power, probably, of the world, and that we are carrying on our operations at a distance of 3,000 miles from home, and in the neighbourhood of the strongest fortifications of that great military Empire. ”

“ In the army and navy no reductions can, with reason, be required. At a moment like this, when all Europe is in arms; when, from the farthest borders of Poland, to the extremities of the Spanish Peninsula, the war-shout has gone forth; when not merely monarchs are at enmity, but nations are in arms! ”

“ Where are the huge military establishments—where the drill, drill, drill, of uniformed and gun-carrying men, where the war bureaus and the generals, where that "power of the sword" that the Teuton blindly worshipped, where the Gospel of Power? Blotted out, and in its place the sanctification of Peace. The vision I had on that battlefield, when Gabrielle and I walked in the midst of the unshriven dead has been realized. The flags of the nations wave still, but with them waves the flag of their common Brotherhood. ”

“ In the plan of a war it is necessary to settle which it is to be in accordance with our powers and resources of attack compared with the enemy's resources for defence, and where our culminating point of victory is likely to be, on this side of the enemy's capital or beyond it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 reflect upon the uncertainty of the result of the late mission to France, and upon the uncommon nature, extent, and aspect, of the war now raging in Europe—which affects materially our relations with the powers at war, and which has changed the condition of their colonies in our neighborhood—we are of opinion, with you, that it would be neither wise nor safe to relax our measures of defence, or to lessen any of our preparations to repel aggression. ”

“ But the gravity of our present struggle is greater than that of any in the memory of living men, perhaps greater than that of any other in our history. The very existence of our Empire, and even the independence of our Kingdom, is at stake; and the Power by which we are threatened has [118] been, of late years, deemed the greatest military force in Europe, and a naval force only second to our own. ”

“ Forgetting that the surest hope of victory lies in presenting the strongest force, they thought it necessary to occupy the whole length of a frontier to prevent invasion,—which was exactly the means of rendering invasion upon every point feasible. ”

“ The times we live in are anomalous to any that have ever preceded us. For some years there have been universal and active preparations for war, and almost universal peace. To secure the greatest efficiency of armed forces for defensive and offensive purposes, has been the prime consideration of government, especially so, as far as the Old World nations are concerned. Europe echoes to the tread of vast hosts of war while the nations are driven to their wits' end to provide for their support. ”

“ Almost everybody hopes that, when this war is over, it will be possible to secure the conditions of a lasting peace by reducing the power of militarism and by setting the relations between nations on a better footing. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ For the first time in our history our troops have been sent to fight on another continent. Many persons have felt that we should keep our young men at home and wait for Germany to cross the Atlantic in order to attack us. Our statesmen, on the other hand, saw that the peace of the world was at stake. ”

“ In the giant warfare here described we behold a continent, well nigh a world, in arms. Along the rivers north of Paris three powerful nations, Germany, France and Britain, wrestled like mighty behemoths for supremacy. Far eastward, on the borders of Russia, Austria and Germany, two other great Powers, Russia and Austria, with German armies to aid the latter, strove with equal fury for victory. ”

“ Already in the East there were skirmishes as the prelude to the great war of the nations. All Europe, Europe that only yesterday was sceptical and apathetic, like a dead wood, was swept by the flames. All men were possessed by the desire for battle. War was ever on the point of breaking out. ”

“ This deeper understanding of war and its goal, and consequently more humane methods, can only come by stripping war of its professional and pacifist catchwords, and grasping that the true national objective in war lies in the after-war. ”

“ It is as though the war demon himself had led humanity to the parting of the roads where the guide boards indicate, on the one side, the long way to the Delectable Mountains and on the other, a short route to the pit. Far reaching beyond all precedent is the choice that humanity must soon make and lands at war and lands at peace must participate in the decision. ”

“ If we suppose the State and its military force as a unit, then the most natural idea is to imagine the War also as one great combat, and in the simple relations of savage nations it is also not much otherwise. But our Wars are made up of a number of great and small simultaneous or consecutive combats, and this severance of the activity into so many separate actions is owing to the great multiplicity of the relations out of which War arises with us. ”

“ The military element predominates in this group of citizens, and of course, they are talking of the wars,—the foreign wars: but the principle of inroad and aggression on the one hand, and defence on the other, the arts of subjugation, and reconciliation, the arts of WAR and GOVERNMENT in their most general forms are always cleared and identified, and tracked, under the specifications of the scene. ”

“ The lasting settlement and internal peace of the Continent as a whole is our only aim. The fact that at the bottom of his heart every combatant knows this is the ultimate source of our strength. To every neutral, satellite or conquered country, it is obvious that our victory is, for the most fundamental and unalterable reasons, to their plain advantage. ”

“ When two civilized nations go to war, each strains every nerve to mow the other down, to cut his throat, to mutilate and kill him,—by fair means or foul,—and when the battle is lost and won, they commiserate and sympathize with them, and grieve to see so many hundreds of their fellowmen writhing in agony on the battlefield. ”

“ He has at His command infinite natural and spiritual forces by which the result of a war or a battle can be determined. As in the famous battle of Joshua, or in the destruction of the Spanish Armada in our own history, storms and tempests, or a mere turn in the weather, or it may be added, the invisible interposition of some angelic agent, may defeat all human schemes and determine the issue of a battle, and, through a battle, the fate of an Empire. ”

“ Every war, then, arises from some conflict of wills between two human groups, each intent upon some political or civic purpose, conflicting with that of his opponent.
War and all military action is but a means to a non-military end, to be achieved and realized in peace. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Let the general possibility of war be left open, in Heaven's name, for the imagination to dally with. Let the soldiers dream of killing, as the old maids dream of marrying. But organize in every conceivable way the practical machinery for making each successive chance of war abortive. ”

“ Every frontier of continental Europe is covered by a chain of entrenched camps. The great arsenals are amply fortified and strongly garrisoned. Strategy has as much to say to new railways as trade; and the lines of communication, whether by water or by land, are adequately protected from all hostile enterprises.
We now come to the importance of close concert between strategy and diplomacy. On the continent of Europe they can Concert between diplomacy and strategy. easily keep pace, for the theatre of war is always within easy reach. ”

“ Rarely in the history of the world has so trivial a cause given rise to such stupendous military and political events as took place in France in a brief interval following this blind leap into hostilities. ”

“ Wars are contemplated calmly as inevitable {103} incidents in the acquisition of world-power—war with France, war with England, war either of army corps or diplomacy with Belgium, Holland, and Denmark. ”

“ All this will be effectually prevented by an army paid by us on this side of Europe; an army ready to march to the borders of her country, and to intercept her succours and supplies for the German war; an army, ready to protect the petty states, whose interest and inclination it apparently must be to declare for us, and to join their forces with us, when they no longer fear the power of France ”

“ For eight miles on either side of the firing lines—whose fire will probably never altogether die away while the war lasts—men will live and eat and sleep under the imminence of unanticipated death.... Such will be the opening phase of the war that is speedily to come.
And behind the thin firing line on either side a vast multitude of people will be at work; indeed, the whole mass of the efficients in the State will have to be at work, and most of them will be simply at the same work or similar work to that done in peace time—only now as combatants upon the lines of communication. ”