Ditos e desdita

Albert I:



"Belgium is a nation, not a road."

Alfonso XIII of Spain:



(ao escapar de uma tentativa de homicídio) "These are hazards of our profession."

Alfred von Tirpitz:

"This war is really the greatest insanity in which white races have ever been engaged."

André Gide:



"We are readying ourselves to enter a long tunnel full of blood and darkness."

Andrew Carnegie:

(1907) "Today it is in the power of one man to found the League for Peace. Of all men, the power to abolish war seems to rest in the hands of the German Emperor alone."

[anônimo]:



(oficiais alemães referindo-se à aliança com a Áustria-Hungria) "We are shackled to a corpse."

"Ottoman Empire is a sick man."

(sobre os soldados ingleses) "They are lions led by donkeys."

Arthur Balfour:

"I feel, as time goes on, not that the war has produced fewer evils than I feared at the time, for the conviction grows on me that the evils are unmeasured. As year succeeds year we shall more and more see how great was the calamity, how inexplicable the crime which brought that war on humanity. ... The horrors of that war did at least persuade mankind that some great effort must be made to prevent its repetition."

August Bebel:

(Dezembro de 1911) "There will be armaments and rearmaments on all sides until one day: Rather end in horror than horror without end ... They might also say: Listen, if we wait longer, we are the weaker side instead of the stronger ... The twilight of the gods of the bourgeois world is in prospect."

Bertha von Suttner, Countess Kinsky:

 
"The war is already upon us. ... Things are worse than ever, the machine is already in motion." [a condessa morreu em 21 de junho de 1914]

Charles E. Stanton:



"Lafayette, we are here."

Charles Mangin:



"Whatever you do, you lose a lot of men."

Colmar von der Goltz:

"If we are defeated this time, perhaps we will have better luck next time. For me, the present war is most emphatically only the beginning of a long historical development, at whose end will stand the defeat of England's world position ... [and] the revolution of the coloured races against the colonial imperialism of Europe."

"Colonel" Edward House:



"Militarism run stark mad. ... There is some day to be an awful cataclysm."

David Lloyd George:

 

"I listened last night, at a dinner given to Philip Gibbs on his return from the front, to the most impressive and moving description from him of what the war really means, that I have heard. Even an audience of hardened politicians and journalists were strongly affected. If people really knew, the war would be stopped tomorrow. But of course they don't know, and can't know. The correspondents don't write and the censorship wouldn't pass the truth. What they do send is not the war, but just a pretty picture of the war with everybody doing gallant deeds. The thing is horrible and beyond human nature to bear and I feel I can't go on with this bloody business."

"Modern warfare, we discovered, was to a far greater extent than ever before a conflict of chemists and manufacturers. Manpower, it is true, was indispensable, and generalship will always, whatever the conditions, have a vital part to play. But troops, however brave and well led, were powerless under modern conditions unless equipped with adequate and up-to-date artillery (with masses of explosive shell), machine-guns, aircraft and other supplies. Against enemy machine-gun posts and wire entanglements the most gallant and best-led men could only throw away their precious lives in successive waves of heroic martyrdom. Their costly sacrifice could avail nothing for the winning of victory."

"It is not too much to say that when the Great War broke out our Generals had the most important lessons of their art to learn. Before they began they had much to unlearn. Their brains were cluttered with useless lumber, packed in every niche and corner."

"This war, like the next war, is a war to end war."
 

"At eleven o'clock this morning came to an end the cruellest and most terrible war that has ever scourged mankind. I hope we may say that thus, this fateful morning, came to an end all wars."

"The finest eloquence is that which gets things done; the worst is that which delays them."

Djemal Pasha:



"Russia was so utterly anti-Turkish that it was quite unnecessary to look round for proofs."

Douglas Haig:

"Every position must be held to the last man. There must be no retirement. ... Each one of us must fight to the end."

Dragutin Gavrilović:

"Soldiers, exactly at three o'clock, the enemy is to be crushed by your fierce charge, destroyed by your grenades and bayonets. The honor of Belgrade, our capital, must not be stained. Soldiers! Heroes! The supreme command has erased our regiment from its records. Our regiment has been sacrificed for the honor of Belgrade and the Fatherland. Therefore, you no longer need to worry about your lives: they no longer exist. So, forward to glory! For the King and the Fatherland! Long live the King, Long live Belgrade!"

Edmond Taylor:

 

"The First World War killed fewer victims than the Second World War, destroyed fewer buildings, and uprooted millions instead of tens of millions - but in many ways it left even deeper scars both on the mind and on the map of Europe. The old world never recovered from the shock."

Edward Grey:

(logo após o Daily Telegraph Affair, 1908) "The German Emperor is ageing me; he is like a battleship with steam up and screws going, but with no rudder, and he will run into something some day and cause a catastrophe. He has the strongest army in the world and the Germans don't like being laughed at and are looking for somebody on whom to vent their temper and use their strength. After a big war a nation doesn't want another for a generation or more. Now it is 38 years since Germany had her last war, and she is very strong and very restless, like a person whose boots are too small for him. I don't think there will be war at present, but it will be difficult to keep the peace of Europe for another five years."

 
"The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime."

Edward VII:



"I have not long to live. And then my nephew will make war."

Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the Queen Mother:



"Never trust Germans. They can't be trusted."

Enver Pasha:

"The Ottoman Empire should be cleaned up of the Armenians and the Lebanese. We have destroyed the former by the sword, we shall destroy the latter through starvation."

Ferdinand Foch:



"Aviation is fine as a sport. But as an instrument of war, it is worthless."

"Victory will come to the side that outlasts the other."

(sobre o Tratado de Versalhes) "This is not a peace. It is an armistice for twenty years."

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti:

"We will glorify war - the world's only hygiene - militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for woman."

Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf:

"The military situation in Europe is such that we must reckon in the coming years with a new Balkan war or a major European conflagration."

"Such an ancient monarchy and such an ancient army [as those of the Habsburgs] cannot perish ingloriously."

Franz Ferdinand:



(dirigindo-se à esposa baleada) "Don't die! Stay alive for our children!"

(sobre o tiro que levou) "It is nothing."

Franz Joseph:



"I did not want this to happen."

Franz Kafka:



(diário, 2 de agosto de 1914) "Germany has declared war on Russia. Went swimming in the afternoon."

Friedrich von Bernhardi:

"War is a biological necessity, the natural law, upon which all the laws of Nature rest, the law of the struggle for existence."

Gavrilo Princip:

"I am not a criminal, because I destroyed that which was evil. I think that I am good. ... I did not wish to kill her [Sophie], I killed her accidentally."

George F. Kennan:

 "I came to see World War I ... as the great seminal catastrophe of this century - the event which ... lay at the heart of the failure and decline of this Western civilization."

George Santayana:



"Only the dead have seen the end of war." 

Georges Clemenceau:

"My home policy: I wage war. My foreign policy: I wage war. All the time I wage war. Only war, nothing but war." 

"War is a series of catastrophes that results in a victory."

(sobre o homem que tentou assassiná-lo) "His poor marksmanship must be taken into account. We have just won the most terrible war in history, yet here is a Frenchman who misses his target 6 out of 7 times at point-blank range. Of course, this fellow must be punished for the careless use of a dangerous weapon and for poor marksmanship. I suggest that he be locked up for eight years, with intensive training in a shooting gallery."

"There are only two perfectly useless things in this world. One is an appendix and the other is Poincaré."

"War is too serious a matter to entrust to military men."

"Mr. Wilson bores me with his Fourteen Points; why, God Almighty has only ten."

"The historians will not say that Belgium invaded Germany."

Georg Herbert zu Münster:

"The Hague conference [1899] brought here political scum from all over the world: journalists of the worst kind like William Stead, baptized Jews like Ivan Bloch, and women fanatics of pacifism like Madame von Suttner."

George V:

"I may be uninspiring, but I'll be damned if I'm alien." [i.e. German-descended]

Gertrude Stein:

"That's what you all are... all of you young people who served in the war. You are a lost generation."

Hans Delbrück:

(1899) "We must become a world power. We cannot go back. We can do this with England or against her."

  

Helmuth von Moltke:

"No plan of battle ever survives contact with the enemy." 

"The next war will be a national war. It will not be settled by one decisive battle but will be a long wearisome struggle with an enemy who will not be overcome until his whole national force is broken, a war which will utterly exhaust our own people even if we are victorious."

Henry James:

(em carta de 22 de janeiro de 1901) "I feel as if her [Queen Victoria] death will have consequences in and for this country that no man can foresee. ... Her death, in short, will let loose incalculable forces for possible ill. I am very pessimistic."

  

Herbert Asquith:

"Kitchener is not a great man. He is a great poster."

 

Herbert Plumer:

(sobre a Batalha de Messines) "Gentlemen, we may not make history tomorrow, but we shall certainly change the geography."

  

H.G. Wells:

"This is a war to end all wars."

Hiram Johnson:

"The first casualty when war comes is truth."

Hiram Maxim:

"In 1882 I was in Vienna, where I met an American whom I had known in the States. He said: 'Hang your chemistry and electricity! If you want to make a pile of money, invent something that will enable these Europeans to cut each others' throats with greater facility.'"

(aprox. 1908) "If you were going to bombard a town, you might have a thousand of these machines [aeroplanes], each one carrying a large shell, because it is the large shell that does the business. If a thousand tons of pure nitroglycerine were dropped on to London in one night, it would make London look like a last year's buzzard's nest."

John Maynard Keynes:

"Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist."

"In the long run we are all dead."

John Pershing:

"Heaven, Hell or Hoboken... by Christmas."

"Infantry, artillery, aviation - all that we have - are yours to dispose of as you will. I have come to say to you that the American people would be proud to be engaged in the greatest battle in history."

"We never really let the Germans know who won the war. They are being told that their army was stabbed in the back, betrayed, that their army had not been defeated. The Germans never believed they were beaten. It will have to be done all over again."

Joseph Joffre:

"The safety of the country is at stake. We must let ourselves be killed on the spot rather than retreat. No faltering can be tolerated today."

Jules Verne:

"The guns grew heavier, the armor of iron-plated ships became thicker in proportion. [Battleships] discharged enormous projectiles themselves, after having been armor-clad against the projectiles of others. In fact they did to others that which they would not they should do to them - that grand principle of immortality upon which rests the whole art of war." (From the Earth to the Moon (1865), chapter 10)

Karl Kraus:

 

"War: first, one hopes to win; then one expects the enemy to lose; then, one is satisfied that the enemy too is suffering; in the end, one is surprised that everyone has lost."

Konrad Adenauer:

 

(após a rendição alemã) "We will never forget. If it takes us five or ten or twenty years, we will never rest until we get our revenge."
 

Kronprinz [Crown Prince] Wilhelm:

 

"Undoubtedly this is the most stupid, senseless and unnecessary war of modern times. It is a war not wanted by Germany, I can assure you, but it was forced on us, and the fact that we were so effectually prepared to defend ourselves is now being used as an argument to convince the world that we desired conflict."

 

Leopold Berchtold:



"This foul peace drags on and on."

Lloyd Williams:



"Retreat? Hell, we just got here!"

Lord Kitchener:

"No one can say my colleagues in the Cabinet are not courageous. They have no army and they have declared war against the mightiest military nation in the world."

(sobre a guerra de trincheiras) "I don't know what's to be done. This isn't war."

Luis Buñuel:



"In Calanda, the Middle Ages lasted until World War I."

Mahatma Gandhi:

('Appeal for Enlistment', June 1918) "If we want to learn the use of arms with the greatest possible despatch, it is our duty to enlist ourselves in the army."

Mary of Teck:

(em carta de 28 de julho de 1914) "God grant that we may not have a European war thrust upon us, and for such a stupid reason too, no I don't mean stupid, but to have to go to war on account of tiresome Serbia beggars belief."

  

Maurice Hankey:

"Oil in the next war will occupy the place of coal in the present war. ... The only big potential supply that we can get under British control is the Persian and Mesopotamian supply. ... The control over these oil supplies becomes a first-class British war aim."

Max Planck:

"Besides much that is horrible, there is also much that is unexpectedly great and beautiful: the smooth solution of the most difficult domestic political problems by the unification of all parties (and) ... the extolling of everything good and noble."

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk:

"Men, I am not ordering you to attack. I am ordering you to die. In the time that it takes us to die, other forces and commanders can come and take our place."

"Unless a nation's life faces peril, war is murder."

Nicholas II:

"The accelerating arms race is ... a crushing burden that weighs on all nations and, if prolonged, will lead to the very cataclysm it seeks to avert."

"Think of the responsibility which you [Sergei Sazonov] are advising me to take. Think of the thousands of men who will be sent to their death!"

Nikola Tesla:



(1898) "You may live to see man-made horrors beyond your comprehension."

Otto von Bismarck:

"The Balkans are not worth the healthy bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier."

"Europe today is a powder keg and the leaders are like men smoking in an arsenal... A single spark will set off an explosion that will consume us all... I cannot tell you when that explosion will occur, but I can tell you where... Some damned foolish thing in the Balkans will set it off."

"Preventive war is like committing suicide for fear of death."

"People never lie so much as before an election, during a war, or after a hunt."

"Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable - the art of the next best."

Paul Valéry:

(em carta de 8 de maio de 1891) "I almost wish for a monstrous war to run away with ... The days are a yawn of boredom."

Philippe Pétain:



"The artillery conquers, the infantry occupies."

Pope Benedict XV:



"This War is the suicide of civilized Europe."

Pyotr Nikolayevich, Baron Wrangel:

"We are on the verge of events, the like of which the world has not seen since the time of the barbarian invasions. Soon everything that constitutes our lives will strike the world as useless. A period of barbarism is about to begin and it will last for decades."

Raymond Poincaré:



"At last we could release the cry, until now smothered in our breasts: Vive l'Alsace-Lorraine."

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, Lord Salisbury:

"If our ancestors had cared for the rights of other people, the British Empire would not have been made."

Robert Nivelle:



(sobre o avanço alemão em Verdun) "They shall not pass."

Robert Ritchie:

"Railways may be the medium of removing the prejudices, and making the members of the great human family better known to each other, and thus tend to promote civilisation and preserve the peace of the world." (trecho do livro Railways: Their Rise, Progress And Construction (1846))

Sergei Sazonov:



"You [Austrian ambassador] mean to make war on Serbia? You are setting fire to Europe!"

Sidney Hook:



"World War I was the second fall of man."

Talat Pasha:

"Turkey is taking advantage of the war in order to thoroughly liquidate its internal foes, i.e., the indigenous Christians, without being thereby disturbed by foreign intervention. What on earth do you want? The question is settled. There are no more Armenians."

T.E. Lawrence:

"Rebels, especially successful rebels, were of necessity bad subjects and worse governors."

"It was evident from the beginning that if we won the war these promises would be dead paper, and had I been an honest advisor of the Arabs I would have advised them to go home and not risk their lives fighting for such stuff."

Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg:

(Janeiro de 1913) "Colonial questions of the future point to cooperation with England."

"If the iron dice roll, may God help us."

"Just for a scrap of paper Great Britain was going to make war on a kindred nation who desired nothing better than to be friends with her."

(sobre a invasão da Bélgica e de Luxemburgo) "Germany is in a state of necessity, and necessity knows no law."

Vladimir Lenin:

(Julho-Agosto de 1915) "An end to wars, peace among the nations, the cessation of pillaging and violence - such is our ideal."

(Outubro de 1916) "Disarmament is the ideal of socialism. There will be no wars in socialist society; consequently, disarmament will be achieved."

Wilhelm I:

"Germany will find that the war will bring her lasting peace, and that, out of the bloody seed, will come a God-blessed harvest of German freedom and unity."

Wilhelm II:

(sobre a Rebelião dos Boxers) "Should you encounter the enemy, he will be defeated! No quarter will be given! Prisoners will not be taken! Whoever falls into your hands is forfeited. Just as a thousand years ago the Huns under their King Attila made a name for themselves, one that even today makes them seem mighty in history and legend, may the name German be affirmed by you in such a way in China that no Chinese will ever again dare to look cross-eyed at a German."

"You English ... are mad, mad, mad as March hares. What has come over you that you are so completely given over to suspicions quite unworthy of a great nation? What more can I do than I have done?"

"This is a dark day and a dark hour. The sword is being forced into my hand. This war will demand of us enormous sacrifice in life and money, but we shall show our foes what it is to provoke Germany."

"You will be home before the leaves have fallen from the trees."

William Randolph Hearst:

"This is a war of kings, brought on by the assassination of a king's nephew, who is of no more actual importance to modern society than the nephew of any other individual, citizen or subject, in all Europe... In the histories of more enlightened ages, the rulers responsible for this war will not be described as heroes, but as homicidal maniacs."

Will Rogers:



"The United States never lost a war or won a conference."

Winston S. Churchill:

 
"The wars of peoples will be more terrible than those of kings."
 

"No part of the Great War compares in interest with its opening. The measured, silent drawing together of gigantic forces, the uncertainty of their movements and positions, the number of unknown and unknowable facts made the first collision a drama never surpassed."

(sobre o fracasso de Gallipoli) "I am finished."
 

"I think a curse should rest on me - because I love this war. I know it's smashing and shattering the lives of thousands every moment - and yet - I can't help it - I enjoy every second of it."

"The Great War differed from all ancient wars in the immense power of the combatants and their fearful agencies of destruction, and from all modern wars in the utter ruthlessness with which it was fought. ... Europe and large parts of Asia and Africa became one vast battlefield on which after years of struggle not armies but nations broke and ran. When all was over, Torture and Cannibalism were the only two expedients that the civilized, scientific, Christian States had been able to deny themselves: and they were of doubtful utility."

"It is sheer affectation to lacerate a man with the poisonous fragment of a bursting shell and to boggle at making his eyes water by means of lachrymatory gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum. It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gases: gases can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effects on most of those affected."

"Lenin was sent into Russia by the Germans in the same way that you might send a phial containing a culture of typhoid or cholera to be poured into the water supply of a great city, and it worked with amazing accuracy."

Woodrow Wilson:

"There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight. There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right."

(slogan da campanha presidencial de 1916) "He kept us out of war."

(sobre a declaração de guerra) "My message today was a message of death for our young men. How strange it seems to applaud that."

"The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty."

"They imply, first of all, that it must be a peace without victory. It is not pleasant to say this. ... Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor's terms imposed upon the vanquished. It would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory upon which terms of peace would rest, not permanently but only as upon quicksand. Only a peace between equals can last."