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. . . see "WAR & PEACE" for related links The one sure way to conciliate a tiger is to allow oneself to be devoured. --Konrad Adenauer (1876—1967) German statesman. Those who will not reason Perish in the act: Those who will not act Perish for that reason. --W.H. [Wystan Hugh] Auden (1907—1973) English-born poet and man of letters. Appeasers believe that if you keep on throwing steaks to a tiger, the tiger will become a vegetarian. --Heywood Broun (1888—1939) American journalist & father of Heywood Hale Broun. When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle. --Edmund Burke (1729—1797) Irish-born Whig politician and man of letters. _Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontent_, Vol. i. p. 526. - There are two ways of losing a war. One is to be defeated in the field. The other is to lose the war before it begins. We have indicated this peril for months past. It is now obvious. It has to be admitted. Why is so plain a peril — plainly revealed in Hitler's book — why, we ask, is it only now recognised by our rulers? Simply because, even if they have read Hitler (which is still doubtful) they have not believed what he has said in Mein Kampf. Not believing him, not knowing the sort of lucid lunatic with whom they have had to deal, they have believed it possible to disarm him by smiles, handshakes, pacts and scraps of paper. --"Cassandra" [William Connor] (1909—1967) British journalist. "The Daily Mirror" [21 March 1939] - My good friends, this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. And now I recommend you to go home and sleep quietly in your beds. --Neville Chamberlain (1869—1940) British Conservative politician, Prime Minister [1937—1940]. In M.J. Cohan and John Major {eds.} _History in Quotations_ [2004] p. 825. Cohan & Major explain: Speaking to cheering crowds from a first-floor window of 10 Downing Street after his return from Munich, 1 Oct. 1938. The sense of relief was shared in France, where a crowd of half a million turned out to welcome Daladier back from Germany. The phrase 'peace for our time' seems to be based on words in the Order of Morning Prayer in the Anglican liturgy: 'Give peace in our time, 0 Lord.' We should seek by all means in our power to avoid war, by analysing possible causes, by trying to remove them, by discussion in a spirit of collaboration and good will. --Neville Chamberlain (1869—1940) British Conservative politician, Prime Minister [1937—1940]. Speech, 6 October 1938, to the House of Commons. It was delivered one week after Chamberlain’s return from the Munich Conference. - - An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile — hoping it will eat him last. --Winston Churchill (1874—1965) British Conservative statesman and Prime Minister [1940—1945, 1951—1955]. Referring to Prime Minister Chamberlain and the Munich Pact, House of Commons speech [2 October 1938]. Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves. --Winston Churchill (1874—1965) British Conservative statesman and Prime Minister [1940—1945, 1951—1955]. - Well, there we are. I see there is nothing to be done. --Pierre-Étienne Flandin (1889—1958) French foreign minister. On the German re-militarization of the Rhineland, March 1936. In M.J. Cohan and John Major {eds.} _History in Quotations_ [2004] p. 818. Cohan & Major point out: General Gamelin, the French army commander-in-chief, exaggerated the size of the German army and warned that French military action in response to the occupation would lead to general mobilization. Thus, in the words of a modern British historian 'Hitler got away with his first and most desperate gamble'. Do the people of the world not yet realize that by fighting on until the bitter end I am not only performing my sacred duty to my people, but standing guard in the last citadel of collective security? Are they too blind to see that I have my responsibilities to the whole of humanity to face? I must still hold on until my tardy allies appear. And if they never come, then I say prophetically and without bitterness: The West will perish. --Haile Selassie I [Tafari Makonnen] (1892—1975) Emperor of Ethiopia [1930—1974]. In 1935. It is when we all play safe that we create a world of utmost insecurity. --Dag Hammarskjöld (1905—1961) Swedish diplomat; served as the Secretary General of the U.N. [1953-1961]. - It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation, To puff and look important and to say: — 'Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you. We will therefore pay you cash to go away.' And that is called paying the Dane-geld; But we've proved it again and again, That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld You never get rid of the Dane. It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation, For fear they should succumb and go astray; So when you are requested to pay up or be molested, You will find it better policy to say: — 'We never pay any-one Dane-geld, No matter how trifling the cost; For the end of that game is oppression and shame, And the nation that pays it is lost!' --Rudyard Kipling (1865—1936) English writer and poet. - - It is not difficult to understand why Jewish people desire the overthrow of Nazi Germany. The persecution they suffered in Germany would be sufficient to make bitter enemies of any race. No person with a sense of the dignity of mankind can condone the persecution of the Jewish race in Germany. But no person of honesty and vision can look on their pro-war policy here today without seeing the dangers involved in such a policy both for us and for them. Instead of agitating for war, the Jewish groups in this country should be opposing it in every possible way for they will be among the first to feel its consequences. Tolerance is a virtue that depends upon peace and strength. History shows that it cannot survive war and devastations. A few far-sighted Jewish people realize this and stand opposed to intervention. [. . . ] We cannot blame them for looking out for what they believe to be their own interests, but we also must look out for ours. We cannot allow the natural passions and prejudices of other peoples to lead our country to destruction. --Charles Lindbergh (1902—1974) American aviator. Speech in Des Moines, Iowa [1941]. - If you have sacrificed my nation to save the peace of the world, I will be the first to applaud you. But if not, gentlemen, God help your souls. --Jan Masaryk (1886—1948) Czech statesman and diplomat. In Peter Jennings and Todd Brewster _The Century_ [1998] p. 206. You may either win your peace or buy it: win it, by resistance to evil; buy it, by compromise with evil. --John Ruskin (1819—1900) English art and social critic. _The Two Paths_, Lecture They all believe that today or tomorrow Hitler will start the war, but I'm not so sure. What good would a war do him, since whatever he wants they bring him on a silver platter? The Americans and the whole democratic world have lost the most valuable possession — character. There's a form of tolerance that's worse than syphilis, worse than murder, worse than madness. They all believe that today or tomorrow Hitler will start the war, but I'm not so sure. What good would a war do him, since whatever he wants they bring him on a silver platter? The Americans and the whole democratic world have lost the most valuable possession — character. There's a form of tolerance that's worse than syphilis, worse than murder, worse than madness. --Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904—1991) Polish-American novelist who won the 1978 Nobel Prize for Literature. _Shosha_ [1978] TOPICAL Meanwhile, I have a confession to make: It was my grandfather, Winston Churchill, who invented Iraq and laid the foundation for much of the modern Middle East. In 1921, as British colonial secretary, Churchill was responsible for creating Jordan and Iraq and for placing the Hashemite rulers, Abdullah and Faisal, on their respective thrones in Amman and Baghdad. Furthermore, he delineated for the first time the political boundaries of biblical Palestine. Eighty years later, it falls to us to liberate Iraq from the scourge of one of the most ruthless dictators in history. As we stand poised on the brink of war, my grandfather's experience has lessons for us. The parallels between Saddam Hussein's repeated flouting of U.N. resolutions — 17 over the past 12 years — calls to mind the impotence of the U.N. forerunner, the League of Nations. In the 1930s, the victors of the First World War — Britain, France and the U.S. — fecklessly allowed the League of Nations' resolutions to be flouted. This was done first by the Japanese, who invaded Manchuria, then by the Italian dictator Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia and, most gravely, by Nazi Germany. --Winston S. Churchill (1941- ) _My Grandfather Invented Iraq_ - - Those who say we have brought the threat upon ourselves, and that renouncing the war against Saddam Hussein and abandoning the US alliance would take us off the target list, ignore the lessons of history, and defy commonsense. Such arguments are directly descended from those of the European appeasers in the 1930s, who were willing to give Nazi Germany whatever it wanted as the price of peace. But bullies feed off fear, and for the three years before World War II every concession by France and Britain only generated another demand for more territory or changes to treaty terms. The appeasers were doomed to fail in the face of their foes' contempt for their very reasonableness. As Winston Churchill put it in 1940, "an appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile hoping it will eat him last". We face a similar situation today. Hitler dreamed of European dominion and of slaughtering millions of ordinary people — Jews, Gypsies and Slavs — on the basis of a grotesquery of ignorance and hate. For Australia to seek peace in our time by pandering to the similar objectives of Osama bin laden and his confederates would be treason to our foundation ideals of democracy and equality. And why are those who say we have created this threat so wrongheaded? In the first place, even if the terrorists were to target us because we helped liberate Iraq, that would not make our decision wrong. And second, the line of reasoning that says Spain was targeted because of its role in the coalition of the willing, and hence we will also be targeted, is flawed at every step. We were already targeted — in Bali — months before the Iraq invasion. And as the comments of the Bali bombers made clear, that was because of who we are, not because of anything we have done. Values such as secularism, equal rights for women and even allowing the consumption of alcohol simply make us unfit to live in the eyes of the Islamofascists. Which of these values would the appeasers have us sacrifice first, when abandoning the US alliance — a true act of suicidal madness in any case — failed to do the trick? The brief of Mantiki 4, the branch of Jemaah Islamiah responsible for Australia, is not to change the direction of Australian foreign policy, but to incorporate Australia into the group's messianic vision of a pan-Islamic state, spreading from Malaysia to the southern Philippines, in which values such as freedom and tolerance will simply no longer exist. If participation in the war on terror or in the war against Saddam Hussein are now what make countries a target for terrorists, how does that explain the devastating attack on the Marriot Hotel in Jakarta last August, which killed 12 people and left another 200 injured? Most of those victims were devout Muslims, citizens of a Muslim country that fiercely opposed the Iraq invasion. Russia, like Germany and France, opposed the invasion of Iraq, but that did not help the 39 commuters killed by a bomb on the Moscow subway last month, an act also linked to al-Qa'ida. Among international institutions, none threw more obstacles in the way of the Iraq invasion than the United Nations, but that did not save Sergio Vieira de Mello, the veteran UN official, or the 16 others killed last August when the UN headquarters in Baghdad was bombed. In Turkey, another Muslim country, a bomb in November killed dozens of innocents. Critics of US policy will say that is because Turkey allowed its air-bases to be used in the invasion of Iraq, but just how far do they want to lower the bar of what is permissible for a country before it is targeted? Even Saudi Arabia, the origin and stronghold of the strain of Wahabbist Islam practised by Osama bin Laden, and a country with intricate links to the September 11 terrorists, did not meet the required standard: a series of co-ordinated suicide bombings in Riyadh last May slaughtered dozens. Nor is there any reason to believe Madrid was bombed last week solely because of Iraq or the war on terror. Spain did not even participate in the invasion of Iraq: it is one of 30 nations that have sent troops since the war ended. The fundamentalists' argument with Spain is far crazier. In October 2001, a videotape by Osama bin Laden broadcast on the Al-Jazeera network began as follows: "Let the whole world know we shall never accept that the tragedy of Andalusia will be repeated in Palestine. We cannot accept that Palestine will become Jewish." In other words, bin Laden has still not forgiven Spain for turning back the tide of Muslim expansion in 1492. The hardline Islamist program, in all its raging madness, is to throw into reverse every historical event that has resulted in a Muslim country becoming a non-Muslim country, or even resulted in non-Muslim troops being stationed on Muslim soil. There can be no reasoning, no compromising with such a vision. because, far from being a rational political program, it is not even a fanatical ideology: it is a millenarian religious doctrine which believes that through vicious and random violence it can wind the world back to the Middle Ages. --Editorial: Rejecting the fatal path of appeasement _The Australian_ [16 March 2004] - - A few days ago Henry Broder wrote in _Welt am Sonntag_, "Europe — your family name is appeasement." It's a phrase you can't get out of your head, because it's so terribly true. Appeasement cost millions of Jews and non-Jews their lives as England and France, allies at the time, negotiated and hesitated too long before they noticed that Hitler had to be fought, not bound to toothless agreements. Appeasement legitimized and stabilized communism in the Soviet Union, then East Germany, then all the rest of eastern Europe where for decades, inhuman, suppressive, murderous governments were glorified as the ideologically correct alternative to all other possibilities. Appeasement crippled Europe when genocide ran rampant in Kosovo, and, even though we had absolute proof of ongoing mass murder, we Europeans debated and debated and debated, and were still debating when finally the Americans had to come from halfway around the world, into Europe yet again, and do our work for us. Rather than protecting democracy in the Middle East, European appeasement…generates a mentality that allows Europe to ignore nearly 500,000 victims of Saddam's torture and murder machinery and, motivated by the self-righteousness of the peace movement, has the gall to issue bad grades to George Bush…Even as it is uncovered that the loudest critics of the American action in Iraq made illicit billions, no tens of billions, in the corrupt U.N. Oil-for-Food program. And now we are faced with a particularly grotesque form of appeasement. How is Germany reacting to the escalating violence by Islamic fundamentalists in Holland and elsewhere? By suggesting that we really should have a "Muslim holiday" in Germany. […] One cannot help but recall Britain's Neville Chamberlain waving the laughable treaty signed by Adolph Hitler, and declaring European "Peace in our time." What else has to happen before the European public and its political leadership get it? There is a sort of crusade underway, an especially perfidious crusade consisting of systematic attacks by fanatic Muslims, focused on civilians, directed against our free, open Western societies, and intent upon Western civilization's utter destruction. It is a conflict that will most likely take longer than any of the great military conflicts of the last century — a conflict conducted by an enemy that cannot be tamed by "tolerance" and "accommodation" but is actually spurred on by such gestures, which…will always be taken by the Islamists for signs of weakness. […] We Europeans present ourselves, in contrast to those "arrogant Americans", as the world champions of "tolerance"….Why? Because we're so moral? I fear it's more because we're so materialistic, so devoid of a moral compass. For his policies, Bush risks the fall of the dollar, huge amounts of additional national debt, and a massive and persistent burden on the American society, because unlike almost all of Europe, Bush realizes what is at stake — literally everything. […] These days, Europe reminds me of an old woman who, with shaking hands, frantically hides her last pieces of jewelry when she notices a robber breaking into a neighbor's house. Appeasement? Europe, thy name is cowardice. --Mathias Doepfner [CEO, German publishing conglomerate Alex Springer], "Europe, Thy Name is Cowardice", _Die Welt_, [20 November 2004] reprinted in _The American Enterprise_, October-December 2005. ----- implacable [im-PLAK-uh-bull], adjective: Not to be appeased; incapable of being pacified Ex.: For it is my office to prosecute the guilty with implacable zeal. --Paola Capriolo, Floria Tosca (translated by Liz Heron) end page | ABILITY - ABUSE | ACADEMY AWARDS - ACCUSTOMED | ACHIEVEMENT - ACQUAINTANCE | ACTIONS | ACTORS | ACTUARIES - ADVERSARIES | ADVERSITY - ADVERTISING | ADVICE | AFFAIRS - AFGHANISTAN | AGE | AGNOSTICS - AIRPLANES | ALCOHOL | ALIBI - AMBITION | AMERICA PAGE 1 (A-M) | AMERICA PAGE 2 (N-Z) | AMERICANS | AMERICAN INDIANS | AMERICAN REVOLUTION | AMUSEMENT - ANCESTORS | ANGER | ANIMAL RIGHTS & ANIMALS | ANIMOSITIES - APATHY | APOLOGY & APPEARANCE | APPEASEMENT | APPLAUSE - APRIL | ARCHAEOLOGISTS - ARCHITECTURE | ARGUMENT | ARISTOCRACY - ART | ASHAMED - ASTROLOGY | ATHEISM | ATOM BOMB - ATTRACTION | AUSTRALIA | AUTHORITY - AUTOMOBILES | AUTUMN - AWARENESS | | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The End | The Reviews | Photos | |
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