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;void(0)) WAR (WORLD WAR I) . . . see "WAR & PEACE" for related links You heroes, who shed your blood and lost your lives. You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country, so rest in peace. There is no difference as far as we're concerned between the Johnnies and Mehmets who lie side by side in this country of ours. You mothers, who sent your sons to a far away country, wipe the tears from your eyes for your sons are now lying in our bosom and are at peace. After having lost their lives in this land, they have become our sons, as well. --Mustafa Kemal Atatόrk (18811938) Soldier, statesman, and reformer who was the founder and first president [19231938] of the Republic of Turkey. At Gallipoli. - We had to jump from corpse to corpse. If we stepped in the mud on either side, we'd get stuck. We had to use the dead face-down because if we stepped on their stomachs our feet would sink in. It was disgusting. It was terrible. We were surrounded by death. --Marcel Batreau, survivor of Verdun, interviewed for the BBC television program "The People's Century" [1995]. Their Name Liveth For Evermore. --Bible Apocrypha, Ecclesiasticus 44:14. Inscription on the Cenotaph, Whitehall, London, unveiled on II November 1920. In M.J. Cohan and John Major {eds.} _History in Quotations_ [2004] p. 723. Cohan & Major add: The word cenotaph means, literally, an empty tomb; a monument to those buried elsewhere. The phrase was chosen by the writer Rudyard Kipling, who lost his son in the war and who was actively involved in the Imperial War Graves Commission after the war. - The effects of the successful gas attack were horrible. I am not pleased with the idea of poisoning men. Of course, the entire world will rage about it first and then imitate us. All the dead lie on their backs, with clenched fists; the whole field is yellow. --German cavalry officer Rudolf Binding [24 April 1915] (The first use of poison gas on the Western Front.) & see: If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori. --Wilfred Owen (18931918) English poet. 'Dulce et decorum est' [1917]. This poem was written after a gas attack. Mr. Owen was killed in action one week before the armistice. - - World War I poem by Laurence Binyon (18691943) English poet. "FOR THE FALLEN" With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children, England mourns for her dead across the sea. Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit, Fallen in the cause of the free. Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres. There is music in the midst of desolation And a glory that shines upon our tears. They went with songs to the battle, they were young, Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow. They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted, They fell with their faces to the foe. They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them. They mingle not with their laughing comrades again; They sit no more at familiar tables of home; They have no lot in our labour of the day-time; They sleep beyond England's foam. But where our desires are and our hopes profound, Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight, To the innermost heart of their own land they are known As the stars are known to the Night; As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust, Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain, As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness, To the end, to the end, they remain. - One day the great European War [will] come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans. --Otto von Bismarck (18151898) Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Prussia 18621890. He unified Germany with a series of successful wars and became the first Chancellor 18711890 of the German Empire. Attributed in Winston Churchill _The World Crisis_ [1923]. - "No Man's Land" by Eric Bogle (1944 ) Scottish-born Australian singer and songwriter. Well, how'd you do, Private Willie McBride, D'you mind if I sit down down here by your graveside? I'll rest for awhile in the warm summer sun, Been walking all day, Lord, and I'm nearly done. I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen When you joined the glorious fallen in 1916, I hope you died quick and I hope you died "clean," Or, Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene? CHORUS: Did they beat the drum slowly, did they sound the fife lowly? Did the rifles fire o'er ye as they lowered ye down? Did the bugles sing "The Last Post" in chorus? Did the pipes play the "Floors O' The Forest"? And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined? And, though you died back in 1916, To that loyal heart are you forever nineteen? Or are you a stranger, without even a name, Forever enshrined behind some glass pane, In an old photograph, torn and tattered and stained, And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame? Well, the sun's shining down on these green fields of France; The warm wind blows gently, the red poppies dance. The trenches have vanished long under the plow; No gas and no barbed wire, no guns firing now. But here in this graveyard it's still No Man's Land; The countless white crosses in mute witness stand To man's blind indifference to his fellow man. And a whole generation who were butchered and damned. And I can't help but wonder now, Willie McBride, Do all those who lie here know why they died? Did you really believe them when they told you "the cause?" Did you really believe that this war would end wars? Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame, The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain, For Willie McBride, it's all happened again, And again, and again, and again, and again. - ^ He loved no-man's-land and constantly crawled out there at night. On one occasion a star-shell revealed his tall figure, not lying down but standing erect in the open. Whereupon, instead of throwing himself flat, he flung out his arms. 'Tell me if I look like a tree,' he shouted back to the British trenches. --British infantryman, describing his colleague, a former schoolmaster, in Peter Jennings and Todd Brewster _The Century_ [1998] p. 60. ^ "Regret to inform you Captain E. H. Brittain M.C. killed in action Italy June 15th [1916]." 'No answer,' I told the boy mechanically, and handed the telegram to my father, who had followed me into the hall. As we went back into the dining-room I saw, as though I had never seen them before, the bowl of blue delphiniums on the table; their intense colour, vivid, ethereal, seemed too radiant for earthly flowers. Then I remembered we should have to go down to Purley and tell the news to my mother. [...] Long after the family had gone to bed and the world had grown silent, I crept into the dining-room to be alone with Edward's portrait. Carefully closing the door, I turned on the light and looked at the pale, pictured face, so dignified, so steadfast, so tragically mature. He had been through so much far, far more than those beloved friends who had died at an earlier stage of the interminable War, leaving him alone to mourn their loss. Fate might have allowed him the little, sorry compensation of survival, the chance to make his lovely music in honour of their memory. It seemed indeed the last irony that he should have been killed by the countrymen of Fritz Kreisler, the violinist whom of all others he had most greatly admired. And suddenly, as I remembered all the dear afternoons and evenings when I had followed him on the piano as he played his violin, the sad, searching eyes of the portrait were more than I could bear, and falling on my knees before it I began to cry 'Edward! Oh, Edward!' in dazed repetition, as though my persistent crying and calling would somehow bring him back. --Vera Brittain (18931970) English writer. "A Brother's Death in Italy", _Testament of Youth_ [1993], in Peter Vansittart's _Voices of the Great War_ [1981]. - If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field That is forever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, A body of England's, breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home. --Rupert Brooke (18871915) English poet. _The Soldier_ [1914] America should have minded her own business and stayed out of the [first] World War. If you hadn't entered the war the Allies would have made peace with Germany in the Spring of 1917. Had we made peace then there would have been no collapse in Russia followed by Communism, and Germany would not have signed the Versailles Treaty, which has enthroned Nazism in Germany. If America had stayed out of the war, all these "isms" wouldn't today be sweeping the continent in Europe and breaking down parliamentary government, and if England had made peace early in 1917, it would have saved over one million British, French, American, and other lives. --Winston Churchill (18741965) British Conservative statesman and Prime Minister [19401945, 19511955]. Speaking with an American reporter [1937]. [Remark during Paris Peace Conference, 1919 about Woodrow Wilson's 'Fourteen Points':] The Good Lord only had ten. --Georges Clemenceau (18411929) French statesman. Attributed in J. Hampden Jackson _Clemenceau and the Third Republic_ [1946]. - Verse I Johnnie get your gun, get your gun, get your gun. Take it on the run, on the run, on the run. Hear them calling you and me, Ev'ry son of liberty. Hurry right away, no delay, go today, Make your daddy glad to have had such a lad. Tell your sweetheart not to pine, To be proud her boy's in line. Refrain Over there, over there, Send the word, send the word over there, That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming, The drums rum-tumming e'vrywhere. So prepare, say a pray'r, Send the word, send the word to beware. We'll be over, we're coming over, And we won't come back till it's over over there. Verse 2 Johnny get your gun, get your gun, get your gun. Johnnie show the Hun you're a son of a gun. Hoist the flag and let her fly, Like true heroes do or die. Pack your little kit, show your grit, do your bit. Soldiers to the ranks from the towns and the tanks, Make your mother proud of you, And to liberty be true. Repeat Refrain --George M. Cohan (18781942) American songwriter, dramatist, and producer. "Over There" [1917 song] - Crowds of people everywhere and soldiers marching out of the city, showered with blossoms as they went. Every face looks happy: we've got war! Bands in the cafιs and restaurants play 'Hail to You in the Battle for Victory' and 'The Watch on the Rhine' non-stop, and everybody has to listen to them standing up. One's food gets cold, one's beer gets warm: no matter, we've got war! --Tilla Durieux [Ottilie Godeffroy] (18801971) German actress. [August 1914 diary entry], in Peter Jennings and Todd Brewster _The Century_ [1998] p. 54. - My center is giving way, my right is retreating, situation excellent, I am attacking. --Marshall Ferdinand Foch (18511929) French general in WW I. Message sent during the first Battle of the Marne, [September 1914], in R. Recouly _Foch_ [1919]. [On the Treaty of Vesailles, 1919:] This is not a peace treaty, it is an armistice for twenty years. --Marshall Ferdinand Foch (18511929) French general in WW I. Quoted in Paul Reynaud _Mιmoires_ [1963]. Keep the home fires burning, While your hearts are yearning; Though your lads are far away, They dream of home. There's a silver lining, Through the dark cloud shining; Turn the dark cloud inside out, Till the boys come home. --Lena Guilbert Ford (18701918) American lyricist. "Keep the Home Fires Burning" [1915] (Music by Ivor Novello.) But War, as war is now, and always was A dirty, loathsome, servile murder-job Men, lousy, sleepless, ulcerous, afraid Toiling their hearts out in the pulling slime That wrenches gum-boots down from bleeding heel And cakes in itiching arm-pits, navel, ears Men stunned to brainlessness, and gibbering: Men driving men to death and worse than death Men maimed and blinded, men against machines Flesh versus iron, concrete, flame and wire Men choking out their souls in poison gas Men squelched into the slime by trampling feet Men, disemboweled by guns five miles away, Cursing, with their last breath, the living God Because He made them, in His image, men... --Gilbert Frankau (18841952) English novelist, poet, and journalist. - [D]uring the First World War, suppression went far beyond anything the war could possibly justify. An outburst of anti-German feeling sometimes took absurd forms: sauerkraut became "liberty cabbage" on some menus, and some people even wanted to call German measles "liberty measles." There were schools that dropped German from the curriculum; the New York Times applauded this idea, and recommended Spanish instead, or perhaps French, which was "more cosmopolitan and urbane." Four county councils in Missouri banned anybody from speaking German on the telephone; and some towns tried to banish it on the streets. The town of Potsdam, Missouri, changed its name to Pershing. The language of Goethe and Schiller survived this onslaught; other forms of xenophobia had more serious results. In a burst of fervor, Congress passed an Espionage Act in 1917. The law understandably imposed severe penalties on people who passed secrets to the enemy. But it also made it a crime to "willfully make or convey false reports or false statements" with the aim of interfering with the "operation or success of the military or naval forces" of the country, or to "promote the success of its enemies"; or to try to foment "insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty" among the armed forces; or to "willfully obstruct the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States." The Trading with the Enemy Act (1917) did what the title suggested; but it also provided that nothing could be published or printed "in any foreign language" about the government of the United States, "or of any nation engaged in the present war, its politics, [or] international relations," unless a full translation was lodged with the postmaster general. These provisions were barely discussed in the sometimes heated debates over the Espionage Act and the rest of the legislative package; in practice, they proved to be pregnant with trouble for anybody who fell short of 100 percent red-blooded patriotism, and in particular, for Americans of the left-wing persuasion. The war generated heat and paranoia. The government found it easy to smear speech that opposed the war or denounced capitalism or the like as dangerous talk which interfered with the war effort. The Sedition Act of 1918 was another truly drastic statute. Under this law, it was a crime to spread "false statements" that might hinder the war effort, obstruct the sale of bonds, or incite mutiny and disloyalty in the army. The act also criminalized saying, printing, or writing any "disloyal, profane, scurrilous or abusive language" about the government, the Constitution, the flag, the army, the uniform; or saying anything that would bring the government or the Constitution "into contempt, scorn, contumely, or disrepute." Anything written which violated the act was "nonmailable," and could not be sent through the post. In short, only total jingoism was acceptable or legal. German-Americans in some parts of the country had a particularly tough time. In front-line South Dakota a state with a large German population zealous officials raided the offices of a German-language newspaper, the Deutscher Herold, where they found some truly dastardly objects, including a paperweight with an image of the kaiser. The editor, Conrad Kornmann, was charged with espionage, mostly because of a private letter he wrote to a friend, in which he was lukewarm about the war, to say the least. That this was an attack on vital war interests or the armed forces was totally absurd, but a jury found Kornmann guilty. The appeal court reversed; still, Kornmann's life was a shambles. South Dakota was not the only state in danger. Rumors flew about in remote Montana of German spies poised to invade from Canada. Local "liberty" or "defense" committees rounded up "slackers," reds, Wobblies, and other bad elements; Montana whipped itself into a froth and conducted a major witch-hunt. In Illinois, a Granite City man got two years in Fort Leavenworth for shooting off his mouth in a saloon to the effect that he liked the kaiser, and would fight for him. In 1918 the Rev. John Fontana, a Lutheran minister in Salem, North Dakota, a German community, went on trial for violating the Espionage Act by obstructing the draft and fomenting insubordination. The evidence was flimsy, to say the least some testimony that Fontana was unenthusiastic about the war, refused to buy liberty bonds, and prayed for the "old Fatherland." In wartime, the prosecutor said, "the unbridled tongue is more dangerous than the arms of the enemy, more stealthy than the submarine," The jury convicted him. The judge fulminated against Fontana for not putting away his German soul; he criticized immigrants in general ("these thousands of little islands of foreigners"), and sentenced Fontana to three years in Leavenworth. On appeal, the case was reversed but it seems incredible, today, that it was brought in the first place. --Lawrence M. Friedman (1930 ) Ch. 5 "Race Relations and Civil Liberties" pp. 138-140 - The Germans, if this Government is returned, are going to pay every penny; they are going to be squeezed as a lemon is squeezed until the pips squeak. --Eric Geddes (18751937) British politician and administrator. Speech at Cambridge [10 December 1918]. - [1918] Special to The New York Times By Philip Gibbs WITH THE BRITISH ARMIES IN FRANCE, Nov. 11 Last night, for the first time since August in the first year of the war, there was no light of gunfire in the sky, no sudden stabs of flame through darkness, no spreading glow above black trees where for four years of nights human beings were smashed to death. The Fires of Hell had been put out. and see: [1918] Special to The New York Times By Edwin L. James WITH THE AMERICAN ARMY IN FRANCE, Nov. 11 They stopped fighting at 11 o'clock this morning. In a twinkling, four years of killing and massacre stopped as if God had swept His omnipotent finger across the scene of world carnage and had cried "Enough." - When the days of rejoicing are over, When the flags are stowed safely away, They will dream of another wild 'War to End Wars' And another wild Armistice Day. --Robert Graves (18951985) English poet. "Armistice Day" [11 November 1918] The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime. --Sir Edward Grey (18621933) British Liberal politician. Remark on the eve of the First World War [3 August 1914], in _25 Years_ [1925]. There is no doubt that the course and character of the feared 'European war'... will become the first world war in the full sense of the word. --Ernst Haeckel (18341919) German biologist and philosopher. "Indianapolis Star" [20 September 1914] My friend, we shall not have time to make them. I shall tear up the Boches [Germans] within two months. --Joseph Jacques Cιsaire Joffre (18521931) Commander in chief of the French armies on the Western Front in WW I. In M.J. Cohan and John Major {eds.} _History in Quotations_ [2004] p. 710. Cohan & Major add: Fatuous optimism from Joffre [November 1914] rejecting the notion that his troops needed steel helmets. French soldiers had gone to war without them and paid a high price for it. It's a long way to Tipperary, It's a long way to go. It's a long way to Tipperary To the sweetest girl I know. Goodbye, Piccadilly! Farewell, Leicester Square! It's a long, long way to Tipperary, But my heart's right there! --in M.J. Cohan and John Major {eds.} _History in Quotations_ [2004] pp. 715-716. Cohan & Major explain: Written before the war by Jack Judge, this became the marching song of the British army after it was made a popular hit by the music-hall artiste Florrie Forde in Christmas pantomime, 1914. Everything, everything in war is barbaric ... but the worse barbarity of war is that it forces men collectively to commit acts against which individually they would revolt with their whole being. --Ellen Key (18491926) Swedish writer and feminist. _War, Peace and the Future_ [1916] The Turks were concerned about the possibility of an Armenian revolt. In 1895 and 1896 the Turkish Army killed about 100,000 Armenian civilians. Then in 1915, early in World War I, with Turkey fighting on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary, and Russia fighting in alliance with the British and French on the other side, the Turkish government accused the Armenians of plotting with the Russians to assist a Russian invasion of Turkey. That spring, around 600,000 Armenians were killed by the Turkish Army, in an attempt to exterminate the Armenians completely. Much of the slaughter took place on 24 April 1915. The survivors were driven eastward and escaped into Russia. On 29 November 1920, most of Armenia was annexed by the Soviet Union. It is sometimes said that the issues here were national, political, and ethnic rather than religious, and that the victims therefore do no qualify as martyrs. However, many of the Armenians, when about to be led, were given the option of saving their lives by converting to Islam. Few did. --James Kiefer There's a long, long trail a-winding Into the land of my dreams, Where the nightingales are singing And a white moon beams: There's a long, long night of waiting Until my dreams all come true; Till the day when I'll be going down That long, long trail with you. --Stoddard King (18891933) American humorist and author and [Alonzo] Zo Elliott (18911964) American composer and lyricist, "There's a Long, Long Trail" [1913] - Rest ye in peace, ye Flanders dead. The fight that ye so bravely led We've taken up. And we will keep True faith with you who lie asleep With a cross to mark his bed, In Flanders Fields. Fear not that ye have died for naught. The torch ye threw to us we caught. Ten million hands will hold it high, And Freedom's light shall never die! We've learned the lesson that ye taught In Flanders Fields. --R. W. Lilliard, "America's Answer" _The Best Loved Poems Of The American People_ Doubleday & Co. [1936] - - 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. --David Lloyd George (18631945) Welsh-born British Prime Minister [19161922]. Speech, House of Commons, [11 November 1918]. You may strip Germany of her colonies, reduce her armaments to a mere police force and her navy to that of a fifth-rate power; all the same in the end if she feels that she has been unjustly treated in the peace of 1919 she will find means of exacting retribution from her conquerors. --David Lloyd George (18631945) Welsh-born British Prime Minister [19161922]. "Fontainebleau Memorandum" In M.J. Cohan and John Major {eds.} _History in Quotations_ [2004] p. 801. Cohan & Major explain: The memorandum. which proposed that Germany lose less territory than was demanded by the French and in particular that Germany retain a demilitarized Rhineland infuriated the French, who saw it as a volte-face. & see The worst act of world piracy ever committed under the flag of hypocrisy. --Max Warburg (1867-1946) German banker. (On the treaty terms, May 1919.) & see This is not peace. It is an armistice for twenty years. --Marshall Ferdinand Foch (18511929) French general in WW I. (On the treaty terms, May 1919), in M.J. Cohan and John Major {eds.} _History in Quotations_ [2004] p. 802. Cohan & Major add: Foch, who boycotted the signing ceremony, told the New York Times: 'The next time, remember, the Germans will make no mistake. They will break through into northern France and seize the Channel ports as a base of operations against England.' & see: [Reparations] created resentment, suspicion and international hostility. More than anything else, they cleared the way for the Second World War. --A.J.P. Taylor (19061990) British historian. _The Origins of-the Second World War_ [1961] p.71. - When call thou home the bold, young boys again, Who front a ruthless and bewidering fate; Call home the young who suffer senseless pain, And leave the war to those who taught them hate. --Furnley Maurice (18811942) [pseudonym of Frank Leslie Thomas Wilmot] Australian poet. "To God, From the Warring Nations" [1916] - In Flanders Fields the poppies blow Between the crosses row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields. --John McCrae (18721918) Canadian poet and military physician. _In Flanders Fields_ [May 1915, at Ypres] - - In Parts of Belgium, Memories of War Lie Near the Surface Military Still Collects Shells, 88 Years After Armistice; Farmers Plow Cautiously By Scott Miller _The Wall Street Journal_ May 24, 2006 YPRES, Belgium Late last month, Dirk Cardoen-Descamps was using a backhoe near his farmhouse bed-and-breakfast and uncovered something that didn't belong there: an artillery shell from World War I. He carefully probed around the projectile and found another, and another, until he pulled out 16 shells. Nearby, he found 15 more buried in the soft mud. For this area, it was a fairly typical haul. "Bombs here are a part of everyday life," said Mr. Cardoen-Descamps. "You just learn to deal with them. You can't live your whole life with fear." Here in Flanders fields, it's the peak time for spring planting, and for the unearthing of World War I bombs. At a sprawling military base here in the middle of what was no man's land during World War I, about 120 members of the Belgian military, including support staff, are employed year-round collecting and destroying the thousands of shells, many of them dangerous live munitions. Today, 88 years after the end of the war, the military is collecting as many bombs as it did when it first started keeping count more than 30 years ago more than 330 U.S. tons a year, on average. This year is shaping up to produce a record haul. Between July and November 1917, nine major battles took place as the Allies attempted to capture the town of Passchendaele. Exact figures aren't available, but Franky Bostyn, curator of the "Memorial Museum, Passchendaele 1917" says that the two sides combined suffered nearly half a million casualties. In preparation for the attack, the Allies fired 4.2 million shells, but during the entire period, he estimates, as many as 15 million shells were fired by both sides. The bombs are a hazardous legacy for the people who live here. Just about every year, one or two are seriously injured or killed when they stumble across leftover ordnance. Two years ago, a pair of Polish road workers tried to cut through what they thought was a pipe running next to a road. It exploded in their faces, killing one. Tourists who pick up bombs are sometimes injured, as are farmers who occasionally run over a bomb with their tractors. The remains of the World Wars aren't restricted to this area, of course: Last week workers at a french-fry factory in northern England had to be evacuated twice when armaments were discovered in batches of potatoes imported from Europe, and a large bomb believed to be from World War II tied up ship and road traffic in Liverpool. But in Flanders, two or three military teams retrieve dozens of shells every day, mostly discovered by farmers and builders, and often left in piles at the side of the road. Troopers study them all carefully and pack them in sand for the short ride back to base. There, they are painstakingly identified and then destroyed, in a process that can take several days. "This is a never-ending job," says Adjutant Marc Devroedt, a burly 20-year veteran of the bomb squad. [ . . . ] - Ils ne passeront pas! (They shall not pass!) --Robert Nivelle (18561924) French general. At Verdun, [23 June 1916], in Alistair Horne _The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916_ [1962]. I suppose a thousand English women have been to see me as a last hope to ask me to have enquiries made in Germany about their 'missing' sons or husbands, generally sons. They are of every class and rank, from Marchioness to scrub-woman. Every one tells her story with the same dignity of grief, the same marvellous self-restraint, the same courtesy and deference and sorrowful pride. Not one has whimpered...It's the breed....They never weep; their voices do not falter. Not a tear have I seen yet. They take it as part of the price of greatness and empire. You guess at their grief only by their reticence. They use as few words as possible and then courteously take themselves away. It isn't an accident that these people own a fifth of the world. Utterly unwarlike, they outlast anybody else when war comes. --Walter Hines Page (18551918) American Ambassador to the Court of St James. Quoted in Andrew Roberts _A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900_. I was in the library in 1915, studying a Latin poet, and all of a sudden I thought: 'War can't be this bad.' So I walked out and enlisted. --Lester B. Pearson (18971972) Canadian prime minister [19631968]. Hell, Heaven or Hoboken by Christmas. --attributed in 1918 to John J[oseph] Pershing {byname Black Jack} (18601948) American general who commanded the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) in Europe during World War I. They shall not pass. --Henri Philippe Pιtain (18561951) French solier and statesman. Quoted in "N.Y. Times" [28 April 1916]. - Have you forgotten yet?... For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days, Like traffic checked while at the crossing of city-ways: And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow Like clouds in the lit heaven of life; and you're a man reprieved to go, Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare. But the past is just the same and War's a bloody game... Have you forgotten yet?... Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget. Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets? Do you remember the rats; and the stench Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain? Do you ever stop and ask, 'Is it all going to happen again?' Do you remember that hour of din before the attack And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men? Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back With dying eyes and lolling heads those ashen-grey Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay? Have you forgotten yet?... Look up, and swear by the green of the spring that you'll never forget. --Siegfried Sassoon (18861967) English poet. "Aftermath" [1919] Does it matter? losing your leg? For people will always be kind, And you need not show that you mind When the others come in after hunting To gobble their muffins and eggs. Does it matter? losing your sight? There's such splendid work for the blind; And people will always be kind, As you sit on the terrace remembering And turning your face to the light. Do they matter? those dreams from the pit? You can drink and forget and be glad, And people won't say that you're mad; For they'll know that you've fought for your country, And no one will worry a bit. --Siegfried Sassoon (18861967) English poet. - That battle, resounding down history as the first Battle of the Marne, was won by the Allies, who in four hot, dusty September days turned almost certain and final defeat into victory. . . . The defeated Kluck, who had had a poor opinion of the enemy forces he had pushed back so easily the first weeks, understood this afterward. 'The reason that transcends all others' for what happened on the Marne, he said in 1918, 'was the extraordinary . . . aptitude of the French soldier to recover quickly. That men will let themselves be killed where they stand that is well-known and counted on in every plan of battle. But that men who have retreated for ten days, sleeping on the ground and half dead with fatigue, should be able to take up their rifles and attack when the bugle sounds, is a thing upon which we never counted. It was a possibility not studied in our war academy.' --William L. Shirer (19041993) American journalist, historian, and novelist. _The Collapse of the Third Republic_ [1969] God heard the embattled nations sing and shout 'Gott strafe England!' and 'God save the King!' God this, God that, and God the other thing. 'Good God,' said God, 'I've got my work cut out!' --J.C. Squire (18841958) English man of letters. [In 1914.] Though you might not believe it, we had a truce for the day just along our bit of the line. Somehow or other we arranged with the Germans opposite to stop fighting till midnight on Christmas night; all Christmas we were walking about outside in front of our trenches. The Germans came out of theirs and we met halfway and talked and exchanged souvenirs, our own bullets for theirs. --Private Warwick Squire [early January 1915]; in Malcolm Brown _The Imperial War Museum Book of the First World War_ [1991] pt. 2. Lafayette, we are here. --Col. Charles E. Stanton (18591933) American army officer. Speech at the grave of Lafayette, in Paris, France [4 July 1917]. We set out to work to bury people. We pushed them into the sides of the trench but bits of them kept getting uncovered and sticking out, like people in a badly made bed. Hands were the worst; they would escape from the sand, pointing, begging even waving! There was one which we all shook when we passed, saying 'Good morning', in a posh voice. Everybody did it. --Suffolk infantryman Leonard Thompson, letter to Ronald Blythe [1915] on his experiences at Gallipoli, from Peter Vansittart's _Voices from the Great War_ [1981]. - My soul is torn asunder, but everything must be put to fire and blood. The throats of men and women, children and the aged must be cut and not a tree nor a house left standing. With such methods of terror, which alone can strike so degenerate a people as the French, the war will finish before two months, while if I use humanitarian methods it may be prolonged for years. Despite all my repugnance I have had to choose the first system. --letter from Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany to Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria on the Subject of German Rule in Northern France [1914] in _Source Records of the Great War_, Vol. III, ed. Charles F. Horne. You will be home before the leaves have fallen from the trees. --Kaiser Wilhelm II (18591941) German emperor and king of Prussia [1888-1918]. Speech to troops leaving for the front [August 1914]; in Barbara Tuchman _The Guns of August_ [1962] ch. 9. - Our whole duty, for the present, at any rate, is summed up in this motto: 'American first.' --Woodrow Wilson (18561924) American Democratic statesman and President [19131921]. In a speech in New York City [20 April 1915]. We have stood apart, studiously neutral. --Woodrow Wilson (18561924) American Democratic statesman and President [19131921]. Message to Congress [7 December 1915]. It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts. --Woodrow Wilson (18561924) American Democratic statesman and President [19131921]. In his war message to Congress [2 April 1917]. The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. --Woodrow Wilson (18561924) American Democratic statesman and President [19131921]. In his war message to Congress [2 April 1917]. - I am restless. I hate the kitchen table at which I am writing. I lose patience over a book. I should like to push the landscape aside as if it irritated me. I must get to the Front. I must again hear the shells roaring up into the sky and the desolate valley echoing the sound. I must get back to my Company...live once again in the realm of death. --Helmut Zschulte, shortly before his death in 1917 - After crawling out through the bleeding remnants of my comrades, and through the smoke and debris, wandering and running in the midst of the raging gunfire in search of refuge, I am now awaiting death at any moment. You do not know what Flanders means. Flanders means endless human endurance. Flanders means blood and scraps of human bodies. Flanders means heroic courage and faithfulness even unto death. --letter found on the body of an unknown German officer I fought I was too big to be walkin' about the street wivout joinin'...I fought a lot of fings when that shell hit...I fought about...going over the water again...and I fought about seein' Mother...And I fought about dyin'. Will they let her come and see me quick when I get to a hospital in London? I fink I'll write to her this afternoon. --a twenty year old cockney tommy's last words [1915], according to nurse Sister Luard. - Ils ne passeront pas. They shall not pass. --anon. (Slogan used by French army at the defense of Verdun in 1916; variously attributed to Marshall Pιtain and to General Robert Nivelle - ODTQ.) - The Espionage Act of 1917 was a United States federal law passed shortly after entering World War I, which made it a crime, punishable by a $10,000 fine and 20 years in jail, for a person to convey antipathy with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United States or to promote the success of its enemies. The legislation was passed at the urging of President Woodrow Wilson who feared any widespread dissent in time of war constituted a real threat to an American victory. What was the result of the Espionage Acts during World War I? 1. Over 6,000 arrests. 2. Led to the Red Scare. 3. Walter Mathey, arrested and convicted, attended antiwar conference and contributed 25 cents. 4. Rev. Clarence Waldron, arrested and convicted for telling a bible study class the "Christians could take no part in the war." 15 year term. 5. Eugene V. Debs, arrested and convicted for opposing the war, 10 years. Gained over a million votes in a run for President while he was in prison. 6. Ricardo Flores Magon, a leading Mexican- American Labor organizer was sentenced to 20 years for opposing the administrations Mexcio policy. 7. Herbert S. Bigelow, a pacifist minister, was dragged from the stage where he about to give a speech, taken to a wooded area by a mob, bound and gagged and whipped. 8. Charles Schenck, member of the Socialist Party, sentenced to 15 years for publishing pamphlets urging citizens to refuse to participate in the draft. He called the draft slavery, among other things. - Come on, you sons of bitches! Do you want to live forever? --attributed to a Marine sergeant at the battle of Belleau Wood [6 June 1918]. -- end page | UGLY - UNICORNS | UNHAPPINESS | UNIONS - USELESS | VACATION - VENGENCE | VENICE - VICTORY | VIGILANCE - VIRGINITY | VIRTUE - VULGARITY | WAGES - WAR & PEACE | WAR (THE CIVIL) - WAR (THE REVOLUTIONARY) | WAR (THOUGHTS ABOUT) - PAGE 1 (A-M) | WAR (THOUGHTS ABOUT) - PAGE 2 (N-Z) | WAR (VIETNAM) | WAR (WORLD WAR I) | WAR (WORLD WAR II) PAGE 1 (A-M) | WAR (WORLD WAR II) PAGE 2 (N-Z) | WASHINGTON (D.C.) - WEAK/WEAKNESS | WEALTH - WEASELS | WEATHER - WELLS (H.G.) | WEST (THE OLD/WILD) - WILDE (OSCAR) | WILL - WINNING | WINTER - WISDOM | WISHING - WIVES | WOMEN - WOMEN'S LIB | WOMEN'S RIGHTS - WORDS | WORK - WORLD | WORLD TRADE CENTER & PENTAGON DISASTER, 11 SEPTEMB | WORRY - WRONG | WRITING | YESTERDAY - ZOOS | | R | S | T | U - END | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The End | The Reviews | Photos | |
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