Guns Of August Quotes

Like a fellow running from or toward a gun ain't got time to worry whether the word for what he is doing is courage or cowardice.

Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.

Honor wears different coats to different eyes.

Human beings, like plans, prove fallible in the presence of those ingredients that are missing in maneuvers - danger, death, and live ammunition.

in the midst of war and crisis nothing is as clear or as certain as it appears in hindsight

The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace, but on history's clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again.

Arguments can always be found to turn desire into policy.

One constant among the elements of 1914—as of any era—was the disposition of everyone on all sides not to prepare for the harder alternative, not to act upon what they suspected to be true.

When at last it was over, the war had many diverse results and one dominant one transcending all others: disillusion.

So gorgeous was the spectacle on the May morning of 1910 when nine kings rode in the funeral of Edward VII of England that the crowd, waiting in hushed and black-clad awe, could not keep back gasps of admiration. In scarlet and blue and green and purple, three by three the sovereigns rode through the palace gates, with plumed helmets, gold braid, crimson sashes, and jeweled orders flashing in the sun. After them came five heirs apparent, forty more imperial or royal highnesses, seven queens - four dowager and three regnant - and a scattering of special ambassadors from uncrowned countries. Together they represented seventy nations in the greatest assemblage of royalty and rank ever gathered in one place and, of its kind, the last. The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace, but on history's clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again.

Fateful moments tend to evoke grandeur of speech, especially in French.

No less a bold and pugnacious figure than Winston Churchill broke down and was unable to finish his remarks at the sendoff of the British Expeditionary Force into the maelstrom of World War I in Europe.

The impetus of existing plans is always stronger than the impulse to change.

Belgium, where there occurred one of the rare appearances of the hero in history, was lifted above herself by the uncomplicated conscience of her King and, faced with the choice to acquiesce or resist, took less than three hours to make her decision, knowing it might be mortal.

Of the two classes of Prussian officer, the bull-necked and the wasp-waisted, he belonged to the second. Monocled and effete in appearance, cold and distant in manner, he concentrated with such single-mindedness on his profession that when an aide, at the end of an all-night staff ride in East Prussia, pointed out to him the beauty of the river Pregel sparkling in the rising sun, the General gave a brief, hard look and replied, 'An unimportant obstacle.

When the guns fired in August 1914, did the faces of men and women show so plain in each other's eyes that romance was killed?

Nowadays, if a man living in a civilized country (ha!) hears cannon blasts in his sleep, he will, of course, mistake them for thunderclaps, gun salutes on the feast day of the local patron saint, or furniture being moved by the slime-buckets living upstairs, and go right on sleeping soundly. But the ringing of the telephone, the triumphal march of the cell phone, or the doorbell, no: Those are all sounds of summons in response to which the civilzed man (ha-ha!) has no choice but to surface from the depths of slumber and answer.

The occasions when an individual is able to harness a nation are memorable, and Grey’s speech proved to be one of those junctures by which people afterward date events.

Believing themselves superior in soul, in strength, in energy, industry, and national virtue, Germans felt they deserved the dominion of Europe.

There was an aura about 1914 that caused those who sensed it to shiver for mankind. Tears came even to the most bold and resolute.

Those deterrents—the brotherhood of socialists, the interlocking of finance, commerce, and other economic factors—which had been expected to make war impossible failed to function when the time came. Nationhood, like a wild gust of wind, arose and swept them aside. People

They were twelve days in which world history wavered between two courses and the Germans came so close to victory that they reached out and touched it between the Aisne and the Marne.

The French right wing, opening the offensive into German-occupied Lorraine, took an old embattled path like so many in France and Belgium where, century after century, whatever the power that makes men fight brought legions tramping down the same roads, leveling the same villages.

SOME DAMNED FOOLISH THING in the Balkans,” Bismarck had predicted, would ignite the next war. The assassination of the Austrian heir apparent, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, by Serbian nationalists on June 28, 1914, satisfied his condition.

The impetus of existing plans is always stronger than the impulse to change. The Kaiser could not change Moltke’s plan nor could Kitchener alter Henry Wilson’s nor Lanrezac alter Joffre’s.

I like Russian trains. Not for comfort, of which there is none, nor speed, of which there is barely any to be spoken about, particularly when you relate it to the size of the country that must be crossed. Not even, particularly, for the view, which is inevitably repetitive, as Mother Nature decrees that her works of wonder can only occur so frequently across such a vast and cultivated space. I like Russian trains, or at least those I travelled on in the early spring of 1956, so many centuries after I gunned Lisle down in cold blood; I like the trains for the sense of unity that all these hardships create in its passengers. I suspect the experience is relative.

Now according to German logic, a declaration of war was found to be unnecessary because of imaginary bombings

To be right and overruled is not forgiven to persons in responsible positions, and Michel duly paid for his clairvoyance.

No more distressing moment can ever face a British government than that which requires it to come to a hard and fast and specific decision.

To think meant to give room for freedom of initiative, for the imponderable to win over the material, for will to demonstrate its power over circumstance.

It was a “severe” disappointment to Henry Wilson who laid it all at the door of Kitchener and the Cabinet for having sent only four divisions instead of six. Had all six been present, he said with that marvelous incapacity to admit error that was to make him ultimately a Field Marshal, “this retreat would have been an advance and defeat would have been a victory.

Although 1870 proved the corollary of the theory and practice of terror, that it deepens antagonism, stimulates resistance, and ends by lengthening war, the Germans remained wedded to it.

Clausewitz, a dead Prussian, and Norman Angell, a living if misunderstood professor, had combined to fasten the short-war concept upon the European mind. Quick, decisive victory was the German orthodoxy;

Eventually the United States became the latter arsenal and bank of the allies, and acquired a direct interest in allied victory that was to bemuse the post war apostles of economic determinism for a long time.

Although the defects of the Russian Army were notorious, although the Russian winter, not the Russian Army, had turned Napoleon back from Moscow, although it had been defeated on its own soil by the French and British in the Crimea, although the Turks in 1877 had outfought it at the siege of Plevna and only succumbed later to overwhelming numbers, although the Japanese had outfought it in Manchuria, a myth of its invincibility prevailed.

The Battle of the Marne was one of the decisive battles of the world not because it determined that Germany would ultimately lose or the Allies ultimately win the war but because it determined that the war would go on. There was no looking back, Joffre told the soldiers on the eve. Afterward there was no turning back. The nations were caught in a trap, a trap made during the first thirty days out of battles that failed to be decisive, a trap from which there was, and has been, no exit.

Nevertheless, Schlieffen decided, in the event of war, to attack France by way of Belgium.

General Gallieni, dining in civilian clothes at a small café in Paris on August 9, overheard an editor of Le Temps at the next table say to a companion, “I can tell you that General Gallieni has just entered Colmar with 30,000 men.” Leaning over to his friend, Gallieni said quietly, “That is how history is written.

German soldiers, posted as informers, were found dressed as peasants, even as peasant women. The latter were discovered, presumably in the course of non-military action, by their government issued underwear; but many were probably never caught, it being impossible, General Gourko regretfully admitted, to lift the skirts of every female in East Prussia.

If I'd been a cowboy, it might've ended well. Somewhere on the ramble, I'm sure I'd have to sell My guns along the highway. My coins to the table To make a gambler's double, I'd double debts to pay. Prob'ly shrink and slink away, It mightn't've ended well. What If I'd been a sailor? I think it might've ended well. From August to May For a searat of man drifting through eternal blue, aboard the finest Debris. I might've called the shanties. From daybreak to storm's set, lines stay Taught, over rhythm unbroken. But, oh, there's a schism unspoken, a mighty calling of the lee. An absentminded Pirate, unaccustomed to the sea; To the land, a traitor. I think it mightn't've ended well. What might've worked for me? What might've ended well? Soldier, to bloody sally forth through hell? Teacher of glorious stories to tell? Man of gold, or stores to sell? Lover to a gentle belle? Maybe a camel; A seashell. What mightn't've been a life where it mightn't've ended well?

There may be a lesson here for our time, too. The first era of financial globalization took at least a generation to achieve. But it was blown apart in a matter of days. And it would take more than two generations to repair the damage done by the guns of August 1914.

What is it about this book—essentially a military history of the first month of the First World War—which gives it its stamp and has created its enormous reputation? Four qualities stand out: a wealth of vivid detail which keeps the reader immersed in events, almost as an eyewitness; a prose style which is transparently clear, intelligent, controlled and witty; a cool detachment of moral judgment—Mrs. Tuchman is never preachy or reproachful; she draws on skepticism, not cynicism, leaving the reader not so much outraged by human villainy as amused and saddened by human folly. These first three qualities are present in all of Barbara Tuchman’s work, but in The Guns of August there is a fourth which makes the book, once taken up, almost impossible to set aside. Remarkably, she persuades the reader to suspend any foreknowledge of what is about to happen.

Its Seventh Commandment, italicized by the authors, stated: “Battles are beyond everything else struggles of morale. Defeat is inevitable as soon as the hope of conquering ceases to exist. Success comes not to him who has suffered the least but to him whose will is firmest and morale strongest.

The British minister, making his own inquiries, was told that if British troops landed before a German invasion or without a formal Belgian request, the Belgians would open fire. Belgium’s rigid purity confirmed what the British never tired of repeating to the French—that everything depended upon the Germans violating Belgian neutrality first.

The problem with research, of course, was knowing when to stop. “One must stop before one has finished,” she advised, “otherwise, one will never stop and never finish.

terrestrial innovation was the Red Ball Express, a cargo haulage service begun in late August. Soon seven thousand trucks carried four thousand tons or more each day

lugubrious” atmosphere.

There is no record what Asquith replied or what, in his inmost mind, a region difficult to penetrate under the best of circumstances, he thought on this crucial question.

Europe was a heap of swords piled as delicately as jackstraws; one could not be pulled out without moving the others. Under

But I have seen many men for whom death truly is the end walk towards their demise for reasons no greater than that it was what they were told to do. On the beaches of Normandy, where the bodies floated in the water beside the falling ramps of the landing craft, I saw men run into machine-gun fire who would say, "Hell, I never thought it would come to this, but now I'm here, what's a guy to do?" With no going back, and no going forward, they went to their deaths with no better plan immediately to hand, having gambled that their choices would not narrow so far, and having been found to be wrong.

the Home Secretary, a young man of thirty-seven, impossible to ignore, who, from his inappropriate post, had pelted the Prime Minister during the crisis with ideas on naval and military strategy, all of them quite sound, had produced an astonishingly accurate prediction of the future course of the fighting, and who had no doubts whatever about what needed to be done. The Home Secretary was Winston Churchill.

The turn of events in Belgium was a product of the German theory of terror. Clausewitz had prescribed terror as the proper method to shorten war, his whole theory of war being based on the necessity of making it short, sharp, and decisive. The civil population must not be exempted from war’s effects but must be made to feel its pressure and be forced by the severest measures to compel their leaders to make peace.

If it was not intended as a veto, then it must have been intended for commanders to interpret as they saw fit, which brings the matter to that melting point of warfare—the temperament of the individual commander. When the moment of live ammunition approaches, the moment to which all his professional training has been directed, when the lives of men under him, the issue of the combat, even the fate of a campaign may depend upon his decision at a given moment, what happens inside the heart and vitals of a commander? Some are made bold by the moment, some irresolute, some carefully judicious, some paralyzed and powerless to act.

Character is fate, the Greeks believed. A hundred years of German philosophy went into the making of this decision in which the seed of self-destruction lay embedded, waiting for its hour. The voice was Schlieffen’s, but the hand was the hand of Fichte who saw the German people chosen by Providence to occupy the supreme place in the history of the universe, of Hegel who saw them leading the world to a glorious destiny of compulsory Kultur, of Nietzsche who told them that Supermen were above ordinary controls, of Treitschke who set the increase of power as the highest moral duty of the state, of the whole German people, who called their temporal ruler the “All-Highest.” What made the Schlieffen plan was not Clausewitz and the Battle of Cannae, but the body of accumulated egoism which suckled the German people and created a nation fed on “the desperate delusion of the will that deems itself absolute.” The

Evaluation of enemy strength is not an absolute, but a matter of piecing together scraps of reconnaissance and intelligence to form a picture, if possible a picture to fit preconceived theories or to suit the demands of a particular strategy. What a staff makes out of the available evidence depends upon the degree of optimism or pessimism prevailing among them, on what they want to believe or fear to believe, and sometimes upon the sensitivity or intuition of an individual.

Charlie?” He holstered his gun and waited until she looked at him. “Do you really think you could love a man who can outshoot you?” Her smile immediately flipped down. “Not sure how well August shoots, but that doesn’t—” “No, not August. Me.

Thereafter the red edges of war spread over another half of the world. Turkey’s neighbors, Bulgaria, Rumania, Italy, and Greece, were eventually drawn in. Thereafter, with her exit to the Mediterranean closed, Russia was left dependent on Archangel, icebound half the year, and on Vladivostok, 8,000 miles from the battlefront. With the Black Sea closed, her exports dropped by 98 per cent and her imports by 95 per cent. The cutting off of Russia with all its consequences, the vain and sanguinary tragedy of Gallipoli, the diversion of Allied strength in the campaigns of Mesopotamia, Suez, and Palestine, the ultimate breakup of the Ottoman Empire, the subsequent history of the Middle East, followed from the voyage of the Goeben.

Within the army, field officers despised Staff officers as “having the brains of canaries and the manners of Potsdam,” but both groups were as one in their distaste for interference by civilian ministers who were known as “the frocks.” The civil arm in its turn referred to the military as “the boneheads.

The weapons attacking her were a diverse mix: antiques such as American carbines, Czech-style machine guns, Japanese Type-38 rifles; newer weapons such as standard-issue People's Liberation Army rifles and submachine guns, stolen from the PLA after the publication of the "August Editorial"; and even a few Chinese dadao swords and spears.

The world remembers the battle ever since by the taxis. A hundred of them were already in the service of the Military Government of Paris. With 500 more, each carrying five soldiers and making the sixty-kilometer trip to the Ourcq twice, General Clergerie figured he could transport 6,000 troops to the hard-pressed front. The order was issued at 1:00 P.M., the hour for departure fixed for 6:00 P.M. Police passed the word to the taxis in the streets. Enthusiastically the chauffeurs emptied out their passengers, explaining proudly that they had to “go to the battle.” Returning to their garages for gas, they were ordered to the place of assembly where at the given time all 600 were lined up in perfect order. Gallieni, called to inspect them, though rarely demonstrative, was enchanted. “Eh bien, voilà au moins qui n’est pas banal!” (Well, here at least is something out of the ordinary!) he cried. Each with its burden of soldiers, with trucks, buses, and assorted vehicles added to the train, the taxis drove off, as evening fell—the last gallantry of 1914, the last crusade of the old world.

A young girl, a frailty, simple and true, who had been unable to stand up from the piano and had had to be carried; a girl half his age; a girl who could not shoot a gun, had never been in an oyster house, atop a tower, or under the wharves; a girl hotter always than noon in August; a girl who knew nothing; had thrown him so hard that he would be out of breath forever.

Matthew Ridgway to command the XVIII Airborne Corps, Gavin had taken over the 82nd in mid-August. At thirty-seven he would be not only the youngest major general in the U.S. Army during World War II, but also the youngest division commander since the Civil War. That achievement was all the more remarkable given his start in life. Gavin was an orphan (he later concluded that his mother had been

August 16, 1945, the day after the Japanese surrendered and World War II ended, "The guns are silent now and so are many of the men whose hands once held them. Never again will they see their wives or mothers. Never again will they hear their children laugh. And never again will they smell the sweet scents of home. And for what? For what did these husbands and fathers, these brothers and sons, give their lives so many thousands of miles from home? I say it was for one word, and that word is freedom. The freedom to pray. To write. To speak. To feel. To be. As we see fit, and not as others would dictate to us. To this freedom, which has been so dearly bought for us, it is up to us, the living, to dedicate our lives and our futures... to its eternal protection." These words were written by Frederick Beeman, the editor of the Peoria Dispatch. And I sincerely hope that Mr. Beeman would see it in his heart that all we are looking for here is... a little freedom, too.

opportunity. The bizarre codes on the pages she’d sorted for Randy suddenly made sense. They must have been the files that kept track of where the bank had stashed millions of dollars. Jim wanted the money out, and so did the Covellis. The Mob was somehow involved with the bank’s dealings, and Carmichael worked for them. Being a bartender was just a facade. Beatrice hadn’t known him at all. But Tony and Max had known him, she realized. Tony was a police detective; he was the one who told her about the Covellis in the first place. He must have known. Every word Carmichael might have overheard at the bar replayed in her mind—her conversations with Tony about snooping around the bank, the missing safe deposits, the missing master key. Maybe Tony had wanted Carmichael to hear. The old man pointed the gun at Teddy in her head. Maybe the Covellis would bring down the bank if law enforcement failed. No one, not even Tony, suspected that she and Max had the power to do anything but run. Max was right. They all underestimated women like them. Beatrice stepped out from behind the curtain with the keys in her hand and crept toward the vault. CHAPTER 72 Friday, August 28, 1998 A black-and-white photograph of two women looked up from Box 547 in the yellow glow of the detective’s flashlight. They were smiling. The glass in the silver picture frame was cracked. Iris picked it up and handed it to Detective McDonnell. Underneath it she found a brown leather book and a candle. That was it. “What the hell is this?” Iris

with that characteristic touch of late-Romanov rashness, the government, by ukase of August 22, extended prohibition for the duration of the war. As the sale of vodka was a state monopoly, this act at one stroke cut off a third of the government’s income. It was well known, commented a bewildered member of the Duma, that governments waging war seek by a variety of taxes and levies to increase income, “but never since the dawn of history has a country in time of war renounced the principal source of its revenue.

The window was dark now beyond which six hours ago he had left the minister. Running, he thought of the bald head, the clenched hands, the prone flabby body sprawled across the desk. ‘But I reckon he has not slept much,’ he thought. ‘Even if he aint playing—playing—’ He could not think of the word midwife, which he knew that Hightower would use. ‘I reckon I dont have to think of it,’ he thought. ‘Like a fellow running from or toward a gun aint got time to worry whether the word for what he is doing is courage or cowardice.

While the coastal media elites would have us believe that Americans are endlessly fascinated with the salacious doings of the Kardashian clan and their various divorces, pregnancies, and exposures of their bodies, the highest-rated episode ever of their reality show drew 3.7 million viewers in 2010. Meanwhile, the tight-knit, God-fearing, Bible-believing Robertson family on Duck Dynasty, alternately mocked and scorned by the coastal elites, drew 11.77 million viewers to their season four premiere in August 2013. It not only beat all competition on the major broadcast networks, it still stands as the highest-rated telecast in the history of the A&E cable channel.

In addition to aerial bombardment, according to a report issued by the Israeli logistical command in mid-August 2014, well before the final cease-fire took hold on August 26, 49,000 artillery and tank shells were fired into the Gaza Strip,31 most by the US-made M109A5 155mm howitzer. Its 98-pound shells have a kill zone of about 54 yards’ radius and inflict casualties within a diameter of 218 yards. Israel possesses 600 of these artillery pieces, and 175 of the longer-range American M107 175mm gun, which fires even heavier shells, weighing over 145 pounds. One instance of Israel’s use of these lethal battlefield weapons suffices to show the vast disproportionality of the war on Gaza.

To the left, civil rights are like a subway: When you reach your stop, you get off. Meanwhile, I’ll just repeat what I said yesterday: For the New Yorker’s target audience, the equivalence of free speech advocates to “gun nuts” is a clear signal of where they’re supposed to fall on the argument. But all I can say is that if the “speech nuts” do as well as the “gun nuts” have done over the past couple of decades, we’ll be in pretty good shape. And the lesson from the “gun nuts” is: Don’t compromise, don’t admit that there’s such a thing as a “reasonable restriction,” don’t back down, and keep pointing out that your opponents are liars and hypocrites. And punish the hell out of politicians who vote with the other side. —Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit, 11 August 2015

was stupid to lie down; one might as well keep moving.… Here and there men lay flat on their stomachs or on their backs. They were dead. One of them, under an apple tree, had all of his face missing; blood drowned his head. On the right drums sounded the bayonet charge followed by the trumpet. Our line advanced marked by the sparkle of the bayonets slanted against a blue sky. The rhythm of the drums quickened. ‘Forward!’ All the men cried ‘Forward!’ It was a superb moment. An electric shiver went through my scalp and contracted the roots of my hair. The drums beat in a rage, the hot wind carried the notes of the trumpet, the men shouted—they were transported!…Suddenly we were stopped. To charge a village 900 yards away against a solid defense was folly. The order came, ‘Lie down, take cover.

Washington is a city of spectacles. Every four years, imposing Presidential inaugurations attract the great and the mighty. Kings, prime ministers, heroes and celebrities of every description have been feted there for more than 150 years. But in its entire glittering history, Washington had never seen a spectacle of the size and grandeur that assembled there on August 28, 1963. Among the nearly 250,000 people who journeyed that day to the capital, there were many dignitaries and many celebrities, but the stirring emotion came from the mass of ordinary people who stood in majestic dignity as witnesses to their single-minded determination to achieve democracy in their time. They came from almost every state in the union; they came in every form of transportation; they gave up from one to three days' pay plus the cost of transportation, which for many was a heavy financial sacrifice. They were good-humored and relaxed, yet disciplined and thoughtful. They applauded their leaders generously, but the leaders, in their own hearts, applauded their audience. Many a Negro speaker that day had his respect for his own people deepened as he felt the strength of their dedication. The enormous multitude was the living, beating heart of an infinitely noble movement. It was an army without guns, but not without strength. It was an army into which no one had to be drafted. It was white and Negro, and of all ages. It had adherents of every faith, members of every class, every profession, every political party, united by a single ideal. It was a fighting army, but no one could mistake that its most powerful weapon was love.

Character is fate, the Greeks believed. A hundred years of German philosophy went into the making of this decision in which the seed of self-destruction lay embedded, waiting for its hour. The voice was Schlieffen’s, [the general who concocted the attack plan] but the hand was the hand of Fichte who saw the German people chosen by Providence to occupy the supreme place in the history of the universe, of Hegel who saw them leading the world to a glorious destiny of compulsory Kultur, of Nietzsche who told them that Supermen were above ordinary controls, of Treitschke who set the increase of power as the highest moral duty of the state, of the whole German people, who called their temporal ruler the “All-Highest.” What made the Schlieffen plan was not Clausewitz and the Battle of Cannae, but the body of accumulated egoism which suckled the German people and created a nation fed on “the desperate delusion of the will that deems itself absolute.

constituted as much as one third of the divisions’ combat strength, were seriously under-gunned (with machine-guns and 20mm main guns) and, therefore, unable to contend with new model Red Army tanks such as the T-34 and KV. On the other hand, although the dependable second-generation Pz. III and Pz. IV tanks were more than a match for the older Soviet tanks, such as the T-26 light, T-8 medium, and T-35 heavy models, even they experienced difficulty destroying T-34 and KV-1 and 2 tanks. In 1941 Germany was in the process of re-arming all Pz. III’s with a medium-velocity 50mm main gun, while the Pz IV’s still retained a low-velocity 75mm gun. The velocity of these weapons was at least as important as the size of the shell because high velocity was necessary for effective armor penetration. Neither German weapon could penetrate the thick frontal armor of the T-34 medium tanks and KV-1 heavy tanks that were just coming off the assembly lines in Russia.

This book challenges the premises of the growing crusade against law enforcement. In Part One, I rebut the founding myths of the Black Lives Matter movement—including the lie that a pacific Michael Brown was gunned down in cold blood by Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014. I document the hotly contested “Ferguson effect,” a trend that I first spotted nationally, wherein officers desist from discretionary policing and criminals thus become emboldened. In Part Two, I outline the development of the misguided legal push to force the NYPD to give up its stop, question, and frisk tactic. In Part Three, I analyze criminogenic environments in Chicago and Philadelphia and put to rest the excuse that crime—black crime especially—is the result of poverty and inequality. Finally, in Part Four, I expose the deceptions of the mass-incarceration conceit and show that the disproportionate representation of blacks in prison is actually the result of violence, not racism.

MASSOUD DISPATCHED his foreign policy adviser, Abdullah, to Washington in August. Their Northern Alliance lobbyist, Otilie English, scratched together a few appointments on Capitol Hill. It was difficult to get anyone’s attention. They had to compete with Pakistan’s well-heeled, high-paid professional lobbyists and advocates, such as the former congressman Charlie Wilson, who had raised so much money for Pakistan’s government in Congress during the anti-Soviet jihad. Abdullah and English tried to link their lobbying effort with Hamid Karzai and his brother, Qayum, to show that Massoud was fighting the Taliban with multiethnic allies. But the members they met with could barely manage politeness. Guns or financial aid were out of the question. Some barely knew who Osama bin Laden was. With the Democrats they tried to press the issue of women’s rights in Afghanistan, but even that seemed to be a dying cause now that the Clintons were gone. Both Massoud’s group and the Karzais were “so disappointed, so demoralized” after a week of meetings on the Hill and at the State Department, Karzai’s lobbyist recalled.37

On the same day, the British chiefs were hurrying the BEF southward with such urgency that the soldiers were deprived of the rest they needed far more than they needed distance from the enemy. On that day, August 28, a day when von Kluck’s columns gave them no trouble, Sir John French and Wilson were in such anxiety to hasten the retreat that they ordered transport wagons to “throw overboard all ammunition and other impediments not absolutely required” and carry men instead. Discarding ammunition meant abandoning further battle. As the BEF was not fighting on British soil, its Commander was prepared to pull his forces out of the line regardless of the effect of withdrawal upon his ally. The French Army had lost the opening battle and was in a serious, even desperate, situation in which every division counted to prevent defeat. But it was neither broken through nor enveloped by the enemy; it was fighting hard, and Joffre was exhibiting every intention of fighting further. Nevertheless, Sir John French, succumbing to the belief that the danger was mortal, had determined that the BEF must be preserved from being involved in a French defeat.

On August 21, 1931, invited to address an American Legion convention in Connecticut, he made the first no-holds-barred antiwar speech of his career. It stunned all who heard it or read it in the few papers that dared report it in part: I spent 33 years . . . being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism. . . . I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1916. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City [Bank] boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the rape of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. . . . In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. . . . I had . . . a swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals, promotions. . . . I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate a racket in three cities. The Marines operated on three continents. . . . We don’t want any more wars, but a man is a damn fool to think there won’t be any more of them. I am a peace-loving Quaker, but when war breaks out every damn man in my family goes. If we’re ready, nobody will tackle us. Give us a club and we will face them all. . . . There is no use talking about abolishing war; that’s damn foolishness. Take the guns away from men and they will fight just the same. . . . In the Spanish-American War we didn’t have any bullets to shoot, and if we had not had a war with a nation that was already licked and looking for an excuse to quit, we would have had hell licked out of us. . . . No pacifists or Communists are going to govern this country. If they try it there will be seven million men like you rise up and strangle them. Pacifists? Hell, I’m a pacifist, but I always have a club behind my back!

the military-industrial-scientific complex, because today’s wars are scientific productions. The world’s military forces initiate, fund and steer a large part of humanity’s scientific research and technological development. When World War One bogged down into interminable trench warfare, both sides called in the scientists to break the deadlock and save the nation. The men in white answered the call, and out of the laboratories rolled a constant stream of new wonder-weapons: combat aircraft, poison gas, tanks, submarines and ever more efficient machine guns, artillery pieces, rifles and bombs. 33. German V-2 rocket ready to launch. It didn’t defeat the Allies, but it kept the Germans hoping for a technological miracle until the very last days of the war. {© Ria Novosti/Science Photo Library.} Science played an even larger role in World War Two. By late 1944 Germany was losing the war and defeat was imminent. A year earlier, the Germans’ allies, the Italians, had toppled Mussolini and surrendered to the Allies. But Germany kept fighting on, even though the British, American and Soviet armies were closing in. One reason German soldiers and civilians thought not all was lost was that they believed German scientists were about to turn the tide with so-called miracle weapons such as the V-2 rocket and jet-powered aircraft. While the Germans were working on rockets and jets, the American Manhattan Project successfully developed atomic bombs. By the time the bomb was ready, in early August 1945, Germany had already surrendered, but Japan was fighting on. American forces were poised to invade its home islands. The Japanese vowed to resist the invasion and fight to the death, and there was every reason to believe that it was no idle threat. American generals told President Harry S. Truman that an invasion of Japan would cost the lives of a million American soldiers and would extend the war well into 1946. Truman decided to use the new bomb. Two weeks and two atom bombs later, Japan surrendered unconditionally and the war was over. But science is not just about offensive weapons. It plays a major role in our defences as well. Today many Americans believe that the solution to terrorism is technological rather than political. Just give millions more to the nanotechnology industry, they believe, and the United States could send bionic spy-flies into every Afghan cave, Yemenite redoubt and North African encampment. Once that’s done, Osama Bin Laden’s heirs will not be able to make a cup of coffee without a CIA spy-fly passing this vital information back to headquarters in Langley.

On Mr. Phipps' discovering the place of my concealment, he cocked his gun and aimed at me. I requested him not to shoot and I would give up, upon which he demanded my sword. I delivered it to him, and he brought me to prison. During the time I was pursued, I had many hair breadth escapes, which your time will not permit you to relate. I am here loaded with chains, and willing to suffer the fate that awaits me. I here proceeded to make some inquiries of him after assuring him of the certain death that awaited him, and that concealment would only bring destruction on the innocent as well as guilty, of his own color, if he knew of any extensive or concerted plan. His answer was, I do not. When I questioned him as to the insurrection in North Carolina happening about the same time, he denied any knowledge of it; and when I looked him in the face as though I would search his inmost thoughts, he replied, 'I see sir, you doubt my word; but can you not think the same ideas, and strange appearances about this time in the heaven's might prompt others, as well as myself, to this undertaking.' I now had much conversation with and asked him many questions, having forborne to do so previously, except in the cases noted in parenthesis; but during his statement, I had, unnoticed by him, taken notes as to some particular circumstances, and having the advantage of his statement before me in writing, on the evening of the third day that I had been with him, I began a cross examination, and found his statement corroborated by every circumstance coming within my own knowledge or the confessions of others whom had been either killed or executed, and whom he had not seen nor had any knowledge since 22d of August last, he expressed himself fully satisfied as to the impracticability of his attempt. It has been said he was ignorant and cowardly, and that his object was to murder and rob for the purpose of obtaining money to make his escape. It is notorious, that he was never known to have a dollar in his life; to swear an oath, or drink a drop of spirits. As to his ignorance, he certainly never had the advantages of education, but he can read and write, (it was taught him by his parents,) and for natural intelligence and quickness of apprehension, is surpassed by few men I have ever seen. As to his being a coward, his reason as given for not resisting Mr. Phipps, shews the decision of his character. When he saw Mr. Phipps present his gun, he said he knew it was impossible for him to escape as the woods were full of men; he therefore thought it was better to surrender, and trust to fortune for his escape. He is a complete fanatic, or plays his part most admirably. On other subjects he possesses an uncommon share of intelligence, with a mind capable of attaining any thing; but warped and perverted by the influence of early impressions. He is below the ordinary stature, though strong and active, having the true negro face, every feature of which is strongly marked. I shall not attempt to describe the effect of his narrative, as told and commented on by himself, in the condemned hole of the prison. The calm, deliberate composure with which he spoke of his late deeds and intentions, the expression of his fiend-like face when excited by enthusiasm, still bearing the stains of the blood of helpless innocence about him; clothed with rags and covered with chains; yet daring to raise his manacled hands to heaven, with a spirit soaring above the attributes of man; I looked on him and my blood curdled in my veins.

SO GORGEOUS WAS THE SPECTACLE on the May morning of 1910 when nine kings rode in the funeral of Edward VII of England that the crowd waiting in hushed and black-clad awe, could not keep back gasps of admiration.

finished their compulsory training under universal service and were between the ages of twenty-three and thirty-four were classed as reserves. Upon mobilization the youngest classes filled out the regular army units to war strength; the others were formed into reserve regiments,

Kitchener up to London, but could not yet nerve himself

Belgium’s declared intention to fight was, the Germans believed, no more than the “rage of dreaming sheep”—in the words a Prussian statesman once applied to his domestic opponents.

Joffre was adept at taking advice, and submitted more or less consciously to the reigning doctrinaires of the Operations Bureau. They formed what a French military critic called “a church outside which there was no salvation and which could never pardon those who revealed the falsity of its doctrine.

When he smelled battle afar off, Winston Churchill resembled the war horse in Job who turned not back from the sword, but ‘paweth in the valley and saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha.’ He was the only British minister to have a perfectly clear conviction of what Britain should do and to act upon it without hesitation.

Two firing squads marched to the center of the square, faced either way and fired till no more of the targets stood upright. Six hundred and twelve bodies were identified and buried, including Felix Fivet, aged three weeks.

1801 - August: Cane Ridge, North America (Barton Stone)   Impressed by the revivals in 1800, Barton Stone (1772-1844), a Presbyterian minister, organised similar meetings in 1801 in his area at Cane Ridge, north‑east of Lexington.  A huge crowd of around 12,500 attended in over 125 wagons including people from Ohio and Tennessee.  At that time Lexington, the largest town in Kentucky, had less than 1,800 citizens.  Presbyterian, Methodist and Baptist preachers and circuit riders formed preaching teams, speaking simultaneously in different parts of the camp grounds, all aiming for conversions.   James Finley, later a Methodist circuit rider, described it:    The noise was like the roar of Niagara.  The vast sea of human being seemed to be agitated as if by a storm.  I counted seven ministers, all preaching at one time, some on stumps, others in wagons and one standing on a tree which had, in falling, lodged against another. ...  I stepped up on a log where I could have a better view of the surging sea of humanity.  The scene that then presented itself to my mind was indescribable.  At one time I saw at least five hundred swept down in a moment as if a battery of a thousand guns had been opened upon them, and then immediately followed shrieks and shouts that rent the very heavens.

Once the divinity of doctrine has been questioned there is no return to perfect faith.

[…] Under such auspices, in 1835, he went to Canaan Academy, at Canaan, New Hampshire, Rev. William Scales, principal; he was kindly received into the family of George Kimball, Esq. There he first met Miss Julia Williams, formerly a pupil of Miss Prudence Crandall, Canterbury, Connecticut, who was imprisoned for teaching colored girls; Miss Williams subsequently became his wife. Among the pupils at the Academy were his old schoolmates, Alexander Crummell and Thomas S. Sydney. They joyfully entered upon their studies, penetrated with the hopes of a race to whom the higher branches of human learning had hitherto been a sealed book. But the spirit of caste, which we have already spoken of, as being, in the rural districts, still stronger against the education of colored youth than in the cities, soon concentrated its malign influence upon this Academy. In August of the same year (1835) a mob assembled in Canaan, and with the aid of ninety-five yoke of oxen and two days’ hard labor, finally succeeded in removing the Academy from its site and afterwards they destroyed it by fire. The same mob surrounded the house of Mr Kimball and fired shot into the room occupied by Garnet: to add to the mean atrocity of the act, he was at that time, in consequence of increasing lameness, obliged to use a crutch in walking, and was confined to his room by a fever. But neither sickness, nor infirmity, nor the howling of the mob could subdue his fiery spirit; he spent most of the day in casting bullets in anticipation of the attack, and when the mob finally came he replied to their fire with a double-barrelled shot-gun, blazing from his window, and soon drove the cowards away. Henry Highland Garnet, A memorial discourse; delivered in the hall of the House of Representatives, Washington City, D.C. on Sabbath, February 12, 1865. With an introduction by James McCune Smith, M.D. (Philadelphia: Joseph M. Wilson, 1865), pp 29-30 [The quote is from Smith's biographical sketch of Garnet]

After the Marne the war grew and spread until it drew in the nations of both hemispheres and entangled them in a pattern of world conflict no peace treaty could dissolve. The Battle of the Marne was one of the decisive battles of the world not because it determined that Germany would ultimately lose or the Allies ultimately win the war but because it determined that the war would go on. There was no looking back, Joffre told the soldiers on the eve. Afterward there was no turning back. The nations were caught in a trap, a trap made during the first thirty days out of battles that failed to be decisive, a trap from which there was, and has been, no exit.

Honor wears different coats to different eyes,

The Western Front was at all times, according to this view, the decisive theatre of the war, and all the available forces should continually have been concentrated there. The only method of waging war on the Western Front was by wearing down the enemy by ‘killing Germans in a war of attrition.’ This we are assured was always Sir Douglas Haig’s scheme; he pursued it unswervingly throughout his whole Command. Whether encouraged or impeded by the Cabinet, his policy was always the same: ‘Gather together every man and gun and wear down the enemy by constant and if possible by ceaseless attacks.’ This in the main, it is contended, he succeeded in doing, with the result, it is claimed, that in August, 1918, the enemy, at last worn down, lost heart, crumpled, and finally sued for peace. Viewing the events in retrospect, Colonel Boraston invites us to see, not only each of the various prolonged offensives as an integral operation, but the whole four years, 1915, 1916, 1917 and 1918, as if they were one single enormous battle every part of which was a necessary factor in the final victory. We wore the enemy down, we are told, upon the Somme in 1916, we wore him down at Arras in the spring, we continued to wear him down at Passchendaele in the winter of 1917. If the army had been properly reinforced by the politicians we should have persisted in wearing him down in the spring of 1918. Finally, as the fruits of all this process of attrition and ‘killing Germans’ by offensive operations, the enemy’s spirit was quelled, his man power was exhausted, and the war was won. Thus a great design, measured, foreseen and consciously prepared, reached its supreme accomplishment. Such is the theory. These views are supported in the two important

Heeding Clausewitz’s warning that military plans which leave no room for the unexpected can lead to disaster, the Germans with infinite care had attempted to provide for every contingency. Their staff officers, trained at maneuvers and at war-college desks to supply the correct solution for any given set of circumstances, were expected to cope with the unexpected. Against that elusive, that mocking and perilous quantity, every precaution had been taken except one—flexibility. While

Monocled and effete in appearance, cold and distant in manner, he concentrated with such single-mindedness on his profession that when an aide, at the end of an all-night staff ride in East Prussia, pointed out to him the beauty of the river Pregel sparkling in the rising sun, the General gave a brief, hard look and replied, “An unimportant obstacle.

impressed

what became known as the “Falaise smell.” Corruption even seeped into Spitfire cockpits at fifteen hundred feet. “Everything is dead,” wrote Ernie Pyle, who had arrived on August 21. “The men, the machines, the animals—and you alone are left alive.

hour

The basic reason for German failure at the Marne, “the reason that transcends all others,” said Kluck afterward, was “the extraordinary and peculiar aptitude of the French soldier to recover quickly. That men will let themselves be killed where they stand, that is a well-known thing 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.

Bethmann expressed concern for unity and exhorted the deputies to "be unanimous" in their decisions. "We shall be unanimous, Excellency," a spokesman for the Liberals replied obediently. The all-knowing Erzberger who, as rapporteur of the Military Affairs Committee and a close associate of the Chancellor, was considered to have his ear to Olympus, bustled among his fellow deputies assuring them that the Serbs would be beaten "by this time next Monday" and that everything was going well.

At the age of twenty-one, as a second lieutenant just out of St. Cyr, Gallieni had fought at Sedan and been held prisoner for some time in Germany, where he learned the language. He chose to make his further military career in the colonies where France was "growing soldiers." Although the Staff College clique professed to regard colonial service as "le tourisme," Gallieni's fame as the conqueror of Madagascar brought him, like Lyautey of Morocco, to the top rank of the French Army. He kept a notebook in German, English, and Italian called Erinnerungen of my life di ragazzo, and never ceased studying, whether it was Russian or the development of heavy artillery or the comparative administrations of the colonial powers. He wore a pince-nez and a heavy gray mustache that was rather at odds with his elegant, autocratic figure. He carried himself like an officer on parade. Tall and spare, with a distant, untouchable, faintly stern air, he resembled no other French officer of his time. Poincare described the impression he made: "straight, slender and upright with head erect and piercing eyes behind his glasses, he appeared to us as an imposing example of powerful humanity.