HERBERT HENRY ASQUITH

When our new armies are ready it seems folly to send them to Flanders, where they will chew barbed wire, or be wasted in futile frontal attacks.

... the Austrians are quite the stupidest people in Europe … and there is a brutality to their mode of performance …

The Army will hear nothing of politics from me, and in return I expect to hear nothing of politics from the Army.

We are within measurable, or imaginable, distance of a real Armageddon. Happily there seems to be no reason why we should be anything more than spectators.

One to mislead the public, another to mislead the Cabinet, and the third to mislead itself.

The Turkish Empire has just committed suicide.

In public politics as in private life, character is better than brains, and loyalty more valuable than either.

Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life.

There is no more striking illustration of the immobility of British institutions than the House of Commons.

If I am asked what we are fighting for, I can reply in two sentences. In the first place, to fulfil a solemn international obligation . . . an obligation of honor which no self-respecting man could possibly have repudiated. I say, secondly, we are fighting to vindicate the principle that small nationalities are not to be crushed in defiance of international good faith at the arbitrary will of a strong and overmastering Power.

Things are being done in Ireland which would disgrace the blackest annals of the lowest despotism in Europe.

In public politics as in private life, character is better than brains, and loyalty more valuable than either.

One to mislead the public, another to mislead the Cabinet, and the third to mislead itself.

The Army will hear nothing of politics from me, and in return I expect to hear nothing of politics from the Army.

Wait and see.

The Turkish Empire has just committed suicide.

The Irish on both sides are giving me a lot of trouble just at a difficult moment…. I sometimes wish we could submerge the whole lot of them and their Island for say, ten years, under the waves of the Atlantic.

... the Austrians are quite the stupidest people in Europe … and there is a brutality to their mode of performance …

Winston, who has got on all his war-paint, is longing for a sea battle in the early hours of tomorrow morning… The whole thing fills me with sadness.

The War office kept three sets of figures - one to mislead the public, another to mislead the cabinet and the third to mislead itself.

If I am asked what we are fighting for, I can reply in two sentences. In the first place, to fulfil a solemn international obligation . . . an obligation of honor which no self-respecting man could possibly have repudiated. I say, secondly, we are fighting to vindicate the principle that small nationalities are not to be crushed in defiance of international good faith at the arbitrary will of a strong and overmastering Power.

We are fighting to vindicate the principle that small nationalities are not to be crushed, in defiance of international good faith, by the arbitrary will of a strong and overmastering Power.

When our new armies are ready it seems folly to send them to Flanders, where they will chew barbed wire, or be wasted in futile frontal attacks.

We are within measurable, or imaginable, distance of a real Armageddon. Happily there seems to be no reason why we should be anything more than spectators.

There is no more striking illustration of the immobility of British institutions than the House of Commons.

Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life.