Alan Lascelles Quotes
Even when you win a war, you cannot forget that you have lost a generation.
Alan [Tommy] Lascelles, 1887-1981, British Officer & Civil Servant, Diary, November 13, 1918
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Many in the House were calling on England to fulfill its treaty obligations and stop Hitler and the Germans from overrunning Europe. Prime Minister Chamberlain, kept trying to appease Hitler by giving in to some of his demands. The more he gave in, the greater the demands became. Maxton was one of the few members of Parliament who wanted to give the Prime Minister more time to avoid war. Chamberlain’s efforts failed miserably and Hitler already had a huge advantage.
At Hamburg Harris organized a massive fire bombing of the German industrial city and the fire storm was so great that it sucked the oxygen out from huge sections of the city and thousands of people were roasted alive. Even with 100,000 Germans killed, Harris was convinced that it was a relatively humane way of waging a necessary war when compared to the classic artillery barrage followed by invading soldiers and street to street fighting.
Although an ordained Methodist Minister, the Methodist Episcopal Church refused to allow her to preach.
The British and American bombing of Germany had become so effective that most of the German industrial system was destroyed. However, early in the War, Germany had violated the Geneva Convention and was indiscriminately bombing London and other part of England. In addition the German Air Force had bombed Warsaw, and many other cities throughout Europe. The German’s had killed over 20 million Europeans. When the Allied bombing produced high collateral damage against civilians, some argued that even though German had deliberately used this tactic, the allies should stop the saturated bombing if there were to be high civilian collateral damage. Others argued that it was unfortunate but a military necessity. There were others like Brenen, who argued that killing German women and children was desirable and just.
Eggleston was an accomplished writer who had served in the Confederate army of the Civil War. 20 year after the war he wrote a series of articles for the prestigious Northern Atlantic Monthly trying to convey the war from the Southerner’s point of view.
The Ambassador of Bavaria represented an area where the politicians saw democrats and socialists as their great enemy, as did many of the leading right wing conservatives in all of Germany. They believed that a great war would give them a chance to crush democratic socialism in Europe. Bethmann warned that just the opposite might result, and indeed it did. He was correct. Many of the crowned heads of Europe were deposed and the democratic socialists emerged as a major political factor in the victorious democracies. Bethmann-Hollweg, however, was not a strong leader and could not prevent the Conservatives, the military leaders, and Kaiser Wilhelm from initiating WWI.
Sir Alan Frederick "Tommy" Lascelles, GCB, GCVO, CMG, MC was a British courtier and civil servant who held several positions in the first half of the twentieth century, culminating in his position as Private Secretary to both King George VI and Queen Elizabeth II. In 1950, he wrote the Lascelles Principles in a letter to the editor of The Times, using the pen-name "Senex".
