Henry David Thoreau Quotes
Fire is the most tolerable third party
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. Ticknor and Fields, 1854, p. 273.
While this was a common attitude for years before, the horrors of World War II produced a general revulsion to war and an awareness that war between two nations spills over to other states in the region and in an era of globalization, effects countries in other parts of the world. So there has been a tendency to use diplomacy endlessly, even after "things have gone too far". Historically, when things reached that point, the parties did fight it out, and when one was weakened sufficiently, negotiations and diplomacy could then be fruitful.
Morgan, one of the biggest industrialists in the nation, had been running vicious monopolies and trusts at a time when government regulation was a new concept. Morgan’s response was to have one of Roosevelt’s assistants make a deal with one of his assistants. He was shocked when Attorney General Knox said, “We don’t want it fixed up. We want to stop it.” They did. It was a watershed in government corporate regulation.
The Russians were breaking diplomatic relations with Israel.
Attila the Hun. They were discussing a structure for negotiating Attila’s grievance against Rome.
Henry David Thoreau was an American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher. A leading transcendentalist, he is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay "Civil Disobedience" (originally published as "Resistance to Civil Government"), an argument for disobedience to an unjust state.