Elihu Root Quotes

Did the occupation of other countries improve our own happiness? Does the individual German get anything out of such conquests?

Wars of aggression are popular nowadays with those nations convinced that only victory and conquest could improve their material well-being.

This uneasy desire to augment our territory has depraved the moral sense and blighted the otherwise keen sagacity of our people.

Where the German soldier stands, no other shall put his foot.

Who believes that a score of victories over Mexico, the annexation of half her provinces, will give us more Liberty, a purer Morality?

The increase of territory and power of empires by force of arms has been the policy of all great powers, and it has always been possible to get the approval of their state religion.

He was driven by the idea that when Milosevic grabs a part of Bosnia, Croatia should get a piece of it, too.

The decades of Imperialism have been prolific in wars; most of these wars have been directly motived by aggression of white races upon "lower races," and have issued in the forcible seizure of territory. Every one of the steps of expansion in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific has been accompanied by bloodshed; each imperialist Power keeps an increasing army available for foreign service; rectification of frontiers, punitive expeditions, and other euphemisms for war ...

Where the carcass of a nation rots there will be the filibusters be gathered together. Every raven in the hungry flock of American politicians looks that way, wipes his greedy beak, prunes his wings, and screams “Manifest Destiny.”

They are based on the universal assumption that a nation, in order to find outlets for expanding population and increasing industry, or simply to ensure the best conditions possible for its people, is necessarily pushed to territorial expansion and the exercise of political force against others.... It is assumed that a nation's relative prosperity is broadly determined by its political power; that nations being competing units, advantage in the last resort goes to the possessor of preponderant military force, the weaker goes to the wall, as in the other forms of the struggle for life.

Every nation is a band of robbers, who prey without restraint, or remorse, on their neighbors.

What the city [Constantinople] contains is its own; beyond the walls it has no dominion—owns nothing. If I want to build a castle at the Sacred Mouth, it can’t forbid me. Tell your emperor this: The sultan who now rules is not like his predecessors. What they couldn’t achieve, he can do easily and at once. The things they did not wish to do, he certainly does. The next man who comes here on a mission like this will be flayed alive.

As an Englishman, particularly as an Englishman standing upon foreign soil, I am, of course, prepared to argue that every war we have ever fought was a purely defensive war. But I am obliged to take cognizance of the quite simple historical fact that for about one thousand years, since the time indeed when Norwegians ravaged our coasts and a certain Scandinavian landed at Hastings in 1066, every war we have fought happens to have been fought in other people's countries. Now if defense means merely keeping burglars out of the house, what were we doing on all those occasions in other people's houses?

Wherever it [Democracy] has had free play in the ancient world or in the modern, in the old hemisphere or the new, a thirst for empire, and a readiness for aggressive war, has always marked it.

It seems incredible that the Russian Government should plunge Europe into war in order to make themselves the protectors of the Serbians.

No despot ever flung forth his legions to die in foreign conquest, no privilege-ruled nation ever erupted across its borders, to lock in death embrace with another, but behind them loomed the driving power of a population too large for its boundaries and its natural resources.

Man is the only Patriot. He sets himself apart in his own country, under his own flag, and sneers at the other nations, and keeps multitudinous uniformed assassins on hand at heavy expense to grab slices of other people's countries, and keep them from grabbing slices of his. And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for the universal brotherhood of man - with his mouth.

Annexation of new land for America is injudicious in policy and wicked in fact.

The German people mistrust the Anglo-Saxons in the belief that they begrudge Germany her legitimate economic expansion…. Between Germany and France the gulf of mistrust is much deeper… the historical controversy between the two neighbors appears in French eyes as merely the result of permanent Teutonic aggression throughout the centuries.

Many Germans dream of revenge today.

If Signor Mussolini should lay claim to the domination of the Mediterranean, he would find us ready to combat such childishness.

Japan has won a reputation in certain quarters of the world for being imperialistic and aggressive. No impartial student of politics can deny that there were grounds for the criticism.

Fascism believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. It thus repudiates the doctrine of Pacifism -- born of a renunciation of the struggle and an act of cowardice in the face of sacrifice. War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have courage to meet it

Their determination to project power was the same impulse that pushed settlers across prairies and over mountains, wrested rich territories from Mexico, crushed Native American resistance, and drew the United States into wars from Central America to Siberia. It remains potent.

Of course the people don't want war... It is the leaders...who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along...all you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.