Nicholas Kristof Quotes

{627488} is an earlier quotation by a French Diplomat of very similar sentiment, but it is not known if Stalin had ever seen it. Also See Beilby Porteus {627489} for an 18th century variation. This is a puzzling phenomenon. In the United States if there is a plane crash and a hundred people are killed, it is page one and television lead news. But between 40,000 and 50,000 Americans die each year, one or two at a time in auto crashes, and it does not seem to be news. More American college students commit suicide (about 1200 a year) then are killed in mining or other industrial accidents, but the former we rarely hear about.

There's no proof that Stalin ever said this, but if he did, he would likely have been quoting a 1932 essay on French humor by the German journalist, satirist, and pacifist Kurt Tucholsky who wrote in a fiction story: "The war? I cannot find it to be so bad! The death of one man: this is a catastrophe. Hundreds of thousands of deaths: that is a statistic!".

This may have been the origin of the famous Stalin later quotation of very similar sentiment {616657}. No one is certain if Stalin had ever seen this work. Or he might have come upon it independently. The original source does not mention Massigli by name. However the description of the “Diplomat vom Quai d’Orsay” fits Massigli and his expertise so we attribute it to him. However, he was not the first to express this idea. The Anglican Bishop of London, Beilby Porteus, appears to have been the earliest—See {627489}.

On that single day, 27,000 French Soldiers were killed in battle. The French Generals, with little understanding of the then modern weapons and their power, sent whole divisions on a bayonet charge and they were just mowed down by the latest German versions of machine guns. They assumed that if they failed to take a German position defended by machine guns, it was only because they had not sent enough men to make the charge. Each successive failure produced another charge with even more men.

This audacious general and Queen of one of the Roman Provinces conquered most of the area including Egypt. Then she declared her independence from the Roman Empire itself. A master of multilateral coalition leading, she was able to attract nearby provinces to join her. The Roman Emperor Aurelian himself set out to subjugate Zenobia—the Roman, Latin name. In the first battle, the Romans won a tactical victory for some territory but lost many men. The Emperor asked Bat Zabbai to surrender, but she refused in this famous reply. She was counting on the fact that the Romans would not accept the high losses she was inflicting. See Aurelian’s letter to the Roman Senate {606345}. The Romans did pay the price and eventually conquered Bat Zabbai and brought her to Rome as a captive. However she was very much admired by Roman society and after she pledged to not revolt against Rome she was allowed to live in Rome—but not go back to Syria where she might raise another army. She became a major celebrity of Roman society and married a Roman Senator.

Turkey, following the French model, only allowed for one kind of citizen, and resisted the notion of different kinds of Turkish citizens. Some Turks of Kurdish extraction, however, wanted to maintain a separate identity, language, culture and sought political independence to join with the Kurds of Iraq and Iran to form their own nation. They used violence to attain their political ends. The Turkish response to this separatist threat was particularly heavy handed and the conflict escalated. The PKK lead by Ocalan killed thousands of Turks with bombings and other terrorist attacks, and the government troops also killed many trying to combat the terrorism. Finally, Ocalan was jailed, and the terrorism diminished.

The Congress had applauded his message vigorously.

The only soldier ever so honored

Slovenia was an unenthusiastic part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and whose young males were required to serve as soldiers in the Empire’s armies. See {641812} for more on Conrad’s part in the war.