Adahoonzou II Quotes

At the Imperial Conference on December 1, it was decided to make war against England and the United States.

The United States is proud of her remoteness from the old world, her freedom from entanglement in its quarrels, her isolation. Yet in her relatively very short history as an independent state she has fought at least six foreign wars while her troops have landed on foreign soil on nearly a hundred occasions. Not one of those wars was for the purpose of defending American soil.

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?

In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.

Every war results from the struggle for markets and spheres of influence, and every war is sold to the public by professional liars and totally sincere religious maniacs, as a Holy Crusade to save God and Goodness from Satan and Evil.

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 ...

... the notion that the greater the preparation for war the smaller the probability of its occurrence might well appear a reductio ad absurdum of militarism, implying, as it does, that the only way to secure an eternal world peace is to concentrate the entire energy of all nations upon the art of war ...

Afford the native tribes of Africa the protection of British arms against the aggression of Her Majesty’s subjects.

The Xhosa have been beaten just enough to increase their caution, to improve their knowledge of war, and to teach them safer and more efficacious ways of attacking us.

I was not a conscientious objector. I was a political objector. I believed that finance and commercial rivalry had led to war.

However much we may sympathize with a small nation confronted by a big and powerful neighbor, we cannot in all circumstances undertake to involve the whole British Empire in a war simply on her account. If we have to fight it must be on larger issues than that.

You help us pay for the war we’ll fight; we’ll launch it while you’re asleep at night. We don’t need friends all around the world; We’ll buy our friends with our flag unfurled, And spread our arms on a global scale To show the world that we still prevail. Oh, we’re not leaders inspiring peace, But we’re in power as the world’s police. So pay your tax for our little war, And we’ll not ask for any more. This year!

I can hardly repress our press and our people too. They are thirsting for war against England.

The only way to save our empires from the encroaching of the people is to engage in war, and thus substitute national passions for social aspirations.

I am sending you out against the whites, who have invaded Zululand and driven away our cattle.

For four hundred years the foreign policy of England has to oppose the strongest, most aggressive, most dominating Power on the Continent …

Even the predatory wars of the most backward African tribes can be reduced to economic causes.

God made war for all the world; and every kingdom, large or small, has practiced it, more or less, though perhaps in a manner unlike, and upon different principles. Did Weebaigah sell slaves? No; his prisoners were all killed to a man. What else could he have done with them? Was he to let them remain in this country to cut the throats of his subjects? This would have been wretched policy indeed; which, had it been adopted, the Dahoman name would have long ago been extinguished, instead of becoming as it is at this day, the terror of surrounding nations.

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.

What booty you take or prisoners, whether men, women or children, you may send to Seabrook fort, to be kept and improved for the advantage of the colonies

Isn’t it clear that the British government has no policy of our own in Iraq and that we are totally dependent on the policy of the United States?

English merchants were responsible for shipping over three million slaves (half the total) from Africa to the slave plantations of the Caribbean and southern USA, before their trade's abolition by parliament in 1807

The same contending powers behind the First and Second World Wars are now preparing the Third World War. This we should know, and we as the sons and daughters of an oppressed country are part of the loot.

The impression is given that this and other countries are at war with one another. They are not. Their governments, composed of men and responsible only to the men of each country, and backed by the majority of men who have caught the war and glory fever, have declared war on one another. The women of all these countries have not been consulted as to whether they would have war or not. If men deliberately shut out women, the peace-loving sex, from their rightful share in ruling their countries, then all the appeals and sentiments and prayers will be of no avail in preventing hostilities.

What was new in the imperialism of Germany and Japan in World War II was the far more ruthless treatment of subject populations.