Walker Downer Hines Quotes
When Germany was defeated in 1918, the Armistice was granted upon the understanding that Germany would be required to pay for the damage sustained by the civilian populations in the victorious countries. The ascertainment of the amount of that damage was of course extraordinarily difficult …. political embarrassments would have been encountered in fixing the precise amount, for passions were running so high that any indemnity within the bounds of reason would have been too low to satisfy popular expectations.
The railroads were nationalized for WWI and he ran them all as a government official. There have been political situations like this one where public opinion was so intense and extreme that any action that satisfied public opinion would have very negative aspects and/or be unrealistic or impossible while realistic solutions are unacceptable to public opinion. Usually, the reaction of the politicians is to punt and simply not deal with the issue or problem but claim that they are seeking a solution.
Walker Downer Hines, 1870-1934, Business Executive & Peace Activist, Director General of the United States Railroad Administration, “Peace Agencies and Politics”, Foreign Affairs, December 1923
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Nicolson was an eyewitness to the proceedings.
The Germans pretended to maintain the treaty and when the French totally evacuated the Rhineland, Hitler started his preparation for WWII and a little later invaded France. Clemenceau had been snookered.
Germany had just attacked Russia with whom it had a treaty. For a while, Hitler paid little attention to Italy and just gave their “ally” orders and instructions. Italian public opinion was concerned about the same question. See {627973} .
This illustrates one of the reasons that the Israeli Arab conflict has been unsolvable over the years. A thousand years ago, the Arabs were a leading intellectual and military power in the world. The rest of the world has moved ahead and they have actually retrogressed. So the Arabs seek dignity which is very elusive. They have never wanted to negotiate terms with Israel when they have been weak and feel defeated. So the pattern has been that they feel they cannot negotiate for justice as they are too week. So periodically they attack Israel which has always defeated them and hoped that after the Arab defeat, permanent negotiations for peace could take place. But the Arabs were feeling too weak. So they just repeated all their extreme demands. After a few years, they would try another attack, lose again and the cycle would repeat. The Israelis fear that if the Arabs every won a war, the Arab moderates might be willing to reasonably negotiate, the extremists would want to continue the fighting and “drive the Israelis into the sea” as they have so often threatened.
After WWI, the Germans were reluctant to make the reparation payments that they had agreed to in the WWI peace treaty. The French, to “motivate” the Germans, occupied the German Ruhr Valley—an area that contained very important German heavy industry and coal mines that could not function under the occupation. See {640090}.
The pressure on the military to produce positive results has existed in almost every war America has fought. In combat Patton may have been the most aggressive American general who produced very quick results. Yet he too felt the pressure.
