War Outbreak Quotes

At 8:23 there seemed every chance of a lasting alliance starting between Florin and Guilder. At 8:24 the two nations were very close to war.

We did not cover ourselves with glory. We predicted the day before the war broke out that it was not going to break out.

The history of the outbreak of war 100 years ago and of the collapse of the fragile balance of power in Europe in the summer of 1914 is a disturbing tale of the failure of the governing elites and the military, but also of diplomacy.

The nations slithered over the brink into the boiling cauldron of war without any trace of apprehension or dismay... The nations backed their machines over the precipice not one of them wanted war, certainly not on this scale

The World War broke out with such elemental violence, and with such resort to all means for leading or misleading public opinion, that no time was available for reflection and consideration.

The essence of war is fire, famine, and pestilence. They contribute to its outbreak; they are among its weapons; they become its consequences.

I have never seen an adequate description anywhere of the amazement, the uncomprehending horror of the bulk of the American people which preceded the firing of that gun at Sumter. Politicians or far-sighted leaders on both sides knew what was coming. And it is they who have written histories of the war. But to the easy-going millions, busied with their farms or shops, the onrushing disaster was as inexplicable as an earthquake. Their protest arose from sea to sea like the clamor of a gigantic hive of frightened bees.

Remember how the first world war broke out. It broke out as a result of the desire to redivide the world.

If Japan had been near to either England or France, war would have broken out long ago.

He [Norman Angell] wrote these words in 1910. One politician after another lined up to praise the book. Four years later, the same men started World War I.

In Washington, we had a grieving President Wilson, very, very much a lonely, grieving man. He had lost his wife of many years in August 1914 at about the same time the war broke out in Europe.

We have to ask if it is once again the summer of 1914. Small acts of terror in the Middle East, in South Asia, could lead to cataclysm as they did in Sarajevo.

A torch lighted in the forests of America set all Europe in conflagration.

Reason died in 1914, November 1914 ... after that everybody began to rave.

I knew it to be very doubtful whether the Cabinet, Parliament, and the country would take this view on the outbreak of war, and through the whole of this week I had in view the probable contingency that we should not decide at the critical moment to support France.

Fortunately, just when things were blackest, the war broke out.

At a certain moment, Yugoslavia stopped being rational, and then you end up going to war.

In the twelve months immediately preceding the outbreak; of war, the quantity of spirits, both domestic and imported released for sale in Canada, amounted to over three and a half million proof gallons.