Military Leaders Of World War I

"thumb|O.M.G. (Oh! My God) - Letter to Winston Churchill|Churchill, 9 Sept 1917We want brave men! ANY BLOODY FOOL CAN OBEY ORDERS!"

"I went the whole hog, totus porcus."

"It is an historical fact that the British Navy stubbornly resists change."

"The Frontiers of England are the Coasts of the Enemy."

"As age increases, audacity leaks out and caution comes in."

"...and you may sleep quietly in your beds."

"The Essence of War is Violence. Moderation in War is Imbecility."

"EQUAL OPPORTUNITY FOR ALL.... Nature is no respecter of birth or money power when she lavishes her mental and physical gifts. We fight God when our Social System dooms the brilliant clever child of a poor man to the same level as his father."

"The best scale for an experiment is 12 inches to the foot."

"Big risks bring big success!"

"Sea fighting is pure common sense. The first of all its necessities is SPEED, so as to be able to fight--When you like, Where you like, and How you like."

"The luxuries of the present are the necessities of the future. Our grandfathers never had a bath-room...."

"Favouritism was the secret of our efficiency in the old days and got us young Admirals.....Going by seniority saves so much trouble. Buggins's turn has been our ruin and will be disastrous hereafter!"

"The humanising of war? You might as well talk about the humanizing of Hell!...... The essence of war is violence! Moderation in war is imbecility!..... I am not for war, I am for peace! That is why I am for a supreme Navy....... The supremacy of the British Navy is the best security for peace in the world...... If you rub it in both at home and abroad that you are ready for instant war.....and intend to be first in and hit your enemy in the belly and kick him when he is down and boil your prisoners in oil (if you take any), and torture his women and children, then people will keep clear of you."

"Favouritism is the secret of efficiency"

"“You have got through the difficult business, now you dig, dig, dig, until you are safe.”"

"Sir Ian Hamilton, Orders from the Gallipoli campaign , April 25th, 1914"

"If a man divides the whole of his work into two branches and delegates his responsibility, freely and properly, to two experienced heads of branches he will not have enough to do. The occasions when they would have to refer to him would be too few to keep him fully occupied. If he delegates to three heads he will be kept fairly busy whilst six heads of branches will give most bosses a ten hours' day. Those data are the results of centuries of the experiences of soldiers."

"In one respect the Germans came remarkably close to their objective of annihilating the enemy. The total number of French dead by the end of December 1914 was 265,000; indeed their casualties of all types had already reached 385,000 by September 10. Not only that, but the French had lost a tenth of their field artillery and half a million rifles. Worst of all, a very substantial part of their heavy industrial capacity was now under enemy control. The puzzle is why these heavy losses did not lead to a complete collapse - as had happened in 1870 and would happen again in 1940. Some credit must certainly go to the imperturbable French Commander-in-Chief Joseph Joffre, and particularly to his ruthless purge of senescent or incompetent French commanders as the crisis unfolded. Fundamentally, however, time was against Moltke for the simple reason that the French could redeploy more swiftly than the Germans could advance once they had left their troop trains. On August 23 the three German armies on Moltke's right wing constituted twenty-four divisions, facing just seventeen and a half Entente divisions; by September 6 they were up against forty-one. The chance of a decisive victory was gone, if it had ever existed. At the Marne, the failure of Moltke's gamble was laid bare. He himself suffered a nervous breakdown."

"I don't know who won the Battle of the Marne. But if it had been lost, I know who would have lost it."

"Soldiers of Verdun! It is your valour which has made this possible, for your heroic resistance was the indispensable condition to our success. Upon it still depends our future victory. Upon all the vast theatres of Europe, thanks to you, there now exists a situation out of which will spring the definite triumph of our cause. I make one more appeal to your courage, your ardour, your spirit of sacrifice, your love of country. Hold fast and strive with all your might to shatter the last desperate efforts of an enemy now at bay."

"The positions occupied by our troops presented a military situation unique in history. The force, in short, held a line possessing every possible military defect."

"As a soldier who has spent a quarter of his life in the study of the science of arms, let me tell you I went into the British Army believing that if you want peace you must prepare for war. I believe now that if you prepare thoroughly and efficiently for war, you get war."

"We want the mathematical genius - there is work for him. We want the literary genius - there is work for him, especially in my office. We want the scientific brain - there is more than enough work for him. We want the man of brains and we want the man of common sense and little brain. We want the man of initiative and the man of action, the methodical man and even the crank. We open our ranks widely to all."

"The development of air power in its broadest sense, and including the development of all means of combating missiles that travel through the air, whether fired or dropped, is the first essential to our survival in war."

"The Great War only produced two things of importance, barbed wire and Trenchard."

"Józef Piłsudski will remain in the memory of our nation as the founder of independence and as the victorious leader who fended off a foreign assault that threatened the whole of Europe and its civilization. Józef Piłsudski served his country well, and has entered our history forever."

"I am not going to dictate to you what you write about my life and work. I only ask that you not make me out to be a 'whiner and sentimentalist.'"

"Only the sword now carries any weight in the balance for the destiny of a nation."

"All that we can gain in the west depends on the Entente — on the extent to which it may wish to squeeze Germany, [while in the east] there are doors that open and close, and it depends on who forces them open and how far."

"Comrades, I took the red tram of socialism to the stop called Independence, and that's where I got off. You may keep on to the final stop if you wish, but from now on let's address each other 'Mister' [rather than continue using the socialist term of address, 'Comrade']!"

"Poland can have nothing to do with the restoration of the old Russia. Anything rather than that – even Bolshevism."

"To be defeated and not submit, is victory; to be victorious and rest on one's laurels, is defeat."

"To want to, is to be able to."

"[About Russians] They are all more or less disguised imperialists, including revolutionists. The trait of these minds, always longing for the absolute, is a vivid centralism. They loathe varieties, cannot conciliate dissonances - such things dull their will and imagination to the extent that they cannot combine varieties into one whole; they reject even the idea of conscious social organizations. [...] Let everything happen by itself, vividly - that is the wisest solution according to them, because it is the simplest and the easiest. Which is why there are so many anarchists among them. A strange thing, but I have never met any republicans among Russians!"

"Bolshevism is a disease which is peculiar to Russia. It will never grow deep roots in any countries which are not entirely Russian."

"You, the Poles, have a funny nature. When the people going along the road are attacked by a dog with its insistent and noisy barking, you immediately feel like jumping off the vehicle, standing on all fours and starting to bark back at it. We, in the Vilnius region, let the dog bark because that is what its canine nature is like but we do not stop out journey because of its canine barking and without any war against dogs we calmly continue our journey until we reach our destination. It seems that you care more about barking more than the dog does and about winning the war with any lousy puppy than about reaching the destination quickly."

"[About Poland] A great nation, only the people are cunts."

"There can be no independent Poland without an independent Ukraine."

"He was the only great man to emerge on the scene during the [First World] war."

"In other cases, it was the army that seized power. General Josef Pilsudski, Poland's Cromwell, marched on Warsaw in 1926 to become de facto dictator until his death in 1935, when much, though not all, of his power passed to another soldier, Edward Smigly-Rydz."

"[H]e was king of our hearts and ruler of our will. Through half a century of his life’s travails, he took into his possession heart after heart, soul after soul, until he had drawn the whole of Poland under the purple of his royal spirit.[...] He gave Poland freedom, boundaries, power and respect."

"Whoever had the choice, would choose an eagle's nest on the cliffs in place of a home. May he know how to sleep, though his eyes be red from the thunder, and listen to the cries of the wild spirits in the murmur of the pines."

"A white gunboat, seeing our first advance, had hurried up the river in the hopes of being of some assistance. From the crow's nest its commander, Beatty, watched the whole event with breathless interest. Many years passed before I met this officer or knew that he had witnessed our gallop. When we met, I was First Lord of the Admiralty and he the youngest Admiral in the Royal Navy. "What did it look like?" I asked him. "What was your prevailing impression?" "It looked," said Admiral Beatty, "like plum duff: brown currants scattered about in a great deal of suet.""

"There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today."

"We learned yesterday that the cause of the United Nations had suffered a most grievous loss. (Hear, hear.) It is my duty to express the feelings of this House, and to pay my tribute to the memory of a great Polish patriot and staunch ally General Sikorski. (Sympathetic cheers.) His death in the air crash at Gibraltar was one of the heaviest strokes we have sustained. From the first dark days of the Polish catastrophe and the brutal triumph of the German war machine until the moment of his death on Sunday night he was the symbol and the embodiment of that spirit which has borne the Polish nation through centuries of sorrow and is unquenchable by agony. When the organized resistance of the Polish Army in Poland was beaten down, General Sikorski's first thought was to organize all Polish elements in France to carry on the struggle, and a Polish army of over 80,000 men presently took its station on the French fronts. This army fought with the utmost resolution in the disastrous battles of 1940. Part fought its way out in good order into Switzerland, and is today interned there. Part marched resolutely to the sea, and reached this island. Here General Sikorski had to begin his work again. He persevered, unwearied and undaunted. The powerful Polish forces which have now been accumulated and equipped in this country and in the Middle East, to the latter of whom his last visit was paid, now await with confidence and ardor the tasks which lie ahead. General Sikorski commanded the devoted loyalty of the Polish people now tortured and struggling in Poland itself. He personally directed that movement of resistance which has maintained a ceaseless warfare against German oppression in spite of sufferings as terrible as any nation has ever endured. (Hear, hear.) This resistance will grow in power until, at the approach of liberating armies, It will exterminate the German ravagers of the homeland. I was often brought into contact with General Sikorski in those years of war. I had a high regard for him, and admired his poise and calm dignity amid so many trials and baffling problems. He was a man of remarkable pre-eminence, both as a statesman and a soldier, His agreement with Marshal Stalin of July 30th, 1941, was an outstanding example of his political wisdom. Until the moment of his death he lived in the conviction needs of the common struggle and in the faith that a better Europe will arise in which a great and independent Poland will play an honorable part. (Cheers.) We British here and throughout the Commonwealth and Empire, who declared war on Germany because of Hitler's invasion of Poland and in fulfillment of our guarantee, feel deeply for our Polish allies in their new loss. We express our sympathy to them, we express our confidence in their immortal qualities, and we proclaim our resolve that General Sikorski's work as Prime Minister and Commander-in-Chief shall not have been done in vain. (Cheers.) The House would, I am sure, wish also that its sympathy should be conveyed to Madame Sikorski, who dwells here in England, and whose husband and daughter have both been simultaneously killed on duty."

"Today it is time for strong and courageous people because only they can achieve victory and rid the world of tyranny."

"One experienced minute sometimes teaches us more than a lifetime."

"We, the Poles, do not understand war as a symbol but as a real fight."

"There is no happiness without patriotism."