World War One Quotes

In Flanders fields the poppies blow.

I wanted us to go to the Tories when we were strong…not in misfortune to be made an honest woman of.

Grief is like a bomber circling round and dropping its bombs each time the circle brings it overhead; physical pain is like the steady barrage on a trench in World War One, hours if it with no let-up for a moment. Thought is never static pain often is… is it not yet enough?

We have war when at least one of the parties to a conflict wants something more than it wants peace.

In the time of my parents, before World War One, most people who came to New Zealand from Europe were the more enterprising people; the people who were stronger mentally. It takes a certain amount of imagination to make a life on the other side of the world, the same imagination it takes to climb the tallest mountain.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place, and in the sky, The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard among the guns below.

We sit in calm, airy, silent rooms opening upon sunlit and embowered lawns, not a sound except of summer and of husbandry disturbs the peace; but seven million men, any ten thousand of whom could have annihilated the ancient armies, are in ceaseless battle from the Alps to the Ocean.

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

It was evident however that the lawyers would have to have their say….This also opened up a vista both lengthy and obscure.

This war proceeds along its terrible path by the slaughter of infantry…I say to myself every day. What is going on while we sit here, while we go away to dinner or home to bed? Nearly, 1000 – Englishmen, Britishers, and the other is America…Everything else is swept away.

God for a month of power & a good shorthand writer.

The old wars were decided by their episodes rather than by their tendencies. In this war, the tendencies are far more important than the episodes.

It is remarkable that Lord Esher should be so much astray…We must conclude that an uncontrollable fondness for fiction forbade him to forsake it for fact. Such constancy is a defect in an historian.

How many have gone? How many more to go? The Admiralty is fast asleep and lethargy & inertia are the order of the day. However everybody seems delighted – so there is nothing to be said. No plans, no enterprise, no struggle to aid the general cause. Just sit still on the spacious throne and snooze.

The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below

There is more blood than paint upon these hands. All those thousands of men killed. We thought it would be a little job, and so it might have been if it had begun in the right way.

…every offensive lost its force as it proceeded. It was like throwing a bucket of water over the floor. It first rushed forward, then soaked forward, and finally stopped altogether until another bucket could be brought.