My friends you want a speech, but I cannot make one at this time. I must have opportunity to think. Undue importance might be give...n to what I said. However, there is one thing I will do. You have a band with you. There's one piece of music I've always liked. Heretofore, it hasn't seemed the proper thing to use it in the North. But now by virtue of my prerogative as President and Commander-In-Chief of the Army and Navy, I declare it contraband of war and our lawful prize. I ask the band to play "Dixie."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final Note stating that, unless we heard from them by... 11 o'clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What armies and how much of war I have seen, what thousands of marching troops, what fields of slain, what prisons, what hospitals..., what ruins, what cities in ashes, what hunger and nakedness, what orphanages, what widowhood, what wrongs and what vengeance.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The one thing that enslaves people more than any other to the servitude of war is nationalism--the patriotic cant--Religious cant ...is feeble; its on a down slope fighting to hold territory--but the patriotism--all the noxious influences of the world seem to have thrown their tentacles about it--Its the mask of all the trade-greed & the glory-breed--and the asininity that makes people insist on sacrificing themselves on the nearest altar--no matter how brazen the God above it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Still, I'm much happier here, really in it than I've been for an age. People don't hate much at the front; there's no one to hate,... except the poor devils across the way, whom they [the French soldiers] know to be as miserable as themselves. They don't talk hypocritical bosh about the beauty & manliness of war: they feel in their souls that if they weren't cowards they would have ended the thing long ago--by going home, where they want to be. And lastly and best, they don't jabber about atrocities--of course, everyone commits them--though about one story in a million that reaches our blessed Benighted States is true.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Behold now this vast city; a city of refuge, the mansion house of liberty, encompassed and surrounded with his protection; the sho...p of war hath not there more anvils and hammers waking, to fashion out the plates and instruments of armed justice in defence of beleaguered truth, than there be pens and hands there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The inevitableness, the idealism, and the blessing of war, as an indispensable and stimulating law of development, must be repeate...dly emphasized.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »