Bill Downs - War Quotes

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Driving to the studio today, I passed a big football field. I had to look twice before I realized that the stands were jammed with people... thousands of them. I looked out on the playing field, and there wasn't a soul. And then I realized that this crowd were war prisoners. I went into the field, and there was a quiet, docile atmosphere about the place…the sort of atmosphere you get in an American football crowd between halves. Germans of every description sat quietly, chatting to their neighbors and doing nothing in particular. Bored British sentries stood around looking like ushers equipped with Tommy guns. It was that quiet.

Bill Downs
Nations don't make twelve-inch guns to shoot quail. They don't drop bombs in mid-Pacific lagoons to kill fish. War is inevitable until the time comes when nation give up their sovereign right to make war and learn to settle their problems peacefully.

Bill Downs
Go back, go back, you silly bastards. This ain't our kind of war. This one is for the birds.

Bill Downs
In Russia during the war, you seldom spoke of Communism versus capitalism. In the first place, we were then comrades-in-arms and the subject was not important. In the second place, the official line of the inevitable struggle between capitalism and Communism was a bit confused. Marshal of the Soviet Union Josef Stalin had indicated to Commander-in-Chief Franklin Roosevelt that the two systems could live in Diplomat-at-Large Wendell Willkie's One World side by side.

Bill Downs