Winston Churchill - The World Crisis (1923)

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The choice was clearly open: crush them with vain and unstinted force, or try to give them what they want. These were the only alternatives, and though each had ardent advocates, most people were unprepared for either. Here indeed was the Irish spectre – horrid and inexorcisable.

Winston Churchill
Victory was to be bought so dear as to be almost indistinguishable from defeat.

Winston Churchill
Jellicoe was the only man on either side who could lose the war in an afternoon.

Winston Churchill
The Great War differed from all ancient wars in the immense power of the combatants and their fearful agencies of destruction, and from all modern wars in the utter ruthlessness with which it was fought. … Europe and large parts of Asia and Africa became one vast battlefield on which after years of struggle not armies but nations broke and ran. When all was over, Torture and Cannibalism were the only two expedients that the civilized, scientific, Christian States had been able to deny themselves: and they were of doubtful utility.

Winston Churchill
Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge.

Winston Churchill
There is required for the composition of a great commander not only massive common sense and reasoning power, not only imagination, but also an element of legerdemain, an original and sinister touch, which leaves the enemy puzzled as well as beaten.

Winston Churchill
Nothing will bring American sympathy along with us so much as American blood shed in the field.

Winston Churchill
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.

Winston Churchill
Building slow destroyers ! One might as well breed slow race horses.

Winston Churchill
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.

Winston Churchill
The Turkish Government began and ruthlessly carried out the infamous massacre and deportation of Armenians in Asia Minor. The clearance of the race from Asia Minor was about as complete as such an act, on a scale so great, could well be.

Winston Churchill