Quotes About Diplomacy

He reakons that all declarations of war ought to be made into a kind of festival, with entrance tickets and music, like they have at bullfights. Then the ministers and generals of the two countries would have to come into the ring, wearing boxer shorts, and armed with rubber trunchons, and have a go at each other. Whoever is left on his feet, his country is declared the winner. That would be simpler and fairer than things are out here, where the wrong people are fighting each other.

Tjaden comes back. He is still worked up and joins in the debate again straight away by asking how a war starts in the first place. 'Usually when one country insults another one badly,' answers Kropp, a little patronizingly. But Tjaden isn't going to be put off. 'A country? I don't get it. A German mountain can't insult a French mountain, or a river, or a forest, or a cornfield.

Kropp invece è un pensatore. Le dichiarazioni di guerra, egli propone, dovrebbero essere una specie di festa popolare, con biglietti d'ingresso e banda, come per i combattimenti dei tori. Poi, nell'arena, i ministri e i generali dei due stati avversari, in calzoncini da bagno e armati di manganello, si azzuffano. Vince il paese di quello che caccia l'altro sotto. Sarebbe assai più semplice e meglio di adesso, che s'ammazzano tra loro persone che non c'entrano. La proposta piace.

Dodd listened intently as Hitler portrayed Germany as a well-meaning, peace-seeking nation whose modest desire for equality of armaments was being opposed by other nations. 'It was not the address of a thinker,' Dodd wrote in his diary, 'but of an emotionalist claiming that Germany had in no way been responsible for the World War and that she was the victim of wicked enemies.

why were the State Department and President Roosevelt so hesitant to express in frank terms how they really felt about Hitler at a time when such expressions clearly could have had a powerful effect on his prestige in the world?

It instructed Germany's ambassador in Mexico to offer Mexican president Venustiano Carranza an alliance, to take effect if the new submarine campaign drew America into the war. "Make war together," Zimmermann proposed. "Make peace together." In return, Germany would take measures to help Mexico seize previously held lands—"lost territory"—in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.

When the conversation turned to Germany's persecution of Jews, Colonel House urged Dodd to do all he could "to ameliorate Jewish sufferings" but added a caveat: "the Jews should not be allowed to dominate economic or intellectual life in Berlin as they have done for a long time." In this, Colonel House expressed a sentiment pervasive in America, that Germany's Jews were at least partly responsible for their own troubles. Dodd

Americans coming to Germany will find themselves surrounded by influences of the Government and

Contrary to the predictions of many students of international problems, I feel fairly certain that we shall not have war in the near future.

The article called Dodd a "small, dry, nervous, pedantic man Ã¢â'¬Â¦ whose appearance at diplomatic and social functions inevitably called forth yawning boredom.

In his memoir-like history The World Crisis, 1916–1918, he said of Wilson, "What he did in April, 1917, could have been done in May, 1915. And if done then what abridgment of the slaughter; what sparing of the agony; what ruin, what catastrophes would have been prevented; in how many million homes would an empty chair be occupied today; how different would be the shattered world in which victors and vanquished alike are condemned to live!

After noting that Germany's submarine campaign had sharply reduced traffic from America, Churchill told Runciman: "For our part, we want the traffic—the more the better; and if some of it gets into trouble, better still.

Far from a clamor for war, there existed a widespread, if naive, belief that war of the kind that had convulsed Europe in past centuries had become obsolete—that the economies of nations were so closely connected with one another that even if a war were to begin, it would end quickly.

failed Munich Agreement. Churchill, one of Chamberlain's foremost critics, called the agreement "a total and unmitigated defeat.

The war began with the geopolitical equivalent of a brush fire.

scarify, a six-hundred-year-old word that only Churchill would use in crucial diplomatic correspondence—" would scarify their names for a thousand years of history.

Unhappily, it depends upon the attitude of a single submarine commander whether America will or will not declare war.

that it was "most important to attract neutral shipping

In Russia, as I sat there day after day wearing headphones, listening to the interpreter struggle to make our words relevant, I wondered if we could establish meaningful rapport with a nation that had never seen raisins dance in dark glasses on TV...never had a garage sale.

Wars did not cease in the twentieth century, notwithstanding the growth of international trade: it was not GATT but MAD, mutually assured destruction, which prevented large-scale wars after 1945.

French, the language of diplomacy. Spanish, the language of bureaucracy.

We never argued about these things because I kept my mouth shut about things I did not like.

En haukar deila við aungvan.

The Parade is not diplomacy," Chris pointed out. "It's celebration.