Arthur Herman Quotes

It was Wilson and Wilson alone who was the source of the problems that haunted the Peace Conference and, afterward, the Treaty of Versailles.

Acceding to Roosevelt's request would have cemented Wilson's standing with pro-war Republicans; turning him down alienated them permanently.

Wilson imagined a conversation among European leaders as they realized they had been wrong, and Wilson right, about the war. "Do you not think it likely that the world will some time turn to America and say, 'You were right, and we were wrong. You kept your heads when we lost ours . . . Now, in your self-possession, in your coolness, in your strength, may we not turn to you for counsel and for assistance?' "23

What Wilson aspired to be, to be hailed as the savior of his people and the light of humanity, Lenin had already achieved, but through unbelievable brutality and ruthlessness, and in a broken, starving country.

Bill Knudsen summed up simply and succinctly. "Progress is only made when fear is overcome by curiosity," he said. "If you are curious enough, you will not have any fear.

For Lenin, “self-determination” was a clarion call not for democracy and freedom but for revolt and bloodshed that would rock the capitalist imperialist order down to its foundations.

his version of American exceptionalism was one that put other nations at a severe disadvantage, as benighted and ignorant of the true course of history, which Wilson (and Wilson alone of world leaders) understood.

The term used to describe them was rednecks, a Scots border term meaning Presbyterians. Another was cracker, from the Scots word craik for "talk," meaning a loud talker or braggart. Both words became permanent parts of the American language, and a permanent part of the identity of the Deep South the Ulster Scots created.

William Jennings Bryan, told the president that "the basis of peace you propose is a new philosophy . . . that is, new to governments but as old as the Christian religion." It would put Wilson, Bryan averred, "among the Immortals."

Villagers still worship at shrines dedicated to gods and goddesses with roots in the Stone Age.12 Compared to this unequaled staying power, the British Raj seemed very transitory — like every other ruler or conqueror in Indian history. Gandhi made his own view plain in 1909, in his Hind Swaraj. "History is really a record of every interruption of the even working of love or of the soul," he wrote, "a record of the interruption of the course of nature."

if any one factor had kept the Entente nations able not only to fight the war but also to mount one massive offensive after another, it was America's contribution to their war effort, even though the United States remained neutral.

Being "civilized" had originally meant living under Roman, or "civil," law; but at the dawn of the Renaissance it had come to denote a way of life and law distinct from that of barbarism. It included prohibitions against murder, incest, and cannibalism; belief in a transcendant creative divinity; respect for property and legal contracts; and essential social institutions such as marriage, friendship, and the family.

The priceless copy of Magna Carta on display in the British pavilion was supposed to go home when the fair closed on October 1. After high-level discussion, however, officials thought it would be safer to let it stay in the United States.*

The telegram offered the promise that if Mexico allied itself with Germany, then Germany would help Mexico "regain by conquest her lost territory in Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico." It went even further, suggesting that Germany and Mexico also reach out to Japan, and encourage that country's defection from the Allied camp by "mediating a peace," while offering to let the Japanese join in the spoils taken from the breakup of America's presence along the Pacific.

The point of this book is that being Scottish is more than just a matter of nationality or place of origin or clan or even culture. It is also a state of mind, a way of viewing the world and our place in it.