To do that would mean, not merely to be defeated, but to acknowledge defeat- and the difference between these two things is what keeps the world goin… - Upton Sinclair

He forgot how he himself had been blind, a short time ago — after the fashion of all crusaders since the original ones, who set out to spread the gospel of Brotherhood by force of arms.

The French delegates now wore a cynical smile as they argued before the commissions; they had their assurance that their armies were going to hold the Rhineland and the Sarre, and that a series of buffer states were to be set up between Germany and Russia, all owing their existence to France, all financed with the savings of the French peasants, and munitioned by Zaharoff, alias Schneider-Creusot. France and Britain were going to divide Persia and Mesopotamia and Syria and make a deal for the oil and the laying of pipelines. Italy was to take the Adriatic, Japan was to take Shantung — all such matters were being settled among sensible men.

Our friends were not poetical, and the sight suggested to them no metaphors of human destiny; they thought only of the wonderful efficiency of it all.