You cannot wage war with sentimentality. The more ruthlessly war is conducted, the more merciful is it in fact, for it finishes the war the sooner. - Paul von Hindenburg

I have always been a Monarchist. In sentiment I still am. Now it is too late for me to change. But it is not for me to say that the new way is not the better way, the right way. So it may prove to be.

You are all young men and you have played to me the “March of Entry into Paris” well. But I hope that one day you will be playing this military march where you should, at the same spot where I was in 1870.

All we know is that, sometimes, in our battles with the Russians, we had to remove the mounds of enemy corpses from before our trenches, in order to get a clear field of fire against fresh assaulting waves.