America is the only nation in history which, miraculously, has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilisatio… - Georges Clemenceau

I will tell how the formula for the military consolidation of the victory of the three Allied and Associated nations was accepted on the proposal of England, only to be rejected without explanation by the American Senate, then quietly dropped by England, and left in oblivion by the French Government itself, without a word of protest. Not a word was uttered to recall that we had given our best blood, and that, after seeking for security in a better frontier, we had given up this strategical guarantee in exchange for the promise of Anglo-American military aid, which had been offered us as an exchange, and which was taken from us without compensation. Defeat substituted for victory, that was what we accepted without finding a single word to assert our right to our Continental life by the establishment of guarantees within the new order created by a most costly victory.

Everything I know I learned after I was thirty.

America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.