"Of course Your Excellency will deny this story," Hale blurted out. Zimmermann turned to him. "I cannot deny it," he replied glumly; "it is true."23 - Arthur Herman

Lenin's urging, had repudiated the entirety of Russia's foreign debt, from both the war and before the war: almost nine billion dollars,

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

A. J. P. Taylor who said that the historian's inevitable task is to decide whether something that happened in history was a Good Thing or a Bad Thing.