August 1914 Quotes & Sayings

THE TRAIN CARRYING THE BODY OF ELLEN AXSON Wilson pulled into the station at Rome, Georgia, at 2:30 in the afternoon, Tuesday, August 11, 1914, under gunmetal skies, amid the peal of bells. — Erik Larson

In August 1914, my father was called to war and then taken prisoner. He died in captivity in Germany on March 27, 1915. My youth - indeed, my entire life - was deeply marked by this, directly and indirectly. — Maurice Allais

We were still looking upon war in the light of Victorian and previous wars," Morton wrote later, adding that he and his brother had failed to appreciate that the "nature and method of war had changed for all time in August 1914 and that no war in the future would exclude anybody, civilians, men, women or children. — Erik Larson

It's an universal law
intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

These, in the day when heaven was falling, The hour when earth's foundations fled, Followed their mercenary calling And took their wages and are dead. The British regulars who made the retreat from Mons, beginning August 24, 1914. — A.E. Housman

Britain, the first industrial nation, had offered the world a remarkable public experiment in liberal, capitalist democracy whose success was premised upon free trade and world peace. Tuesday, 4 August 1914 brought that experiment to an abrupt halt. — Kenneth O. Morgan

Bernard Vonnegut, named for his paternal grandfather, was born August 29, 1914. He was a serious-looking little boy, even in informal photographs. — Charles J. Shields

Far from shocking the rulers of Europe, the war that erupted in August 1914 was widely anticipated, rigorously rehearsed, immensely resourced and meticulously planned. — Paul Ham

As the world stood on the brink of war in August 1914, the local paper of a small town in the west of Ireland took a stand: 'We give this solemn warning to Kaiser Wilhelm: The Skibbereen Eagle has its eye on you. — Robert Hutton

On 10 August 1914, five days after war was declared, Henry James, in a letter to a friend, expressed his revulsion at the prospect of war, and articulated the illusion that had preceded it:

'Black and hideous to me is the tragedy that gathers, and I'm sick beyond cure to have lived on to see it. You and I, the ornaments of our generation, should have been spared the wreck of our beliefs that through the long years we had seen civilization grow and the worst become impossible. — Henry James

Home before the leaves fall' the soldiers all shouted to their families in August 1914 as they marched toward an enemy who felt the same way. Both sides prayed to the same god for victory, with the equal assurance that that god was on their side. Like helpless actors in a play the script of which they seemed to have no role in writing, the leaders of the nations in 1914 helplessly played their parts as hourly Europe lurched toward war until all the major countries on the continent were sucked into a gigantic maelstrom that lasted for a horrendous 1,561 days, toppled four monarchies, destroyed a centuries-old social structure, decimated thousands of towns and villages, and left a number of dead that God alone could count. As for the misery the war caused, it cannot begin to be calculated. The dead can be buried and forgotten and the villages rebuilt, but for the survivors the mental scars could not be erased except by death. — Jamie H. Cockfield

August 2, 1914: Germany has declared war on Russia. Went swimming in the afternoon. — Franz Kafka