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“I only realized that the situation was serious when I saw a working-class passenger on the first-class deck,”
“Doctors and solicitors might be invited to garden parties, though never of course to lunch or dinner.”
She held herself with Junoesque grace and walked with the stiff, awkward gait of a cow.
(“Is this what they made me abdicate for?” exclaimed the old Emperor, Ferdinand, living under medical supervision in Prague, when he heard the news. “I could have lost those provinces myself.”)
eyes like badly rinsed glassware.
“If the Monarchy is doomed to perish, let it at least go down decorously,” he said
the “sausage machine” at the front, so-called, Graves explains, because “it was fed with live men, churned out corpses, and remained firmly screwed in place.”
It was dedicated to socialism as St. Augustine in his younger days was dedicated to chastity: ardently, but not yet.
Parvus had his critics, but no one has ever accused him of lacking either scope or originality.
The story is fascinating in a way, but like so much Russian history, it reads as if it had been laboriously contrived by some third-rate dramatist with no flair for the emotional authenticity of his scenes, and few scruples about the plausibility of his intrigue; the kind of tragic playwright who can take his nemesis but never, never leave it alone.
The French were even more confused about what was happening in Berlin, and at one point Erzberger had to explain that a telegram ending with the words, THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR SCHLUSS, did not indicate the emergence of a new revolutionary leader in the German capital since “schluss” was merely German telegraphese for “stop.”)
The Austrian Empire and with it the Austrians, were international too early and national too late.
has been said that he had one illusion, France, and one disillusion, mankind, including Frenchmen.
Next to unscrambling an egg, it is true, the hardest task one can set oneself in Central and Eastern Europe, is to draw national borders that coincide even approximately with the ethnic and linguistic frontiers.
Technical progress would no doubt continue but the belief that it would contribute to man’s betterment was shattered beyond repair.
