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Meanwhile the subject peoples of the Austrian Empire were starting to think they might rule themselves—which was why the Bosnian nationalist Gavrilo Princip had shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo.
In every country, those who were against war had been overruled. The Austrians had attacked Serbia when they might have held back; the Russians had mobilized instead of negotiating; the Germans had refused to attend an international conference to settle the issue; the French had been offered the chance to remain neutral and had spurned it; and now the British were about to join in when they might easily have remained on the sidelines.
President Wilson says a leader must treat public opinion the way a sailor deals with the wind, using it to blow the ship in one direction or another, but never trying to go directly against it.”
Maud was editor of The Soldier’s Wife, a small-circulation newspaper that campaigned for better treatment for the dependents of servicemen. A Conservative member of Parliament had described the journal as “a pestilential nuisance to the government,”
It was not only soldiers who died, Walter thought worriedly.
Brave words came easily in the dark. Daylight might tell a different story.
A numbered list was always a good idea: people felt they had to listen until you got to the end.
A baby was like a revolution, Grigori thought: you could start one, but you could not control how it would turn out.
“Malheur la guerre,” they said. “Pour nous, pour vous, pour tout le monde.” “Miserable war—for us, for you, for everyone.”
His talent was to express his readers’ most stupid and ignorant prejudices as if they made sense, so that the shameful seemed respectable. That was why they bought the paper.
“The ability to listen to smart people who disagree with you is a rare talent—but a president should have it.
“Wilson said: ‘At Château-Thierry we saved the world.’”
‘If you owe a hundred dollars, the bank has you in its power; but if you owe a million dollars, you have the bank in your power.’”
“Because in the end the taxpayers of every country will pay for the war—but the politician who tells them that will never win another election.”
Gavrilo Princip,
Today a loaf of black bread was 127 billion marks.
At Tŷ Gwyn, Ethel remembered, whenever she encountered Fitz in the corridor, she had had to stand aside, up against the wall, with her eyes cast down as he passed by. Now she stood in the middle of the landing, holding Lloyd’s hand firmly, and stared at Fitz. “Good morning, Lord Fitzherbert,” she said, and she tilted her chin up defiantly.
