Marlborough Quotes

“Battles are the principal milestones in secular history. Modern opinion resents this uninspiring truth, and historians often treat the decisions of the field as incidents in the dramas of politics and diplomacy. But great battles, won or lost, change the entire course of events, create new standards of values, new moods, new atmospheres, in armies and in nations, to which all must conform.”
― Winston S. Churchill, Marlborough: His Life and Times, 1936

“We see how strong was the structure of Christendom in these times and with what restraints even warring nations acted. Of course, nowadays, with the many improvements that have been made in international morals and behaviour all enemy subjects, even those whose countries were only technically involved, even those who had lived all their lives in England, and the English women who had married them, would, as in every other state based on an educated democracy, be treated within twenty-four hours as malignant foes, flung into internment camps, and their private property stolen to assist the expenses of the war. In the twentieth century mankind has shaken itself free from the all those illogical, old-world prejudices, and achieved the highest efficiency of brutal, ruthless war.”
― Winston S. Churchill, Marlborough: His Life and Times, Volume III 1702-1704