White Eagle, Red Star Quotes

“the Entente Powers, far from aiding Poland, regarded her activities with irritation. Poland won her independence for twenty years by her own efforts under the leadership of Piłsudski.”
― Norman Davies, White Eagle, Red Star: The Polish-Soviet War 1919-20

“The tendency of the Western democracies to support their Eastern European allies in word but not in deed remained.”
― Norman Davies, White Eagle, Red Star: The Polish-Soviet War 1919-20

“It is a well-tried rule that war accelerates social and political change. War acts as a bellows which fans smouldering problems into flame and forces people into new decisions and new dissensions.”
― Norman Davies, White Eagle, Red Star: The Polish-Soviet War 1919-20

“When Henryk Sienkiewicz set Poland alight with his tales of chivalry, it was Cossack life in 17th-century Poland that stirred his readers. Just as many great ‘Englishmen’ turn out to be Irishmen or Scots, so many great ‘Poles’, like Mickiewicz, Słowacki, or Kościuszko, turn out to be Lithuanians.”
― Norman Davies, White Eagle, Red Star: The Polish-Soviet War 1919-20

“wars can be traced to a scuffle between a man and a boy, both of whom summon aid to their respective sides.”
― Norman Davies, White Eagle, Red Star: The Polish-Soviet War 1919-20