The Splintered Empires Quotes

“Unfortunately everything we had done had not hitherto been enough to wound our adversaries to death in a military and political sense. There was no sign of surrender on the enemy’s part. On the contrary, each military defeat seemed only to strengthen the enemy’s lust for our destruction. This impression was in no wise diminished by the fact that here and there the voice of moderation was heard in the hostile camp. The dictatorial authority of the political organisms against which we were fighting was on the whole in no way injured. They held the wills and the resources of their nations together as if with iron bands, and by more or less autocratic methods suppressed the capacity for harm of all who dared to think differently from the tyrants in power.387”
― Prit Buttar, The Splintered Empires: The Eastern Front 1917–21

“What can the Russian soldier know of ‘Peace without annexations and without contributions’ – the formula produced in Berlin for his special misleading? Many of them think that ‘Anneksiya’ and ‘Contributsiya’ are two towns, and one of them, when asked if he understood the motto, said that he did not know where ‘Anneksiya’ was, but that ‘Contributsiya’ was ‘somewhere in Turkey!’ He thought of Constantinople!166”
― Prit Buttar, The Splintered Empires: The Eastern Front 1917–21