John Morley

A matter of this kind cannot be regarded as in principle a question between the two belligerents only, but involves considerations of legitimate interest to all the Powers of Europe.

I am afraid of our wasting that which we at present derive from moral causes, by laying down general principles when nobody will attend to them, and when in all probability they will be disregarded.

My objection to doing at present what you propose is, that it is impossible according to my views to do so without being considered to throw our weight into the French scale against Germany, with consequent encouragement on one side and…

What do you suppose that all your parchments and your treaties signify to me?

I have told him that it is impossible to say that we may not be driven into it by Russia, or by other foreign powers, or by our own people; that we must take care of our dignity; but if there ever was a cabinet which is bound not to drift…

I will frankly own that I am much disgusted with a good deal of the language that I have read in the newspapers within the last few days about immediate war with Russia.

I know, however, nothing more like drifting into war than would be a resort to any military measures whatever, except with reference either to some actual fact or some well defined contingency....

At least it saved us from the insanity of a war that would have intensified European confusion, merely to maintain restraints considered valuable by nobody.

In politics,” he said, “one hand should wash the other” (eine Hand die andere waschen muss).

I am afraid our whole success has been owing to the belief that we would go to war, and to tell the truth, I think that war in some shape or other, sooner or later, was a possible risk after our note.

Promising peace is as unwise as to threaten war.

To give a single signatory Power the right of forbidding a change desired by all the others, imposes a kind of perpetuity on treaty stipulations, that in practice neither could nor ought to be insisted upon.

It is, moreover, true that in the ever recurring eras when force, truculent and unabashed, sweeps aside the moral judgments of the world, the mere inscription of a pious opinion in a protocol may seem worth little trouble.

Yet it is the influence of good opinion, tardy, halting, stumbling, and broken, as it must ever be, that upholds and quickens the growth of right.

The good rules laid down in conferences and state-papers may look tame in the glare of the real world of history as it is.

Europe,” he said, “has lost a mistress and got a master.” Annexation wore an ugly look.

You will not think it less fair because it is individual and unofficial; for a man must be a wretch indeed, who could speak at this most solemn juncture, otherwise than from the bottom of his heart.

Some of the most excusable errors ever committed,” he said, in closing the letter, “have also been the most ruinous in their consequences.

The smallest in the forum of conscience, they are the greatest in the vast theatre of action.

The most fatal and in their sequel most gigantic errors of men are also frequently the most excusable and the least gratuitous.

They are committed when a strong impetus of right carries them up to a certain point, and a residue of that impetus, drawn from the contact with human passion and infirmity, pushes them beyond it.

Slow sometimes to go in, she is slower yet to come out, and if she had then held her hand, the course of the revolution and the fate of Europe would in all likelihood have been widely different.

The substitution, instead of this abusive system, of promotion by selection, was one of the first steps in army reform.

Gladstone put it, the nation must buy back its own army from its own officers.

By prerogative I understand a power not necessarily contrary to law, but in some sort beyond law—a power whose source must be sought for somewhere else than in the terms of an act of parliament.