Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 27, 2025
It is no great feat for a naive imagination to suppose the President of the Swiss Confederation or the President of the United States for each of these two systems is an exemplary and encouraging instance of the possibility of the pacific synthesis of independent States taking a propagandist course and proposing extensions of their own systems to the suffering belligerents.
If the extreme is no longer to be apprehended, and no longer to be sought for, it is left to the judgment to determine the limits for the efforts to be made in place of it, and this can only be done on the data furnished by the facts of the real world by the LAWS OF PROBABILITY. Once the belligerents are no longer mere conceptions, but individual States and Governments, once the War is no longer an ideal, but a definite substantial procedure, then the reality will furnish the data to compute the unknown quantities which are required to be found.
Feeling ran high in England and France because Wilson's note had seemed to place the belligerents on the same moral plane, in its statement that the objects on both sides "are virtually the same, as stated in general terms to their own people and to the world." The statement was verbally accurate and rang with a certain grim irony which may have touched Wilson's sense of humor.
Again the belligerents gathered their resources, with still increasing vigor, for another campaign. The British cabinet seemed now to be out of all patience with Maria Theresa.
On the 18th President Wilson addressed an independent inquiry about their aims to both groups of belligerents. The Allies replied to Germany on the 30th and to President Wilson on 10 January, intimating that there could be no peace without the reparation, restitution, and guarantees which Germany was as yet determined to refuse. The attitude of the Allies astonished no one but the Germans.
On the following day there was a sensational rumour that the armistice would be raised and hostilities between the two belligerents resumed. At the forts and at the military quarters of the city there was much activity. The troops were being reviewed by one of the Grand Dukes, and there were evidences of conscription everywhere.
If we were to keep out of European conflicts, it was necessary for us to pursue a course of rigid impartiality in wars between European powers. In the Napoleonic wars we insisted that neutrals had certain rights which belligerents were bound to respect and we fought the War of 1812 with England in order to establish that principle.
On April 11 an immense flotilla of 120 grain vessels sailed from the Chesapeake under the escort of two ships-of-the-line, which were to be strengthened by the entire Brest fleet at a rendezvous 300 miles west of Belleisle. Foodstuffs having already been declared subject to seizure by both belligerents, Howe was out on May 2 to intercept the convoy.
He believed that, if a declaration of war had been expedient at any period of the commercial difficulties with England and France, the proper time for declaring it was when the offence was given, and when our commerce was at the height, and our ability to sustain hostilities was proportionally greater; that the administration, having waived the opportunity of making a declaration in the first instance, and deliberately adopted the policy of diplomacy and of commercial regulation as the proper means of relief, our resources meantime having become crippled and our revenue almost annihilated, it was bound to adhere to it during the existing crisis; that the long and expensive war had impaired the resources of England and France, who would soon be compelled from mere exhaustion to make peace, and with the restoration of peace our difficulties would necessarily terminate, and we might demand redress for the grievances which we had sustained at their hands; that a declaration of war with England would be substantially, as it turned out to be, a receipt in full for our enormous commercial losses caused by her orders in council, which losses must then be assumed by our own government, or fall on the merchants, who would be crushed by their weight; that peace among the belligerents might happen at any moment, while a war with one of them would certainly involve a large expenditure of blood and money, and might continue at the pleasure of the belligerent long after a general pacification in Europe; and that, if war was to be waged as a measure of redress for our violated rights, as both belligerents were equally guilty, it should be declared against both.
However, the geographical position of the capital, the political relations of the belligerents with their neighbors, and their respective resources, are considerations foreign in themselves to the art of fighting battles, but intimately connected with plans of operations, and may decide whether an army should attempt or not to occupy the hostile capital.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking