World War I

World War I was a world conflict, raging from August 1914 to the final Armistice on November 11, 1918. The Allied Powers, led by the British Empire, France, Russia until March 1918, and the United States after 1917, defeated the Central Powers, led by the German Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire.

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• The First World War killed fewer victims than the Second World War, destroyed fewer buildings, and uprooted millions instead of tens of millions - but in many ways it left even deeper scars both on the mind and on the map of Europe. The old world never recovered from the shock.
  • Edmond Taylor, in The Fossil Monarchies

• What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
  Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
  • Wilfred Owen, from Anthem for Doomed Youth

• In war-time the word patriotism means suppression of truth”.
  • Siegfried Sassoon in Memoirs of an Infantry Officer

• The day has passed when armies on the ground or navies on the sea can be the arbiter of a nation's destiny in war. The main power of defense and the power of initiative against an enemy has passed to the air.
  • Brigadier General Billy Mitchell, November 1918

• Any one of them could have been me. Millions of men came to fight in this war and I find it incredible that I am the only one left.
  • Harry Patch, last surviving veteran to have fought in the trenches of the First World War. Commenting on graves at a Flanders war cemetery, July 2007

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• The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.
  • Sir Edward Grey, British Foreign Secretary, at the beginning of the war.

• Yesterday I visited the battlefield of last year. The place was scarcely recognisable. Instead of a wilderness of ground torn up by shell, the ground was a garden of wild flowers and tall grasses. Most remarkable of all was the appearance of many thousands of white butterflies which fluttered around. It was as if the souls of the dead soldiers had come to haunt the spot where so many fell. It was eerie to see them. And the silence! It was so still that I could almost hear the beat of the butterflies' wings.
  • A British officer, 1919.

• Soldiers! Heroes! The supreme command has erased our regiment from its records. Our regiment has been sacrificed for the honor of Belgrade and the Fatherland. Therefore, you no longer have to worry for your lives - they do not exist anymore. So, forward to glory! For King and Homeland! Long live the king! Long live Belgrade!
  • Major Dragutin Gavrilovic, to defenders of Belgrade in First World War

• In Flanders fields the poppies blow
  Between the crosses, row on row,
  That mark our place; and in the sky
  The larks, still bravely singing, fly
  Scarce heard amid the guns below.
  • Canadian lieutenant colonel John McCrae, from the poem “In Flanders Fields”

• Gott strafe England was a common slogan of the German Army, which means May God punish England”.

• In war there are three courses of action open to the enemy, and he usually chooses the fourth.
  • General Helmuth von Moltke'.

• We will support Britain to the last man and the last shilling.
  • Andrew Fisher, Australian Prime Minister at the outbreak of the war.