Wars cannot be won by destroying women and children

Machine guns are taken through grit and determination.

The Bomb will never go off, and I speak as an expert in explosives.

Once the mass of the defending infantry become possessed of low moral, the battle is as good as lost.

Obviously, the greater the length of a war the higher is likely to be the number of casualties in it on either side.

Further, a defensive policy involves the loss of the initiative, with all the consequent disadvantages to the defender.

After lunch we went into the garden for coffee and I turned on the Surgeon-General with his graphics, percentages etc. of sick and wounded to entertain the Premier.

So long as the opposing forces are at the outset approximately equal in numbers and moral and there are no flanks to turn, a long struggle for supremacy is inevitable.

Every position must be held to the last man. There must be no retirement. With our backs to the wall, and believing in the justice of our cause, each one of us must fight to the end.

The idea that a war can be won by standing on the defensive and waiting for the enemy to attack is a dangerous fallacy, which owes its inception to the desire to evade the price of victory.

As a matter of fact we have to take special precautions during a battle to post police, to prevent more unwounded men than are necessary from accompanying a wounded man back from the firing line.

It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender... In being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages.

The use of [the atomic bombs] at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons... The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.

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