Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig quotes

Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig quotes

last updated: November 28, 2023

“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.”
-- Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig

#War Quotes #Men Quotes #Police Quotes
“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.”
-- Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig

#War Quotes #Coffee Quotes #Garden Quotes
“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.”
-- Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig

#Struggle Quotes #Numbers Quotes #Long Quotes
“Further, a defensive policy involves the loss of the initiative, with all the consequent disadvantages to the defender.”
-- Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig

#Loss Quotes #Initiative Quotes #Disadvantages Quotes
“Obviously, the greater the length of a war the higher is likely to be the number of casualties in it on either side.”
-- Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig

#War Quotes #Numbers Quotes #Sides Quotes
“Once the mass of the defending infantry become possessed of low moral, the battle is as good as lost.”
-- Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig

#Battle Quotes #Moral Quotes #Infantry Quotes
“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.”
-- Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig

#War Quotes #Ideas Quotes #Waiting Quotes
“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.”
-- Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig

#Retirement Quotes #Wall Quotes #War Quotes
“Machine guns are taken through grit and determination.”
-- Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig

#Determination Quotes #Taken Quotes #Gun Quotes

“All my life I've been aware of the Second World War humming in the background. I was born 10 years after it was finished, and without ever seeing it. It formed my generation and the world we lived in. I played Hurricanes and Spitfires in the playground, and war films still form the basis of all my moral philosophy. All the men I've ever got to my feet for or called sir had been in the war.”
“No matter what political reasons are given for war, the underlying reason is always economic.”
“Though the object of being a Great Power is to be able to fight a Great War, the only way of remaining a Great Power is not to fight one.”

Source : A.J.P. Taylor (1996). “Origin Of The Second World War”, p.18, Simon and Schuster
“This book has been a catalogue of mistakes by politicians, moral and practical disasters which led to wars, enslavement and wretchedness on a scale which no previous age could have dreaded or dreamed of.”
“This is our high calling, to represent Christ, and act in His behalf, and in His character and spirit, under all circumstances and toward all men.”
“Ambition often puts Men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same position with creeping.”
“The soul of the slave, the soul of the "little man," is as dear to me as the soul of the great.”
“Citizens who take it upon themselves to do unusual actions which attract the attention of the police should be careful to bring these actions into one of the recognized categories of crimes and offences, for it is intolerable that the police should be put to the pains of inventing reasons for finding them undesirable.”

Source : "Uncommon Law". Book by A. P. Herbert. Chapter "Is It a Free Country?", 1935.
“In The Police, in a trio situation - which I've come back to now - it's just so wide open that it does actually provide this arena where you can play with a certain freedom.”
“There is an unbroken line of police violence in the United States that takes us all the way back to the days of slavery, the aftermath of slavery, the development of the Ku Klux Klan. There is so much history of this racist violence that simply to bring one person to justice is not going to disturb the whole racist edifice.”

Source : "Angela Davis: 'There is an unbroken line of police violence in the US that takes us all the way back to the days of slavery" by Stuart Jeffries, www.theguardian.com. December 14, 2014.

You may also like:

Arthur Balfour
Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Charles de Gaulle
Former President of the French Republic
Clement Attlee
Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
David Lloyd George
Chancellor of the Exchequer
Erich Ludendorff
Political leader
Ferdinand Foch
Generalissimo
Georges Clemenceau
French Statesman
Jan Smuts
Statesman
John J. Pershing
Military officer
John Monash
Civil engineer
John Terraine
Historian
Joseph Joffre
Armed force officer
Neville Chamberlain
Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Paul von Hindenburg
Statesman
Ramsay MacDonald
Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Sam Hughes
Stanley Baldwin
Former Chancellor of the Exchequer
Wilhelm II
Former German Emperor
Winston Churchill
Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Woodrow Wilson
28th U.S. President