GEORGE C. MARSHALL

Go right straight down the road, to do what is best, and to do it frankly and without evasion.

I can't expect loyalty from the army if I do not give it.

I was very careful to send Mr. Roosevelt every few days a statement of our casualties. I tried to keep before him all the time the casualty results because you get hardened to these things and you have to be very careful to keep them always in the forefront of your mind.

I will give you the best I have.

If man does find the solution for world peace it will be the most revolutionary reversal of his record we have ever known.

When a thing is done, it's done. Don't look back. Look forward to your next objective.

Don't fight the problem, decide it.

The only way human beings can win a war is to prevent it.

Passive inactivity, because you have not been given specific instructions to do this or to do that, is a serious deficiency.

We have to begin having the State Department in on joint plans so that our foreign policy and military plans would be in step …. I will not go along with the past practice of not informing the State Department as to Army and Navy joint plans ...

Dictator governments are arming heavily and penetrating economically and politically in Central and South America. Japan is establishing a "new order" in China and has been informed that we will have something to say about this "new order." These activities emphasize the possibility of this nation becoming involved in war in the Atlantic, in the Pacific, or in both these areas

If Europe blazes in the late spring or summer, we must put our house in order before the sparks reach the Western Hemisphere.

It is possible that our opponents in the Pacific would be four-fifths of the way to Hawaii before we knew that they had moved...

Continuous paring of appropriations has reduced the Army virtually to the status of that of a third-rate power

It is not believed that a force of more than 400,000 can be secured or maintained by voluntary enlistments. An increase beyond that number would necessitate the simultaneous enactment of a selective service act.

We cannot have a political club and call it an army.

I can get billions of dollars with comparative ease, but when I get down to the practical proposition about personnel … all of those billions are futile unless you provide the highly trained personnel.

Leadership in the field, and especially during the hurried organization of the urgently needed new units, must not depend on seniority, meaning age.

There is no group today in America who view the possibilities of war with more horror, and consider the large appropriations involved with more reluctance than do the officers of the General Staff. There is no thought in our minds to seize upon the dilemma of this tragic world situation as an opportunity to aggrandize the Army.

I do not see Japanese invasion of the Philippines as a probability because the hazards would be too great for the Japanese .... We know a great deal that the Japanese are not aware we know, and we are familiar with their plans to a certain extent ... .

Tell Groves to take care of his own dirty work.

The question of whether we should drop this new bomb on Japan involves such imponderable considerations as to remove it from the field of a military decision.

We had won many pacific islands where the Japanese fought to the death rather than surrender …. We had killed 100,000 people in Tokyo in a single night. It destroyed the city but as far as we could tell it had no effect on their morale. We had to shock the Japanese into surrender.

In a democracy such as ours military policy is dependent on public opinion.

I have no feelings except those I reserve for Mrs. Marshall.