European War Quotes
German ally, the Austro-Hungarian Empire had declared war on Serbia. See {642085}. The Russian Czar was under great pressure because a large Roman Catholic Empire was warring against a small Orthodox co-religionist of Russia and Russians of all classes wanted Russia to defend Serbia. The Czar was making a good faith effort to stave off the war. What he did not realize was that Germany had actually planned for war against Russia and France and was using the alliance with Austria as an excuse.
Vladimir Lenin
See the American ambassador’s assessment after the war began {41089}
Dreadnoughts were huge battleships. Britain had the dominant navy of the world and controlled the seas. A European war would be a land war where a navy would be of little use. Hence, Britain would not want to get involved in such a war where she could not use her greatest military strength. He was wrong about this and so much else. Britain entered WWI when Germany invaded Belgium fulfilling her treaty obligations. The Germans intelligence operators and analysts were well aware of the treaty obligations, but had little understanding of English culture and tradition. The German aggression against a small power like Belgium was morally offensive to many in Great Britain, and Britain had a tradition of fighting for moral principles. The Germans would never militarily disadvantage themselves for the sake of a treaty obligation to a small nation, and they did not believe that the British would be so different and fulfill their treaty obligations even though their strongest military asset—their navy would not be very helpful.
The statement was made in the midst of WWI when anti German fever was high.
The Times regretted that the Germans did not speak to the Austrians more vigorously when they were threatening to attack Serbia who harbored anti-Austro-Hungarian terrorists (see {642085}). What the Times editors did not realize was that the Germans had already made their war plans (see {642092}) and the Serbian issue was just the justification they needed to implement them. So there was no real reason for the Germans to discourage the Austro-Hungarian Empire from its mission to punish Serbia.
Unusually for a scientist, Szilard was politically very astute. In this letter he predicted exactly what was going to happen in Europe which would be WWII. He was the leading scientist organizing the lobbying efforts with the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration to develop an atomic bomb.
