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As for myself, what more can I say? I am bitterly censured for having refused to give my country a strategic frontier. How can I take seriously those who, both great and small, reproach me with this, since they know that I could not—apart from any question of the rights of peoples—annex the Rhineland without breaking off our alliance, WHICH NO ONE DARED TO SUGGEST TO ME?

— Georges Clemenceau Grandeur and Misery of Victory (1930)

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More quotes by Georges Clemenceau

War is too serious a matter to entrust to military men.

A man's life is interesting primarily when he has failed — I well know. For it's a sign that he tried to surpass himself.

To me the scene possessed only the horror of a slaughter-house.

It is easier to make war than make peace.

The quantum of a hypothetical German civilization would not take us very far, because she is to-day still too close to barbarism.

Grandeur and Misery of Victory (1930)

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