“The truth is, I was never a very good Party man. Probably but for the War of 1914, I should have gone on fairly comfortably as a Conservative official.”

—  Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood

A Great Experiment (1941), p. 189
Context: The truth is, I was never a very good Party man. Probably but for the War of 1914, I should have gone on fairly comfortably as a Conservative official. But those four years burnt into me the insufferable conditions of international relations which made war the acknowledged method — indeed, the only fully authorized method — of settling international disputes. Thenceforth, the effort to abolish war seemed to me, and still seems to me, the only political object worth while.

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Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood 30
lawyer, politician and diplomat in the United Kingdom 1864–1958

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