I just had an experience which illustrates the folly of thinking that if a quote can't be found online, it doesn't exist.

Looking an a 1917 road map last week, my eyes were drawn to quote from Rear Admiral W.W. Kimball.

Above the picture of Uncle Sam, here's the quote from W.W. Kimball:

"A military people are a peaceful people, free from the danger of preventable war, from the danger of being conquered, and from all danger of being infected with militarism."

It wasn't easy, nor did I find the exact quote of this now-obscure rear admiral. But I did learn that Admiral Kimball had in 1914 authored a tract bearing the title of "Our Question of Questions -- Arm or Disarm?" That was the very caption on the road map under the picture of Uncle Sam, but I had no idea it was a book The book is of course long out of print. Kimball (an early proponent of submarine technology) died in 1930, but thanks to the public domain doctrine, the entire book can be read freely online here.

By today's standards, Kimball is a militarist (even though he condemns militarism) and a racist. Yet he comes through as a wise old warrior and I found his writing witty and irresistible. While cynical and hard boiled, he is also thoughtful, patient, and reflective. Every major argument is backed by historical examples and his personal wartime experience. He detests college professors and pacifists with a particular passion that comes from knowing too well from his firsthand experience how terribly naive and misguided they were. (Or should I say are?)

A few examples I culled by hand:

On the movement to abolish war:

However, the picture seems to obfuscate our conceptions of realities and thereby to aid the Pacificists in what Dr. Wyatt calls "the ceaseless efforts which are being made alike in the United Kingdom and in the United States, to destroy what remains of the military spirit of the Anglo-Saxon race. War and the preparation for war, without which it beings defeat, are represented as barbaric which can be abolished by international agreements." (page 43)

Diplomacy is the science of finding a pretext for shirking responsibility -- personal, national, or international; it is the art of doing so. (page 83)

Our political parties have principles, -- they are not without them --, but principles are reserved for platform purposes only. After a party comes into power, it throws overboard politics -- the Science of Government -- and attends strictly to its real business of office broking and election manipulation. (page 103)

Haec fibula docet, that while a kid, from the high shed to which he has been boosted, may, until he is knocked off the roof, safely rail at the wolf of war passing bellow, it would not be the best kind of diplomatic business for that kid to use rash language toward a man with a gun. *

*Mr. Bryan was Secretary of State when this was written.

And a warning not to assume our enemies are fools:

We should first read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest this dogma of Frederick the Great:

"He is a fool and that nation is a fool, who having the power to strike his enemy, does not strike and strike his deadliest."

Then we should consider what nations would be inclined to be our enemies as a result of the interferences with the desires of those nations arising from the maintenance of our Pacific empire or of the Monroe Doctrine. (pages 123)

However, the beautiful dreams of the war-provoking pacificists cannot be realized for some decades at least; and meantime, and we had the pluck and necessary business sense, we might make ourselves over from the warlike, war-inviting, unmilitary lot that we now are, into a properly military and therefore peaceful people, free from the danger of preventable war, from the danger of being conquered, and from all danger of being infected with militarism. (pages 155-116)

During peacetime no one listens to people like that. When wars come, they wish they had.