Change the Names, Still the Same

A German professor of European history: "It was this younger generation that brought France into the war--this and Clemenceau, who is still living back in 1870. . . Oh, you simple Americans! You do not seem to realize that such things [British propaganda] are made to be published in the school books of the future, not for actual use, not to be seriously believed by the experienced and the disillusioned. That has been the story of European politics for centuries, since long before you dear naive people came into existence. You are like a new-comer dropping into a poker game that has been going on since long before you learned to distinguish one card from another. You do not guess that the deck is pin-pricked and that every kind of underhanded trick is tacitly allowed, so long as the player can get away with it."

Vagabonding Through Changing Germany by Harry A. Franck, 1920