Its title comes from a quotation by Vyacheslav von Plehve in reference to the Russo-Japanese War: "What this country needs is a short, victorious war to stem the tide of revolution." That quotation is one of the novel's two epigraphs; the other is a quotation from Robert Wilson Lynd: "The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions."
Woodrow Wilson | Robert Louis Stevenson | Robert De Niro | Robert E. Lee | Robert Mugabe | Robert Redford | Robert Burns | Robert Bosch GmbH | Robert | Robert A. Heinlein | Robert Schumann | Robert Browning | Robert Rauschenberg | Robert Plant | Harold Wilson | Robert Altman | Robert Mitchum | Pete Wilson | Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars | Robert Frost | Robert Southey | Robert F. Kennedy | Robert Maxwell | Robert Graves | Robert E. Howard | Brian Wilson | Robert Fripp | Robert Fisk | Wilson | Robert Rodriguez |