Happy New Year 1915! Bonne année! The New Year shoots down the Old over Paris. 1914 is represented by a German Taube, the New Year is loosely based on a French Blériot.
Bonne annéeHappy New Year1915 1914Logo: JM (?)406Reverse:Fabrication françaisMade in France
"In an hour's time 1914 will be over. . . .This afternoon, however, I had a long and frank talk with the Swiss Minister, Odier. . . . We came to the conclusion that Germany made a serious mistake in thinking she could finish the war straight off; that it will be a very, very long struggle and that victory will ultimately rest with the most tenacious of the combatants.The war will thus become a war of attrition and the attrition, alas, must be complete, involving the exhaustion of food supplies, industrial machinery and products, man power and moral forces! And it is plain that it is the moral forces which will bring about the decision in the last desperate hour."
Entry from the memoirs of Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia, for Thursday, December 31, 1914. Paléologue and Odier agree that Germany made a serious mistake in thinking it could end the war quickly. But Paléologue worried that his Russian ally did not have the 'moral force' to see the war through to a successful conclusion. He concludes by quoting Russian physician and writer Anton Chekhov: 'Why do we tire so soon? How is it that after squandering so much fervour, passion, and faith we almost always go to ruin before the age of thirty? And when we fall how is it that we never try to rise again?'
An Ambassador's Memoirs Vol. I by Maurice Paléologue, pp. 231, 232, publisher: George H. Doran Company, publication date: 1925
1914-12-31, 1914, December, Chekhov, Russia, Bleriot
