... At times, gas has been known to travel, with dire results, fifteen miles behind the lines.

A gas, or smoke helmet, as it is called, at the best is a vile-smelling thing, and it is not long before one gets a violent headache from wearing it.

Our eighteen-pounders were bursting in No Man's Land, in an effort, by the artillery, to disperse the gas clouds.

The fire step was lined with crouching men, bayonets fixed, and bombs near at hand to repel the expected attack.

Our artillery had put a barrage of curtain fire on the German lines, to try and break up their attack and keep back re-inforcements.

I trained my machine gun on their trench and its bullets were raking the parapet [spraying the wall].

Then over they came, bayonets glistening. In their respirators, which have a large snout in front, they looked like some horrible nightmare. ...

Arthur Empey, "Over the Top," G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1917

For a fortnight Gandhi’s march is intended to be only a demonstration. Then, when he expects to be at the sea, he will begin to produce salt from brine [salt water], and so infringe [violate] the Government salt monopoly, defying the Government to arrest and punish him. At the same time his supporters everywhere have been incited by him to refuse to pay local taxes.

— Gandhi’s March to the Sea, The Guardian, 1930

...History shows that wars are divided into two kinds, just and unjust. All wars that are progressive [reformist] are just, and all wars that impede [obstruct] progress are unjust. We Communists oppose all unjust wars that impede progress, but we do not oppose progressive, just wars. Not only do we Communists not oppose just wars, we actively participate in them. As for unjust wars, World War I is an instance in which both sides fought for imperialist interests; therefore the Communists of the whole world firmly opposed that war. The way to oppose a war of this kind is to do everything possible to prevent it before it breaks out and, once it breaks out, to oppose war with war, to oppose unjust war with just war, whenever possible...

— Mao Zedong, Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1966

. . . Yet in recent months something has changed. Kim Jong Il, whose regime was responsible for the first test and who died in 2011, had only a rudimentary [basic] nuclear device, useful mainly for blackmail. Under his son, Kim Jong Un, the programme has rapidly gathered pace, with two nuclear tests this year alone. The North has also conducted 21 missile tests this year, including one from a submarine—a first. The ability to miniaturise a tactical nuclear weapon on a working missile could be just two or three years away, with an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting California possible in five years’ time. Chun Yung-woo, a South Korean former national security adviser, talks of “growing outrage. . . after five tests, a change of mood, a sense of urgency.”

Once, it was possible to hope that the North’s isolated regime would implode [fail] under its own contradictions before it gained a proper nuclear capability. But the spread of informal markets and, for some North Koreans, a measure of prosperity may have strengthened the regime’s chances of survival. A consensus in Seoul is forming that Mr Kim now aims to dictate events on the peninsula—including the ability to demand that the Americans leave. One senior foreign diplomat in Seoul says that for the first time he hears people wondering openly whether there will be a major conflict on the peninsula in their lifetime. . . .

— “A Shrimp Among Whales,” The Economist, October 27, 2016