"Internationalism, illustrated by the Bolshevik and by the men to whom all countries are alike provided they can make money out of them, is to me repulsive"
About this Quote
The intent is defensive nationalism with a patrician edge. Lodge isn’t just rejecting a policy agenda; he’s policing loyalty. “Repulsive” is doing work here: it’s visceral, bodily, meant to make international cooperation feel contaminating rather than merely misguided. The subtext is that the nation is a kind of moral home, and anyone who treats it as interchangeable - whether a communist agitator or a cosmopolitan financier - is suspect.
Context matters. Lodge was a leading Senate voice against Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations after World War I, when fears of Bolshevism spread alongside anxiety about transnational markets, immigration, and shifting power. His rhetoric anticipates a recurring American pattern: global engagement is welcomed when it expands U.S. leverage, condemned when it looks like constraint. The quote works because it offers readers an enemy with two faces and one label, simplifying a complicated moment into a gut-level choice: country first, or chaos.
Quote Details
| Topic | Freedom |
|---|---|
| Source | Evidence: Internationalism, illustrated by the Bolshevik and by the men to whom all countries are alike, provided they can make money out of them, is to me repulsive. (null). The quote is verifiably from Henry Cabot Lodge's 1919 anti-League speech 'League of Nations.' A Library of Congress item records the speech as a 1919 sound recording published in Bridgeport, Connecticut by the Columbia Graphophone Manufacturing Company. A Library of Congress teaching transcript identifies the speech as given in Washington, D.C., in August 1919 and includes this wording. I could verify the speech/audio primary source, but I could not confirm from the sources retrieved the exact first live delivery date or a contemporaneous printed page number. The strongest evidence points to the quote originating in this 1919 speech, later circulated as an audio recording. Other candidates (1) World War One (Lawrence Sondhaus, 2011) compilation98.0% ... Henry. Cabot. Lodge. versus. Woodrow. Wilson. For Senate majority leader Henry ... Internationalism, illustrated ... |
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Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Lodge, Henry Cabot. (2026, March 11). Internationalism, illustrated by the Bolshevik and by the men to whom all countries are alike provided they can make money out of them, is to me repulsive. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/internationalism-illustrated-by-the-bolshevik-and-140976/
Chicago Style
Lodge, Henry Cabot. "Internationalism, illustrated by the Bolshevik and by the men to whom all countries are alike provided they can make money out of them, is to me repulsive." FixQuotes. March 11, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/internationalism-illustrated-by-the-bolshevik-and-140976/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Internationalism, illustrated by the Bolshevik and by the men to whom all countries are alike provided they can make money out of them, is to me repulsive." FixQuotes, 11 Mar. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/internationalism-illustrated-by-the-bolshevik-and-140976/. Accessed 30 Mar. 2026.
