all over again? You could travel from London to Vladivostok without a passport, and your money was good everywhere because it was redeemable in specie. Yep. They blew it up.
I was thinking about that - Germany and Austria were, in a lot of ways, the center of culture, music and art. Those never really came back after WWII. 1914 was the end of the Classical Era in a lot a ways.
What we’re seeing in the middle east is a result of the breakup of the Ottoman Empire and the insanity that was the Versailles treaty redrawing borders the West knew nothing about redrawing.
I watched the WWI documentaries Saturday night on History and the airship show was the most educational piece on the subject I have ever seen. Very entertaining history.
I have to say it’s amazing just how much evil has spawned out of a war that even I don’t know as much about as I wish.
World War I was going happen anyway because the race for foreign colonies and the massive arms buildup by the UK, France and Germany was going to come to a head sooner or later.
The writer artfully skates around the cause of the war - naked German aggression - and instead pretends that war was just in humanity’s DNA.
Yes: it was a futile war. German and Austro-Hungary launched their war of aggression and the rest of Europe had to spend blood and treasure to defend themselves.
Nobody gained from it, in the same way George Zimmerman gained nothing from defending himself - except that he defended himself and his way of life as best he could.
There’s no shared collective guilt for WW1. It’s all on the Kaiser and those who allied with him.
So gorgeous was the spectacle on the May morning of 1910 when nine kings rode in the funeral of Edward VII of England that the crowd, waiting in hushed and black-clad awe, could not keep back gasps of admiration. In scarlet and blue and green and purple, three by three the sovereigns rode through the palace gates, with plumed helmets, gold braid, crimson sashes, and jeweled orders flashing in the sun. After them came five heirs apparent, forty more imperial or royal highnesses, seven queens--four dowager and three regnant--and a scattering of special ambassadors from uncrowned countries. Together they represented seventy nations in the greatest assemblage of royalty and rank ever gathered in one place and, of its kind, the last. The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace, but on history's clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again.
Four years later, their armies were killing each other at the rate of 10,000 men PER DAY, kept up for over four more years.
It may have been futile, but an utopia was not thrown away. The author ignores way to much to be taken seriously.
Technology was exploding at the time, if not for WWI we would probably have flying cars by now.....
all over again?And then there's the long view which sees WWI as the inevitable outcome of many centuries of European history:
Spengler: Musil and meta-Musil: The inevitable World War I
(The Metamucil reference in the title must've been irresistable for Goldman.)
Ping.