I usually think of Churchill as simply an imperialistic war enthusiast, so I found this empathic comment remarkable. That it was made just a half year before the start of World War I gives it added poignancy. I've said here before that I consider WWI the chief disaster of the 20th century -- the cause of endless ills, notably including WWII. Viewing the course of 19th-century imperialistic rivalries, the outbreak, at least, of WWI seems inevitable in retrospect; what makes the conflict morbidly fascinating is the way it took on a life of its own almost immediately and became mindless mechanized slaughter destined to run for years to no strategic purpose at all.
John Keegan's recent book, The First World War, ends with this interesting passage:
"... the First World War is a mystery. Its origins are mysterious. So is its course. Why did a prosperous continent, at the height of its success as a source and agent of global wealth and power and at one of the peaks of its intellectual and cultural achievement, choose to risk all it had won for itself and all it offered to the world in the lottery of a vicious and local internecine conflict. Why, when the hope of bringing the conflict to a quick and decisive conclusion was everywhere dashed to the grounds within months of its outbreak, did the combatants decide nevertheless to persist in their military effort, to mobilise for total war and eventually to commit the totality of their young manhood to mutually and existentially pointless slaughter? ...
"The experience of the early warriors of 1914-18 -- the probability of wounds or death, in circumstances of squalor and misery -- swiftly acquired inevitability. There is mystery in that also. How did the anonymous millions, indistinguishably drab, undifferentially deprived of any scrap of the glories that by tradition made the life of the man-at-arms tolerable, find the resolution to sustain the struggle and to believe in its purpose? That they did is one of the undeniabilities of the Great War. Comradeship flourished in the earthwork cities of the Western and Eastern Fronts, bound strangers into the closest brotherhood, elevated the loyalties created within the ethos of temporary regimentality to the status of life-and-death blood ties. Men whom the trenches cast into intimacy entered into bonds of mutual dependency and sacrifice of self stronger than any of the friendships made in peace and better times. That is the ultimate mystery of the First World War. If we could understand its loves, as well as its hates, we would be nearer understanding the mystery of human life."
Carl _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
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