Lights Out
August 4, 2014 3:23 AM Subscribe
I hate Grey's famopus quotation. Its relentlessly passive construction tries to avoid his responsibility for the situation. His vacillating diplomacy seems to have egged on both Germany and France; a more competent politician might have at least delayed the conflict. It wasn't so much that "the lamps were going out" as that, all over Europe, people were clumsily (and occasionally maliciously) knocking over each others' lamps and then being shocked when the drapes caught fire.
Still, the more sober reflection we can have on the events of 1914, the better. I've been listening to a bunch of the podcasts from Kattullus's FPP last week, and some of the stories and analysis is heartening and some less so.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:45 AM on August 4, 2014 [8 favorites]
Still, the more sober reflection we can have on the events of 1914, the better. I've been listening to a bunch of the podcasts from Kattullus's FPP last week, and some of the stories and analysis is heartening and some less so.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:45 AM on August 4, 2014 [8 favorites]
I'd like to take sledgehammer to every war memorial in the UK and reduce it to dust. Clearly they don't work. If they did, we would stop having wars.
The most worrying aspect of this centenary is the projection of false nobility onto the pointless suffering of the fallen.
posted by devious truculent and unreliable at 5:43 AM on August 4, 2014 [4 favorites]
The most worrying aspect of this centenary is the projection of false nobility onto the pointless suffering of the fallen.
posted by devious truculent and unreliable at 5:43 AM on August 4, 2014 [4 favorites]
The lamps are going out all over Europe,” said the British foreign minister, Sir Edward Grey. “We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.” And he did not, because he lost his sight to macular degeneration.
More, here
posted by Mister Bijou at 5:58 AM on August 4, 2014
More, here
posted by Mister Bijou at 5:58 AM on August 4, 2014
The link Mister Bijou gives is wrong. They sacrificed themselves for nothing. The 16 million young men and women who died in the trenches, from machine gun or artillery fire or disease or shot by their own side for doing the logical thing and deserting, died for nothing. The things that should've died in that awful war were nationalism and imperialism, but they survived, and all the geopolitical issues needed more war to resolve.
posted by graymouser at 6:30 AM on August 4, 2014 [3 favorites]
posted by graymouser at 6:30 AM on August 4, 2014 [3 favorites]
They sacrificed themselves for nothing.
Be fair; each 10 deaths mark about a meter of front gained or lost. Of course, it was pretty much the same kilometers over and over, but, still....
I've always wondered what would have happened if the leftist calls that "workers should not kill workers in the bosses' wars" had actually been followed and that so many organizations and parties hadn't lined up behind Nationalism rather than continue to resist.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:38 AM on August 4, 2014 [1 favorite]
Be fair; each 10 deaths mark about a meter of front gained or lost. Of course, it was pretty much the same kilometers over and over, but, still....
I've always wondered what would have happened if the leftist calls that "workers should not kill workers in the bosses' wars" had actually been followed and that so many organizations and parties hadn't lined up behind Nationalism rather than continue to resist.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:38 AM on August 4, 2014 [1 favorite]
I'd like to take sledgehammer to every war memorial in the UK and reduce it to dust. Clearly they don't work. If they did, we would stop having wars.
For many people those individuals were friends or family, people that - particularly in the immediate aftermath of WW1 - were still strong in their memory and who they greatly missed.
Granted you may see them as faceless obelisks or plaques - 2001-esque monoliths seemingly set up to warn a future to behave - but to an enormous number of people, both then and now, they are the only link they have to friends and family who never made it home.
For many people those memories are still incredibly powerful today. During last year's US government shutdown I wrote about the heartbreaking impact I saw this have on a visitor to a US WW1 cemetery in Belgium, who had travelled over 4000 miles just for the opportunity to lay a flower on the grave of a grandfather she had never met. On the same trip i saw an old soldier from a different war scrabbling round for stones to put on the grave of a man he'd never met.
First as Scout and then now as a Scout Leader, I've spent plenty of cold November mornings at war memorials in the UK as well, and on every occasion the majority of people have been there to remember family, or even just people from the same town as them, who died too young.
No one is there to share their feelings, or to learn about, the futility and horror of war. That knowledge is simply an inevitable side-effect of spending time around memorials to the fallen.
Frankly if there's a problem now it isn't that memorials don't do their job, it's that people don't spend enough time around them to pick up the secondary lessons they can teach us beyond the act of remembrance.
As far as I'm concerned every teacher, journalist, politician (and really every voter) should get themselves over the cemeteries of France and Belgium at least once in their life and see the enormous damage that war can do to entire generations of people, of all nations, colours and creeds. It's hard to be blasé about the potential consequences of military action once you've seen row upon row of uniform white grave stones in the likes of Tyne Cot, with inscriptions like this or counted the thousands that feature what is perhaps one of the most heartbreaking phrases that you'll find on a tombstone - A soldier of the Great War. Known only to God.
Sorry, but the war memorials in this country and beyond do exactly what they are there for - they help us remember.
If we don't also learn from them that war is a terrible thing then that's just our own stupid fault.
posted by garius at 6:38 AM on August 4, 2014 [14 favorites]
For many people those individuals were friends or family, people that - particularly in the immediate aftermath of WW1 - were still strong in their memory and who they greatly missed.
Granted you may see them as faceless obelisks or plaques - 2001-esque monoliths seemingly set up to warn a future to behave - but to an enormous number of people, both then and now, they are the only link they have to friends and family who never made it home.
For many people those memories are still incredibly powerful today. During last year's US government shutdown I wrote about the heartbreaking impact I saw this have on a visitor to a US WW1 cemetery in Belgium, who had travelled over 4000 miles just for the opportunity to lay a flower on the grave of a grandfather she had never met. On the same trip i saw an old soldier from a different war scrabbling round for stones to put on the grave of a man he'd never met.
First as Scout and then now as a Scout Leader, I've spent plenty of cold November mornings at war memorials in the UK as well, and on every occasion the majority of people have been there to remember family, or even just people from the same town as them, who died too young.
No one is there to share their feelings, or to learn about, the futility and horror of war. That knowledge is simply an inevitable side-effect of spending time around memorials to the fallen.
Frankly if there's a problem now it isn't that memorials don't do their job, it's that people don't spend enough time around them to pick up the secondary lessons they can teach us beyond the act of remembrance.
As far as I'm concerned every teacher, journalist, politician (and really every voter) should get themselves over the cemeteries of France and Belgium at least once in their life and see the enormous damage that war can do to entire generations of people, of all nations, colours and creeds. It's hard to be blasé about the potential consequences of military action once you've seen row upon row of uniform white grave stones in the likes of Tyne Cot, with inscriptions like this or counted the thousands that feature what is perhaps one of the most heartbreaking phrases that you'll find on a tombstone - A soldier of the Great War. Known only to God.
Sorry, but the war memorials in this country and beyond do exactly what they are there for - they help us remember.
If we don't also learn from them that war is a terrible thing then that's just our own stupid fault.
posted by garius at 6:38 AM on August 4, 2014 [14 favorites]
Graymouse: whatever you think of that first link, it caused someone to post something attributed to a French poet and essayist, Paul Valéry: "War is a massacre of people who do not know each other for the profit of people who know each other but do not massacre each other."
In my book, that quote's a keeper.
Anyway, commemorated in France, but not a lot elsewhere, I think it's worth saluting the fact that 31 July 2014 was the 100th anniversary of the assassination of Socialist Party leader Jean Jaurès. A staunch anti-militarist (but not an anti-imperialist à la Bolsheviks), Jaurès, while sitting in a Paris café, got a bullet in his head for his troubles.
posted by Mister Bijou at 7:07 AM on August 4, 2014 [2 favorites]
In my book, that quote's a keeper.
Anyway, commemorated in France, but not a lot elsewhere, I think it's worth saluting the fact that 31 July 2014 was the 100th anniversary of the assassination of Socialist Party leader Jean Jaurès. A staunch anti-militarist (but not an anti-imperialist à la Bolsheviks), Jaurès, while sitting in a Paris café, got a bullet in his head for his troubles.
posted by Mister Bijou at 7:07 AM on August 4, 2014 [2 favorites]
They sacrificed themselves for nothing. The 16 million young men and women who died in the trenches, from machine gun or artillery fire or disease or shot by their own side for doing the logical thing and deserting, died for nothing.
This too is a drastic oversimplification of things. Of course they died for something.
At the beginning of the war, that something was just the fact that they were a professional soldier and it was their job.
For the vast majority of volunteers for "Kitcheners Army" that something was a desire to see what they thought was an overly imperialistic Germany brought to heel - one that had invaded Belgium, a country whose neutrality Britain had publicly sworn to defend and who they were now determined to liberate.
For those signing up after the blood and death of the Somme it was often about reluctantly doing their part to try and bring an end to a conflict that seemed determined to bleed the entire youth of Europe dry.
All of those people, once at the front, also discovered another big reason to fight - the desire not to let down the men you fought alongside, or the younger brothers or relatives who might have to come out and fight if they didn't try and do their part to bring the war to an end.
All those things are something. We may not like them, and with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight and another 100 years of cumulative cultural development we may feel that some (or all) of those somethings are utterly inadequate reasons for those soldiers, generals and politicians to do what they did. But that doesn't mean that to them at the time those reasons weren't important.
It might be nice to imagine that if we were able to go back now and interview random Tommies coming out of the trenches they would almost all be unable to provide a reason for being there, but the exact opposite is true. Even in the darkest, muddiest, filthiest, most deadly days of the Somme and Passchendaele - when those men were terrified and traumatised in equal measure, the vast majority of them would have been able to tell us exactly why they felt they were there in the grand scheme of things. The leftist calls that "workers should not kill workers in the bosses' wars" didn't fail because people were forced at gunpoint into battle, they failed in a large part because even to the majority of the burgeoning political working class it seemed a too simple attitude to a complex situation.
I guess what I'm saying - and apologies for being longwinded about it - is that reducing WW1 to a pointless war over nothing is just as false a history as taking the Gove approach of trying to portray it as glorious high jinks. Both are attempts to portray a bloody and complex period of history in a black-and-white manner that does no justice to both the men and women who fell and to the lessons it should teach us about the dangers of war, complacency and stubbornness at all levels of society.
posted by garius at 7:08 AM on August 4, 2014 [7 favorites]
This too is a drastic oversimplification of things. Of course they died for something.
At the beginning of the war, that something was just the fact that they were a professional soldier and it was their job.
For the vast majority of volunteers for "Kitcheners Army" that something was a desire to see what they thought was an overly imperialistic Germany brought to heel - one that had invaded Belgium, a country whose neutrality Britain had publicly sworn to defend and who they were now determined to liberate.
For those signing up after the blood and death of the Somme it was often about reluctantly doing their part to try and bring an end to a conflict that seemed determined to bleed the entire youth of Europe dry.
All of those people, once at the front, also discovered another big reason to fight - the desire not to let down the men you fought alongside, or the younger brothers or relatives who might have to come out and fight if they didn't try and do their part to bring the war to an end.
All those things are something. We may not like them, and with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight and another 100 years of cumulative cultural development we may feel that some (or all) of those somethings are utterly inadequate reasons for those soldiers, generals and politicians to do what they did. But that doesn't mean that to them at the time those reasons weren't important.
It might be nice to imagine that if we were able to go back now and interview random Tommies coming out of the trenches they would almost all be unable to provide a reason for being there, but the exact opposite is true. Even in the darkest, muddiest, filthiest, most deadly days of the Somme and Passchendaele - when those men were terrified and traumatised in equal measure, the vast majority of them would have been able to tell us exactly why they felt they were there in the grand scheme of things. The leftist calls that "workers should not kill workers in the bosses' wars" didn't fail because people were forced at gunpoint into battle, they failed in a large part because even to the majority of the burgeoning political working class it seemed a too simple attitude to a complex situation.
I guess what I'm saying - and apologies for being longwinded about it - is that reducing WW1 to a pointless war over nothing is just as false a history as taking the Gove approach of trying to portray it as glorious high jinks. Both are attempts to portray a bloody and complex period of history in a black-and-white manner that does no justice to both the men and women who fell and to the lessons it should teach us about the dangers of war, complacency and stubbornness at all levels of society.
posted by garius at 7:08 AM on August 4, 2014 [7 favorites]
For the vast majority of volunteers for "Kitcheners Army" that something was a desire to see what they thought was an overly imperialistic Germany brought to heel
This is a drastic oversimplification which has taken on mythic qualities.
Thankfully, as the result of recent historical research during the last decade or so that jingoistic narrative has been revealed for what it is: myth.
Men from the working class joined up for all kinds of reasons. Here are some: sense of adventure; way to escape a boring job; way to escape poverty; because some of their mates had decided to take the 'King's shilling' and they didn't want to be regarded as wimps; it paid better than the current job in civilian life...
posted by Mister Bijou at 7:21 AM on August 4, 2014 [5 favorites]
This is a drastic oversimplification which has taken on mythic qualities.
Thankfully, as the result of recent historical research during the last decade or so that jingoistic narrative has been revealed for what it is: myth.
Men from the working class joined up for all kinds of reasons. Here are some: sense of adventure; way to escape a boring job; way to escape poverty; because some of their mates had decided to take the 'King's shilling' and they didn't want to be regarded as wimps; it paid better than the current job in civilian life...
posted by Mister Bijou at 7:21 AM on August 4, 2014 [5 favorites]
The leftist calls that "workers should not kill workers in the bosses' wars" didn't fail because people were forced at gunpoint into battle, they failed in a large part because even to the majority of the burgeoning political working class it seemed a too simple attitude to a complex situation.
Really? I think that's a much more complex and nuanced view than the one you are suggesting. I've been listening to the CBC's 10-[part distillation of veteran interviews (originally broadcast in the 60s; link in one of the comments in the Kattullus post I mention above), and the first couple of episodes are about people signing up, and the interviews are often clear that they really didn't know what they were fighting for or where they were going to be fighting, much less the conditions or the exact geopolitical reasons that sparked the war.
All these podcasts make it clear that people had a lot of reasons to volunteer -- some went willingly, eager for what seemed like an adventure; some went out of a sense of duty; some were shamed into it by efforts like the "white feather campaign" -- but they didn't have a clear idea of what they were getting into, and the leaders who could actually made a difference didn't seem to have any clear idea, either. The First Battle of Ypres might not have been criminally insane but the Somme certainly was -- it's not like those soldiers just kind of randomly died; they were spent by generals and politicians who were happy for a generation of young men to make a sacrifice that they themselves were insulated from.
So we get to a tricky place, emotionally. How do we honor and remember the soldiers who died while remembering and holding accountable the leaders who killed them? If we focus entirely on the first part, we risk falling into sentimentality and Gove-ness; if we focus on the others, we risk trampling on the memory of people who were really trying to do their best for all their diverse human reasons.
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:23 AM on August 4, 2014 [4 favorites]
Really? I think that's a much more complex and nuanced view than the one you are suggesting. I've been listening to the CBC's 10-[part distillation of veteran interviews (originally broadcast in the 60s; link in one of the comments in the Kattullus post I mention above), and the first couple of episodes are about people signing up, and the interviews are often clear that they really didn't know what they were fighting for or where they were going to be fighting, much less the conditions or the exact geopolitical reasons that sparked the war.
All these podcasts make it clear that people had a lot of reasons to volunteer -- some went willingly, eager for what seemed like an adventure; some went out of a sense of duty; some were shamed into it by efforts like the "white feather campaign" -- but they didn't have a clear idea of what they were getting into, and the leaders who could actually made a difference didn't seem to have any clear idea, either. The First Battle of Ypres might not have been criminally insane but the Somme certainly was -- it's not like those soldiers just kind of randomly died; they were spent by generals and politicians who were happy for a generation of young men to make a sacrifice that they themselves were insulated from.
So we get to a tricky place, emotionally. How do we honor and remember the soldiers who died while remembering and holding accountable the leaders who killed them? If we focus entirely on the first part, we risk falling into sentimentality and Gove-ness; if we focus on the others, we risk trampling on the memory of people who were really trying to do their best for all their diverse human reasons.
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:23 AM on August 4, 2014 [4 favorites]
This is a drastic oversimplification which has taken on mythic qualities.
You're right - fair point. I'd fallen guilty there of over-simplifying for brevity and doing the exact thing i was warning against. I should have stuck with my original (longer) comment which was more along the lines of "reasons might include"
Men from the working class joined up for all kinds of reasons. Here are some: sense of adventure; way to escape a boring job; way to escape poverty; because some of their mates had decided to take the 'King's shilling' and they didn't want to be regarded as wimps; it paid better than the current job in civilian life...
With this though, you've very much made the point I was trying to make better than me - that it was an awfully complex series of collective and individual reasons that resulted in war, and in men fighting in it.
posted by garius at 7:26 AM on August 4, 2014
You're right - fair point. I'd fallen guilty there of over-simplifying for brevity and doing the exact thing i was warning against. I should have stuck with my original (longer) comment which was more along the lines of "reasons might include"
Men from the working class joined up for all kinds of reasons. Here are some: sense of adventure; way to escape a boring job; way to escape poverty; because some of their mates had decided to take the 'King's shilling' and they didn't want to be regarded as wimps; it paid better than the current job in civilian life...
With this though, you've very much made the point I was trying to make better than me - that it was an awfully complex series of collective and individual reasons that resulted in war, and in men fighting in it.
posted by garius at 7:26 AM on August 4, 2014
"Today Germany declared war on Russia-- In the afternoon, swimming lessons."
Diary of Franz Kafka- Aug. 2, 1914
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:06 AM on August 4, 2014 [1 favorite]
Diary of Franz Kafka- Aug. 2, 1914
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:06 AM on August 4, 2014 [1 favorite]
When I say they died for nothing, I obviously don't mean that they thought they were dying for nothing. That would be obviously wrong. But I think that it's wrong to try and use it as a complex, nuanced list of reasons why they died. Most of the men and women who died in World War I died with no ramifications whatsoever on the putative reasons they were fighting. After the Marne, the Western Front was simply a meatgrinder that killed millions and helped starve more. There was no question of Belgian neutrality in why a human being was cut down by a machine gun or vaporized by an artillery shell. And I think that this needs to be presented, front and center, in the hundredth anniversary of this atrocity.
The thing I think should be remembered as well is that the peace was, in a very real way, worse than the war. The rise of Hitler, the scar lines that run across the Middle East, the Russian revolutions whose ultimate failure gave the world Stalinism, were all direct fall-out of the horrible war and its victors' peace. The Treaty of Versailles was justly described as "an armistice for twenty years." All the fine-sounding reasons for "sacrifice" were thrown away in the triumph of England and France.
posted by graymouser at 8:29 AM on August 4, 2014
The thing I think should be remembered as well is that the peace was, in a very real way, worse than the war. The rise of Hitler, the scar lines that run across the Middle East, the Russian revolutions whose ultimate failure gave the world Stalinism, were all direct fall-out of the horrible war and its victors' peace. The Treaty of Versailles was justly described as "an armistice for twenty years." All the fine-sounding reasons for "sacrifice" were thrown away in the triumph of England and France.
posted by graymouser at 8:29 AM on August 4, 2014
...conspiracy to drag us into a war against England’s interests...
posted by Segundus at 8:53 AM on August 4, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by Segundus at 8:53 AM on August 4, 2014 [1 favorite]
The rise of Hitler, the scar lines that run across the Middle East, the Russian revolutions whose ultimate failure gave the world Stalinism, were all direct fall-out of the horrible war and its victors' peace.
Historian Margaret McMillan argues, persuasively, I think, in her book first published in 2001 Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War (aka Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World) that the Treaty of Versailles did not directly lead to the rise of Adolf Hitler. We have to thank the Great Depression starting in 1929 for that.
posted by Mister Bijou at 9:09 AM on August 4, 2014
Historian Margaret McMillan argues, persuasively, I think, in her book first published in 2001 Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War (aka Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World) that the Treaty of Versailles did not directly lead to the rise of Adolf Hitler. We have to thank the Great Depression starting in 1929 for that.
posted by Mister Bijou at 9:09 AM on August 4, 2014
The Treaty of Versailles was the sine qua non of the pre-1929 crises that weakened the Weimar Republic, strengthened German nationalism and helped to create a situation where the Republic could not withstand the social stresses of the Depression. Even if you consider the 1923 hyperinflation totally disconnected from the 1931 economic crisis that starts Hitler's march to power, it set the stage for a revival of nationalism and intense antisemitism from hatred of the "Jewish bankers" etc. And the bad end of WWI, with its dispersal of millions of disaffected veterans, also helped form the situation where paramilitary groups – Röhm's Sturmabteilung as well as the Communist Roter Frontkämpferbund and others like the Eiserne Front – became a big factor in German politics.
posted by graymouser at 3:10 PM on August 4, 2014
posted by graymouser at 3:10 PM on August 4, 2014
Granted you may see them as faceless obelisks or plaques
It is impossible to draw that inference from my statement. It is a deliberate distortion of my words.
Your leading roles in a paramilitary organisation whose aims includes brainwashing impressionable children into believeing pointless death can be noble does not enhance your argument. It devalues it.
Your repeated trips to cemetries proves that death inspires somewhat confused and irrational emotions in you. It does not enhance your point of view or give you the "expert" status you seek.
You want to state your point of view - be my guest. Leave your personal comments about me out of it and I shall do the same.
posted by devious truculent and unreliable at 8:04 AM on August 5, 2014
It is impossible to draw that inference from my statement. It is a deliberate distortion of my words.
Your leading roles in a paramilitary organisation whose aims includes brainwashing impressionable children into believeing pointless death can be noble does not enhance your argument. It devalues it.
Your repeated trips to cemetries proves that death inspires somewhat confused and irrational emotions in you. It does not enhance your point of view or give you the "expert" status you seek.
You want to state your point of view - be my guest. Leave your personal comments about me out of it and I shall do the same.
posted by devious truculent and unreliable at 8:04 AM on August 5, 2014
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posted by double block and bleed at 4:32 AM on August 4, 2014 [1 favorite]