'..The first world war more than any other since the rise the Ottoman empire in the 15th century, defined the modern middle east. It was this war that created the system of states - twenty or so Arab and three non-Arab - that characterise the region today.'
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Fred Halliday, Crises of the middle east: 1914, 1967, 2003'Next year, I think, we should find a new way of understanding what happened between 1914 and 1918. That would be our memorial to grandfathers and great grandfathers and in a few cases – including mine – fathers.''The Great War was a strange war, in almost every way. Though it is now called the First World War, it was primarily a European and Middle-Eastern war. More than half of the Earth remained untouched, though far from unaffected. Australia and Canada and the US (a latecomer, as usual) remained safe, though their soldiers – like India’s – died in their tens of thousands in Mesopotamia (Iraq), Gallipoli and in France. Indian battalions were among the first to fight in Flanders and one of the first major naval engagements was fought off the Falklands, now of Thatcher fame. Who now remembers that long before Saddam, Allenby used gas in the Middle East, in a Sinai-Gaza battle against the Turks? Or that the Brits brought almost 100,000 Chinese workers to service the armies of the Western Front?
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Why did it start? AJP Taylor remains my favourite. A meticulous complex of peace treaties that appealed to historians as much as politicians ensured that a balance of competing alliances would lock Europe into peace. But Gavrilo Princip’s infamous shot in Sarajevo caused the Austro-Hungarians to declare war on Serbia, and thus Russia had to mobilise and then Germany had to declare war on Russia and…
Like our own carefully nurtured security pacts, all was well until an individual – say bin Laden instead of Princip – took things into their own hands. A giant, magnificently constructed electrical system that lit up all of Europe, it suddenly short-circuited.
Next year, I think, we should find a new way of understanding what happened between 1914 and 1918. That would be our memorial to grandfathers and great grandfathers and in a few cases – including mine – fathers.'
- Robert Fisk,
As we move towards the Great War’s centenary, it’s time to recognise the reality of its horror, 15 December 2013
Context(1914.org) - 2014 will mark 100 years since the outbreak of the First World War.'..the world in 2013 looks a bit discomfitingly like that of 1913.'The killing fields of the First World War - By John LichfieldSome Costs of the Great War: Nationalizing Private Life - By T. Hunt Tooley(1913 - 2013) Banking Reform - 'Rather than still hoping that real wealth will come out of money creation, an illusion..'A Primer on Austrian Economics - By Jonathan M. Finegold Catalan