A century ago, millions of young men left the
security of their homes and went off to war. They went eagerly, swept
along by a wave of patriotism. “I am happy and full of excitement over
the wonderful days ahead,” wrote an American volunteer in 1914.
Soon, though, their enthusiasm turned to
bitterness. No one foresaw the way those huge armies would get bogged
down for years in the mud of Belgium and France. At the time, people
termed it the “Great War.” Today, we know it as the first world war.
The first world war was decidedly great in terms
of casualties. By some estimates, it left about 10 million dead and
20 million mutilated. It was also the result of great blunders. European
statesmen were unable to stop international tensions from escalating
into a global conflict. More important, perhaps, is the fact that the
“Great War” left great scars. It changed the world in ways that still
affect us today.MISTAKES THAT DESTROYED TRUST
The first world war broke out because of
miscalculations. European leaders acted like a “generation of
sleepwalkers that stumbled unawares over the ledge of doom during that
halcyon summer of 1914,” explains the work The Fall of the Dynasties
Within weeks, the assassination of an Austrian
archduke plunged all the major European powers into a war that they did
not want. “How did it all happen?” the German chancellor was asked a few
days after hostilities began. “Ah, if only one knew,” he sadly replied.
The leaders who made the fateful decisions that
led up to the war had no inkling of the consequences. But reality soon
dawned on the soldiers in the trenches. They discovered that their
statesmen had failed them, their clergy had deceived them, and their
generals had betrayed them. How so?
The statesmen promised that the
war would open the way to a new and better world. The German chancellor
proclaimed: “We are fighting for the fruits of our peaceful industry,
for the inheritance of a great past, and for our future.” American
President Woodrow Wilson helped to coin a reassuring popular slogan that
the war would “make the world safe for democracy.” And in Britain,
people thought it would be “a war to end war.” They were all mistaken.
The clergy supported the war
enthusiastically. “The guardians of God’s word led the martial chorus.
Total war came to mean total hatred,” states The Columbia History of the World. And
clerics fanned rather than quenched the flames of hatred. “Clergymen
were unable, and for the most part unwilling, to place Christian faith
before nationality,” observes A History of Christianity. “Most
took the easy way out and equated Christianity with patriotism.
Christian soldiers of all denominations were exhorted to kill each other
in the name of their Saviour.”
The generals promised a quick
and easy victory, but it was not to be. Before long, the opposing armies
came to a grueling stalemate. Thereafter, millions of soldiers faced
what one historian described as “perhaps the cruelest large-scale ordeal
that the flesh and spirit of man have endured.” Despite appalling
losses, generals kept throwing their men against barricades of barbed
wire and barrages of machine-gun fire. Not surprisingly, widespread
mutinies broke out.
How did the first world war affect society? One
historical work quotes a veteran as saying: “The war . . . scorched the
minds and character of a generation.” Indeed, in the wake of that war,
entire empires disappeared. That tragic conflict proved to be the
prelude to the bloodiest century mankind has ever known. Revolutions and
strikes came to seem almost commonplace.
Why did the war turn the world upside down? Was
it really just a colossal accident? Do the answers reveal anything about
our future?
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