Unhappy Birthday, Great War
Today marks the 99th anniversary of Britain's decision to throw in over Belgium, thus completing the conversion of a regrettable but moderately contained causus belli between the Dual Monarchy and the Kingdom of Serbia into a general meat-grinder that took far longer, cost far more, and went further than any reasonable predictions could have surmised. The last living veteran of that war is thought to have died recently, but the echoes are still with us.
I admit to having a long list of 'what if' and 'might have been' questions about that whole mess, but against the musings of a chap like Ferguson, I am prone to a certain fatalistic interpretation of events. it is all very good to claim that the world would have been better off if England had stayed her hand (England and the Commonwealth, certainly)...but that ignores a lot of people whose primary offense is to have been born somewhere other than Merrie Olde. Given the assumptions that prevailed at the time, the amount of resources that would be brought to bear, and the general naivete about the scaling factors involved, I find it more likely that if it hadn't been an Austrian Archduke's death, it would have been something else...and sooner rather than later.
I admit to having a long list of 'what if' and 'might have been' questions about that whole mess, but against the musings of a chap like Ferguson, I am prone to a certain fatalistic interpretation of events. it is all very good to claim that the world would have been better off if England had stayed her hand (England and the Commonwealth, certainly)...but that ignores a lot of people whose primary offense is to have been born somewhere other than Merrie Olde. Given the assumptions that prevailed at the time, the amount of resources that would be brought to bear, and the general naivete about the scaling factors involved, I find it more likely that if it hadn't been an Austrian Archduke's death, it would have been something else...and sooner rather than later.