AWAITING WORLD WAR
THREE
I was asked to read
out the at Assembly on November 11 the names of
the old boys of my
school who had died in two world wars. It was a
small school, but the
list was so long that I was treated for a sore throat.
Something had clearly
gone on , I thought, something almost literary
unspeakable. When the
history teacher, so forthcoming on the Corn
Laws and the Stuarts,
came to the subject of the Great War, he seemed
to struggle for
breath; he shook his head sadly and seemed in a hurry to
move on.
Sebastian Faulks,
author of Birdsong
The Second World War
was, in large part, a repeat performance of the
first.
A.J.P. Taylor, an
English historian writing about 'The Origins of the
Second World War.
It is difficult to
grasp! A century has passed since the time of the
armistice agreed on
November 11th, 1918. Yet I can still vividly
recall my grandmother
speaking about how the war had killed the
flower of our youth
and that wicked shameless scoundrel the Kaiser
sought to seize the
British thrown. Her brother Alan "had been
killed by a German
sniper when he went out for a breath of fresh air"
and a much younger
brother had only just avoided perishing. He
had lied about his age
and been sent to France. His father, seeing
the growing casualty
lists endlessly complained to the war office
that his son had
illegally entered the army and should be ejected.
By the time he had won
his case it was too late. The war had lasted
so long that his son
had grown into an adult. Due to his age as well
as conscription, he
could not be discharged. By some miracle he
survived as the rest
of his regiment was entirely decimated. I have
a photo of him dressed
in a kilt in our Moscow apartment.
There is something
about that World War One which deeply disturbs
people. Two years ago
my brother visited my Grand Uncle Alan's
grave on the
battlefield of the Somme. What staggered him was
the vast sea of white
crosses which stretched endlessly on and on.
Where I lived, the
biggest landmark of the town in Bearsden is
the enormous war
memorial of an angel carrying a dead soldier
to the next world.
Just drive around Scotland and you can't help
noting World War One
memorials are everywhere. They are inescapable.
They surpass the
number of Second World War memorials.
I saw many gravestones
of soldiers. What confused me was that some
dates put the World War from 1914-18, but a lot of them extended it to 1919.
I kept wondering
"Have they made a mistake ? " And " Are our history
books wrong? "
Then as I studied more intensively I could grasp why
the war may have truly
ended in 1919. The Armistice was only a
provisional ceasefire
and that the war would be renewed against Germany
unless she agreed to
the Allied Forces' terms. Since the British and French
soldiers were
exhausted, the British could only continue the war by using
a cruel naval blockade
where imported food was prevented from entering
Germany. Thousands of
children were dying from starvation during this
blockade. A.J.P.
Taylor stated: 'The military superiority of the allies had
compelled the Germans
to sue for an armistice .Now this superiority
was wasting away by
demobilization with every day which passed. If
negotiations dragged
on long enough , the Germans might reappear
as equals, not as the
defeated. The allies had one remaining weapon -
the blockade against
Germany which was still being enforced'. Even
British commanders and
their men protested against this blockade and
began to share their
food with German children. It was only with the
signing of the Treaty
of Versailles on 28 June 1919 that the war formally
ended. But this treaty
was so hard on the Germans that it fostered
a revenge psychology
where peace represented only a pause to prepare
for another war. The
war led to the collapse of four great empires as well as
acting as an impetus
to rapidly growing Industrialization.It also gave birth to
three fascist regimes
bent on asserting their authority in Europe.
The tragedy of the
First World War lies not only in the deaths of ten million
soldiers and 20
million wounded, but the fact its outcome was used as
a pretext for yet
another senseless World War. Those wars mean different
things to different
people. Should you call it World War One, The First World
War or The Great War?
Should you spell the words in full capital letters?
I have read many books
on this war yet can't find consistent punctuation!
Some spell it in
capital letters, some do not! It is as if the very war mocks
our impotent words
violating the rules of grammar. Linguists are at a loss!
For the Russians ,
they don't have many First World War memorials to visit. The
biggest First World
War graveyard in Moscow was decimated. Only a few
gravestones have been
preserved or rather recently installed. Dead Russian
soldiers and nurses
are forgotten heroes. Nobody sings their songs.
Now, at present,
many of my Russian students tell me that they are
expecting a Third
World war. They believe it is imminent in Syria where
American and Russian
armed forces have already clashed. There is even
a current slogan among
some Russians boasting "We won the Great Patriotic
War and we can win
another World War." Those people have no real idea of
how horrific war can
be. If those people lent an ear to the voice of refugees
then they might well
be humbled. People shed tears for the dead, but who will
weep for the dying?
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