|
E
|
xactly 100 years ago tomorrow, Britain stumbled into a war
that would change the face not just of this country but of the whole of Europe,
for ever.
Its consequences
would spread far beyond the continent where it was fought, initiating almost a
century of upheaval, revolution, bloodshed and conflict unimaginable to the
Britons who cheered when we decided to fight the Kaiser on August 4, 1914.
It is no exaggeration
to say that the effects of the Great War are still being felt. It isn’t just that so many families remember great uncles
or grandparents or great-grandparents who lie in what Rupert Brooke called
‘some corner of a foreign field’.
The conflict in
Ukraine and the bloody wars in Syria, Iraq and Gaza all have their roots in a
war that destroyed the empires that constituted the old world order, and which
began a century ago almost to the day.
Ukraine’s troubles were born from the ruins of the
Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires, and the horrors of the Middle East from
the fall of the Ottoman Empire. These two conflicts have conspired to make the
world more dangerous than since the height of the Cold War in the early 1960s,
and are direct legacies of the bloodbath which the nation commemorates the
centenary of tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment