Weapons of Mass Disruption

Any nation, people, or organisation has a range of 'weapons' at its disposal, ranging from those of obvious and deadly purpose, to the more subtle ones that most people do not recognise as 'weapons'. Few think of attempts to reduce, restrict or damage another countries economy as a 'weapon', or as an act of war. Yet, arguably, it is both.

Those who call for 'economic sanctions' or 'boycotts' or 'disinvestment' do so in the belief that these are alternatives to sending in the military to change a country. They fondly believe that their 'sanctions' offer an alternative to war, but is it? Is it not a weapon deployed in exactly the same manner as deploying a Trident missile would be? OK, the visible damage is not going to be as great, and perhaps you won't kill several hundred thousand people in achieving your objective  - to change a regime or a national culture - with 'sanctions/boycotts/disinvestments'. Or will you?

The unpleasant truth is that an economic blockade of a country can be just as damaging - over a longer term admittedly - as a short sharp 'little' shooting match. While bullets kill people, sanctions destroy livelihoods, they destroy opportunities, and they create hardships for the very ordinary people those who call for them claim to want to help. So those who want to impose them are, in the long term, likely to cause as much hardship as a 'hot' war will do. Why do I say this?

I have several reasons, one being that I have lived in a country under 'international sanctions'. The most observable effect was the steady increase in unemployment. Disinvestment was something of a two edged sword, many companies who did, walked away having 'sold' their holdings in local companies which simply found other sources of capital (a lot of it ironically, from the Far East and 'Communist' countries), while others simply pulled out, abandoning massively expensive infrastructures and leaving thousands unemployed in an already saturated employment market. Crime rates climbed steeply, with violent crimes such as murder and violent assaults becoming everyday.

And all the while, those imposing the sanctions talked of bringing the country to its knees economically in order to impose their vision of what the country should look like. When I had the opportunity to challenge someone who was a determined and very vocal advocate of sanctions, boycotts and disinvestment, they admitted it was a 'weapon' to be used 'for the good of the oppressed'. But when I pointed out that the 'oppressed' were suffering more than anyone else, the answer astonished me; "Well, some must suffer hardship for the good of the majority and the future."

Quite, as long as it is not the 'advocate' who suffers.

A flip through history reveals a number of interesting things about past 'sanctions' campaigns. Perhaps the most telling is the example of the sanctions against Japan in the 1930s. Intended to 'damage' Japan's ability to sustain its war in Manchuria, it actually convinced the Japanese that their only option was to go to war in order to secure the resources they needed to sustain their economy and population. Some historians still argue that the US policy may well have been deliberately designed to provoke exactly that response. At the very least, something those who advocate sanctions, boycotts or disinvestment should consider is that the response almost invariably invoked in the people on the receiving end, is a hardening of attitudes.

That can be seen today in Iran, in Russia, in Zimbabwe and in Israel.

Then there is the question of what happens once you have succeeded in destroying someones economy. Does it produce the happy smiling face you wanted to see? Or does it produce a failing state, struggling to stay afloat and unable to pay its way in the world economy? If some recent examples are anything to go by, the latter seems to be more likely. Iraq, having had sanctions imposed which ruined its currency and internal economy, then had 'regime change' imposed by a war, is a basket case. Even without the IS lunatics and all the other factions vying for power, it is a country in ruins because its economy is ruined - and it is likely to stay that way for a very long time.

Zimbabwe's economy all but collapsed toward the end of the long UDI government, so when Mugabe came to power, those who love this form of warfare, thought there would be a 'magic' recovery. There wasn't. The AID they poured in was stolen, then the banks were grabbed by Mugabe's thugs, and then the farms. Now? It is a subsistence economy at best. The same thing almost happened in South Africa, though it was better placed to survive, and the economy is at least now stable - but the corruption and white collar crime, coupled with a few other problems, is crippling any rebuilding of the economy. Yet another 'triumph' for the sanctions, boycotts and disinvestment advocates to rejoice over.

Sanctions/Economic Blockades do work. Again, if we consider history, we can see many examples. Britain's blockade of France during the Napoleonic wars crippled France's economy. Napoleon's 'Continental Blockade' of closed ports and trade bans in Northern Europe almost destroyed the British economy by smashing the Baltic Trade - worth over 42 million Pounds Sterling in 1809 and only 5 million Pounds Sterling five years later. The dramatic loss of market share almost destroyed the British economy in the middle of the war. The British blockade of German trade in 1914 - 18 smashed the German economy, and millions of Germans starved (so did millions of other Europeans caught between the 'Great Powers', what one might call 'collateral damage' today), and gave rise (as some always hope will happen when they demand sanctions) to mass civil unrest in German towns and cities. Communists seized town halls and other government buildings, but more crucially, the sanctions/blockade coupled with the demands of the Allies in the Versailles treaty, resulted in the rise of the National Socialists as a counter to the Communists.

Again and again we see the result of destroying an economy to compel regime change, and each time we see a situation resulting that is, if anything, worse than the first state. Yes, there are exceptions, but they are few and very far between.

Those who call for sanctions, boycotts or disinvestment against a country need to think very carefully about what they are doing. In essence they are declaring war on another country, another people, and they are deploying a very dangerous Weapon of Mass Disruption with the deliberate intent of destroying a people's ability to feed and house themselves.

It often strikes me as ironic that those who always advocate the deployment of this weapon are usually also anti-war, anti-military, but none I have ever spoken to seem to see the contradiction.  

The Final Dominoes Fall ...

Today, one hundred years ago, Britain and France declared war on the Central Powers, Germany and Austria-Hungary, the French striking into Alsace, and the British moving the BEF to France. Reading the newspaper accounts of the time, the expectation was that the Fleet would steam across the North Sea, destroy the German High Seas Fleet in a 'second Trafalgar' at sea, or in their anchorage at Wilhelmshaven. The BEF was going to put the Germans in their place in Europe and the whole thing would be all over in a matter of months.

There would be no 'second Trafalgar', nor a 'Glorious First of June' at sea. In fact the Royal Navy suffered several disastrous losses in the early days of the war. The old cruisers, HMS Aboukir, Cressy and Hogue were torpedoed by U-9 in an almost comical series of blunders by the commanding officers, taking with them hundreds of Reservists. At the Battle of Coronel, Admiral Cradock's squadron was destroyed by Admiral von Spee's East Asiatic Squadron, and the raiders, SMS Königsberg, operating out of the Rufiji River in East Africa, and the SMS Emden in the East Indies, played havoic with Empire shipping. Jutland is best described as a 'draw', and the idea that the High Seas Fleet never again played a decisive part in the war is a myth. Their actions in the Baltic continued unhindered and would eventually play a large part in creating the Bolshevik Revolution and the Russian collapse.

That is always the danger of propaganda replacing reality. Far from being 'all over by Christmas' and a nice tidy demonstration of the superiority of British forces, it turned into a rout within days in France and it was only the professionalism of the British 'Tommies' that checked the French retreat once the German onslaught was unleashed. That check condemned the Germans to a slow and agonising war of attrition, and everyone else to a slow bleeding away of their young men, and a serious drain on economies that the pro-war parties cannot have foreseen.

The 'Great War' swept away the 'old' European systems and borders, re-alligning territories and moving vast numbers of people - or marooning them in 'new' host countries where they were treated as 'foreigners'. It would, in the draconian 'reparations' demanded by the French among others, sow the seeds for a second global conflict and the rise of Nazism and Fascisim - and, ironically, in attempting to destroy the German economy - it brought on the Great Depression.

We can only speculate on what the world would be like today had Britain refrained from rushing into war and cooler heads prevailed elsewhere.

Germany Opens Fire on Russia

As the German ultimatum to Russia expired, the SMS Augsburg set sail from Königsburg to carry out her orders. On this day she opened fire on the Russian garrison town and the Naval Base of Liepaja (Libau in German) in what is today Latvia, but was then a province of the Tsarist Empire. In a very brief engagement demonstrating some remarkably accurate gunnery (something we, in Britain, should perhaps have taken more note of) she destroyed batteries, munitions dumps and ships in the harbour, steaming away from the scene unscathed and leaving the city on fire.

It was a taste of things to come on this front, Liepaja being just the first city to get a taste of modern war. Many others on this front and in the west would soon be given the same treatment from both sides of the conflict. There was no distinction to be drawn then between 'civilian' and 'military' targets - everyone was an enemy.

In the West, the Royal Navy was already at its 'War Stations' thanks to Winston Churchill. Parliament had sent its Ultimatum to Germany, as had France. Belgium had cast its lot with France and Britain, and the Dutch, Danish, Norwegians, Swedes and Swiss declared their neutrality. Austria-Hungary, already engaged with the Serbs and the Russians, was not doing well, and Italy, with their eyes on Austria's Aegean territories was hesitating.

The storm in the west was about to break.

The First Shots of the Great War

One hundred years ago today, the Russian forces completed their mobilisation, and the first of Germany's Reserves mustered to join their Regiments. The Ultimata had begun to be circulated, and Germany itself was divided over the prospect of the conflict. We are often told of the 'patriotic fervour' and the 'rush to join' by the official history taught in most schools, but reading the 'Zeitungs' of the period a slightly different story emerges. Yes, there were those who saw the war as an opportunity, but they were far from being the only voices on the streets and in the corridors of power. The whole thing was still, even at this point, on a knife edge.

We are told of the mass demonstrations that greeted the Kaiser's supposed statement that henceforth he 'recognised no Patries, only the German people', but it transpires that this is a myth built around the real events. There were demonstrations of a patriotic nature in Berlin and other major cities, but the Kaiser's actual words have been paraphrased, presumably by newspaper editors. His actual words were much longer and a bit more guarded. What the papers (and subsequent historians) were a little less entusiastic about reporting was the mass demonstrations in many more cities and towns against joining the war. Even in the Reichstag - the Kaiserreich Parliament - and in the various Landestags, voices were raised in heated debate both for and against the coming conflict. There was, at this point, no united will to go to war.

Now enter 'hubris' and the fear of invasion. At some point Russian forces fired on German villages and troops in East Prussia. Coupled with this came the intelligence that the French were sending troops into Belgium to reinforce the Belgians (though this appears to have been a misleading report) and planned to occupy Luxemburg, a German affiliated independent Duchy. These events became the game changers, though there were still dissenting voices, the majority swung behind the demand to defend German territory and the die were caste.

Ambassadors began packing, diplomatic telegrams flew back and forth, and deadlines for avoiding conflict began to pass. Luxemburg was occupied without a shot fired. Indeed, one gets the impression the Luxembourgois preferred German occupation to a French one, and the armoured cruiser SMS Augsburg was despatched to Königsburg with secret orders to be executed if the Russians did not respond to the Ultimatum resulting from their having fired on Germany.

The Great War was now inevitable.

A Tragic Centenary

Today marks the hundredth anniversary of the bombardment of Belgrade by the Ausrto-Hungarian army. Whether this news finally decided the Tsar to mobilise his army, is debatable, but the fact remains he gave the order, and that triggered the rest. The Kaiser, who had, the the annoyance of his Chancellor and his Chiefs of Staff, had been vacillating, now had, as he saw it, no choice, and the German mobilisation was the final straw.

Interestingly, it has just recently emerged that King George V, in a private meeting with the British Foreign Secretary a week or so before this, told him that 'a war is essential if we are to avoid having the continent under Prussian control'. Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty had already cancelled the dispursal of the Reserve Fleet following the annual Fleet exercises - and ordered them to their 'War Stations' instead - pre-empting Parliament. Germany, under the epithet, Prussia, has always been blamed for starting the war, but it appears there were people on all sides simply spoiling for a war in Europe for all manner of nationalistic reasons.

I very much doubt any of those seeking an excuse to 'have a little war' in order to check German expansion on the continent, or to stave off politzical unrest at home, secure trade advantages, or any of the miriad reasons not paraded, had the slightest inkling of what they were about to unleash.  

The Slide to War ...

Today marks the one hundredth anniversary of the Austrian declaration of War against Serbia, the moment the world began an inexorable slide into the mud, blood and slaughter that engulfed the world. The initial Austrian attack into Serbia went disastrously wrong, in part thanks to the fact the head of their Military Intelligence was actually working for the Russians and passing all the military plans to his Russian paymasters - who forwarded them to the Serbs.

The Austrians had several problems. Their troops were poorly trained and led, the artillery largely antiquated and their troops ran into problems with the weather as well. On the Serbian side there was, initially, a problem of discipline, and they were out numbered. Both sides ran into difficulties, but the Austrians faced the bigger problems and their initial attack soon ran into trouble.

Unfortunately, the dominoes were already starting to tumble, turning what should have been, and remained, a 'local' squabble, into a global conflict. One can only wonder what the world would have looked like had Russia, Germany, Britain and France stayed out of it. One thing is certain - the death toll would not have been numbered in millions.

The Shots that Triggered Catastrophe

Say Sarajevo today and most first think of the famous concert there or the Bosnian and Serbian conflict as the former Yugoslavia broke up. Many would not associate it immediately with the start of the First World War. Today marks one hundred years since an assassins bullets on the streets of Sarajevo started the tumbling of the dominoes as the world slid toward what would become the slaughter of Europe’s young men in France, Belgium, Poland, Romania, Hungary, East Prussia, Lithuania, Latvia, Gallipoli, East and West Africa and the Far East.

When the nationalist fanatic Gavrilo Princip pulled the trigger, killing the Archduke Franz-Ferdinand and his wife, Sophia in Sarajevo, he started the process that brought down the Hapsburg, Hohenzollern and Romanov dynasties, redrew the borders of Europe and sentenced millions to death, starvation and hardship. He set the scene for the fall of fragile democracies that followed the 1919 peace, and led to the disappearance of both several more Royal Houses and of democracy itself in many more lands. News papers whipped up patriotic sentiment to a frenzy in almost every country as the tensions grew and spread, and one has to wonder what drove some to want to bring about a war.

Once the dominoes began to fall, the rush toward a global conflict gathered momentum. At play were issues of nationalism, national pride, revenge, territorial ambitions and in at least one case, a desire to prevent Germany becoming the dominant European power. Some countries involved really had no direct interest in the confrontation between Serbia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire other than the chance to gain territory. Italy had it’s eyes on the Tirol and the territory around Trieste and the Dalmatian coast. Serbia cherished ambitions for Bosnia, Croatia and Albania, Romania had it’s eyes on Transylvania, France on Alsace and the Russians on East Prussia.

Great Britain had several reasons for wanting a war, none of them ‘territorial’ but driven by the fear that a powerful Germany dominating Europe would threaten British manufacturing (already in trouble and already losing its edge to the more innovative Germans) and its High Seas Fleet could eventually threaten British superiority at sea. The British cabinet was split, between those who did not want to get involved in a ‘European squabble’, and those like Winston Churchill and the Earl of Salisbury who demanded it. Their reasoning was that it would check German expansionism (part of the long running anti-German propaganda campaign in the British Press) and, privately, that it would resolve and divert growing problems of unemployment and labour unrest in the declining industrial heartlands.

France, still smarting from her defeat in 1870, wanted revenge and the opportunity to seize territory ‘lost’ to Germany (some argue they had their eyes on pushing all the way back to the Napoleonic borders along the Rhine) and the Russians wanted to secure the ice free harbour at Königsberg (now Kalinnengrad). It must be said here that the Kaiser, perhaps realising at the last moment, that Germany had everything to lose and almost nothing to gain, made strenuous attempts to call a halt - frustrated in the end by Tsar Nicholas II's casual order to 'mobilise' his army against Austria. The rest, as they say, is history.

So Princip’s bullets launched a domino tumble that would sweep away millions of lives in a war which, in reality, had no ‘winners’ unless one considers the late entering United States as a ‘winner’. It would launch the eventual Bolshevik Revolution in Russia which swept aside, not the Tsar, but the fledgling democracy the Tsar had finally been forced to allow, and condemn millions to the horrors of the Russian civil war and the Leninist and Stalinist terrors that followed. Those gunshots at Sarajevo also set history on the course that would lead to the rise of National Socialism and the horrors of the holocaust and the Second World War and ultimately the Cold War and the world we see crumbling around us at present.

It has been a remarkable century, one shaped by war, by failed ideologies, by fanatics of every description. Let us hope that the future can be secured against such horrors and against such lunatics.

Societies in Decline

Students of the wider sweep of history are very acutely aware, I suspect, of the manner in which societies - and their attendent cultural forms and influences - rise and decline. Sometimes they are violently overthrown and even eradicated by a more aggressive neighbour. Egypt versus the Hittites, Hittites versus the Assyrians, Babylon versus Assyria, Persia versus Babylon, Greece (Macedonia) versus Persia, Rome versus Greece, versus the Carthaginians, and so on. Along the way there is often an element of 'ethnic cleansing' - Rome's Punic Wars against Carthage, and their suppression of the Etruscan civilisation, spring immediately to mind - but that is the tip of the iceberg.

In the Far East there is a similar pattern of rise and fall of societies and cultures, each one weakening one society, often by simply killing off all males. There is evidence that this happened in Britain once the Angles and Saxons began a serious settlement invasion. Recent reading I have been doing on the subject of genetics and genetic diseases suggests, for me, a possible explanation as to why we are seeing an increasing number of genetic defects in the world's populations, and why, in some groups, we seem to be seeing a form of 'regression' physically and mentally. I must stress that I am NOT a geneticist. I have NO qualification in that field and I know only what I can access online, in paper journals and books on the subject. So what I think can be dismissed by those with far more knowledge as "speculation" - but I would hope that someone, somewhere, will be kind enough to consider this, and perhaps explain to me why I am wrong - or why I'm right.

Many now accept that western society is in decline. We have lost our competitive edge as the business phrase is, and our taste for military adventures. Our response to threats such as that posed by Iran or Mr Putin's Russia, is to retreat into hand-wringing appeals to their 'better nature' and launch into a flurry of 'diplomatic activity' and horse trading until someone, somewhere, can emerge waving a bit of paper and proclaiming "peace in our time". A century ago, we'd have sent a Fleet and bombarded someone until they saw our point of view. And that is part of the problem I am about to raise. Each of those 'little' wars culled sections of the human gene pool. Until the so-called Great War of 1914 - 1919, the numbers were actually quite limited - assuming one ignores things like the French losing 10,000 of their nobility at Agincourt, or Napoleon's loss of 100,000 men retreating from Moscow. In the Great War, however, all the European nations and their colonies threw the cream of their genetic pool into the trenches and carried out a cull of it on an industrial scale.

Then we repeated the folly barely twenty years later - and this time involved the rest of the world. Add to that, the Russian Bolshevik 'cull' now estimated at more than 30 million, and the Japanese 'cull' of Chinese in Manchuria and elsewhere (estimated at around 10 million), Mao's cull estimated at 100 million, and we have a stage set for a massive restriction in genetic diversity. The impact is probably most notable in the former British Colonies and Dominions since the "European" genetic pools in these countries was quite small, and their losses during the first and second World Wars disproportionately high. However, the Germans and their allies, and the Russians and their's suffered higher losses than everyone else in this conflict, and the French probably, in proportion, most of all. So why have we not seen the collapse of their populations before this?

Part of that answer is, I think, due to the fact that post 1945, their populations have grown, expanded and to some extent been replaced, by inward migration from all over Europe, and lately, from Africa and the Near East. The loss of genetic diversity among the 'native populations' has, to some extent been masked and the effects delayed by it. In Britain, where there has tended to be less 'mobility', I would suggest that the loss of genetic material has had a more visible and insidious effect. There has been a large increase - according to one source an above average increase, in the incidence of Multiple Schlerosis, Thyroid problems, Aspergers Syndrome, Parkinsons Disease and several other genetically caused disabilities. Given that we know it requires a minimum of 2.5 million people to provide the unrelated genetic diverstiy to prevent 'inbreeding' in any population and all the problems that causes (I'd love to know who the genius was that included the ban on marrying brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, cousins, etc., almost 3,000 years ago in the Bible), it does not take a genius to work out that a lot of this is down to 'bad genes'.

So where do they come from? Back we go to the 1914-19 and 1939 - 45 wars. All sides lost millions of young men. Young men at the height of their breeding capability, and at the point where the genetic material they carried was at its best. Then we subjected the survivors to diseases, to radiation, to chemicals and a range of conditions, stresses and diets guaranteed to cause genetic damage - and now we reap the results.

OK, so I'm not an expert. I'm not a biologist, and I'm certainly not a geneticist, but the more I read on this, the more I realise we have a serious problem. That we have compounded it by interfering in the process of 'natural selection' as well, just makes it worse. Who cannot be moved by the grief of parents who have a child whose only hope of survival at birth is a total replacement of all its organs? (There was a case of this a while ago where the NHS was sued to force them to provide it for a desparately ill baby) What does it actually achieve, given that the reason is the child's genetic blueprint is loaded with defects?

Yes, the World Population has exploded and expanded since 1945, largely due to the eradication of a range of diseases we were prone to and which the weakest members of our population gereally succumbed to. Infant mortality has fallen everywhere, more children survive to adulthood and breed, more adults survive beyond 45 years and some even breed into their sixties. All of which adds more genetic defects to the pool if the latest research saying that men over 30 are more likely to pass on defects than under that age. Children who died in their prepuberty often did so because they lacked resistance to certain common ailments, or had some defect in their systems which meant they couldn't cope with it.

For Europe, I would suggest that our gene pool was seriously weakened by the wars of the 20th Century, and though it is now diversifying again, it is simply widening the range of damaged genes we can use. As I said at the outset, I'd love to see what the real geneticists, biologists and experts say about this. So far I see and read a lot of skating round the edges, but, as far as I can see, no one is prepared to take a longer and wider look at it.

Maybe someone should.

A Century of Change ...

This year we will mark the start of an event that changed the world in ways we are still coming to terms with. The question being raised by many taking a fresh look at the events of 1914, is could it have been avoided? If it had not happened, what sort of world would we now inhabit?

Growing up in an English speaking environment, the son of an ex-serviceman, and grandson of other ex-servicemen, I grew up with the 'British' version that it was all caused by the Kaiser. That it was his ambitions, his desire to rule the world, and his desire for conquest that caused it all. As ever, the truth is a lot more complex, and a whole lot more convoluted than that. Sure this is what the British and Empire press pushed in a frenzy of patriotic fervour, but we must also remember that certain strong elements of that same Press had been whipping up anti-German sentiments since around 1890 when the Kaisers first began building an oceanic navy to defend their interests in Africa and the Far East. It spurred a naval building arms race that more or less made a war against Germany inevitable.

Recently published letters and memoirs of the British Prime Minister reveal that the Cabinet was split, and that the small government majority in Parliament meant that he couldn't afford to lose a single seat. So the 'War Party' within the Cabinet were able to hold him to ransom. What is seldom taught in the lesson I have encountered on this period, is the fact that the Kaiser, perhaps seeing the danger more clearly than those who thought a war would be quick, dashing and commercially advantageous, desperately telegraphed all the potential protagonists urging restraint. He undertook to refrain from military support of Austria if everyone else stayed out of the squabble - which Austria unwisely tried to settle by attacking Serbia. Unfortunately, the Tsar ignored the offer and mobilised his army.

I have often wondered why the Germans, with a war on the Eastern border, attacked France in the West, invading through Belgium and Luxembourg (the latter was actually an independent Grand Duchy of the Kaiser's Empire) which gave the British 'War Party' the excuse they needed. I have now learned that the attack was triggered by the French mobilising and threatening an invasion of Germany's southern states. As the Germans knew the French cherished ambitions of 'avenging' the humiliation of the Franco-Prussian War of 1871, they couldn't afford to leave that unchallenged. Interestingly, and despite latter Britsih and French historians putting it about that the Germans had been amassing weaponry and preparing for the war for ages, Germany was actually very unprepared. There was sufficient ammunition available for only a six week conflict, and it took an almost superhuman effort on the part of their industries to meet the demand once that was expended. Even their navy had so little ammunition available at the outset that a single engagement could have depleted their stopcks disastrously.

As ever, when you take a look at the history from both sides there is a lot of information revealed that makes obvious that there were a number of 'eminence grise' in the background on all sides. Britain did not need to get involved, but there were powerful voices within government, and in commerce and industry that wanted a war. Why? Some for altruistic reasons, believing it would strengthen the Empire to stamp firmly on the 'upstarts' in Europe who dared to challenge the British hegemony, others who were losing trade to German industries and hoped a war would give them an advantage, and there was the anger at the fact that, in Africa, Germany had prevented the creation of a continuous British presence "from the Cape to Cairo" with their colonies in South West Africa and Tanganika.

There were those in France who wanted to bring down the power of Germany, and restore French dominance on the Continent, and others, who, like their British counterparts, wanted German industry  and trade restricted. And then there was Russia. The last despot in Europe, the last real Emperor responsible to no one. Unfortunately, also a man given to whims of the moment who failed to see the danger of the beast he unleashed.

We have always been taught, by the history written by the 'winners' that the whole conflict was caused by 'German ambitions' and 'German aggression', but, as I said in opening, this isn't the whole truth. The 'War Parties' on all sides expected a quick and mobile war, the slogan 'all over by Christmas' was popular, but sadly ill-informed and based more on propaganmda than reality. And like most propaganda, it led to tragedy on a massive scale. In June we will mark the assassination that triggered the whole sorry mess - and launched a century of war that has all but destroyed the world and the society the men who marched across Europe in 1914 thought they were fighting to preserve.

The only victors, as ever, seem to have been those 'dark figures' in the background who saw profit in a conflict, and who are still present, at least in spirit, in our world today. It is something we should reflect on deeply.