[...] Seth Halpern makes a good point in the discussion under the World War One review, and I’ve already conceded that I may have overdone the “what a pointless joke it was” theme, or anyway have underrated the historical and moral necessity of the war itself, but consider this post from yesterday, by blogger Jacob T. Levy, that got a fair amount of attention and linkage via Memeorandom on the political left: There’s commemorative cannon-fire outside my office right now, and I’m more disgusted than moved. Yet more artillery fire seems to me to miss what should be the point. [...]
I remember being surprised as an early teenager when my dad, a WW2 veteran, told me that his father’s war was altogether a different thing from his – unnecessary and foolish. “It was none of our business, and it really did a lot of good, didn’t it?”
My dad’s father was gone by then, so I took that thought to my mother’s father, who had also fought in WWI, with an artillery unit. I can’t quote him because his english was poor and my italian far worse. The gist of what I got was that it was a good war because it yielded him American citizenship. The work in the army wasn’t easy; but it wasn’t nearly as hard as work for the padrone who was a (unprintable and I doubt I could get translate the italian vehemence into a description). I was quite shocked at the time.
It was the first time in his life he ate any significant amount of meat and the American sargeants were easy to work for next to the overseer on the padrone’s land. They treated you like a person rather than like an animal. Then he told me about gas attacks and how they (the common soldiers) almost looked forward to them. There were gas masks for the horses; but the mess sargeants made sure all the units knew to go slow on getting the masks on weak or sickly horses when supplies of meat were low.
“You ate the horses!”
‘When you’re belly’s empty, Sulliva, you mangia what there is.’
The peasant’s point of view of the wars of the gentry.
@ Seth Halpern:
I think you're right, Seth, that German expansionism-militarism was a problem that would have had to have been sorted out sooner or later anyway. Stone is also very strong relative to his space limitations on the inevitability of the war, whose outbreak is tied to sheer accident in the popular imagination - the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand - though the event amounted to a sought-after pretext for the Germans. They were convinced they had to act before Russia became too strong. The British and French were convinced they had to act before Germany became too strong. There was and remains little precedent in world history for a peaceful resolution of such competing claims. The ongoing decline of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires were major complicating factors.
The expanded context for the "comedic set-up" is that the war planners were looking back on their own recent military precedents, and had to go back 40 years for the last Great Power confrontation in Europe. They appear to have expected something resembling the Franco-Prussian war, maybe even shorter given the greater destructiveness and mobility of their armies. They had dismissed the more relevant precedent that you happen to bring up, of the American Civil War.
The horrors that followed should not obscure the fact that Imperial Germany was an aggressively expansionist power which would have to be contained (and preferably dismantled) sooner or later to insure the stability of Europe. We can argue whether it was worth the cost, or handled sanely even if it was, but I think the persistent notion that WWI was nothing more than a singularly tasteless joke does a disservice, no doubt inadvertent, to its Allied practitioners, who tend to be stereotyped as mad social Darwinists or their hapless lab rats and guinea pigs. .
After all, the American Civil War may have been criminally negligent overkill too, and most white Southerners just wanted to be left alone.
I think the bugs bunny / daffy duck thing was a later cartoon and about WW2.
I probably should have written that I think I saw Boom Boom as a kid because of the way memory works and the possibility that scenes and gags were later copied in other cartoons; but the scene with the shell chasing the motorcycle and the scene of the cow? becoming an angel with a harp sure seemed familiar. Also the bugler at the beginning.
The matter of fact violence with consequences might well stem from the horrified attitude that grew out of that war. In Messina my wife and I came upon a very elaborate war memorial that contained hundreds of crypts of soldiers who died from 1915 to 1918. WW2 didn't inspire that sort of monument - or perhaps the felt need to bring men home for burial had lessened - or perhaps Mussolini and his fascists built monuments like that in service to their Second Roman Empire sense of grandiosity.
My mother, visiting family in her (our) ancestral town in northeastern Italy in the 1990's, met a several year older than her cousin who still commonly wore his full blackshirt fascist uniform out of yearning for the good old days. Among the other relatives he was considered off his rocker, but no one was shocked by him. They joked with my mom that he was lucky the communists hadn't shot him after the war.
I may have seen it when I was a kid. I found it while I was looking for some other cartoon I seem to remember - I was thinking it was Bugs Bunny vs Daffy Duck - in which a huge bombardment occurs, but Daffy or whoever is still standing there, smoldering, dirtied up, and frazzled, but mainly just a little upset and ready for the next round.
Boom Boom though - I meant it when I described it as nightmarish. I think the poor quality black and white enhances the effect.
Oh, that's a tragedy about the YouTube - did you catch it before it was pulled?
According to Stone and others, when the Royal Navy finally enforced effective convoy tactics, they reduced the hit on shipping significantly enough to neutralize the U-boats. A parallel process occurred during WW2.
I don't think you'll be disappointed in the book at all. The detail work alone - the footnotes I referred to - justifies it as a read for history buffs.
Very fine writing; but I think you let yourself get a bit carried away by the prose. Not that I, of all people, occupy ground suitable for making that charge.
"The greatest positive accomplishment of the Royal Navy may have been protecting merchant shipping so poorly against U-boats as to bring the enraged Americans earlier into the war."
A nicely turned sentence that suited your objective and narrative flow; but it implies that the Royal Navy could have protected merchant shipping much better. I could be wrong but it seems more the case that the technology to protect merchant shipping simply wasn't there.
Regardless, I enjoyed the review a lot, and I've put the book on my wish list; although I doubt the fellow's writing matches what you produced for sheer elan. It reminds me a bit of parts of Helprin's A Soldier of the Great War .
By the way, Youtube has removed your video for unauthorized use. The next knock on your door may be their lawyers.
[...] Seth Halpern makes a good point in the discussion under the World War One review, and I’ve already conceded that I may have overdone the “what a pointless joke it was” theme, or anyway have underrated the historical and moral necessity of the war itself, but consider this post from yesterday, by blogger Jacob T. Levy, that got a fair amount of attention and linkage via Memeorandom on the political left: There’s commemorative cannon-fire outside my office right now, and I’m more disgusted than moved. Yet more artillery fire seems to me to miss what should be the point. [...]
The credulous led by the incredibly clueless.
But not all. I posted the comment below to J.E. Dyer's commemoration of Veteran's Day.
http://theoptimisticconservative.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/ninety-one-years/#comments
I remember being surprised as an early teenager when my dad, a WW2 veteran, told me that his father’s war was altogether a different thing from his – unnecessary and foolish. “It was none of our business, and it really did a lot of good, didn’t it?”
My dad’s father was gone by then, so I took that thought to my mother’s father, who had also fought in WWI, with an artillery unit. I can’t quote him because his english was poor and my italian far worse. The gist of what I got was that it was a good war because it yielded him American citizenship. The work in the army wasn’t easy; but it wasn’t nearly as hard as work for the padrone who was a (unprintable and I doubt I could get translate the italian vehemence into a description). I was quite shocked at the time.
It was the first time in his life he ate any significant amount of meat and the American sargeants were easy to work for next to the overseer on the padrone’s land. They treated you like a person rather than like an animal. Then he told me about gas attacks and how they (the common soldiers) almost looked forward to them. There were gas masks for the horses; but the mess sargeants made sure all the units knew to go slow on getting the masks on weak or sickly horses when supplies of meat were low.
“You ate the horses!”
‘When you’re belly’s empty, Sulliva, you mangia what there is.’
The peasant’s point of view of the wars of the gentry.
@ Seth Halpern:
I think you're right, Seth, that German expansionism-militarism was a problem that would have had to have been sorted out sooner or later anyway. Stone is also very strong relative to his space limitations on the inevitability of the war, whose outbreak is tied to sheer accident in the popular imagination - the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand - though the event amounted to a sought-after pretext for the Germans. They were convinced they had to act before Russia became too strong. The British and French were convinced they had to act before Germany became too strong. There was and remains little precedent in world history for a peaceful resolution of such competing claims. The ongoing decline of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires were major complicating factors.
The expanded context for the "comedic set-up" is that the war planners were looking back on their own recent military precedents, and had to go back 40 years for the last Great Power confrontation in Europe. They appear to have expected something resembling the Franco-Prussian war, maybe even shorter given the greater destructiveness and mobility of their armies. They had dismissed the more relevant precedent that you happen to bring up, of the American Civil War.
The horrors that followed should not obscure the fact that Imperial Germany was an aggressively expansionist power which would have to be contained (and preferably dismantled) sooner or later to insure the stability of Europe. We can argue whether it was worth the cost, or handled sanely even if it was, but I think the persistent notion that WWI was nothing more than a singularly tasteless joke does a disservice, no doubt inadvertent, to its Allied practitioners, who tend to be stereotyped as mad social Darwinists or their hapless lab rats and guinea pigs. .
After all, the American Civil War may have been criminally negligent overkill too, and most white Southerners just wanted to be left alone.
Colin, that was a terrific piece. It looks as if I'll be forced to buy a book, something I've almost forgotten how to do.
@ CK MacLeod:
I think the bugs bunny / daffy duck thing was a later cartoon and about WW2.
I probably should have written that I think I saw Boom Boom as a kid because of the way memory works and the possibility that scenes and gags were later copied in other cartoons; but the scene with the shell chasing the motorcycle and the scene of the cow? becoming an angel with a harp sure seemed familiar. Also the bugler at the beginning.
The matter of fact violence with consequences might well stem from the horrified attitude that grew out of that war. In Messina my wife and I came upon a very elaborate war memorial that contained hundreds of crypts of soldiers who died from 1915 to 1918. WW2 didn't inspire that sort of monument - or perhaps the felt need to bring men home for burial had lessened - or perhaps Mussolini and his fascists built monuments like that in service to their Second Roman Empire sense of grandiosity.
My mother, visiting family in her (our) ancestral town in northeastern Italy in the 1990's, met a several year older than her cousin who still commonly wore his full blackshirt fascist uniform out of yearning for the good old days. Among the other relatives he was considered off his rocker, but no one was shocked by him. They joked with my mom that he was lucky the communists hadn't shot him after the war.
I may have seen it when I was a kid. I found it while I was looking for some other cartoon I seem to remember - I was thinking it was Bugs Bunny vs Daffy Duck - in which a huge bombardment occurs, but Daffy or whoever is still standing there, smoldering, dirtied up, and frazzled, but mainly just a little upset and ready for the next round.
Boom Boom though - I meant it when I described it as nightmarish. I think the poor quality black and white enhances the effect.
@ CK MacLeod:
I remember that cartoon. I saw it as a kid; but it still surprised me with how matter of factly it humorized death, shell shock, torture, etc.
Found a replacement for the video in case you missed it the first time. Watch it before WB lowers the boom boom again!
Oh, that's a tragedy about the YouTube - did you catch it before it was pulled?
According to Stone and others, when the Royal Navy finally enforced effective convoy tactics, they reduced the hit on shipping significantly enough to neutralize the U-boats. A parallel process occurred during WW2.
I don't think you'll be disappointed in the book at all. The detail work alone - the footnotes I referred to - justifies it as a read for history buffs.
Very fine writing; but I think you let yourself get a bit carried away by the prose. Not that I, of all people, occupy ground suitable for making that charge.
"The greatest positive accomplishment of the Royal Navy may have been protecting merchant shipping so poorly against U-boats as to bring the enraged Americans earlier into the war."
A nicely turned sentence that suited your objective and narrative flow; but it implies that the Royal Navy could have protected merchant shipping much better. I could be wrong but it seems more the case that the technology to protect merchant shipping simply wasn't there.
Regardless, I enjoyed the review a lot, and I've put the book on my wish list; although I doubt the fellow's writing matches what you produced for sheer elan. It reminds me a bit of parts of Helprin's A Soldier of the Great War .
By the way, Youtube has removed your video for unauthorized use. The next knock on your door may be their lawyers.
Thanks and happy Veterans Day, scisoc.
Fine writing, Colin.
It reminds me of the memorials I've seen in every English city, bleak reminders of enormous loss.
[...] cross-posted at Zombie Contentions [...]