The long shadows of the Great War

Mark Steyn writes about the importance of this day in history.

...Edward Grey was Britain's longest-serving Foreign Secretary, although, in contrast to contemporary foreign ministers, he had a modest appetite for foreigners: For his first eight years in the job, he never set foot abroad, and then only did so because he was obliged to accompany King George V on a State Visit to Paris in 1914. He served a prime minister, Asquith, who had little interest in foreign affairs and was unengaged by distant events in faraway places until late July of 1914 - by which time it was too late, and the great unraveling of world order had begun. Five years later, the German, Russian, Austrian and Turkish empires lay shattered, and in their ruins incubated Communism, Fascism and a hardcore post-Ottoman Islam. And in a more oblique sense the horrors of the trenches caused the ruling classes of the Great Powers to lose their civilizational confidence - and across a century they have never recovered it.

Read more here and watch a video Mark produced in April.

His grandfather's thoughts

At the Ace of Spades blog, co-blogger KT writes about his grandfather who served in World War I.

I know I have shared the excerpt below before, but it seems fitting on this special anniversary year. These were some of my grandfather's thoughts as he prepared to return home from Europe at the end of World War I. He received more injuries than he let on in this letter to his father. He carried shrapnel in his back the rest of his life, and his life was saved by a small frying pan holding corned beef ("bully beef") which had been strapped to his back when a bullet hit. He buried a lot of men. Don't know how much that changed him, but when I was a child he was not very demonstrative. He struck me as living in an adult world where the concerns of children were left to other people.

After the war, he expressed willingness to serve again if he were needed.

"I am happy to say that peace seems to have come. I was slightly wounded in the right arm in the offensive we took part in on the Belgian front. I felt happy to be alive and safe and I look forward to coming home.
My sympathy goes out to those who will never go home and for those who expect to see friends and relatives who will never come back. I have come to the conclusion that life is a precious gift and is worth living, no matter what the difficulty, but we are so helpless to save it or preserve it that it is not worth while to consider our health and happiness and comfort above that of others. It is worth while sometimes to die, if death will serve to help others. When we think too much of our comfort we expose ourselves to more danger by disintegration than we do when we make a brave fight and face every danger and exposure.

I hope I come home from this war more of a man then I went into it. If I don't I'll feel that I have not played my part."

See the photo of his grandfather and read more here.