Blog 2013-04-29

Remembering the First World War

Prompted by …

… TV news where I heard about some initiatives of the UK Prime Minister.  Apparently he and others want to stage remembrance events in 2014, the 100th anniversary of the start of world war one (WW1) and mainly aimed at educating children.

My impressions …

… were that it was a call for rather nationalistic lessons aimed primarily at schoolchildren to tell them about British heroism at the time.

Thoughts

Of course I do not object to history lessons:  we should learn from history, and we can only do that if we study history.

But WW1 is now indeed a century ago.  It was one of the saddest events in human history.  The country where I was born, Belgium, and especially the area around Ieper (“Ypres”) in Flanders, where my ancestors continuously lived from before 1600, were severely affected, to use a euphemism.  Do I need to remember 1914 and feel heroic?  I don’t think so.

1914 needs to be studied, and 2014 will be a great occasion to bring WW1 to the attention of schoolchildren.  I want them to know that Europe then descended in total chaos.  But we have to be very careful how we do it.  One might say it was the fault of the belligerent Germans, but that would be to oversimplify things.  John Maynard Keynes, in his book “The Economic Consequences of the Peace” correctly identifies WW1 as the European Civil War.  A civil war is usually the result of (a) a breakdown in communications between parties with opposing views and (b) opportunistic demagoguery, profiting from the tensions to gain power by misleading uninformed masses.  A breakdown in communications always has some fault on both sides.

Studying only the heroism of the simple soldiers during WW1 will not be enough.  We will need to tell the schoolchildren and students of all the aspects of WW1 and the history of the period leading up to it.  The great danger is that the conflict will be looked at through the spectacles of today:  kids are used to technology, media, ways of expressing themselves that were unheard of even a few decades ago.  In 1914, most workers had very few rights, women could not vote, Europe was still full of autocratic rulers, supported by a rich aristocracy.  People did not travel, did not widely read, heard practically only their own dialect.

WW1 was the conflict of interests that had little or nothing in common with the interests of the soldiers who died for them.  The vast majority of young men that were sent to the front to die in the trenches were not shareholders in industrial empires or sons of ruling aristocrats.  They were for the most part uneducated labourers, who were told to fight for the good cause.

Worse than anything was the elaboration of the peace treaty of 11 November 1918.  “Vengeance is a lazy form of grief”.  The consequence of that peace treaty was the Second World War.

How to remember 1914

I would like the children of 2014 to be told not only of the war acts of 1914.  They must also learn what went wrong before, which stresses built up, what life was like a century ago, not only in their own country but in all involved countries.  They should also know what “country” meant then.

What can we tell them to learn from such a conflict?  That patriots are heroes?  Should they not also learn that murderous conflicts like WW1 can be avoided?  Should they not learn about techniques of personal communication, should they not learn that it is important to study the circumstances in which others live before passing judgement?

Anyone capable of remembering WW1 events first-hand will be way over one hundred years old in 1914.  All the children at whom the history lessons are aimed have parents who were definitely not involved.  Are any of these children or their parents responsible for anything to do with WW1?  Certainly not.  There is nobody alive who carries any responsibility whether as a guilty party or a heroic party.

I hope that there will be Europe-wide events to remember 1914, but that they consist of inviting people from other places to visit and discuss.  All the events should have a character of studying the past and the errors humankind made then.

It would be very bad indeed to take the 2014 opportunity to whip up patriotic or nationalistic feelings.  We should be beyond that.  WW1 is too far in the past.  Or should we in patriotic and nationalistic ways and forever remember other past events like 1066?

We want lasting peace in the world, not a revival of ancient ideologies, or quibble over whose ancestors were right or wrong, as if by some magic responsibility is handed down through the generations.  We are beyond punishing the child for the deeds of the ancestor.