by Jack Beatty
* “Gough embodied to the core [the cavalry’s] ethos of lax discipline and independent decision making. Edward Bennington, who served under him before and during the First World War, related a prewar incident in his memoirs which exemplifies Gough’s attitude:
It so happened that I was in command of “A” Squadron one day and brought it on to parade five minutes before time. Goughy appeared at 9.00 am and had his trumpeter sound “Squadron Leader.” We all galloped up and saluted, and he addressed us as follows. “Good morning Gentlemen. I noticed 1 squadron on parade this morning five minutes early. Please remember that it is better to be late rather than early. The former shows a sense of sturdy independence and no undue respect for higher authority, the latter merely shows womanish excitement and nervousness. Go back to your squadrons.”
See Nikolas Gardner, “Command and Control in the ‘Great Retreat’ of 1914: The Disintegration of the British Cavalry Division,” Journal of Military History 63, no. 1 (January 1999): 38.
* Asquith used “lightning” in describing Churchill to Venetia Stanley. “He is a wonderful creature with a curious dash of school boy simplicity (quite unlike Edward Grey’s) and what someone said of genius—‘a zigzag of lightning in the brain.’ ” Seen in Roy Jenkins, Churchill: A Biography (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001), 230.
* “The terms ‘peasant’ and ‘peasant movement’ are widely used to denote a particular rural social stratum and its purposeful self-organization. Peasants, however, have been so variously identified that a generally accepted definition has yet to be produced. Usually the term refers to rural producers who possess (but do not necessarily own) the means of producing their own subsistence and a marketable surplus—that is, smallholders, squatters, members of corporate Indian villages, service tenants, cash renters, sharecroppers and the like.” John H. Coatsworth, “Patterns of Rural Rebellion in Latin America: Mexico in Comparative Perspective,” in Friedrich Katz, ed., Riot, Rebellion, and Revolution: Rural Social Conflict in Mexico (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 22. “The driving force of the revolutionary upheaval of 1911–1916 was the rural peasantry and proletariat. To the dispossessed peasant small ranchero, Indian cumunero, or rural proletarian, the enemy—the landlord-capitalist—was still very much in evidence. To these people the solution was simple: take back the land and water, seize the mills, provide for self, family, and community rather than the boss.” James Cockroft, quoted in ibid., 418, n. 2.
* “The victory of the recent revolution is the work of American policy. Ambassador Wilson made the … coup; he himself brags about it,” Paul Von Hintze, Germany’s minister in Mexico, wrote to Berlin. From Friedrich Katz, The Secret War in Mexico: Europe, the United States and the Mexican Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 108. Katz (on page 110) concludes, “[Lane] Wilson’s attitude indicates that he not only wished to undertake no effective steps on Madero’s behalf, but that he actually favored his execution.”
* On this point, commenting in his paper “L’Homme Enchainé” on Wilson’s message of January 22, 1917, proposing “peace without victory,” Georges Clemenceau wrote: “Never before has any political assembly heard so fine a sermon on what human beings might be capable of accomplishing if only they weren’t human … He leaps forward far beyond the limits of time and space … way above material things, whose inferiority resides in the mere fact of their existence.” See the essay by Jean-Baptiste Duroselle in J. Joseph Huthmacher and Warren I. Susman, eds., Wilson’s Diplomacy: An International Symposium (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Publishing, 1973), 21.
* For twenty-five thousand dollars and 20 percent of the gross, they had a commitment from Villa to stage a day battle for the cameras.
* “The present writer feels obliged to say that this was a misrepresentation of the facts. Huerta and his subordinates had acted with studied courtesy toward the U.S. government and its representatives and shown an extraordinary concern in protecting American citizens and property in Mexico … Wilson was … manufacturing charges against the [Huerta] government to justify the use of force.” Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson: The New Freedom (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956), 398.
* In Latin American anti-imperialist invective of the era, Yankees are blonds or pigs and sometimes both. When Major Smedley Butler, leading a force of 350 U.S. Marines, intervened in Nicaragua to prop up a threatened ruler in 1912, a Nicaraguan journal condemned “the blond pigs of Pennsylvania advancing on our garden of beauty.” See Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America (New York: Norton, 1993), 50.
* Recent American history has opened a new perspective on the Austrian decision to go to war over the murder of its archduke. “State sponsored terrorism that struck at the Monarchy’s heir apparent went beyond the bounds of acceptable international behavior,” Samuel R. Williamson Jr., a leading historian of Austria-Hungary, writes. “[The Serbian government’s] failure to investigate any Serbian links to the murders and the glee of the Belgrade press over the deaths at Sarajevo provided additional incentive and anger. In a post 9/11 world, Vienna’s response becomes possibly more understandable than it would have been for previous generations of historians. Sometimes enough is felt to be enough, whether or not that feeling is wise.” Samuel R. Williamson Jr., “Aggressive and Defensive Aims of Political Elites? Austro-Hungarian Policy in 1914,” in Holger Afflerbach and David Stevenson, eds., An Improbable War? The Outbreak of World War I and European Political Culture before 1914 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007), 72.
* Compare Bismarck: “His name was to be found … on streets, squares, bridges, tunnels, obelisks, towers, ships … a mountain peak, a dye (dark brown), a vodka, a rose, a jelly doughnut … and a pickled herring.” See Otto Pflanze, Bismarck and the Development of Germany, vol. 2 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 32.
* By treating Sophie with the respect due a future empress of Austria, the kaiser endeared himself to her husband. Their relationship began unpromisingly, however. Franz Ferdinand was “terribly, terribly offended” after their first meeting at a Berlin railway station, when Wilhelm greeted him with, “Don’t imagine I’ve come to your reception—I am expecting the Crown Prince of Italy.” See John C. G. Röhl, “The Emperor’s New Clothes: A Character Sketch of Kaiser Wilhelm II,” in John C. G. Röhl and Nicholas Sombart, Kaiser Wilhelm II: New Interpretations, The Corfu Papers (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 34.
* The Serbian government accepted most of the demands made on it by the Austrian ultimatum, but, knowing any inquiry would lead to Apis, would not agree to permit Austrian police to go to Belgrade to investigate the assassinations. Serbia’s rejection of this demand triggered Austria’s declaration of war. If the zero-sum diplomacy of imperialism had not eclipsed the diplomacy of European Concert that had kept the peace for decades, “Europe acting in concert” could have asked “Austria-Hungary to turn its cause and demands over to them, and then carr[ied] through seriously on an investigation and any required sanctions … Russia was more than once required in the nineteenth century to turn its cause and honor in the Balkans over to the European Concert to defend … The fact that this procedure did not always work or was not always tried makes no difference. It was there, it could and did sometimes work, and in some instances like this one it was the only thing that could have worked.” See Paul W. Schroeder, “Embedded Counterfactuals and World War I as an Unavoidable War,” in David Wetzel, Robert Jervis, and Jack S. Levy, eds., Systems Stability and Statecraft: Essays in International History (New York: Palgrave, 2004), 39 (Web version).
* The following analysis closely follows Richard Ned Lebow, “Franz Ferdinand Found Alive: World War I Unnecessary,” in Philip Tetlock, Richard Ned Lebow, and Geoffrey Parker, eds., Unmaking the West: Counterfactual Thought Experiments in History (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006). Also see Richard Ned Lebow, “Counterfactual Thought Experiments: A Necessary Teaching Tool,” History Teacher 40, no. 2 (2007):
1–17. I am indebted to Professor Lebow. For a robust theoretical defense of counterfactual history, see Niall Ferguson, “Virtual History: Towards a ‘Chaotic’ Theory of the Past,” in Ferguson, ed., Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 1–90.
* In another account, Princip shot the archduke, then shifted his aim to Potiorek and would have shot him “had not Sophie thrown herself across the car in one last expression of her great love, and drawn Franz Ferdinand to herself with a movement that brought her across the path of the second bullet.” Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia (New York: Penguin Books, 2007), 349–50.
* “This old idea is often referred to as the scapegoat or diversionary theory of war, for political elites can use a foreign war to divert popular attention from internal social, economic, and political problems … The scapegoat theory is based on the in-group/out-group hypothesis in sociology. [Georg] Simmel, in the first systematic treatment of the subject, argued that conflict with an out-group increases the cohesion of the in-group, and generalized to international relations: ‘war with the outside is sometimes the last chance for a state ridden with inner antagonisms to overcome these antagonisms, or else to break up definitely.’ ” Jack S. Levy, “Domestic Politics and War,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18, no. 4, “The Origin and Prevention of Major Wars” (Spring 1988): 667.
* “It is worth considering the somewhat counterintuitive proposition that there may be no relationship between the number and intensity of underlying causes and the probability of an outcome … Social scientists err in thinking that major social and political developments are invariably specific instances of strong … regularities in social behavior. These developments are sometimes the result of accidental conjunctions … The concatenation of particular leaders with particular contexts, and of particular events with other events, is always a matter of chance, never of necessity.” Richard Ned Lebow, Forbidden Fruit: Counterfactuals and International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 133. From a chapter coauthored with George W. Breslauer.
* “Giving pleasure, after all, is France’s unique selling proposition. The country has for centuries created beguiling things to eat, drink, smell and wear. When my Paris landlord arrived with an old chair that the tiny apartment did not need, he explained that it was ‘for the pleasure of your eyes.’ ” Donald Morrison, “Je t’aime … moi non plus,” Financial Times, Life & Arts, June 18, 2011, 19.
* On Clemenceau: “He had a gay time with women, he was fond of actresses, but he would not tolerate any liberty in his wife. He obtained divorce by taking a policeman with him to catch her in a compromising situation. He had her convicted to 15 days imprisonment for adultery, and then expelled from the country, like a common criminal.” Theodore Zeldin, France 1848–1945, vol. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), 703.
* “Recent scholarship suggests that the ‘nationalist revival’ in France from 1909 to 1914 was largely an outgrowth of, and perhaps even a smokescreen for, conservative attempts to dominate internal politics.” See Frederic Seager, “Joseph Caillaux as Premier, 1911–1912: The Dilemma of a Liberal Reformer,” French Historical Studies 11 (1979): 241.
* The American historian Gordon Wright offers a decisive judgment on the consequences of Poincaré’s unchallenged control of France’s Russia policy: “The French people were dragged into a war which they did not want, over an incident which did not directly affect their interests. And the chains which bound their government had been forged in part by Raymond Poincaré.” Gordon Wright, Raymond Poincaré and the French Presidency (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1943), 149.
* “It is almost impossible even now to describe what happened in Europe on August 4, 1914. The days before and the days after the first World War are separated not like the end of an old and the beginning of a new period, but like the day before and the day after an explosion. Yet this figure of speech is as inaccurate as all the others, because the quiet of sorrow which settles down after a catastrophe has never come to pass. The first explosion seems to have touched off a chain reaction in which we have been caught up ever since and which nobody seems to be able to stop.” Hannah Arendt, writing in 1951 in The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Meridien Books, 1958).
* “In 1914 many of the German people, and in 1939 nearly all of the British, felt justified in going to war, not over any specific issue that could have been settled by negotiation, but to maintain their power; and to do so while it was still possible, before they found themselves so isolated, so impotent, that they had no power left to maintain and had to accept a subordinate position within an international system dominated by their adversaries.” Michael Howard quoted in Jack S. Levy, “Declining Power and the Preventive Motivation for War,” World Politics 40, no. 1 (1987): 95.
* “Alsatians and Lorrainers did not fare much better in French hands. Soon after the war’s outbreak, the French interned thousands [of them] living on French soil; they were joined by some eight thousand Alsatians deported from parts of southern Alsace ‘liberated’ during the first weeks of the conflict and by an unspecified number of Lorrainers taken hostage during the French army’s initial advance.” Paris maids and servants from the “lost provinces” were sent to “concentration camps.” “The pervasive suspicion of Alsatians and Lorrainers, the lingering doubts about their patriotic trustworthiness,” extended into the peace, when purge trials and persecutions of those deemed too German marred the restoration of the “lost sisters” to France. Laird Boswell, “From Liberation to Purge Trials in the ‘Mythic Provinces’: Recasting French Identities in Alsace and Lorraine, 1918–1920,” French Historical Studies 23, no. 1 (2000): 4.
* It wasn’t tanks alone but tanks as the new element of a combined arms attack that tipped the balance toward the offense: “A German officer captured on 21 August said that a BEF attack with infantry, artillery and tanks would always get through; one with infantry and artillery alone would get through three times out of four; but one with infantry and tanks unsupported would get through only one time out of four.” Tim Travers, How the War Was Won: Factors That Led to Victory in World War One (London: Pen & Sword Classics, 1992), 140. Also see Jonathan Boff, “Combined Arms During the Hundred Days Campaign, August–November 1918,” War in History 17, no. 4 (2010): 459–78. Of 202 attacks mounted by Third Army in the hundred days, 50 were with combined arms, infantry, artillery, and tanks. The success rate of these attacks was 90 percent.
* On July 31, 1914, Germany promulgated a “State of Siege,” suspending the “right to express opinion freely by word, print or picture.” Press censorship “ranged from food shortages, casualty lists, notices of deaths, and mentions of peace demonstrations, to advertisements for quack venereal disease cures (since they might prevent sufferers from consulting a qualified physician.)” Alice Goldfarb Marquis, “Words as Weapons: Propaganda in Britain and Germany During the First World War,” Journal of Contemporary History 13, no. 3 (July 1978): 472, 76. “Nothing was to challenge the impression of German domestic unity and resolve, while in the official reading German troops remained in the field in order to defeat Russian despotism and British designs on world hegemony … The operational reports from the front never once mentioned a German defeat until the fall of 1918, when the whole propaganda campaign collapsed along with the army.” Roger Chickering, Imperial Germany and the Great War, 1914–1918 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 49, 48. As for France, “There is no doubt that by leaving it in ignorance of the gravity of certain military defeats, of diplomatic failures and of the horrors of war, censorship went a long way towards helping the French civilian front to stand firm.” Like the British “Tommy,” the French poilu “was filled with animosity, even contempt, for the journalists.” Jean-Jacques Becker, The Great War and the French People (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986), 63.
* The animus felt by British soldiers toward civilians during World War I was
not repeated in World War II, when soldiers’ deaths in battle did not exceed civilian deaths from German bombing until September 1941. “Of course the [bombing] raids caused much suffering and hardship. In the long run they cemented national unity. They were a powerful solvent of class antagonism and ensured, too, that there was none of the hostility between fighting men and civilians which had characterized the first World War.” A. J. P. Taylor, English History, 1914–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), 504–5; for civilian deaths, see 502.
* Here is Kitchener as seen by Vera Brittain in her diary: “Friday September 4th: Kitchener is said to be over at Ostend with an army of 500,000 composed of men of all nations. They are said to intend, after Germany has been gradually lured to Paris, to attack the back of the German Lines … The move is a grand one, while the very name of Kitchener, & his presence on the actual battlefield will fill the British with courage, & strike terror into German minds.”