This Day in History, Sept 4, 1917

On Sept 4, 1917, the U.S. expeditionary force suffered its first World War I fatalities in France.

This Day in Baseball, Sept 4, 1916

Sept 4, 1916:
Longtime pitching rivals Christy Mathewson and Mordecai Brown closed out their careers, by special arrangement, in the same game. Mathewson won the game 10-8.

From Kansas City Star's This Day in Baseball

Your nostalgia: The changing landscape of Coventry's War Memorial Park

From the Coventry Telegraph: Your nostalgia: The changing landscape of Coventry's War Memorial Park
The War Memorial Park’s new play area opened to rave reviews from children and parents alike at the beginning of the month.

The new facilities ,which have been funded by grants by the Lottery and the Community Spaces programme, are the latest in the recent redevelopment of the park and include a new water play area as well as the state of the art playground attractions.

The War Memorial itself has been renovated and new steps and a ramp installed.

The park opened in 1921 but it wasn’t until October 8, 1927, that the Portland stone-clad cenotaph was officially unveiled by Field-Marshal Earl Haig, a WW1 leader. The park was of course established in memory of those who died in the Great War.

The land for the park – part of Stivichall Common – had been purchased by Coventry Corporation in October 1920.

Among the original features were a rock garden and ornamental garden, tennis courts, three bowling greens and 19 football and hockey pitches.

In the spirit of remembrance, 181 Copper Beech trees were planted in memory of individuals who fought for their country.

During the Second World War the park was requisitioned by the military authorities. Facilities became limited and many areas were also turned over for food production.

Due to bomb damage it took nearly two years to restore the green areas and tennis courts.

Today the park is at the heart of major events such as the Godiva Festival, the ever-popular Donkey Derby and the Caribbean festival.

As part of the revamp there will be a visitor centre, which is close to completion, several pavilions are being renovated and the cafe has been overhauled and is up and running.

The Human Toll Of The War 'To End All Wars'

From NPR: The Human Toll Of The War 'To End All Wars'

The human cost of World War I was enormous. More than 9 million soldiers and an estimated 12 million civilians died in the four-year-long conflict, which also left 21 million military men wounded.

"Many of them were missing arms, legs, hands, genitals or driven mad by shell shock," says historian Adam Hochschild. "But there was also a human cost in a larger sense, in that I think the war remade the world for the worse in every conceivable way: It ignited the Russian Revolution, it laid the ground for Nazism and it made World War II almost certain. It's pretty hard to imagine the second world war without the first."

Hochschild traces the patriotic fervor that catapulted Great Britain into war during the summer of 1914 — as well as the small, but determined British pacifist movement — in his historical narrative To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918. The book frames the Great War not as a struggle between nations but as a struggle between individual people — sometimes even family members — who supported and opposed the war.

Families Divided

One family that split: the Pankhursts, who had been some of the most militant supporters of the British suffragist movement before the war began. Emmeline Pankhurst, the family's matriarch, was arrested on the war's eve for cutting telegraph wires, putting bombs in mailboxes — and even throwing a rock at the British prime minister's residence.

"However, the moment the war began ... she called a halt to all of her political activities and she and her daughter Christabel put themselves at the service of the British government for the duration of the war ... [who used them] to rally women for the war effort."

But Emmeline's other daughter, Sylvia — also a militant suffragist — came out strongly against the war and stopped speaking to her sister, says Hochschild.

"She published the leading anti-war periodical of that period, repeatedly spoke against the war, supported conscientious objectors and prisoners and published some of the most important pieces of anti-war testimony from people in the army," he says.

Hochschild also profiles siblings John French and Charlotte Despard. She co-founded the Women's Peace Crusade and was an ardent proponent of anti-war organizations. Her brother, meanwhile, was the commander in chief on the Western Front.

"Interestingly they remained fond of each other and saw each other a number of times during the war," he says. "They stopped speaking only when, in 1918, the British government sent him to Ireland to suppress the nationalist revolt breaking out against British rule. She went to Ireland to work for the IRA. At that point, they stopped speaking."

Propaganda On The Home Front

Hochschild also writes about the huge propaganda campaign in Britain to engage the civilian population. The government published posters and calendars denouncing the Germans and recruited famous authors — including James Barry, Arthur Conan Doyle, and H.G. Wells — to mention patriotic themes in their works.

"And unknown to the public, the government had deals with publishers where they would agree to buy in advance of a book and pamphlet that was judged to be sufficiently patriotic," he says. "The public just thought they were being published as normal."

They also made films after the Battle of the Somme in 1916, when England suffered over 120,000 casualties. The British government released a propaganda film called Battle of the Somme, which Hochschild describes as "one of the earliest and most influential propaganda films of all time."

"It was estimated that it was seen by more than half the population in the British Isles," he says.

The film was designed to be graphic to make the public closely identify with the British soldiers.

"This to me shows one of the terrible things that happens in all wars," says Hochschild. "As the suffering mounts ... there is a powerful need among people at home, among their families, to feel like [the soldiers] are suffering and dying for something worthwhile. And therefore, in a way, showing graphic images of suffering does not usually turn people against a war. In fact, usually it doesn't."

Interview Highlights

On why World War I was so lethal for officers

"If you look at the conflicts our country has been involved with in recent years — Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq — it's the poor who have done most of the dying. And usually throughout history, elites are very good at getting somebody else to do the dying for them. But in the first world war it was different. It was different because it was the tradition in most of the major countries for upper-class young men to have military careers, and then it became those young captains and lieutenants who led their men out of the trenches and into a hail of machine gun fire. ... 31 percent of the men who graduated Oxford in 1913 were killed. ... The prime minister of England lost a son. The German chancellor lost a son."

On the horrors of trench warfare

"One problem is that the water table in most of Western Europe, at least where the fighting was, is fairly close to the surface of the ground. So this meant that a lot of the time, the soldiers on each side were literally knee-deep in mud. So they rigged up pumps to try to pump the water out of the trenches, but they were hopeless, especially when it rained. There was an enormous profusion of rats. There was the dreaded trench foot where if you go in wet socks and leggings week after week, your feet begin to wither and rot. And it was a matter of essentially living underground — not a pleasant place to live."

On the British government infiltrating anti-war groups

"The agents have the same mindset [as modern agents.] Scotland Yard, the FBI — when they're putting these dissidents under surveillance, they are always imagining strict hierarchies with a leader and other people who are following his commands. Whereas these resistance movements tend to be anarchic and unorganized and its hard to tell who is in charge."

On executing deserters [who were granted a blanket posthumous pardon in 2006]

"During the first world war, there were more than 300 British soldiers who were executed for desertion ... which is considerably more people — several times the number — of German soldiers who were executed for similar offenses during the war. The Germans became far more draconian during World War II. There has been a long battle in recent decades for getting posthumous pardons for these men and it has become a proxy battle about how the war itself is to be remembered."

Digging for the Truth About a Dirty Trade

From the Wall Street Journal: Digging for the Truth About a Dirty Trade A book review: Consuming the Congo: War and Conflict Minerals in the World's Deadliest Place

By JASON STEARNS

The roiling conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo that began more than a decade and a half ago has seen some of the worst human suffering of our time, including cannibalism, an epidemic of rape and mass killings. According to an epidemiological study by the International Rescue Committee, more than five million people died as a result of the fighting between 1998 and 2007. Other studies suggest that more than a quarter of women living in the east of the country have been raped.

Given the scale of the calamity, it is not surprising that we should try to find culprits. There is no lack of candidates: military commanders, politicians in the Congo and abroad, callous businessmen. But much recent writing about the conflict attempts to impose a simple causal arrow on a mess of narrative strands, casting the quest for mineral wealth as the main driver of the violence. The story goes something like this: Brutal armed groups kill and rape in order to get their hands on precious minerals in the Congolese soil, mainly gold, tin and tantalum, a metal used in electronic components. They sell the minerals to foreign companies, who are at best accomplices and at worst puppeteers, and use the proceeds to fund further violence. The minerals then end up in our cellphones, Xboxes and laptops.

Peter Eichstaedt's "Consuming the Congo: War and Conflict Minerals in the World's Deadliest Place" seems at first glance to be in this vein. His publisher's blurb begins: "Every time you use a cell phone or log on to a computer, you could be contributing to the death toll in the bloodiest, most violent region in the world: the eastern Congo." This kind of argument has been around for some time. As far back as 2001, the United Nations began releasing a series of investigative reports accusing belligerents—including Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Uganda and the Congolese state—of profiting from the conflict. Similar investigations continue today—I led such a U.N. team in 2008—and they continue to find evidence implicating governments and business.

But recently the advocacy community has pushed the conflict-minerals narrative with much greater urgency. Until 2003, most outside aid focused on obtaining a peace deal among the African countries involved in the Congo, along with their local allies. That year a comprehensive peace deal was signed, ushering in a transitional government. Thereafter the emphasis was on maintaining this fragile process and getting to elections, which were held in 2006. It was during the post-2006 rut, when violence escalated in the mineral-rich eastern Congo despite the elections, that conflict minerals began to become an idée fixe.

New organizations were launched, with the aim of mobilizing grass-roots support in the United States: Both The Enough Project and V-Day, for example, highlighted the nexus between minerals and sexual violence. Such groups adopted slogans like "Don't want your cell phone to fuel war in the Congo? Tell Obama!" and "Get Blood Out of Your Mobile." Finally, in July of last year, the U.S. Congress chimed in, requiring companies to make sure that they were not using "conflict minerals" from the eastern Congo. An appealingly clear-cut narrative, one in which corporate greed provoked abject misery, drove these responses.

Mr. Eichstaedt's book reflects this analysis but ultimately offers a more nuanced take. At times he does try to fit the complexities of the eastern Congo into the snug straitjacket of conflict minerals, warning that "each time we use a mobile phone, use a video game console, or open a tin can, we hold the lives and deaths of the eastern Congolese in our hands." But the extensive interviews with local actors that are the book's great strength burst the seams of his own narrative.

Through his conversations with businessmen and pick-and-shovel miners, Mr. Eichstaedt shows that many of these people, rather than working to fund violence, are just trying to make a living while struggling with corrupt officials and roving militias. One of the mineral traders tells him: "It's not our fault. We follow the laws and we pay the tax. Out of that we are blamed [for] financing the war? I don't think it is true. People come to us with minerals and we buy." Mr. Eichstaedt suggests that Congolese minerals only amount to a few percent of the world's supply—not enough to justify a broad conspiracy to exploit them.

In the end, Mr. Eichstaedt falls short of giving a clear answer to the central question: To what extent are Western consumers, governments and businesses to blame for the Congo's problems? He gives us isolated facts and statistics but does not build a coherent case. Also disappointing is a seemingly unconnected excursion to Sudan in the middle of the book. (What is the relevance? The oil wealth there? Merely another African conflict?) There are factual inaccuracies, too, such as stating that Ignace Murwanashyaka, a rebel leader, was involved in the Rwandan genocide (he was not) and suggesting that another rebel, Jean-Pierre Bemba, was involved in the 1998 rebellion led by the Congolese Rally for Democracy. (He was actually the leader of a rival group, the Movement for the Liberation of Congo.)

Minerals, in any case, were not the initial cause of the Congolese wars, which have passed through various stages since 1996. The origins can instead be found in a conjuncture of national, regional and local dynamics. For 32 years, with the backing of Western allies, the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko plundered his own state and pitted ethnic communities against one another through cynical divide-and-rule policies. Nowhere were these power games more prominent than in the densely populated east, where a small population of immigrants from neighboring Rwanda was alternately favored and persecuted. In 1994 a spark ignited this powder keg: The Rwandan genocide prompted a million refugees, including most perpetrators of the massacres, to flee into the Congo. The first Congo war began when the new Rwandan government invaded to break up the refugee camps. Since then, nine countries and more than 40 armed groups have struggled over land, citizenship and access to power.

Those seeking to distill this morass into a less murky essence risk oversimplification. It is true that minerals have played a crucial enabling role in the conflict, making it easier to finance the fighting and at times forming a strong motive for individual actors. But politics, even in the Congo, cannot be reduced to profit maximization. Nor would removing minerals from the equation quell all of the fighting—some groups are fighting for more than money and some have diversified into timber, cannabis and palm oil.

We ignore these political contours at our peril. For example, the legislation passed by Congress last year requiring companies to scrutinize their Congolese supply chains made a lot of sense in itself, but it was ill adapted to the Congolese context. A dysfunctional and corrupt state makes tracing minerals difficult; without the local infrastructure necessary to enforce them, the law's stiff requirements have led most U.S.-based companies to boycott Congolese minerals since April of this year, depriving thousands of Congolese of their livelihoods.

At the same time, the focus on minerals has distracted attention from more fundamental tasks. Foremost, the Congolese state must transform from a predator into a service provider. Over the past two years, Congolese security forces have driven many rebel groups out of mining areas only to occupy these areas themselves. Many of the human-rights abuses in the eastern Congo are carried out by these security forces, in particular the army.

Mr. Eichstaedt concludes that "real solutions for the eastern Congo cannot be imposed from the outside." He is right. Still, the United States government alone provides more than $1 billion in aid to the country per annum, and the United Nations has one of its largest peacekeeping contingents deployed there. Outsiders wield a lot of clout in the country and can help midwife the process of reform—provided we diagnose the problem accurately.
—Mr. Stearns is the author of "Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa."

Two Great Minds on World Peace

From the American Thinker, Aug 28. Not specifically about WWI, but deals with its aftermath.

Two Great Minds on World Peace

The year was 1932. At the invitation of the League of Nations, the predecessor of today's United Nations, two world-famous scientists exchanged open letters addressing the issue of putting an end to all warfare.

Both men were Jews -- one German, the other Austrian. Both had lived through the Great War of 1914-1918, in the aftermath of which the League of Nations had been formed to ensure that nothing like it would ever happen again. But now, with the storm clouds of Nazism gathering with frightening speed, both men knew that another war was likely -- and that the League of Nations would be powerless to prevent it.

"Is there any way of delivering mankind from the menace of war?" wrote the German to his Austrian counterpart. In his letter, he proposed "[t]he setting up, by international consent, of a legislative and judicial body to settle every conflict arising between nations." Ideally, every nation involved in a dispute would unquestioningly accept, and abide by, the authority of this international judiciary. But, he admitted, "The quest for international security involves the unconditional surrender by every nation, in a certain measure, of its liberty of action."

The German couldn't see how any nation would ever accept such a loss of sovereignty, given the long historical record of the use of violent force to preserve and advance national agenda. Is it possible, he asked his Austrian colleague, to extinguish mankind's desire to wage war by eliminating violence and other pathological aspects of human nature?

Barely two months later, the Austrian sent his long and detailed reply.

He argued that violence itself is not to blame. After all, establishing and enforcing the rule of law, whether among people or nations, amounts to using violence (or the threat of it) to suppress violence. And while human nature may well be changing, through cultural evolution away from warmongering and toward a group identification of all people with the entire human species, the eradication of warfare by this means is at best a distant hope.

The Austrian affirmed that this left the German's first proposal as the only realistic solution, writing, "There is but one sure way of ending war and that is the establishment, by common consent, of a central control which shall have the last word in every conflict of interests. For this, two things are needed: first, the creation of such a supreme court of judicature; secondly, its investment with adequate executive force[.] ... Obviously the League of Nations fulfills the first condition; it does not fulfill the second."

The heart of the problem was clear: without a means of enforcement, which would have to come from the entire world community, no global authority could effectively carry out its mission as peacemaker and peacekeeper.

Shortly after this correspondence, in 1933, intolerable conditions at home drove the German to the United States. He would live to see revealed the full horror of the Holocaust. He would also see the postwar formation of the United Nations, only to witness its pathetic inability to stop war and genocide numerous times before his death in 1955.

The Austrian stayed in his homeland until the Nazis engulfed it in 1938, then fled to England; he would die of cancer a year later. With its naïve attempts at appeasing Hitler an abject failure and no other cards left to play, the League of Nations also effectively died that same year, on the eve of the second global conflict of the century.

The Austrian was Sigmund Freud.

The German was Albert Einstein.

Unfortunately but not surprisingly, the Nazi regime squelched the distribution of their published open letters, denying them the widespread readership they deserved. But the real tragedy is that many decades and many wars later, the United Nations has degenerated into a corrupt, self-serving cabal that has proven as impotent as its predecessor in dealing with conflicts between (or within) nations. Perhaps inevitably, and despite the often bitter misgivings of its own people and the resentment of others, the task of global law enforcement long ago defaulted to the world's only superpower without expansionist ambitions -- the United States -- which continues in this thankless role today.

Both Freud and Einstein, born in the 19th century and destined to attain greatness in the 20th, would no doubt be dismayed that their plan for world peace still remains an unrealized ideal in the 21st -- although, given what they had lived through in their own time, neither would probably be surprised. All the same, both were lifelong believers in the supreme power of human reason. We can only hope that the future will prove them right.

More fallen diggers found at Bullecourt

Same article, different version from different newspaper.

From the Canberra Times: More fallen diggers found at Bullecourt
They were buried where they lay. Not in mass graves prepared by the Germans, but in haste, by fellow diggers who pushed dirt in on top of the crater where their dead companions had been taking shelter, and then fled. And there they are believed to remain, up to 13 Australian soldiers, interred in a nameless pit beneath a road in northern France.

The recent discovery of the World War I burial site, near the town of Bullecourt, is the result of three years' research by the team behind the 2009 unearthing of a mass grave of 250 Allied soldiers in Fromelles, 60km to the north, which has so far resulted in the recovery and reburial of all the men, with 110 Australians so far identified by name.

Now researchers and relatives hope that the find, which is outlined in a detailed report sent to Defence almost a year ago, will result in similar treatment for the group of Bullecourt dead.

News of the find comes as the Federal Government beds down its plans for a Western Front remembrance trail to mark the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War in 2014, which will include the village of Bullecourt, where about 10,000 Australians died in 1917.

Report author and lead investigator Tim Whitford said that after studying the action and archival material, there was a compelling case that between 10 and 13 soldiers remained in a former shell crater under the main road to the village of Longatte. ''All the available evidence suggests that they are still in situ,'' he said.

He has urged Defence to investigate the site with urgency before the 2014 centenary and launch of the Western Front remembrance trail - to which the Australian Government is contributing $10 million - generates a spike in visitor numbers. ''We want to know for sure that these men won't be driven over the top of,'' he said.

''The idea of a remembrance trail is a beautiful idea but to allow the subjects of that remembrance to remain under a road would not bode well for the sentiment behind that trail.''