So gorgeous was the spectacle on the May morning of 1910 when nine kings rode in the funeral of Edward VII of England that the crowd, waiting in hushed and black-clad awe, could not keep back gasps of admiration. In scarlet and blue and green and purple, three by three the sovereigns rode through the palace gates, with plumed helmets, crimson sashes, and jeweled orders flashing in the sun. After them came five heirs apparent, forty more imperial or royal highnesses, seven queens–four dowager and three regnant–and a scattering of special ambassadors from uncrowned countries. Together they represented seventy nations in the greatest assemblage of royalty and rank ever gathered in one place and, of its kind, the last. The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace, but on history’s clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again.
Five years later they were machine-gunning each other, killing 10,000 men a day, for over four years.
-- British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey on the eve of the United Kingdom's entry into the First World War.
Another great read about the Great War is Siegfried Sassoon’s autobiographical trilogy highlighting his experiences in the trenches. A perspective from “the other side” is Ernst Junger’s “Storm of Steel”, Germans in the trenches.
I finally read that book last year. Great book about a terrible subject.
The opening paragraph of Barbara Tuchman’s “Guns of August”..........
Five years later they were machine-gunning each other, killing 10,000 men a day, for over four years.
I was just back from a year of a dubious air war when I read
“Guns of August”....
It occurred to me we humans should stop doing this as it never accomplishes a thing, just recycles to the next conflict.
I don’t have an answer.....