I am somewhat - no, totally! - engrossed in "Staring at God" by Simon Heffer. It is rather like watching a recoding of a major, multiple car crash on a motorway. You can see the first errors which, of course, multiply into even more errors and then the devil is out of the bottle and total, mad mayhem ensues! It is difficult with historical "events, dear boy, events" to point the finger at exactly the event that kicked it off but I suppose in the case of WWI it is reasonable to accuse the Serbian nutter who decided to assassinate a particularly useless Austro-Hungarian Prince.
Cue: a chance for Austro-Hungary to give those damned 'uppity' Serbs a slap! The threat of that, of course, provided the 'Rooskies', whose useless leader was wobbling on his throne, a chance to stand up for those, er, 'plucky little Serbs' - and, of course, fellow Slavs. At which point, the Austrians can appeal to their German 'Big Brother' for support. The French, au naturellement, instantly offered their services to their Russian partners with whom they had a treaty designed, of course, to keep Germany in check! Meanwhile, the Brits steered well clear on their island fortress because, dammit, they had an Empire to look after!
But then, like the well-oiled parts of a machine-gun, the move of one part automatically moved another which then click-started yet another and, hey-ho, we were all off to the races! Of course, for the people concerned at the time, only a tiny few had any inkling of what was to ensue but soon enough they learned - the hardest of hard ways.
"The pity of it lago; oh, Iago, the pity of it".
"but soon enough they learned - the hardest of hard ways"
The only way the human race learns anything.
Btw, thanks for the help SoD
Posted by: Whitewall | Wednesday, 08 April 2020 at 20:20