To End All Wars

To End All Wars by Adam Hochschild

First thing’s first:  This is NOT a retrospective of the entire first World War.  If you’re looking for a detailed account of the major battles, key turning points, and figures that shaped this horrible conflict, look elsewhere.  What this book IS, is a snapshot of the reason for the conflict, how ridiculous it was in retrospect, and most importantly, how ridiculous it was to a few brave men and women who risked their entire livelihood making bold statements denouncing this “patriotic” war.

To understand the time and places a bit better, we must remember that war was not necessarily looked at with the same degree of horror that it now is a century later.  Up until this “war to end all wars”, it was expected amongst most civilized society that, in all probability, there would be an instance where one’s country would engage with another “enemy” country, lives would be lost, civilians would be tortured, and innocent weaker countries would be bloodily dominated by barbaric bullies of stronger nations.   Seems pretty catastrophic in hindsight as it should, yet…well, this is just how things were.

Take, for instance, how this war started.  Essentially, an anarchistic individual from a country most have never heard of assassinated an arch duke of a rival country (that again, most had never heard of).  The victimized country declares war on the anarchist’s country because of this one incident, and the allies of each of the two countries line up against one another for total domination.  Silly, stupid, and sad.

Initially when the war begins, most are excited.  A war!  We’ll show them who’s boss!  Sadly, reality seeps in quickly.  For various reasons, this war is essentially a stalemate for four years, with no progress being made, yet the dead bodies atrociously pile up in the millions.

There are those on the fringe who realize this is ridiculous, and they make their voice known.  I was not very (and in some cases, not at all) familiar with names such as Keir Hardie, Emiline and Sylvia Pankhurst, Stephen and Emily Hobhouse, and Charlotte Despard.  These figures are not only opposed to the war, but opposed to the many social injustices across Europe in most major countries that essentially caused this travesty to occur.  There is a lot of focus in this book on the protests, hunger strikes, and revolutionary activities to change things.  These individuals have always had pacifist and socialist tendencies, and this awful war culminates their anger, yet most of their angry sentiments are wasted on a blindly faithful public, even as the body count piles up and the general public become enraged and sickened as well.

There are those who might be put off by this book’s obvious “left” political leanings, but we must remember the times that the majority of the people were living in more than 100 years ago.  Life was only good for a very privileged few, and for the majority of the poor and underprivileged, there was, literarily, no escape from a life of poverty and subjugation.  The author gives one humorous (I use that term loosely) example of how the aristocracy in England tried to “help” the poor: At times, the privileged few in the upper realms of royalty would travel to the poorest of the poor in London and distribute flowers to the poor and down trodden.  Flowers.  It kind of reminds of the Monty Python sketch of the famous Robin Hood-like character who would steal from the rich and give to the poor, only instead of stealing money, he stole lupids (a kind of flower).

This book is mainly focused on the comings and goings in England (the author even says so at one point during this narrative), and even though England were the “good guys” during this war, the author reminds us that England was just as guilty as Germany when it came to barbaric acts of subjugation.  He uses the Boer war in South Africa, concluded only a few years before this war starts, as an example, detailing not only the actual conflict, yet the horrid way the women, children and non-soldiers were treated.  So, true, acts such as the German army butchering the country of Belgium during the opening months of the war is basically ignored within these pages, but the author is reminding us that such acts were common everywhere, and the distinction between the “good guys” and the “bad guys” wasn’t as black and white as one would like to think.  He also places strong emphasis on some of the war’s most inept, bungled commanders as they sacrifice hundreds of thousands of young soldiers in battles that never seem to accomplish much of everything.  So, yes, this is definitely an “anti-war” book.

So when the dust finally settles and peace is finally declared in 1918, we can all finally see how bloody a mistake this war actually was, and that the few, brave, outspoken were actually on to something with their observations.  Sadly, like a lot of history, it’s too little and too late.  With out going into too much detail (and the author really doesn’t here, either), the peace treaty that ended this conflict was so inadequate, that it actually was a major factor in the causes of the second world war.

There’s an overall good balance between the war on the actual battlefields and the war that the protest movement was wagering as well.  Personally, I would have preferred more emphasis on the actual battles, yet the author is very convincing in his point that it was the actions of these radicals back “home” that helped educate and shape the attitudes of many, and helped convince those everywhere, that although this conflict sadly did not “end all wars”, it at least educated the planet of the ridiculousness and butchery of such a conflict.  The world would never be the same.