Friends Of Padre Steve’s World,
it is hard to believe that 105 years ago Germany declared war on Imperial Russia. They did it to support their Austro-Hungarian allies and expected that the war would be short. But within days they would also find themselves at war with Britain and France. Eventually almost all of continental Europe, it’s colonial dominions, and others, including the United States and Japan would be at war.
The American President, Woodrow Wilson who promised to keep the United States out of the war would lead the country into it in April 1917, calling it the War to End War. Wilson was an idealist in international relations and did not understand how deep the hatred of war could run, despite being a son of the South, the first elected President from a former Confederate State since before the Civil War. However, Wilson was a revisionist Of Civil War history and race relations. Despite his knowledge, he lived in a fantasy world, and when the war ended French President Clemenceau, and British Prime Minister David Lloyd George completely outmaneuvered him during the negotiations over the Treaty Of Versailles. Wilson had thought that his allies would support his idealistic 14 Points, which the interim German Government had agreed to in order to gain an armistice. The final treaty blamed the Germans for all war guilt, saddled them with massive reparations, and humiliated them. The treaty would end up dooming the prospects of democracy in Germany and ensuring another war, this on barely than twenty years after the signing of the Treaty Of Versailles.
That war would, the Second World War would be even more costly than the first. More lives lost, most of Europe and much of Asia devastated, and the world divided into the American led alliance, and the Soviet led Warsaw Pact. It would end most European colonies and birth new wars during the Cold War.
When the Cold War ended many idealists expected the Democratic ideal to take hold in former communist countries, and for a moment in time it did that, but many of the same tensions that brought a return to authoritarian governments in the 1920s, especially globalization and migration have led to the election of authoritarian, nationalist, and racist parties with fascist leanings in much of Eastern Europe, and spreading in to Western Europe, even the Republican Party in the United States led by President Trump is moving in a rapidly authoritarian direction.
The First World War ended a period of relative stability, prosperity, and slow movements toward democracy in Europe. It brought forth disaster after disaster. One can only hope that our generation will do better. But, then that is only hope, history shows that we will not do better. God help us.
Until tomorrow,
Peace,
Padre Steve+
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