Top rated scene

England is warned but instead jokes about American swimwear

Very little of London's news coverage of July 3, 1914, involved the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, an act that triggered “The Great War”—World War One—which would begin in one month. Granted, the news was being written from the British perspective. But it is instructive that so few people in the country recognized the imminence of a war that would change their lives and that of the world forever.

The top story in The Telegraph that day was about hail damage from a storm that ended a prolonged heat wave. On the previous day, page 12 told of the “breezy and fresh” magazine article on the threat of a German submarine attack on Britain “even though that enemy is not actually a very powerful one.”

The reviewer called the article "dangerous but interesting," and spoke to British naval officials about the article. ”We have done something to meet the dangers to our food supplies to arming some of our merchantmen, but we shall never be really secure until we have installed granaries in this country. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s article will bring this important question well to the front,” a leading Naval official was quoted as saying.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

In fact, the threat of German submarine attack was much greater than either the famed novelist or the Navy imagined. During the war, German battleships were kept at anchor while submarines sunk not only merchant ships carrying grain but also a full range of armaments, oil, goods and supplies needed for the war effort and consumer consumption.

But, as far as the public was concerned, Doyle's comments were the exception to the rule.

Several of the newspaper’s prominent stories on July 3 involved odd news from America. These included a salacious report from the United States concerning the shooting death of a physician by his jealous wife. The wife secretly used a dictagraph to monitor her husband’s conversations with female patients whom she suspected might be involved in liaisons with the doctor.

On the same page there was news about male swimwear.

Under the headline “Ethics of the Beach. Kilts for Male Bathers,” The Telegraph noted, “Bathing costume for men is now exciting as much concern in American seaside resorts as costume for women. It is alleged that in neither case are the requirements for propriety and art completely met, and in a country where mixed bathing is universal and the ‘bathing parades’ on the sand sometimes last the entire forenoon, this question is considered important.

Swimwear for males in the 1910s

“In Newport, as I have described it in a previous despatch to The Daily Telegraph, women policemen patrol the bathing quarters and insist upon fair bathers being dressed—or undressed—decorously. The fashion for lady bathers, as set at Atlantic City recently, when a sort of modified Tango costume was introduced, is being adopted generally. Dancing on the sands and exercise with a ‘medicine ball,’ in which bathers of all ages participate, have been successfully inaugurated during the last few days.

“At Dayton, Ohio, ‘The Welfare Director,’ as he is called, that the role being akin to a censor of public morals, has to-day ordered men bathers to wear skirts. Moreover, he has been provided skirts—a kind of kilt effect, reaching about half-way to the knee. ‘They are modern and proper,’ says he. The newspapers criticice Dayton’s example, but after an impartial preview of bathing fashions recently popular here there seems some reason for men to wear skirts as women have shown a tendency to discard them.”

Also in the news: continued discourse over Ireland’s demand to separate from the United Kingdom to form its own nation, or at least local autonomy, and Ulster’s demand that no such separation occur. Finally, the newspaper presented a full page of news from the Henley Royal Regatta. Selfridge’s advertised sale prices for summer suits for men.

As to the June 28 assassination of the Archduke, the newspaper provided shed light on the plot to kill the Austro-Hungarian heir apparent. The killer, Gavrilo Princip, was one of 11 members of “The Black Hand,” a criminal organization formed with the specific principal of bringing the multicultural Bosnia-Herzegovina into the Serbian orbit (an action Serbia tried again in the 1990s). The hearing further established that money to finance the group’s activities was provided by the Serbian National Party.

Martial law remained in effect in place in Sarajevo ever since the assassination of the Archduke. Before martial law took effect:

“The anger of the Moslem and Croation inhabitants [in the city] is very great, and there were several gave disturbances,” The Telegraphreported.

The non-Serbian majority demolished a Serbian school and social club, two major hotels owned by Serbs, and 200 houses and shops belonging to Serbs. Muslim and Croat activists paraded through the streets carrying a portrait of Emperor Franz Joseph as a demonstration of their support for the empire.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

But, as far as the public was concerned, Doyle's comments were the exception to the rule.

On the same page there was news about male swimwear.

Swimwear for males in the 1910s

Martial law remained in effect in place in Sarajevo ever since the assassination of the Archduke. Before martial law took effect:

Europe reacts to the assassination of the Archduke

Women in punts watch the Henley Regata in July 1914

It the start of the last month of peace that Europe would have for four years, though few realized that the coming strife actually was about to occur.

"Life was still carrying on as blithely as usual," The Telegraph of London recalled in its centennial observance of July 1, 1914, the year that war transformed the world.

The big story in England on that day was the Henley Royal Regatta, the annual rowing event that has been held since 1839 on the River Thames in the town of Henley-on-Thames. The event merited a full-page preview in The Telegraph.

But the focus on the light-hearted didn't mean that Britain, or the rest of Europe, was ignoring the tragedy that occurred three days earlier in Sarajevo. Heads of state and legislative bodies, including the King and both houses of Britain's Parliament, expressed their condolences to the royal family of Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph on the assassination of his nephew and heir apparent, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, by a Serbian nationalist on June 28.

The assassin, Garvilo Princip, appeared in a Sarajevo court, where he confessed to his role in the shooting. He explained that he wanted to avenge what he saw was the oppression of the Serb minority in Sarajevo, the capital of the province of Bosnia-Hercegovina, which at the time was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The character of Princip's crime was recognized everywhere as a departure from the assassinations of six heads of state over the previous 20 years. They were President Carnot of France in 1894, Premier Canovas of Spain in 1897, Empress Elizabeth of Austria in 1898, King Humbert of Italy in 1900, President McKinley of the United States in 1901 and another Spanish premier, Canalejas, in 1912.

Each of these killers was an anarchist, a believer in the vision of a stateless society, with no government, without law and without ownership of property. The theory was that with no oppression, humanity would be free to act on its own, for its own good, unfettered by authority.

By contrast, Princip's act was purely political in nature. He didn't want to overthrow all government; he wanted to substitute Austrian rule with Serbian rule. The Telegraph's correspondent in the Balkans recognized this immediately: "There are circumstances connected with the crime which appear to prove that it was, if possible, a more atrocious and heartless piece of work than any of those murderous attempts we usually associate with Anarchical efforts." The correspondent left it at that; speculating as to what might happen next was to awful to contemplate.

German's Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898)

The Balkans had been a tinderbox for decades, even centuries. If the great European war were to take place, German Chancellor Bismarck once remarked, it would "come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans."

The most recent strife, the Balkan War of 1912, was contained only through the unusual cooperation of five of Europe's Great Powers: Britain, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy. One of the Great Powers' creations, the Kingdom of Albania, remained a spark waiting to catch fire.

In the spring of 1914, the new kingdom was trying to fuse its many clans into a single new political structure. Albania was, and is, a Muslim outpost in Europe. Some of Albania's neighbors, particularly Greece, was not happy with the new arrangement. Earlier in the year, a separatist group of ethnic Greeks called the Epirotes declared their own independent state, "Autonomous Epirus," and guerrilla war broke out.

Europe was staggered by the rawness of the violence. On May 7, The Telegraph reported:

"An official telegram from Durazzo [modern-day Durrës, Albania's second largest city] brings news which will be received with indignation throughout the civilized world. According to a message received today by the Albanian Government, 200 Mohammedan Albanians were taken prisoner by the Epirotes and dragged to the village of Kondra. There they were taken into an Orthodox church and all 200 were crucified alive and the church then set on fire. Two days after the carnage, Albanian gendarmes occupied Kondra where they found the corpses."

The Archduke greets Sarajevans on June 28, 1914

The atrocities against the Albanians were insufficient to bring Europe to war. All sides were appalled. No side could claim justification for the horror.

But within eight weeks, another tragedy occurred that could set Europe alight. This time, Bismarck's prophecy would come true.

Women in punts watch the Henley Regata in July 1914

German's Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898)

The Archduke greets Sarajevans on June 28, 1914

Dashing young men

"Question Mark," by Ryan McGinley, 2007

"Outdoor 096,"_ by ArnieVn

World Naked Bike Ride

Warwick Rowers

"Question Mark," by Ryan McGinley, 2007

"Outdoor 096,"_ by ArnieVn

World Naked Bike Ride

Warwick Rowers

Intimate company

Nathan Daniel Ward (Tristan Scott) and Porter Westcott

Photo by Jan Kubicki

Leo Forte and Trent Diesel

"The Captain's Tent," by Cerberuseos

Nathan Daniel Ward (Tristan Scott) and Porter Westcott

Photo by Jan Kubicki

Leo Forte and Trent Diesel

"The Captain's Tent," by Cerberuseos

Pebbles on the beach

The War to End All Wars

One hundred years ago, the driver of a car carrying a visiting dignitary took a wrong turn. The error set in motion a chain of events that resulted in changes that affect us this day.

That one mistake left 7 million people dead. It led to the collapse of European monarchies. It instigated the rise of communism and Nazism. It permitted strife to continue to recent times in parts of Europe and the Middle East. Today's collapse in Iraq—that's one consequence of what happened on June 28, 1914.

The wrong turn gave Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian nationalist, an opportunity to assassinate Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, who were riding in that car. One month later, armies throughout Europe massed for battle in what was then known as "The Great War."

Two decades later, The Great War was renamed World War One, as an even deadlier conflict began. World War Two killed even more people—more than any war in human history.

Consider what World War One brought:

The Romanov dynasty, an empire slowly falling into decay, collapsed in an instant. The Romanovs were inept at waging war. Their soldiers and sailors were deserting. Filling the void was a revolutionary movement, the Bolshevik Party, led by Vladimir Lenin. The Soviet Union was created and, over the course of a few decades, it industrialized, militarized and became powerful enough to be able to threaten the world in nuclear Armageddon.
The punitive terms imposed on Germany by the victorious Allied Powers created economic suffering for the German people and a belief that they had been "stabbed in the back" by their own democratic Weimar government, which had to sign the dictates. Capitalizing on these injuries, a failed painter named Adolf Hitler gained a following, took power, created a war machine, invaded its neighbors and ordered a holocaust that killed more than 7 million civilians.
Japan, an ally in the conflict but ignored in the postwar Versailles negotiations, decided it needed to adopt a go-it-alone policy. Japan became more militaristic. It conquered Korea, Manchuria and much of the rest of China, plus Indochina and the Philippines. Without The Great War, there would be no need for Pearl Harbor and no need for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
New national boundaries were delineated after the war. In many cases, they ignored traditional ethnic, cultural and religious lines. The diplomats were sometimes clueless as to the desires of the local populace. They gave more credence to their own colonial interests. The postwar Versailles conference in 1919 gave the world Yugoslavia, a futile amalgamation of Balkan peoples. After decades of keeping the lid on the pot, the country finally blew up in the 1990s. Wars and ethnic cleansing occurred in Bosnia, Kosovo and Croatia. Other postwar agreements created Iraq and the British Mandate of Palestine. As with Yugoslavia, different religious and cultural groups were thrown together in the expectation that their peoples could live together harmoniously.
The United States' entry into the war in 1917 meant the end to American isolation from European affairs. From then on, the distance between the Atlantic shores grew smaller and smaller. At the outset of American involvement, President Wilson vowed that The Great War would be "the War to End All Wars." By the end of the war, his idealism was challenged here and abroad.

World War One resolved no important issues. It allowed woulds to fester and new issues to develop. It made inevitable a second global war. Fifty million to 80 million people died in World War Two through combat, bombing, ethnic cleansing, execution, starvation and disease. Roughly 3 percent to 4 percent of the world's people lost their lives.

Of course, a world absent The Great War would have continued to struggle with the tensions of nationalism, industrialization and democratization. But those struggles might have been addressed regionally or bilaterally, without a global war. Indeed, there was the belief by many in Europe that economic interrelationships made war impossible.

Archduke and his wife minutes before the shooting

The belief in accommodation and gradual change ended on that morning of June 28, 1914. A Serbian nationalist, whose name is obscure to all but historians, tried to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand with a grenade. He failed. An Austrian general directed the archduke's six-car procession to change its route, but he did not inform the driver of the archduke's car. The driver headed along the wrong route. Realizing his mistake, he back out of a street to resume the procession. That brief delay gave Gavrilo Princip, the Serb nationalist, the opportunity to pull out his gun and shoot the archduke and his wife, both of whom died almost immediately.

The tragedy occurred in Sarajevo, the Bosnian city that was nearly shelled into oblivion by Serbia during the 1990s, during one of the seemingly endless string of Balkan wars.

Gavrilo Princip, Serbian nationalist

Princip was a member of the Black Hand, a secretive group formed by the Serbian Army in 1911 to seek unification of all territories with Slavic populations not ruled by the Serbian government. One of those territories was Bosnia, which had recently been annexed by the Hapsburg rulers of Austria-Hungary.

The Austro-Hungarian Emperor, Franz Josef, grieved for the loss of his nephew, the presumptive heir to the Hapsburg throne. German Kaiser Wilhelm II, a friend of the murdered archduke, felt the tragedy needed to be avenged. Germany encouraged Austria to stand against Serbia. Russia, the Serbs' protector, threatened war against Austria if that happened. Germany promised to support Austria against the Russians. The French, who had a mutual defense treaty with the Russians, warned Austria and Germany against moving against Russia. Germany in turned warned France it would fight. Britain had an understanding with France; it would cooperate with France if German troops entered French soil through Belgium.

When Serbia ignored the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum one month later, the dominoes began falling. By early August, the Central Powers—Germany and the Austro-Hungarian empire—were at war with the Allied Powers—France, Russia and Britain. Soon, the Ottoman Empire joined the fight on Germany's side, a crucial mistake that ensured the dismemberment of Ottoman territories even while the fighting continued.

Over the next few weeks, I'll recount some of the events that occurred in the lead-up to the war. But if you're so inclined, I suggest you get a copy of Barbara Tuchman's epic, "The Guns of August," which details the history behind the war and the early days of the conflagration. My copy is battered from having read it again and again since the 1990s. Subsequent research counter bits of Tuchman's work. But hers remains the masterpiece. The book has been reprinted several times since its original 1962 publication. If you can find one at your bookstore or library, it's worth your while to read it. Its tales of hubris, miscalculation, nationalism and vanity remind us of the continued failings of government and its citizens. Though written 50 years ago, the story reminds one of the events surrounding Iraq in 2003.