In Heavenly Peace: The Christmas Truce

   There is something defiant in it also; something that makes the abrupt bells at midnight sound like the great guns of a battle that has just been won. All this indescribable thing we call the Christmas atmosphere only hangs in the air as something like a lingering fragrance or a fading vapor from the exultant explosion of that one hour in the Judean hills nearly two thousand years ago. But the savor is still unmistakable, and it is something to subtle or too solitary to be covered by our use of the word peace. By the very nature of the story the rejoicings of the cavern were rejoicings in a fortress or an outlaw's den; properly understood it is not unduly flippant to say they were rejoicings in a dug-out....There is in this buried divinity and idea of undermining the world;..."

G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man 1925.  (emphasis his)

Christmas Day, 1914 was the first Christmas in war of a century that would be defined by its wars. And yet, that first Christmas in war, would be strangely defined by its peace. In the week leading up to Christmas, a series of unofficial cease-fires spontaneously occurred along the front line.  The Germans called it Weinachtsfreiden, the French, Treve de Noel. 

   The truce mostly involved British and German troops who crossed lines into the opposing side's trenches to talk and exchange gifts.  They all expressed that they were tired of the war. A war they were told would be over "before the leaves fell" or "over by Christmas" was now dug into trenches and frozen in place, a deadlock that showed no signs of being over quickly.
    Fraternization with the enemy was banned, for obvious reasons, but it happened anyway.  As early as November of 1914, peaceful and even friendly interactions between opposing sides was not uncommon.  This ranged from just letting each other alone to men from either side coming into the other's trench for a visit, which irked the commanders to no end. But something magical happened on December 24 and 25 1914 in places like Ypres, Ploegsteert, and Neuve Chapelle.
   By many accounts it started when the Germans lit candles, decorated Christmas trees, and began to sing carols whose tunes were familiar to the English, though the words foreign. Probably the Germans were singing Stille Nacht (Silent Night) or Herbei, o ihr Glaeubigen (O Come, All Ye Faithful). Hearing this, the British responded by singing the same thing in their own language. After that, the Germans began to shout across the lines "You no shoot, we no shoot", "Pudding", "A Happy Christmas" and "English means good." The British thought it was a trap at first, a ruse by the Germans to draw them out to be shot. But finally, a few English soldiers that were either brave enough, or hopeful enough, ventured forward. The rest followed slowly.
  They were met by smiling, unarmed Germans who seemed to be rather nice.  Both sides exchanged wine, cigarettes, pictures and food. One British man got a German to write his name and address on a card as a souvenir.  Both sides expressed how tired they were of the war. They all got together and sang carols, one German even played "God Save the King" on a mouth organ, according to a letter sent home by Rifleman C.H. Brazier. Many accounts from those days claim that impromptu football (i.e. soccer) matches broke out between both sides.  Part of this truce was also a cease fire agreement to let each side bury their dead.  On the eastern front, where Austria was facing Russia, similar truces were reported. Several Austrian commanders of uncertain rank were reported to be the initiators. The Austrian soldiers were told not to fire unless provoked, and the Russians did the same. Both sides met to exchange Austrian schnapps and tobacco for Russian bread and meat.  At the siege of the Polish fort Przemysl, the Russian besiegers left three Christmas trees in no-man's land with an attached note saying "We wish you, the heroes of Przemysl, a Merry Christmas, and hope we can come to a peaceful agreement as soon as possible."
    It wasn't just soldiers on the front that wished for peace this Christmas.  The Open Christmas Letter was a public call for peace signed by 101 British Suffragettes addressed "To the Women of Germany and Austria". The current pope, Benedict XV requested an official truce between the warring governments "on the night the angels sang".
   Peace on earth, and goodwill toward men with whom He is well pleased.  Many want peace on earth at Christmas without knowing why.  The rest of us know that God is our Peace.  This Christmas truce in this first great and terrible war shows us that He will one day return to us, not as a baby, but as a conquering king to to bring the actual war that will end all wars......forever. 

The Regretful Shore

   So we'll stoke the fire and light the lamp

Turn our backs in from the damp

Settle down beneath the starry sky

Endure the winter passing by

~Winter Song

    The first day of the year 1915 was cloudy, with a northerly breeze and occasional snow squalls. The ice began to break up, and Endurance made good speed through the floes.  Twenty-four hours run gave them 124 miles which was encouraging, but by midday on the 2nd the way was blocked by ice again, and they were forced to sail west and north to find another opening.  The party passed about 200 bergs that day, along with great quantities of bay ice (ice that had come from a bay, obviously) and ice foot (ice foot is either ice from the foot of a glacier, or spray that has frozen to the waterline of a shore. One floe of the bay ice had black earth on it, most likely basaltic in origin, and another large berg had a broad band of yellowish-brown through it.
   Shackleton suggests that the band of yellow-brown in this berg was volcanic dust, and I have no reason to doubt him. Although he was not a geologist, Shackleton was not ignorant, and he was a seasoned explorer. Also, he had scientists with him that could have suggested otherwise if they had ideas to the contrary.  If this was indeed volcanic dust, where did it come from? Antarctica has many volcanoes, but most of the currently active ones are on the opposite side of the continent.  There are only two volcanoes near the Weddell Sea that have been active in the past 100 years. Deception Island is at the very tip of the Antarctic Peninsula that reaches up like an arm toward South America. It's last eruption was in 1970. Penguin Island is in the same vicinity as Deception, and it's most recent eruption is thought to have occurred in  1905.  If the estimate is 9 or so years off (which is possible) either one of these volcanoes could have been erupting onto ice in 1914-1915. The only problem is, they are rather far away from Shackleton's position, on the opposite end of the Weddell Sea in fact.  Still, with the clockwise current that churns in the Weddell Sea, which would later carry the ship a good third of the circumference of the Sea, it is possible those ice floes did have volcanic dust.

Location of Deception and Penguin Islands

Approximate Location of Endurance January/February 1915

   By 10 a.m. on January 4th, the ship passed a berg they had passed twice on the previous day.  In their effort to find an opening in the ice, Endurance had steamed around an area of 20 square miles for 50 hours. They were trying to find an opening to the south or southwest, but all openings were to the north and northeast.  Further effort for the present time seemed useless, so Shackleton gave the order to bank the fires, and the ship was moored to a solid floe. The weather was clear, so some enthusiastic crew members started a game of soccer on the floe (Shackleton is the one using the word soccer, despite being British/Anglo-Irish) until around midnight when Captain Frank Worsley fell through a hole in some rotten ice while retrieving the ball.  After retrieving Worsley, they called it a day. 

  On the 6th, still moored to the ice, the crew took the opportunity to exercise the dogs, who had begun to languish from lack of exercise. The dogs got very excited, and several managed to get in the water. Two dogs managed to get into a fight after slipping their muzzles, they were pulled from the water still grappling with each other.  All around, men and dogs much enjoyed the exercise.  But caution had to be in order for anyone exiting the ship.  Killer whales were becoming active in the vicinity. The crew had seen several seals plucked off the bergs they were lying on, and to a whale men would probably look much like seals.
  By the 8th, the pack was beginning to loosen again, and the ship was able to make headway south once more. The next day, water-sky was seen extending to the southeast, and the ship reached open water just before noon.  Water-sky is quite an interesting thing, and I had no idea there was such a phenomenon before reading Shackleton's writing. When light shines on blue ocean some of the light bounces back and is reflected of low-lying clouds.  The more blue light reflected off the water is a contrast to the white light reflected off ice. These darker clouds allow observers to see where water is even when they cannot see the actual open water.  Arctic and Antarctic explorers often use water sky to navigate sea ice.

Water sky, the darker stain on the clouds indicates open water. 

   Open water inside the ice pack was frequented by large whales, probably Blue Whales. Shackleton speculated they found refuge this far south, since they were harried by whalers further north, outside the pack. They had now come near the land discovered bu Dr. W.S. Bruce, leader of the Scotia expedition in 1904, which he had named Coats' Land.  Dr. Bruce had seen no bare rock, but had described rising slopes of snow and ice, with shoaling water off the ice barrier that stood in his way of reaching the land. Shakleton planned to land at these slopes as far south as possible, and from there begin the march across the continent.  After passing through some loose ice, they came around what appeared to be a small peninsula to open water and headed south without delay. On January 12th, they passed the southernmost point reached by Scotia, and were sighting new land.

Caird Coast of Coats Land, as photographed from Endurance, January 1915

    Shackleton planned to skirt this new land to the southwest as far as they could go, and then embark from the ship to start across the continent with the dog sleds.  They needed to land soon, some of the dogs were beginning to lose condition.  One of the dogs had to be shot on the 12th, Shackleton does not elaborate why. He had started now looking for landing places, but really did not intent to port anywhere north of Vahsel Bay, which was still quite a distance away. Endurance made her way through loose ice pack or open water, rounding several glaciers that came down from the land into the sea.  On January 15, the ship came to the edge of a great glacier extending into the sea. The bay formed by the northern edge of this glacier would, Shackleton noted, have made an excellent landing place, as it was protected from the south wind and only open to the warmer, and almost nonexistent, northern winds.  Shackleton called it Glacier Bay.  Passing this bay, they came to the junction of Coats Land and Luitpold land, observing the ice locked coast that remained in view through all but the worst weather. January 19th found the ship completely locked in ice.  The ice had come close around the ship in the night and now she would not move. The party worked hard at chipping the ice away from the ship, but Endurance was held fast within it, to the point they almost lost the rudder in the squeezing floes.  On the 27th, Shackleton gave orders for the boilers to be put out, since they only had half their coal stores left and were wasting it sitting in the ice. On January 31st, Physicist Reginald James and Navigator Huberht Hudson rigged the wireless in hopes of hearing the monthly message from the Falklands, but at 1630 miles from the station, they were too far away.
   Aside from some slight movement when the pack loosened, the ship remained stuck in the ice.  On February 5, Endurance received a foretaste of her ultimate fate. At noon the ship gave a sudden start and heeled over three degrees. The ice around her then cracked on both sides and the ship righted again.  Being stuck within sight of land was maddening.  Shackleton wrote sometime in early February "From the masthead the mirage is continually giving us false alarms. Everything wears an aspect of unreality. Icebergs hang upside down in the sky; the land appears as layers of silvery golden cloud. Cloud banks look like land, icebergs masquerade as islands...Worst of all is the deceptive appearance of open water, caused by refraction of distant water, or by the sun shining at an angle on a field of smooth snow or the face of ice cliffs below the horizon."  Desert regions are famous for mirages, but they are as likely if not even more common in the polar regions of the earth.
  On February 14 there was a last-ditch effort to chip the ice from the ship and break through the floes to open water. After 24 hours of labor, they got the ship about a third of the way through the ice, but a good 400 feet of pack still separated her from open water, and Shackleton had to admit that further effort was useless. They were now realizing they would have to spend winter in the embrace of the ice, and winder was fast approaching. The sun, which had spent two months above the horizon, set for the first time at midnight on February 17. On the 22nd, Endurance reached the furthest south point she would, touching the 77th parallel latitude at 35 degrees west longitude. Summer was no more, it had barely existed. Seals were disappearing, as were birds, headed north to warmer waters.  Shackleton wrote "This calm weather with intense cold in a summer moth is surely exceptional". He did, unfortunately, picked an unusually cold winter to attempt reaching the South Pole. One wonders if he may have had more success in a different year, several years prior or after 1914.  Ninety years on, the Weddell Sea was largely free of ice in summers, (that is of course, changing again) but all who have traveled it, in any season, claim it is the most treacherous and dismal sea on earth.
    February 24, they stopped observing ship routine and turned Endurance into a winter station. All hands on duty during the day, all slept at night except for the night watchman. They made ice houses or "dogloos" for the dogs (one of which had recently had puppies) out of blocks of ice. The dogs were certainly glad to leave the ship and have the run of the ice floes. Seals were hunted and provided fuel as well as food for man and dog. Hockey and soccer on the ice were the chief forms of entertainment, and both were enjoyed by all. Really, it wasn't that unpleasant a situation, things could have been much worse.  Still, Shackleton had to be regretting he did not land at Glacier Bay in Coats' Land, the perfect sheltered bay he had described in January.

Wringing the Last Drops of Innocence from the World

   "Never such innocence,

Never before or since,

As changed itself to past

Without a word – the men

Leaving the gardens tidy,

The thousands of marriages,

Lasting a little while longer:

Never such innocence again."

MCMXIV by Philip Larkin

Casual historians today tell the story of the First World War as if Bang! The Archduke gets shot, and Bam! everyone started shooting each other.  In reality, the whole thing was far more complicated. For a while after Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, the Crisis of 1914 was seen as just a small dispute between Austria and Serbia.  A local problem best left to the two participants to sort out between them. Then, when it looked like there really would be a huge war, everyone stood around for a while deciding whether or not they really should start the whole thing or just talk each other out of it.
   Local crises like the murder of the Archduke had happened before, for example European quarrels over who owned what in Africa, or the Balkan Wars of 1912-13.  These had mostly been settled by a few shots fired and some diplomacy, but they had touched only matters of national interest.  The death of Franz Ferdinand was a matter of national pride.
    Austria was the weakest of the European powers, and was therefore also the most sensitive. A very multicultural, multi-religious, multi-ethnic territory, Austria-Hungary lived in fear of ethnic subversion. When the heir to the throne was killed by a member of the most subversive minority, it was too much for Austrian sensibilities. An investigation revealed that the terrorists were Austrian subjects, but they had been armed in Serbia and the smuggled across the Austria/Serbia border by Serbian nationalists. This national organization was the Narodna Odbranda (National Defence) which had been set up in 1908 to work against the incorporation of Serbia into the Austrian Empire. Narodna shared members with another nationalist organization,"Union or Death" better known as The Black Hand. They wanted to unite Serbia, it was actually from The Black Hand where there terrorists had come.  This secret society was under the control of an individual code named "Apis" who was the commander of the Serbian Army's General staff.  No one is still quite sure how much the Serbian government knew about the plot.  However much they knew, it was enough to confirm to Austria that Serbia was nothing but trouble and was best punished for their crime.
    The Serbs were Orthodox Christians, which made them a religious as well as ethnic minority. Their religion, however, made them the darling of Russia.  Austria knew this, and to were hesitant to take action against Serbia. Russia aside, Serbia was not well-liked among most of Europe.  In 1903, the Serbs had killed their king and queen and then thrown their bodies out a window and hacked them to bits with swords.  This shocked the rest of Europe, even sympathetic Russians and Bulgarians, and no one was really keen on defending people that did this to their sovereigns.
   The assassins confessed to Serbian complicity in the crime on July 2. Austria had long wanted to get Serbia out of their hair and this was a perfect excuse. Austria made its position clear a mere six days after the assassination, but would not dare to act if they could not count on backing from Germany. This was a mistake on Austria's part.  Everyone else, even Russia, wasn't all that interested in Serbia. If Austria had struck immediately, without waiting to see if Germany would help them, the rest of Europe might have let Austria do what it wished with Serbia and passed it off as a local problem.
    Over lunch on July 5, Kaiser Wilhelm II told the Austrian Minister, Count Berchtold, Austria would have Germany's support. The German Foreign Office was informed the next day that Britain would not get involved in a Balkan crisis, nor would Russia and France. Satisfied, the Kaiser departed on the imperial yacht, the Hohenzollern, for his annual cruise to the Norwegian fjords. Before he left, the Kaiser insisted on one thing, Austria needed to come to a firm decision on waht it wanted to do. Austrians were known for what Germany referred to as Schlamperei, a mix of prevarication and procrastination which often irritated  Germans to no end.  Kaiser Wilhelm feared the same was about to happen this time. Oddly enough, in the first weeks of July the roles were reversed; Austria wanted action, Germany went on holiday.
    Tuesday, July 7 was ten days after the assassination when the Imperial Counsel of Ministers finally met. Count Berchtold wanted to go to war, The Hungarian Prime Minister, Tisza, insisted that a list of demands be sent to Serbia first. If they rejected the terms, then they would be sent an ultimatum that led to war. They argued over this for a while, and then turned it over to the Emperor. Franz Josef agreed that Serbia should be given terms first, to Berchtold's dismay.  By July 14th, Berchtold and Tisza drafted the terms and set the date for the terms to be approved. The date chosen was July 19, twenty days after the assassination. Even worse, the note would not be delivered to Serbia for at least another week.  Why? Because the President of France was going on a state visit to Russia and Austria/Germany did not want their note going out when two potential allies to Serbia would be in close contact with one another. With France and Russia together when the terms were sent to Serbia, it would lessen the chance conflict with Serbia remaining a local problem, and make it more likely that France and Russia would come to Serbia's defence.
       The French president was scheduled to leave Russia on Thursday, July 23rd. Austria's terms would be sent to Serbia on the same day and would expire at 6 o'clock in the evening (local time) of the 25th. In short, the terms imposed the arrest, interrogation, and punishment of Serbian officials implicated in the assassination.  They also insisted Austro-Hungarian officials should take part in the process on Serbian soil.  Translation: Austria-Hungary did not trust Serbia to handle the crime itself.
   Twenty-five days since the assassination had passed, and the Serbian Prime Minister, Nicholas Pasic, was warned the note from Austria with terms was on its way. Despite this, he left  Belgrade for the country. During the night he had a change of heart and returned to the city, and met with his ministers the next morning. France, Britain, Germany and Russia had by this time all received copies of the note, although France was currently in the hands of a deputy since the president and foreign minister were at sea. Meanwhile in Belgrade, the British minister was ill, the Russian minister had just died and was yet to be replaced, the French minister had a nervous breakdown and his replacement had just arrived. Messages from London and Paris urged Serbia to accept as many of the terms as they could, but the Serbians were still deciding. With Serbia humiliated and everyone else mostly just standing around not knowing what to do, the murder of the Archduke was still a matter between Austria and Serbia and not really any other country. The British Foreign Minister, Sir Edward Grey, left London for a weekend of fishing.  At this point I am beginning to wonder how this war got started at all.  We're deciding on whether or not we should end civilization as we know it and everyone goes on holiday!  Although, there is something to be said for prolonging the inevitable, and wringing those last drops of innocence from the world.
   Serbia was still considering the terms from Austria when word reached them the mood in the Tsar's country palace was very pro-Serbian.  This emboldened Serbia to reject the most important of Austria's terms, that Austria would take part in the investigation of the assassination. Tsar Nicholas, meanwhile, announced a  "Period Preparatory to War", where Russia would think about thinking about mobilization.  At this, Serbia began mobilizing its small army, and Russia recalled the youngest reservists from its western districts.  Aside from this, for two days not much else happened. Germany warned Russia that if it fully mobilized, it would cause Germany to mobilize its army which would mean war. Britain and France began working to restrain Russia, which seemed to work, Russia moderated its position and so did Germany.  For an instant it looked like this crisis could be negotiated away like so many before.

Kalimegdan or Belgrade Fort

    If only, if only! Few realized what a flash point the mobilization of Russia was until after the fact. While Britain and France were trying to talk Russia down, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia Tuesday July 28, officially beginning the War to End All Wars and start a hundred others. Austria began bombing Belgrade the next day. Horrible as that sounds, the attack was really just a pinprick. The fort that was shelled, Kalimegdan, an old Turkish fort at the meeting of the Danube and Sava Rivers, still stands to this day. Also on the 29th, Russia began partial mobilization. That afternoon, Kaiser Wilhelm telegraphed his cousin, Tsar Nicholas, and asked him to smooth over difficulties between Austria and Serbia,  Nicholas replied "It would be right to give over the Austro-Servian problem to the Hague conference." The international court that Nicholas himself had invented to handle such crises which no one seemed to want to be a member of. Wilhelm telegraphed back asking Russia to remain a spectator,  Nicholas had a change of heart and recalled the mobilization orders that evening. The Tsar, on holiday along with everyone else it seems, was at his summer residence. He was being badgered by his cabinet about what might happen if they didn't mobilize,  Finally giving in, Tsar Nicholas gave the order for the first day of mobilization to be July 31, thirty-four days since the Archduke had been murdered.
   The next day saw Germany's mobilization, while France fell into despair when Britain still refused to get involved. Britain was disconnected from the rest of Europe, both geographically and in ties of diplomacy, and she still believed that the primary offending parties could be talked out of their current positions.  August 2 saw Germany deliver an ultimatum to Belgium, which would expire in 24 hours. This was the causus belli for Britain, they told Germany to stand down or else. The Germans refused, so at midnight on August 4, Britain and France collectively declared war on Germany. Austria managed to delay its declaration of war on Russia until the next day, August 5 and was still not at war with Britain and France a week later.  The two Allies made up dithering Austria's mind for it by declaring war on Austria August 12th. Italy, meanwhile, would remain neutral for the time being and Serbia, the cause of all this woe? War would not come to their country for another 14 months.
    Modern forms of communication overload those who use them.  Valuable information is lost as we try to separate what is vital from what is not, and drown in the onslaught. In 1914, everyone was plague by the opposite problem "underload." Information about who was doing what trickled in slowly, if at all, and was usually incomplete. No one had any idea what everyone else was up to, nor could they get advice from anyone else on how to respond.  (It probably would have helped some if most of the main decision-makers hadn't all gone on holiday at once.) In the dreadful in-between, the gaps of information that had to be filled in, everyone deliberated, thought, acted and then rescinded, and finally just made the choice and prayed it was the right one.

Ad Infernum: The Edge of Civilization

    To talk about the bottom of the universe

the way it truly is, is no child's play,

no task for tongues that gurgle baby-talk. ...

...In the depths of Austria's wintertime, the Danube 

never in all its course showed ice so thick, 

nor did the Don beneath its frigid sky,

as this crust here; for if Mount Tambernic

or Pietrapana would crash down upon it,

not even at its edges would a crack creak.

~Dante, The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Canto XXXII

 As mentioned previously, Shackleton had volunteered all the men and supplies of his Trans-Antarctic Expedition, without consulting his donors, to the war effort as soon as Britain declared war on Germany. He was thanked but told they were not needed since the war would likely be over in a few months. So Endurance set sail from Plymouth on August 8, 1914 heading for Buenos Aires. Shackleton had been detained by expedition business, so he did not depart on the ship. He took a faster ship to Buenos Aires and met with the rest of the crew there.I do not know what day Endurance reached Buenos Aires, Shackleton does not mention it in any of his published writings. Perhaps, because he arrived separately, no one bothered to mark it. The voyage from Plymouth to Argentina would probably take about two months.  They departed Buenos Aires on October 26 and came to Grytviken, the whaling station at South Georgia, on November 5.     South Georgia is the largest and northernmost of a chain of islands known as South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.  It was then and still is a British Overseas Territory. Britain had claimed South Georgia since 1775 but had only taken over the South Sandwich Islands in 1908, six years prior.  Back in 1914 they were known as the Falkland Islands Dependencies. Grytviken was the main settlement there, a whaling station (where whales were brought for processing after being killed by whaling ships) and literally the end of civilization. Past Grytviken there was nothing, no towns, no radio, no telegraphs, no people. Today there are a few research stations in Antarctica so one is never very far from at least other humans, but Shackleton and Company were completely on their own.   The whalers at Grytviken had warned Shackleton about ice around the South Sandwich group, they had seen ice come all the way up to the island chain even in summer (which it was now), and said the best time to get into the Weddell Sea was probably late February or early March.  The Weddell Sea is the large bay facing the South America side of Antarctica. (I would say the North/West/or East side, but at the bottom of the world, there is really only one direction to go, North.

South Georgia, taken by Frank Hurley

    The ship departed Grytviken on December 5, 1914. They had hoped a steamer would arrive at the station to bring mail and news of the war before they had left, but they tarried long enough and had to leave while the ice pack was at least barely passable. A year and a half later they would learn that the steamer Harpoon had arrived with mail just two hours after Endurance departed. Passing through the South Sandwich islands on the 7th of December, they met their first ice at 57°26’ south latitude. Many icebergs, tabular in shape and yellow with diatoms, were seen west of the islands.  Two hours later, the ship encountered its first band of heavy pack ice. Although the whalers had said ice came as far north as the southern end of the islands, Shackleton was had not expected to see it this soon.
    Why was there ice this far north? Even today, when Antarctica is supposedly warmer, pack ice comes as far north as the Southern Sandwich Islands in winter.  Also, 1914 was a mere 64 years after the approximate end of the Little Ice Age, and the climate was still coming out of that. Only two years prior had benen the great maritime tragedy when Titanic struck a berg in the opposing hemisphere in a place were ice is now less common.  Titanic herself was only a few miles from pack ice in the north Atlantic when she struck the berg that was her undoing. Indeed, there is a theory that the Great Ship did not hit an iceberg but pack ice.  If pack ice was that far south in 1912, then it is no surprise that it was that far north of the South Pole in late spring two years later.
  Thus began the process that would become routine most of the way south.  Sail or steam through leads in the ice as they found them, break through the ice when there were no leads, or when the wind was driving the ice floes so close together they were impassible, shut off the engine and wait.  During colder weather, water that was exposed between floes would soon freeze over in a matter of hours after putting off "frost smoke". Often, they would have to break through the ice by driving the ship against a floe at half speed, stopping the engines just before impact. The ship would then ram into the ice and cut a V-shape into the floe, and often the impact caused the ship's bow to rise nearly out of the water and roll slightly. After ensuring loose bits of ice would not hit the propeller, they then reversed the engines and drove the ship back 200 to 300 yards. They would then drive the ship forward and hit the V in the center. This would be repeated until, usually on the fourth attempt, the ice split and they could sail through. Sailing through these ice floes required muscle as well as nerves. One day, while navigating and breaking through the ice, there was a great nose aft. Leonard Hussey, meteorologist, was at the wheel and explained "The wheel spun round and threw me over the top if it!" This was no pleasure cruise.
       It wasn't all monotonous ice-splitting, though. There were sled dogs to train and give names to like Rugby, Upton, Saint, Caruso, and Slobbers. Shackleton and Company did a good deal of whale, penguin and seal spotting, as often as not they would hunt the animals as well. This was not so much for sport as to add to their food supply. Then of course there was fun to be had at the scientists' expense. One of the standing jokes on the ship was that the Adelie Penguins they saw quite often all knew biologist Robert Clark, and when he was at the wheel would run alongside the ship squawking "Clark! Clark!" and seemed to be disappointed that he never answered. Some of the men would later put a few strands of spaghetti in a jar and present it to Clark as some new Antarctic worm they had found.  At one point while trying to run through some ice, the captain had the semaphore hard-a-port, but the ship would not port. The captain shouted to the scientist who happened to be manning the wheel "Why in Paradise don't you Port!" The indignant reply came "I am blowing my nose!" Ah, scientists. Even they were required to steer the ship through the ice floes.
    The penguins, in addition to acquainting themselves with Clark, also seemed to have a taste for music. One afternoon, Hussey was playing the banjo on deck and three Adelie penguins approached the ship. They apparently very much appreciated "It's a Long Way to Tipperary" but, according to Shackleton, "they fled in horror when Hussey treated them to a little of the music that comes from Scotland." The roars of laughter from the crew dismayed the little birds even more, and they ran off as fast as their short legs would go.
      Christmas Day 1914 found Endurance stuck in heavy ice floes from midnight to 6:00 a.m. then the ice opened and they made progress until about 11:30 a.m., when the ice closed in again. During the early part of the night, they had good leads and easily broken ice.  They made more progress that day then the had and of the prior two weeks.   On the other side of the world, Germans and British soldiers on the front lines were calling a temporary truce for Christmas.  They would get back to killing each other the next day. Meanwhile,  the crew of the Endurance had grog at midnight for all on deck, and grog again breakfast for those who had been asleep at midnight. Thomas Orde-Lees, the storekeeper and motor expert, had decorated the wardroom with flags and had a little present for each of them. Later came a dinner of turtle soup, whitebait, jugged hare, Christmas pudding, mince pies, dates, figs, and crystallized fruit, with rum and stout.
  New Year's Day, 1915 came, and since the ship had entered pack ice in December, they had made 480 miles through the ice. Shackleton reckoned the total steaming distance to be 700 miles. So 220 miles had been spent sailing along and around ice finding a way through to open water. They had made good progress considering the ice and the winds that had barred their crossing. But winter was quickly on it's way, and they were still not within sight of land.
 

Colorized photograph of Endurance in full sail

Sister Russia and Our British Cousin. The Trouble with Allies

   "Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom"  ~Lao Tzu   

    If you are going to war against a country larger and more powerful than you, you will need allies. At least one, preferably more. In 1914, no one was more aware of this than France. Germany and its satellites were at least 20% larger than France and its population was half again as large. France's primary ally, really its only confirmed ally, was Russia.
  Russia, however, was a constant cause of trepidation to France because it refused to confirm just how much it would thrown in with France when war began. Russia wasn't intending to be malicious with its vacillation, it had its own problems to deal with, and its sheer size and distance from Germany made the way it could wage war different than France.  If Germany started a two-front war, France was immediately in the cross-hairs. It would be the first thing Germany went for.  Russia was so far away that by the time they reached even the borders of Germany, France could have fallen. Russia's distance from Germany allowed it to wait a few days to mobilize. It was also large enough that it could endure a initial (relatively) small loss of territory to the Germans while calling up their reserves.
   Size and distance aside, Russia also had its own problems at home without having to worry about its comparatively small ally. They had just come through a humiliating defeat by Japan in the Russo-Japanese War in 1904-05. That war, considered the "first great war of the 20th Century" was an imperial dispute between Russia and Japan over Manchuria and Korea. After that, Russia had a minor revolution in 1905.If Germany had implemented its Schlieffen plan in 1906, it probably could have wiped out both France and Russia.  But by 1909, Russia was starting to pull itself together again and work out its own mobilization schedules in the event of another war.  Indeed, the mistakes Russia learned from in 1904 helped it to defeat Germany in 1917. After much waffling, Russia surprised everyone by throwing in its lot with France in 1913.      There is still speculation today as to why Russia seemed to have a sudden change of heart. One possibility is that Russia had an Austrian double agent that sold them the secrets of Austria's war plans. Another is that Russia finally got over its defeat by Japan and was militarily and economically to the point where it could start expanding again.  Or perhaps Russia just realized that if France fell, it could not stand alone against the combined force of Germany and Austria-Hungary. Whatever the cause, the idea of having Russia coming at them from behind while they attacked France certainly gave Germany pause.
    Germany was not without its own ally problems. Germany's main ally was its smaller associate to the south Austria-Hungary.  Austria-Hungary vacillated on whether it would or would not help Germany in the next war.  While Austria-Hungary was more interested in taking on Serbia, Germany intended to throw Austria at Poland to keep back the advancing Russian army while they dealt with France. It was not until summer of 1914 that Austria-Hungary finally agreed to engage Russia, and only if Germany guaranteed they would grant them a portion of the German forces to assist.
    Russia aside, the one thing Germany did not consider was Britain getting involved. France couldn't really count on Britain either, because Britain had strongly implied that they did not want to get involved with anyone else's problems.  Britain had an advantage that the rest of Europe did not have, isolation.  They were separated from everyone else by water, while the rest of the countries were separated by a river or mountain range at best, at worst, just a line on a map.  While the rest of Europe had to worry if a conflict elsewhere would spill over into their land, Britain could stay out or choose to get involved, and with whom.  Britannia also had the largest and most powerful navy in the world, although Germany was fast catching up with them. Indeed, if conflict did start, that is how Britain at first planned to engage Germany, by putting its impressive British Navy against the German High Seas Fleet.   Over time, however, the British government and military came to realize that if Germany was the aggressor, the decisive point of battle would lie in France, and it was there they would have to go.  They came to an agreement in 1911, and France added Britain into their battle plans, while Britain went to work determining the fastest way to send soldiers over the Channel. France and Britain had never really gotten along, in the past they went to war against each other as often as not, but this time they would operate on a "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" policy. Stop the enemy from invading you before he invades us both.
     Everyone had been making plans and stockpiling weapons and men for years. Planning moves and counter moves, trying to anticipate the other side's reaction to their advance.  The board was set.  All that was needed now was the opening move.

Deutschland Uber La Marseillaise: The German-French Hostility

"From the lands where the sun rises to western shores, people are crying and wailing ... the Franks, the Romans, all Christians, are stung with mourning and great worry ... the young and old, glorious nobles, all lament the loss of their Caesar ... the world laments the death of Charles ... O Christ, you who govern the heavenly host, grant a peaceful place to Charles in your kingdom. Alas for miserable me."

Anonymous Monk at the monastery of Bobbio, on the death of Charlemagne

With all this talk about Germany wanting to war with France and France wanting to war with Germany, I really have not clarified why these two neighboring countries wanted to destroy each other so terribly.  Allow me to pause here and explain, at least in part, why they were both spoiling for such a war.  It is not an easy story, for it is a very complicated tale, with many causes and many players. One could spend literally a lifetime studying and writing about the enmity between these two countries. I shall endeavour to put it in a very large nutshell.
    As with most things in Europe, it begins with Rome. Julius Caesar in his On The Gallic War comments on he rivalry and cultural differences between the Gauls, living in what is now France, and the Germanic tribes in present day Germany. The Gauls were a Celtic people who inhabited a territory bounded by the Rhine river on the East, the Atlantic Ocean on the West and North, and the Pyrenees Mountains and Mediterranean Sea to the South. This still corresponds to the borders of modern day France.Once the Gauls were conquered by Julius Caesar, they became thoroughly Roman. Roman citizenship, running water, baths, forums, circuses, speaking Latin and so on. 
   The neighbors across the Rhine were a different story. They were not Celts and they had no interest whatsoever in being Roman. They were the barbarian Germanic tribes. We don't really know what they called themselves, Julius Caesar calls them Germani because that is what the Gauls called them. Rome tried to conquer them too, but after losing three legions to the Germans in the disastrous Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, the Romans pretty much gave up and went home.  In fact, this battle all but ended any further Roman expansion into northern Europe. The hero of this battle was the chieftain of the Cherusci tribe of Germans named Arminius, Armin, or Hermann, depending on what language you are speaking. Remember him and remember Teutoburg Forest, they will be important later. 
   So we have the Roman Gauls and the very un-Roman Germans living on opposite sides of a river. This is why French is considered a "Romance" language while German is not. French has a lot of Latin in it while German has hardly any Latin in it at all, save for a few words. After Rome fell, what is now France and most of Germany was united under the Franks. Though they gave their name to France (i.e. Francia), they were actually a Germanic people who spoke a language that was more German than Latin Gaulish.  Clovis I was the first king of the Franks to unite all the Frankish tribes. He was of the Merovingian Dynasty and is still considered the first king of France. His name, Chlodowig in its original Frankish form,  would later be transformed to Louis in French and Ludwig in German. The Merovingians were later overthrown by the Carolingian Dynasty, founded by Charles Martel, whose grandson would be the most famous Frankish king and one of the most legendary monarchs of all Europe: Charles the Great, Carolus Magnus, Charlemagne.   Charlemagne united all the Franks in Francia and all the German Franks, he conquered south to take northern Italy and west to unite all the territories that would later make up Germany and parts of Austria and Hungary.  Being a Christian, he went to war with the Muslims in Spain and put Pope Leo III under his protection after the Romans tried to put out Leo's eyes and tear out his tongue.  On Christmas Day A.D. 800, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne Emperator Romanorum "Emperor of the Romans", declaring the Frankish king the rightful heir to Old Rome. This was a slap in the face to the Byzantine Emperors in Constantinople, who considered themselves the continuation of the Roman Empire.  
   The crowning of Charlemagne founded the Holy Roman Empire, whose ever-changing borders over time would contain all of Germany, most of Austria and Hungary, northern Italy, all of Switzerland, Belgium, and the Netherlands, and parts of Poland and France. When Charlemagne died, he was succeeded by his son Louis who only kept the empire intact in his lifetime. Upon Louis' death, two of his sons divided the kingdom between them into two territories that became later the countries of France and Germany. 
  So, after some nice Christian and Roman unity, it's time to start hating each other again. France, throughout the middle ages into the modern era sought to maintain the borders it had since it was Gaulish Rome as described above, but France was the main nation that went on Crusades, fought wars against the Spanish and the British and owned England itself for a time. France was sophisticated and outward looking. Germany sort of kept to itself and ignored everyone. (Beware the loners, they're usually not quiet so much as plotting.) Also, France was united into a single country.  Germany, or the Holy Roman Empire as it was known, was a collection of smaller territories ruled by lesser kings under a greater emperor. It stayed this way until the early 19th century when Germans started thinking about unification. They were finally driven to unify in 1870 with the Franco-Prussian war. The Franco-Prussian War starts with Napoleon. 
     The Napoleonic Wars are well known enough that they do not need to be discussed here. Let's just say that the German States were very angry with France for the way it had run over them on its way to Russia and Poland. To prevent such a thing happening again, Prussia, the largest and most powerful of the German states, began uniting the norther German territories. This suddenly upset the balance of power in Europe, and Napoleon III, Emperor of France, demanded compensations in Belguim and the left bank of the Rhine, including two little territories largely full of German-speakers known as Alsace-Lorraine. Otto von Bismark, the Prussian Chancellor refused, and turned around started to unify the southern German states with the new northern state, creating modern Germany.  This is where Arminius and Teutoburg come back in. After the Napoleonic Wars, Germans began writing plays and songs about Arminius and his defeat of the French Romans. This even was looked back to as a key point of German identity. 
   France did not want Germany to unify because it would make a country larger and more powerful than itself. France attacked Germany and newly unified Germany responded. They responded by marching all the way to Paris and laying siege to it, intending to starve the French into submission. Finally, an armistice was signed in 1871, less than a year after the war started. Flush with victory, Germany demanded Alsace-Lorraine from France and built a monument to Arminius in Teutoburg Forest, with his statue glowering toward France. 
  So on top of everything that had gone before, the final bone of contention between these two countries was this. France felt threatened by unified Germany, newly unified Germany wanted to start taking back some of the territory it had as the Holy Roman Empire (and didn't want France attacking it again) and France wanted Alsace and Lorraine back. They couldn't wait to start going at each other again. In August 1914 they were only to glad to start going at each other again. 

The Great Game

"All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; When far away, we must make him believe we are near."
Sun Tzu, The Art of War

    Aside from making war, there is another occupation that armies have which is no less important, making plans. Without plans, there is no way to win a war. Alexander the Great planned how to invade Persia, Hannibal planned how to cross the Alps (with his notorious elephants and boulder dissolving vinegar) to take over Rome. Philip II of Spain planned to sail the Spanish Armada to England in 1588, only to have to tables turned on him. Napoleon made war plans almost every year of his conquering career. The North planned how to defeat the South in the American Civil War and so on.
    All of these plans, indeed pretty much any war plans since men began the art of war, were made "on the hoof" when war was either impending or already ongoing. That would change by 1870, with the advent of the new European railway systems which made it possible for armies to move thousands of men long distances ten times faster than they could travel by foot. The railroads also made it easier to supply armies, since food and other goods could be shipped to troops by rail, rather than having to rely on what could be begged, borrowed, bought, or stolen from the surrounding countryside.  The trouble with railroads is, they have to be efficiently timed or nothing will ever go anywhere.  The French army learned this the hard way during the Franco-Prussian war, when empty train cars left sitting on the track blocked the arrival of full trains for miles. Because of this, armies became fixated on ensuring that trains were kept to a strict timetable in war as well as peacetime. The best place to do this was staff colleges.
   Staff colleges were an invention of the latter Nineteenth Century. As mentioned before, soldier-making had become an industrial staple of most European countries, and since armies and navies need officers, staff colleges were set up to train privileged young men to be such. The first staff college was, not surprisingly, founded  by the Germans the same day the University of Berlin was founded. At first, the attendants of these schools were trained to be minions, but later on they were taught to think like generals, play war games, study military tactics, and write solutions to strategic problems. Germany was the founder of the staff college/war college and its models were soon coped throughout Europe. Their tactics were copied and their manuals translated into English, French, and other languages. The best graduates were appointed to general staffs and set to arranging mobilization schedules, writing wartime railway timetables, and finding solutions to every possible outcome of a situation.  Nineteenth century warfare had been turned from something done on an as-needed basis to an intricate art, a trade craft.  An obsessive, giant chess game with the map of Europe as the playing board.  The opening move was designated Mobilization Day ( M-Tag as it was known by the Germans) and everything following was a rigorous schedule of what soldiers and supplies should be placed where and when however many days after M-Tag until they reached the battlefield and the war was won.

The Schlieffen Plan

   As in chess, there are always strategies, and this new art of war was no exception. Generals and their staffs would write out various plans of deployment based on the situation and how they expected their opponents to respond.  These deployment plans, once complete, were pigeon-holed to be pulled out later as needed. The most famous of these is still known even to casual students of history, the Schlieffen Plan.
The Schlieffen Plan was named for its author, Field Marshall Alfred von Schlieffen, and was in short, a plan of how Germany was to crush France once one of them declared war on the other. The Plan was this, nearly the whole German army in a line, hinged at the Swiss border and stretching nearly to the North Sea, would march forward in a large arc across Belguim, Brussles, and finally across Flanders to the French border. The were scheduled to reach the French border by 21 days after M-tag. On the 31st day after M-tag, the German line would run along the Somme and Meuse rivers and the right wing would turn south, enveloping Paris in a pincer-like movement,  driving the French army toward the left wing that was advancing from Alsace-Lorraine. Thus in a gigantic claw, 400 miles in circumference and 200 miles wide, France would essentially be decapitated as her army was crushed.
   This plan would continually be plagued by problems, how long would it take supplies to get to the front, how hard would resistance through Belgium be, and so on. Schlieffen would continue to tinker with his plan obsessively until he died in 1912. His colleagues and successors would also continue to tinker with it. He and the other Germans were unaware that the French had a very similar plan in their war plan index. Known as Plans XIV-XVI, they were all variations on the same theme, to send all of the French forces along the French frontier to block Germany from entering France. It was a mirror of Schleiffen's masterwork, and plagued by the same problems; troop movements, supplies, ect.  If both of these plans had been implemented as written, there would have been gridlock in Belgium and Alsace-Lorraine that may just still be going on today. Fortunately these two armies mobilized in slightly modified versions of their dress rehearsals.
   France had a smaller population and therefore a smaller army than Germany, but remedied this in part by the Conscription Law of 1905, which imposed two years of military service for all young Frenchmen. Germany responded in kind in 1911 with a three year law for all young German men. Thus the world ran back and forth for thirty odd years, laws were changed, battle plans were written, rewritten, and indexed up until zero hour. This is what the staff colleges of Europe did during peace time. It is really no surprise that everyone wanted to go to war so desperately, the were all probably bored. One can only play the world's biggest chess game for so long.
   Oddly enough, there were no diplomatic equivalents of military staff colleges. They cataloged ways to make war, but not ways to make peace. Oxford University had established its professorship of Modern History in the eighteenth century to educate future diplomats, but up to 1914, the British Foreign Office was still choosing its entrants from honorary attaches; that is, young men whose fathers were friends of ambassadors. ("It's not what you know, it's who you know" is at least two hundred years old. It is not a new thing.) Diplomacy was therefore, mostly taught in embassies. European diplomats ante-Great War were a truly international class, they all knew each other as acquaintances or friends and all spoke French as a common language. And they all shared the belief that it was their main job was to avoid war.
    They had done so in the past.  At times when it looked like Europe was on the verge of war they all had enough confidence in each others abilities, a common standard of conduct, and desired above all else to prevent conflict. It was not the fault of the diplomats in 1914 that war finally consumed the world, why did they fail? I am not quite sure of that answer, I am still determining the threads of action and consequence.  The nearest I have come to so far, is that the conscripted young men, the professional soldiers, and the professional officers of the staff colleges were so well taught and well trained that they shouted down the diplomats. And the diplomats, whose very un-industrial trade was neglected, were at last out of their depth.
   
  

June 28, 1914: Wars and Rumours of Wars

"And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye not be troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows"

Matthew 24:6-8

Archduke Franz Ferdinand 

 One hundred years ago today, the world ended.

All right not technically, I am still sitting at my desk typing and the sun is still shining in the window so the ball we live on called Earth still exists. But a way of life, of ideals, a set of ethics and morality ended today, Western Civilization began its slow end. An man was murdered, which set off a chain reaction that would result in a war that changed the world forever.    A plot device of  books, movies, and television today is the apocalypse and the post apocalyptic world. I would posit that an apocalypse has come already. I said an apocalypse, not the Apocalypse. The Apocalypse really will end everything, and will come when Human History has reached its end, and God comes to remake the world. The Great War was however, an apocalypse, as we are still reeling in its effects one hundred years later.

   In June of 1914, Austria-Hungary was the weakest of the European powers, and was very sensitive because of this. It's southern neighbor, Serbia, was a backward, aggressive and rather violent Christian kingdom that had just recently won its independence from the Muslim Ottoman Turks. But not all Serbians were Serbs, a good many of them were Austrians, by historical accident. The Serbian Serbs did not appreciate this large minority of Hapsburg Austrians and their big brother to the north, Austria itself. Many among them were, in fact, prepared to kill to get these Austrians out.

 Austria and its ever changing collection of satellite nations had been ruled by the Hapsburg Dynasty ever since 1279.    The Hapsburg Army's summer maneuvers in 1914 were held in Bosnia, a former Muslim province of Serbia that had been occupied by Austria in 1878 and annexed in 1908 . Archduke Franz Ferdinand was the nephew of the emperor, the heir apparent, and the Inspector General of the army. He arrived in Bosnia on June 25, 1914 to supervise and once the maneuvers were over, he and his wife drove to the capital, Sarajevo, for some official engagements. The Archduke really could not have chosen a worse time to visit Bosnia. June 28th, the next day, was the anniversary of the defeat of Serbia by the Turks in 1389. To the Bosniaks, it must have been like they had thrown off one oppressor only to gain another. His Excellency was warned that his visit was not welcome and could be dangerous, but he proceeded anyway. A murder team lay in wait for him, consisting of five young Serbs and a Bosnian Muslim. On the way to the governor's residence, one of the conspirators threw a bomb at the Archduke's car. It bounced off and exploded under the car, injuring another occupant. Forty-five minutes later, the Archduke and his wife were on the way to the hospital to visit the casualty of the previous attack when the chauffeur took a wrong turn and came to a stop while turning the car around.  This brought them in range of another conspirator who stepped forward and fired a pistol at them. The Archduke's wife Sophie (a woman he had all but given up the throne to marry, out of love) died instantly, the Archduke himself expired ten minutes later. The assasin, Gavrilo Princip, was arrested on the spot.

  The dying words of Franz Ferdinand were "Sophie, Sophie,don't die! Stay alive for our children. Sophie was an impoverished Czech aristocrat, considered unworthy of her husband by the rest of the powerful Hapsburg family. Archduke Ferdinand knew that his beloved wife would not be allowed burial in the Hapsburg crypt in Vienna, therefore, according to his earlier directions, he was buried beside Sophie at Arsetten Castle in Austria.

This assassination started a chain of events that would result in a shocking war that surprised everyone, but everyone wanted at the same time. I will cover the events of that fateful summer in the days to come. Today is to remember the man and his wife whose deaths ended the world.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand's Uniform

  

The White Warfare

"To

My Comrades

Who fell in the White Warfare 

Of the South and on the

Red fields of France

and Flanders"

Sir Ernest Shackleton, C.V.O

    While Western Civilization was facing the beginning of the end in the summer of 1914, another noteworthy event was also well on its way. Sir Ernest Shackleton, that seasoned Arctic explorer was, with fifty-six other men, about to head south to be the first people to cross the Antarctic Continent. 

    The turn of the 20th century was the Heroic Age, when man's drive to explore every inch of his world peaked, and men sought that last, almost forbidden frontier, the poles. Literally, the very ends of the earth. Many countries were involved in the race to see who would be the first to reach the north and south poles, much like America and the Soviet Union racing for the moon some 60 years later. America won the race to the North Pole in 1909, Britain, an empire in decline, lost the race South to Norway in 1911. 
   Shackleton, a qualified master mariner,  had an abiding love for the cold, extreme edges of our world and was a veteran of polar exploration. He had been a part of Robert Falcon Scott's 1901 to 1903 Antarctic expedition. From 1907 to 1909 he led his own expedition to reach the South Pole, known as the Nimrod Expedition.  Their ship , the Nimrod, made it to within 97 miles of the pole when it got stuck in pack ice and had to turn back.  At that time, it was the furthest south anyone had been and Shackleton was knighted for his efforts. 
   Having lost the race to the Norwegians, Shackleton then devised the last great explorer's quest, to traverse the continent of Antarctica in its entire. Charting, exploring, and crossing the whole continent on foot was indeed nothing anyone had ever tried before. Years in planning the expedition was to be in two parts. One part, in the ship Endurance was to disembark at the Weddell Sea* and head for the pole, taking magnetic and meteorological observations, geological survey, and samples of Antarctic flora and fauna. The other part was to bring another ship, the Aurora,  to the Ross Sea, on the opposite side of Antarctica.  Their party was to go about halfway to the pole from their side and wait for the Endurance party  to meet them, also taking scientific observations. 
  The Endurance set sail August 1, 1914, but she almost never left at all. Once she was fitted out and ready to go, she was to be inspected by His Majesty King George V on the Monday of Cowes Week before setting sail. Cowes week was and still is the conclusion of the Season.  Let me pause and explain the Season. The Season is the social calendar of the elite in England and was also for a time in America. It began in the 17th and 18th centuries and was at its peak in the 19th.  At this time the aristocrats and landed gentry would leave their country houses and come to London to socialize and engage in politics, as it coincided with the seating of Parliament every year. This was also when young ladies were presented to society (and often to the Royal Court) and expected to find a husband as soon as possible. Once the Season was over, everyone would return to their country houses at the beginning of hunting season to shoot birds in Autumn and hunt foxes in Winter. 
   When Jane Austen was writing about Mr. Fitzwiliam Darcy and Miss Marianne Dashwood, the season ran from sometime after Christmas until the end of June. By the late  Victorian Era, the Season was standardized as running from April to August. After the end of the Great War, the Season fell into decline because many great families had to give up their London mansions. The Season is still preserved to this day, but the venues such as the Proms, the Chelsea Flower Show, Wimbledon, and so on are now more public venues. However, most events have a dress code where men and women are often required to dress in a more traditional way that resembles their Edwardian predecessors. It is a desiccated mummy, a last relic of a time gone by. 
Where was I? Ah yes Cowes Week. Cowes week is one of the largest sailboat races in the world, takes place the first week of August, and is one of the last events of the Season.  Cowes week in 1914 was the last real Season before the world blew apart. The Friday before that Monday Shackleton received a message saying the King would not be able to go to Cowes. The date was July 31, Archduke Ferdinand had been assassinated a month prior, and Austria was at war with Serbia.  Germany was threatening to attack France,  and Britain had just warned Germany that if they declared war on France, Britain would declare war on Germany. This last summer, this last Season before the world was turned on its head, was about to see off the last explorers of their kind. 
      Endurance left London Saturday August 1, but stayed anchored off the coast through Sunday, anticipating to be called up for war. Shackleton sent a telegram to the Admiralty offering to cancel his expedition and put himself and his men at the service of the crown. The Admiralty replied simply "Proceed."  Two hours later, Mr. Winston Churchill sent a longer telegram to Shackleton, thanking him and his party for their offer and stating the authorities desired the expedition to continue as planned. Tuesday, August 4th, the King did arrive and gave Shackleton the Union Jack to carry on the expedition. War finally erupted at midnight on that same day. 
    Shackleton took a lot of criticism later on for leaving when he did, without consulting the donors of the expedition. But the Admiralty had told him to continue as planned, and no one expected the war to last more than a few months. Indeed most expected it to be over by Christmas. This tiny capsule of the preserved Edwardian world was about to leave the civilized world to its own un-civilizing, and undergo a conflict against the elements of nature that was no less dangerous or strenuous than men shooting bullets and driving tanks at each other back home. They made it to Buenos Aires, Argentina on October 26, and from there sailed to South Georgia, a small island south of the Falklands which was the southernmost outpost of the British Empire, and indeed the very edge of civilization itself. From there was the unknown. 


* The land and sea area from the Falkland Islands extending to the South Pole was considered British territory at this time. 

Technology Can Save (or Destroy) The World

"War on an industrial scale is inevitable. They'll do it themselves in a few years."

~Prof. James Moriarty Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

   As I said last time, while the royal cousins of Europe were smiling at each other, back home they were building up their armies and experimenting with new weapons. Symbolic relationships and family ties were not hard currency when it came to foreign affairs.  Since the fall of Rome, international policy had chiefly consisted of national security, that is, military superiority.  Do unto others first,  before they invade you, or if they do try to invade you, make sure you can make them sorry they tried. Exhibit A, the British defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588.
     For all the new societal organizations and business partnerships, nineteenth century Europe had no solid system of diplomatic mediation. The closest to such that existed was the first Geneva Convention, convened in 1864, and was more about humanitarianism in war than international negotiation. Tsar Nicholas II convened the Hague Conference in 1899, which brought the powers of Europe together to limit the buildup of armaments and also found an international court to settle disputes between nations. The International Court was indeed founded, but the problem was convening the court was to be voluntary.  There is no purpose in having a way to settle international disputes if participation is voluntary.  Any country can then do whatever they please to their neighbors and then politely decline to participate in the court if summoned.
    Britain and France ruled much of the world at this time, thus much international conflict arose over jealous competition between the two of them, and Germany, who had a few colonies that it wanted to keep from the rest. Germany was the worst at provoking the rivalry between these three when, in 1900, it determined to build a naval fleet capable of engaging the Royal Navy. By 1906, the race to out-build Germany was at the forefront of British public policy.  France, in turn, decided to match Germany in number of soldiers. No mean feat, because Germany had a population of 60 million souls, France only 40 million. They did this by enacting the "Three Year Law" in 1913, extending the service of conscripts to three years.
    Thus soldier making and armaments manufacture became yet another of the new industries of the turn of the 20th century.  Nearly all of Europe made it necessary for all their young men to go through military training and remain in reserve until late middle-age.  The exception to this was Britain which, surrounded by sea and defended by the most powerful navy in the world, saw no need for this. Therefore, in 1914 there were some two hundred military divisions ready at a moment's notice, with sufficient firepower to destroy each other in the first few minutes of the war.
      The only thing that kept the world from ending so quickly was communication.  Large armies can only be efficiently deployed with near instantaneous communication, and the world did not quite have that yet. Radio (wireless telegraphy as it was known then) was still in its infancy, and while well known in theory, was not practical in the field. Primitive radios were too large and used too much energy to be used anywhere outside ships.  The telephone and telegraph were the fastest way to send word, and those both depend on fragile wires, easily broken as soon as they were set up. When those failed, the fastest way to send and receive news and commands were the most ancient ways, word of mouth and the written word, which can only travel as fast as a man, or whatever he rides or drives. This is why it first took a while for the war to actually start when war was declared and also why front lines often came to a grinding halt as territory was won and lost by inches later on. Commanders were reduced to confusion and uncertainty, while soldiers waited days or weeks to receive orders.
    Certainly,  it is also this uncertainty in communications that brought the war into being. In that fateful summer, the diplomatic crisis that was ignited by an assassination was slave to the wheel, the written note, the telegraph schedule and the encipher routine. Events swelled and outpaced the ability of diplomats and statesmen to control them, and they overwhelmed the primitive ways of communication. Why no one bothered to use a telephone I cannot say, except that no one thought about it. Telephones were certainly available for use, they had been around for nearly thirty years at least.  Everyone was too used to the regular routine that had served for years. So, the chain reaction began, as if everyone had been wanting to do this for so long, and they felt the had no other choice.

The Interdependence of Nations

Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch. *
and when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

~T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland

   Part of why the Great War came as such a surprise to everyone was because European Culture at the time was so cohesive and united.  Everything was so dependent on everything else that war seemed nearly impossible. In 1910, economic interdependence in Europe caused Norman Angell in The Great Illusion to say that the threat of disruption of international credit would either prevent a war entirely, or bring it to a quick end if war did break out. Almost all informed opinion agreed with this.
     The last two decades of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th were unlike any other that had been before, or quite possibly will be again. A twenty-year depression that began in the middle of the century was cushioned by a price decrease in raw and manufactured goods. The gasping economy was jolted to  life again  by new categories of manufactured goods, such as chemical dyes and internal combustion engines, to tempt consumers. Population increase in Europe, anywhere from 25% to 50% depending on the region, led to immigration to the Americas and Australasia. This, along with the expansion of empires, brought other inhabitants of the world into the international market.  Between 1875 and 1913 the unification of trademarks, artistic property, accountancy, maritime law, weights and measures, and copyright conventions all came into being.
   In addition to this came also two revolutions in transport, the steam ship, and the railway. People and products could now move around the world in a fraction of the amount of time they had before. South African gold and diamonds, Indian textiles, African and Malaysian rubber, Canadian wheat, Australian sheep, South American Cattle and everything that was being produced en masse in the United States (in 1913 the largest economy in the world) was moving around the world in record time, and most of it's capital passed through one place, London. The city of the world. London's international connections of its banks and insurance companies made it the standard medium for commerce for all civilized countries.
     Internationalism, however, had become as much cultural as it was commercial. Much of Europe was united under the Holy Catholic Church as it had been since Roman times. The rest, while not Catholic, were some other flavor of Christian: Lutheran, Anglican, Calvinists, Anabaptist, Greek or Russian Orthodox, Armenian Christians and Egyptian Coptic. Europe was intensely Christian and had been for centuries. Out of this saturation of Christianity rose the abolition of slavery, and organisations protecting worker's rights and sanctioning child labor. Christian Europe was so indignant at the Ottoman Empire's (i.e. Muslim) treatment of its minorities that international intervention was prompted in Greece and Lebanon several times.
    Religiously and Idealistically homogeneous, Europe was also culturally unified. The educated classes held all the same things at equal value. They all admired Italian Renaissance art and German Classical music. (Let me tell you, Germany has produced some of the best and most complex music humanity has ever seen.) Names like Victor Hugo, Leo Tolstoy, Honore de Balzac, Dickens, Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe were familiar to every European high school child, and nearly all of them could speak French, German, or Italian, if not more than one of those. The classics, Homer, Plato and the like, were still studied by all as they had been since the Middle Ages. Although they were a small minority, university graduates of Europe held the same body of knowledge and philosophy among them that it could be identified as a single European culture. The unity of Europe at the time is now way better illustrated, however, than in its royal families, who were all, in one way or another related to each other. A thousand years of only being allowed to marry into one social class eventually leaves you with only relative to marry.
      Nineteenth century Europe was no exception. All European rulers were cousins, and most were children or grandchildren of Queen Victoria. George V of England, Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, and his wife Alexandra, were all first cousins. (Nicholas and Wilhelm were also third cousins, I'll stop before this gets even more weird. Suffice to say, West Virginia has nothing on European Royalty.)
   So, with all this unity and relative harmony and  homogeneity, where did it all go horribly, horribly wrong? What happened to this golden age of prosperity to end not with a whimper, but an apocalypse of blood and fire? Well, all was unity and cooperation on the surface, under the surface was a different story.  The arms race was picking up. The "Concert of Europe" which had been unintentionally established by Napoleon (an alliance of most of the countries of Europe against him), was beginning to wear thin.  While the royal cousins were smiling at each other, back home they were each massing armies, just waiting for someone to make the first move. I will examine this further in my next piece.



*I am not Russian at all; I come from Lithuania, I am a real German.

A Cultural Tragedy

"We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
   Loved and were loved, and now we lie
         In Flanders fields."  
~ Lt Col. John McCrae

  The Great War was a tragedy unlike any other. It was tragic because it could have easily been prevented at any point in the five weeks leading up to the war if reason and prudence had halted the avalanche of events. It is tragic because it destroyed a culture of general peace and prosperity, ruined and ended the lives of millions Tragic because it left a legacy of political and racial hatred that could only be consummated in a second war. 

   Nearly every community, church, and cathedral in France and England have a war memorial inscribed with the names of those that did not return.  The acres of graveyards in France and Britain bear solemn testimony to this. This "lost generation" of young men would leave 630,000 war widows in France alone and deprive a generation of young women the opportunity for marriage. By wars end, there would be 45 men for every 55 women, on average, in the general population.
    France and Belgium would build monuments and graveyards to their own and England's brave boys, and ploughmen in Northern France would always stop in reverence when they came across "English dead". England was granted sepulture perpetuelle for their cemeteries, which would become a chain of permanent graveyards along what had been the Western Front.
      Germany was not allowed to mourn her dead in such a way. The battlefields to the east were forbidden to them by the Bolshevik revolution. To the west, Germany was awarded no such courtesy.  No graveyards were dedicated to their eternal rest; France and Belguim would only reluctantly allow Germany to retrieve and bury bodies, which were usually interred in mass graves out of site. Their war memorials were relegated to churches and cathedrals, often integrating Hans Holbein's The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb. 

Holbein's Body of the Dead Christ

Mathis Grunewald's Lamentation and Entombment of Christ was also often used for German war memorials.

 Indeed, for nearly 100 years, Germany has not been permitted grief over its loss. Britain, France, and most of the rest of Europe have forgotten that despite the crimes committed by Germans in both wars, they were people as well. They "loved and were loved" the same as all people, and German mothers, wives, daughters and sisters lost sons, husbands, fathers, and brothers.  Even Germans themselves did not allow their fellow countrymen to mourn.  In 1924, the Germans attempted a national memorial to the dead as other countries had. Its dedication caused a outpouring of political protest.  The dedication speech by President Fredrich Ebert, who had lost two sons in the war, was thankfully heard out, but the two minutes of silence that followed was interrupted by the shouting of pro- and anti- war protests, which then descended into a riot that lasted all day.
     The greatest number of counted dead did not belong to Germany, the winner of that macabre contest is Serbia, the country where Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated and which started  the whole thing. Serbia's population before the war was 5 million, 15% of this was lost to war and disease, compared to 5-10% of France, Britain, and Germany. Fifteen percent! If any country has a Lost Generation, it would be Serbia.
     Historians will argue that the First World War had less of an effect than the Second. In part, that is true. Certainly there was less material damage, the rural fields where battles were soon returned to farms and pastureland. There was no bombing of cities like in Germany and Britain. Civilian populations were largely shielded from the worst and carried on with life as usual. And, save for the Armenian Christians of the Ottoman empire, no populations were forced to relocate or subjected to genocide. The effect that the First War had on the culture, however, was far greater than anything else, and far greater than the its successor.  The rational and generous culture of the European culture was permanently damaged, and through it  human culture as a whole was damaged. Pre-War Europe was defined by constitutionalism, rule of law, and representative government. Post-War Europe relinquished confidence in these and gave rise to totalitarianism, which had cropped up nearly everywhere by the time the War was only fifteen years gone. Totalitarianism really was just a continuation of the war, because it is war by other means. War by menace and deprivation of rights, rather than war by guns and battlefields.
   The Second War was really the latent infection of the culture damage coming to a head. Commanders in the Second World War were the junior officers of the First, who had marched of to war confident they would be victorious "before the leaves fall".  The Second War was worse than the first, because the world had already been broken.