The Great War

When I was a child my great uncle told me two stories of the Great War. One was being on sentry duty with another guy and hearing something in the bushes. They fired and killed a German. Neither of them knew, whose shot had actually killed the man. My uncle seemed relieved at that. The other story was that of being caught in a German gas attack without any gas masks. One of the men in his outfit, presumably a trench, I never knew exactly where this took place, urinated in handkerchiefs and hand them out. They put that to their faces, which saved them from being killed by the gas.

                  This month marks the 100^th anniversary of the start of the Great War or World War I. It was triggered by a chain of events starting with the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. That led to an investigation by Austria-Hungary into the assassination, followed by an ultimatum to Serbia on July 25^th, which Serbia appeared to accept almost all the demands, but upon careful examination actually rejected the ultimatum. This in turn was followed by Austro-Hungarian declaration of war on Serbia on July 28^th.

                  It was amusing to hear a news-caster say that July 28^th marks the anniversary when the firing began. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Austro-Hungarian declaration of war was a very drastic diplomatic move as their army could not be ready for war for several weeks. This triggered a series of events that made a general European war unavoidable. During the initial phase Germany did more than any other power to try to avert the general war, but, unfortunately failed.

                  General war was made inevitable once the initial declaration of war was made due to the tyranny of the railroad timetable, upon which the mobilization of all the European armies depended on. Austria-Hungary quickly realized that they could not mobilize against Serbia only without also mobilizing against Russia, otherwise they’d leave themselves open to attack as Russia was Serbia’s defender. This led to war with Russia. Russia tried partial mobilization against Austria-Hungary, but quickly realized that they would also have to mobilize against Germany, otherwise that would leave them vulnerable. This led to war with Germany. German war plans for a two front war called for Germany to knock-out France, Russia’s ally, first and then turn against Russia, whose army was slower to mobilize. Since they were at war with Russia and not with France, that led to war with France. That in turn led to the German ultimatum to Belgium demanding free passage for their troops. Belgium refused and so Great Britain and the British Empire came to their defense, although not required to by the terms of 1839 treaty dealing with Belgium neutrality.

                  All the powers thought the war would be a quick one and over by Christmas. And had the war been over by Christmas the monarchies of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia and Turkey would have all survived along with Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. The Great War would have been just that a great war with no World War II. That it wasn’t a short war was due to the war in the west becoming bogged down. The railroads were able to bring more troops to the staging areas then they could be deployed at the front. That strengthened the defense along with the machine gun.

                  The ironic thing is that the Archduke realized that war for Austria-Hungary would be very bad. And had there been no First World War there would have been no Second World War thus no Hitler, no Stalin, no Mao and no Jewish holocaust. In short our world would have been a whole lot different and probably for the better.

Advertising Overload

Enough already! I’m referring to advertisements. They’re everywhere – in newspapers and magazines, flyers delivered in the mail, on t.v., radio and the Internet, on videos, billboards, garbage cans and phones, on cars, trucks, buses and vans, they’re in buses and other public transit vehicles and they’re even on the names of public buildings, not to mention the spam emails and phone calls. You can’t go anywhere without being bombarded by ads.

I realize ads are important. They help pay bills and can convey useful information on such things as health and environmental issues to safety to new programs offered by schools and the government. They can also be useful to letting me know about sales at the grocery store, hardware store or book store. However, there can be too much of a good thing and not all ads are good. Some seek to steal our money and our identity, to have us believe lies and sell things that are damaging to our health and the environment.

Whenever I log into my Yahoo Mail and they’re trying to sell me something. Lately ads for matchmaking services are being fostered onto me with photos of supposedly sexy looking women. Well besides not find the women the least bit sexy, I’m a happily married man with not the flightiest interest in either finding a new woman or having something on the side.

I go on YouTube and I’m forced to watch at least 5 seconds or more of some commercial. I avoid this by turning down the sound and doing something else while waiting for it to end. The latest is on the Sun Media newspaper sites where, in exchange for watching some commercial I can get full access to a particular article. With this I don’t even have to keep the window open I just go to another window and do something else until the commercial finishes. With TV ads I turn down the sound and read, unless I need to leave the room in which I leave the sound up so that I know when the commercials were over.

CTV Toronto News At 6 have commercials and then for sports and weather bring you yet another short commercial. I’m waiting for the time commercials will be interrupted by commercials or better still when a commercial will be interrupted by a five minute show. It would sure save on programming costs.

And it’s not just amount of ads, but what they’re selling. As I mentioned earlier I’m not the least bit interested in a matchmaking site. I’m also not the least bit interested in cars – I don’t have my license and have no desire to get one. Likewise with booze as I don’t drink. I’ve had newspaper sites with annoying popup ads for bridal wear. I’m not an engaged woman and have no children and so this has zero interest for me. The crazy thing is despite all of us needing to eat I’ve yet to come across a single grocery store ad. I can still remember the old Dominion Store jingles from when I was a child. “Why do more Canadians shop at Dominion? It’s mainly because of the meat. And it’s mainly because of the meat.”

What I’d like to see is fewer, more creative ads and ads that are focussed on everyday needs like food, hardware and clothing. Not the crap that generally passes for advertising now.

Optimist Or Pessimist

If you say the glass is half full you’re considered an optimist, while if you say the glass is half empty you’re a pessimist. However, few people bother to consider what’s in the glass. If the glass has poison in it presumably you’d be very glad the glass was half empty and therefore an optimist, while if you felt the glass was half full you’d be a pessimist.  

The same thing goes for those who forecast economic boom versus economic depression. The former are considered cheery and optimistic, while the latter are considered doom and gloom. This is based on the erroneous assumption that growth is always good and contraction is always bad.

One key of our key economic indicators is housing starts. If they’re up it’s good, but if they’re down it’s bad. Taken to its logical extreme sooner or later we run out of land and have no place to grow food and no place for wildlife not to mention conflicts with commercial interests and industry. This in turn is based on another erroneous assumption that a stagnant or decreasing population is bad. An increasing population made sense when our numbers were only a few million globally, but don’t when we have several billion people.

This reminds me of a story my mother told about a relative in the 19^th century, who was a dentist. Whenever he’d come for a visit he would check the teeth of the relatives he was visiting. His visits were not looked forward to. However, he was actually doing people a favor in helping them keep their teeth healthy.

If you or your message is perceived as being pessimistic you won’t be welcomed or listened too. There are exceptions. A message warning about a coming hurricane or tornado usually is listened to and acted upon, although some just ignore it. A famous case of people ignoring a warning of danger is when the Titanic sank. People convinced themselves that the ship was safer than a little rowboat until too late.

Sometimes something that has been perceived as negative can perceived as positive. For years the forestry departments of Canada and the United States used to believe that forest fires were always bad and therefore they had to be suppressed.  Finally it was learned that forest fires, at least small ones, were actually very good for the health of the forest. They cleared out the accumulated undergrowth and were key to the survival of some species. When forest fires are suppressed it leads to major configurations as sooner or later all the undergrowth has to be removed or the forest dies.

As you can see from these examples whether or you perceive something as being optimistic or pessimistic depends on your experience and knowledge of a situation. Under these circumstances the abnormal and unhealthy can come to be seen the normal and the healthy and thus anyone who forecasts the return the normal and the healthy can often be seen as pessimistic. The bottom line is we need to keep an open mind about the message and to judge it based on our preconceived notions.