Author Topic: Did Nationalism Cause World War I?  (Read 305 times)

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Offline endicom

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Did Nationalism Cause World War I?
« on: November 16, 2018, 01:29:32 am »
American Greatness
Michael Walsh
Nov. 14, 2018

The French say many silly things, along with a few wise ones, although since the deaths of Voltaire, Descartes, and la Rochefoucauld, not lately. One of the silliest came out of the mouth of M. le President, Emmanuel Macron, at the centenary observance of the end of World War I on November 11. Calling nationalism a “betrayal of patriotism,” the fey popinjay went on to caution the world against “old demons coming back wreak chaos and death.”

The media, of course, loved it, promptly casting Macron’s words as a “rebuke” to (who else?) Donald J. Trump and his soul mate, Vladimir Putin, who were both in attendance. Far from fighting for the survival of the French nation in 1914, said Macron, the French soldiers were fighting for the “universal values” because—get this—“patriotism is exactly the opposite of nationalism.” This statement ignores all the contemporary evidence from a century ago outlining the patriotic motives that moved the French and British soldiers who went to war against the Kaiser; all you have to do is read the poetry of Wilfred Owen or Siegfried Sassoon, or read Robert Graves’ classic memoir, Goodbye to All That.

More... https://amgreatness.com/2018/11/14/did-nationalism-cause-world-war-one/

Offline Absalom

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Re: Did Nationalism Cause World War I?
« Reply #1 on: November 16, 2018, 06:20:54 am »
What on earth is Walsh blathering on about???
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Around 60 BC, Roman Pro-Consul, Julius Caesar initiated a series of campaigns
against the Tribes of Gaul which he detailed in his dispatches to the Roman Senate;
called by history, the Gallic Wars.
Caesar continually called attention to the corrosive and enduring hatred between
the Gauls and Saxons, as well as the Saxons and Slavs; which made his task of
securing Rome's frontiers both costly and lengthy.
From these enervating attitudes and behaviors developed Prussian Militarism, 
French Revanchism and Russian Jingoism which were the underlying catalysts
and drivers of the Great War; a reality Sir John Keegan aptly describes in his
seminal work on World War 1.
In 507 AD Clovis created France yet it was another 1360 years before Germany
was unified. Then in 1870 Von Bismarck and Moltke crushed France in the
Franco-Prussian War sending a lima-charlie message that Germany was now
the ranking continental economic and military power in Europe.
Gallic hubris and pride refused to accept this humiliation and it was this more
than anything else that triggered the War.