OF 1914 AND 2014

Bill Murchison


And there before us, b'golly, was ... the car!
THE car. You know? The one positioned, in
blood and early 20th-century elegance, at the
center of modern history; the open car
carrying the heir to the Austro-Hungarian
throne, and his wife, when a teenage terrorist
in Sarajevo shot them dead on St. Vitus Day --
June 28 -- 1914, setting off nearly
uninterrupted shockwaves of horror. Or so
we generally hear. I will come back to that
point.
I saw the car nearly half a century ago at the
Austrian Museum of Military History in
Vienna: large, dark, eerie. The sight was akin
in my mind to the notion of inspecting the
cutlery employed by Brutus and Cassius on
mighty Caesar's carcass.
March 15, in 44 B.C., and June 28, 1914 have
historical consonance. They unleashed large
and bloody events: the more recent of which
we have begun already to commemorate.
The June 28 assassinations, as we know,
commenced a series of calculations and
miscalculations that produced the most
catastrophic and haunting event of modern
times -- the Great War; the toppling of
empires, the implantation of fear and doubt
in minds everywhere. Nobody "wanted" the
war, though maybe the Germans, who backed
the Austrians in their desire to avenge the
murders, were more amenable to it than the
other warring parties.
Everyone is agreed -- no detailed recounting
seems necessary -- that European civilization
died suddenly in the 1914-1918 war, save for
those leftovers lost between 1939 and 1945,
and afterward. Thus wrote England's great
modern poet Philip Larkin, in "MCMXIV":
"Never such innocence,/Never before or since/
As changed itself to past/Without a word."
The lessons of 1914 are hard to sort out. Did
the world suddenly go crazy? It seems crazy
to tear down your house and everyone else's.
Was "the system" so far amiss that it lacked
the corrective tools -- the ability to call off, or
better yet, prevent madness? "Systems" had
gone off the track before -- as far back as
anyone could recall. The effects were worse
in 1914 -- worse by far than in 44 B.C. -- on
account of the technology and techniques that
had made war unspeakably horrible, without
anyone's noticing until too late. Likewise
daily life around the world had grown
entangled and interrelated. Immunity from
disaster had receded vastly.
The lessons of 1914 are in truth hard to sort
out; their glare blinds the eyes. That
"innocence" of which Larkin spoke is not to
be equated with purity. It was ignorance --
blindness to human limitations, and to the
consequences of stupidity and inhumanity. It
was human malice (the execution of hostages,
the destruction of homes and churches and
libraries, slaughter as a goal. We possibly
didn't think we were capable of it, we
humans. No, no, not in the sanitized,
purified, electrified 20th century, held
together by science and rationality! We
proved more than capable. We did it. We all
-- by virtue of our membership in the human
fraternity -- did it. And keep on doing it.
Much more than, "Who started the war in
1914?" that is the question we could
profitably focus on in 2014 -- "Who are we, as
opposed to who we would like to imagine we
are?" Are we nuts? Human character is more
fittingly under the microscope than are the
acts and operations of humans who in a time
not so long ago wore crowns and plumed hats
as if every knob, every feather infused their
minds with Right Knowledge.
The continuing imperfections of the human
race are the headline story of 1914, not how
one grossly imperfect Serb lurched up to a car
in Sarajevo, killing two innocent people. The
world of 2014 is saddled with the same
encumbrances as the old one -- gluttony,
pride, anger, lust and such like: just not so
well-dressed, so well-perfumed. We might
learn something by looking around. That is, if
we could for a moment take our eyes off our
own allure, our science and soaring
landmarks, suspending the fateful certainty
that any gods are still hovering out there, fine
-- we just don't require their services.