No Time for Peace
Christmas 1914 was remarkable for one event in particular. German troops put candles on the edge of their trenches and sang carols and songs of home. British and allied troops responded in kind. They approached each other cautiously across no mans land and a number of impromptu football games ensued. Given the terrible circumstances and the state of war this was indeed remarkable. What a pity that this display of humanity at its best was swept away and that the very next day these same men were killing each other. If only that humanity could have spread across the whole front. Instead the war dragged on for another 3 years and eleven months.
As I look back on these months of war I am astounded by how often history repeats itself. This was the month of the first battle of the Falklands, yes 1982 was the second. The first battle was at sea and a whole German squadron was captured or destroyed. News of that victory took some time to reach Blighty. It was somewhat overshadowed by the failure of the Admiralty to take the opportunity of destroying the German Fleet in the North Sea.
This was also the month when the war reached these shores, Scarborough and Hartlepool were bombarded with shells from German battleships. Amongst the casualties was a young boy. His death evoked the same feelings of outrage and pity as those that followed the pictures of a young Syrian boy dead on a Cyprus beach. To remind the population that this was now total war the first bombs were dropped from an aeroplane. In another twenty-five years this innovative approach to war became the norm for both the Allies and the Germans. The human capacity for bending invention to the business of killing seems to have no bounds.
There were two other events that we can relate to today. At the end of the month Wall Street suffered its biggest one-day loss of all time. The Dow Jones index fell by 24.4%. Shades of the Wall Street crash of 1929 and, more recently, the banking crisis of 2008. Needless to say then, as now, it was the poor that picked up the tab.
The other event relates to sport. On the very last day of the year Colonel Jacob Rupert and Cap Huston bought the New York Yankees for just under half a million dollars. It did not seem so at the time but the age of the super rich club and super rich players was born. Roll forward 100 years and everything in sport now has a price.
To finish on a lighter note “Tillies Punctured Romance”, premiered in New York, billed as the first 6 reel feature film. We can giggle at the title but just think; the whole of film output from the year could be stored on a single disc. Progress it might be but I have a soft spot for the implicit naivety.
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