In 1934 Atatürk learned that a ship carrying relatives of fallen Allied soldiers had docked near Gallipoli and that its passengers were mounting at the site. He sent them a moving message that is now chiseled, in English translation, into a memorial stone there. “Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives,” he […]
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Tags:Anzac·Australia·Death·leadership·poetry·Turkey·WW1
Turkey’s experience as an ally of Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany was disastrous, with one shining exception. To the astonishment of Europe and the world, in 1915 a Turkish force managed to resist and then repel British-led invaders whose battle plan had been drawn up by no less a personage than First Lord of the Admiralty Winston […]
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When Menzies was Prime Minister in 1939, the Country Party leader, Earle Page, subjected Menzies to a bitter attack in the house. Page had served on the Western Front as a doctor (his field instruments are on display at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra). Page told the Parliament that he and his party were […]
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Tags:Australian Politics·conservatives·Democracy·History·Politics·war·WW1·WW2
Quoting Tennyson’s ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ ‘Forward the Light Brigade! ’ Was there a man dismayed? Not though the soldiers knew Some one had blundered: Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die: Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.
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The turn of events in Belgium was a product of the German theory of terror. Clausewitz had prescribed terror as the proper method to shorten war, his whole theory of war being based on the necessity of making it short, sharp and decisive. He said the civil population must not be exempted from war’s effects […]
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Vodka, another traditional companion of war, was prohibited (by the Russians). In the last mobilization in 1904 when soldiers came reeling in and regimental depots were a mess of drunken slumbers and broken bottles, it had taken an extra week to straighten out the confusion. Now, with the French calling every day’s delay a matter […]
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Tags:Alcohol·communism·Discipline·Excise·military·Revenue Raising·Russia·Tax·Taxation
When General de Selliers, the Chief of Staff, rose to explain the strategy of defence to be adopted, his Deputy Chief, Colonel de Ryckel, with whom his relations were, in the words of a colleague, ‘denuded of the amenities’, kept growling between his teeth, ‘il faut piquer dedans, il faut piquer didans [We must hit […]
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“Some damned foolish thing in the Balkans,” Bismark had predicted would ignite the next war. The assassination of the Austrian heir apparent, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, by Serbian nationalists on June 28, 1914, satisfied his condition… War pressed against every frontier. Suddenly dismayed, governments struggled and twisted to fend it off. It was no use. Agents […]
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Tags:History·leadership·military·Politics·war·WW1
In Whitehall that evening, Sir Edward Grey, standing with a friend at the window as the street lamps below were being lit, made the remark that has since epitomized the hour: “The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.
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The (Russian) regime was ruled from the top by a sovereign who had but one idea of government – to prserve intact the absolute monarchy bequeathed to him by his father – and who, lacking the intellect, energy, or training for this job, fell back on personal favourites, whim, simples mulishness and other devices of […]
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