One hundred years ago, today, the course of history was badly disrupted:
“It is not to be supposed,” wrote a correspondent for the Manchester Guardian analysing the significance of the assassination 100 years ago on Saturday, “that the death of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand will have any immediate or salient effect on the politics of Europe.”
Thirty-seven days later, Britain declared war on Germany and Europe was plunged into a worldwide conflict in which more than 16 million people died in four years.
When England declared war on Germany a little more than a month later, all debate came to an end:
The Guardian opposed British intervention right up to the declaration of war. “We care as little for Belgrade as Belgrade for Manchester,” it told its readers on 30 July. On 1 August, CP Scott argued that intervention would “violate dozens of promises made to our own people, promises to seek peace, to protect the poor, to husband the resources of the country, to promote peaceful progress”.
Four days later, after Britain declared war on Germany, the Guardian said: “All controversy therefore is now at an end. Our front is united.”
But, the newspaper added: “A little more knowledge, a little more time on this side, more patience, and a sounder political principle on the other side would have saved us from the greatest calamity that anyone living has known.
“It will be a war in which we risk almost everything of which we are proud, and in which we stand to gain nothing.”
We paid an unspeakable cost for ignoring the Guardian’s advice, but at least we learned something. And then we began to forget what we had learned.
