Long Shadows

The world was better off with the British Empire. Look at the mess that replaced it. m/r

Long Shadows :: SteynOnline

by Mark Steyn  •  Aug 5, 2014

Yesterday was the 100th anniversary of Britain's declaration of war on Germany, a long day of somber observances starting at dawn way out in Wellington, New Zealand. We marked the occasion more modestly at SteynOnline, with a centenary reflection on Sir Edward Grey's mordant eve-of-war aside, and with the favorite wartime ballad of British Tommies.

~The big Commonwealth ceremony yesterday was at Glasgow Cathedral in Scotland, with representatives of 71 countries and territories in attendance. Among the viceregal eminences present, Sir Peter Cosgrove, Governor-General of Australia, gave one of the simplest and most moving readings, the Soldier's Prayer of Commitment:

Make me to be considerate of those with whom I live and work, and faithful to the duties my country has entrusted to me. Let my uniform remind me daily of the tradition of the Army in which I serve.

As much as any army, a nation, a society, a civilization needs a "tradition", too. And in that sense the Great War was devastating. As I put it on Sunday:

Five years later, the German, Russian, Austrian and Turkish empires lay shattered, and in their ruins incubated Communism, Fascism and a hardcore post-Ottoman Islam. And in a more oblique sense the horrors of the trenches caused the Great Powers to lose their civilizational confidence - and across a century they have never recovered it.

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