Donald Trump is making America grate again - that is, grate
on the nerves of our longstanding friends and allies. He did this recently when
he declined to attend a solemn Armistice Day memorial ceremony because of rain,
and shortly thereafter sat grimly while France’s President Macron attempted to
educate him on the stupidity and bigotry embodied in the concept of “nationalism.”
Here’s what Winston Churchill’s grandson, Sir Nicholas
Soames, tweeted after Trump called off his participation in the ceremony: “They died with their face to the foe and
that pathetic inadequate @realDonaldTrump couldn’t
even defy the weather to pay his respects to The Fallen #hesnotfittorepresenthisgreatcountry”
But let’s not dwell on the crudeness, stupidity and
selfishness of the orange and white nationalist now occupying the Oval Office.
I’d rather talk about World War I, which ended 100 years ago today and so brought
about the birth of Armistice Day.
In The Guns of
August, Barbara Tuchman quoted a conversation between two Germans about how
the war started: “How did it all happen?” one asked. “Ah,” the other replied,
“if only one knew.”
How it all started was through an understanding of
national interests among the dominant European powers that took for granted the
idea that each country was in the game for its own interest and nobody else’s. A
kind of suspicious, trigger-happy nationalism was the order of the day, where
power politics were seen as a zero-sum game. If Germany grew strong, France would be
weak. Slavic independence was a threat to Austria’s influence, and so on. In this
Hobbesian “every country for itself” environment, all that was needed to launch
a general conflagration was the assassination of a prominent figure. On July
28, 1914, a Serb nationalist named Gavrilo Princip, provided just such a catalyst for
war when he murdered Austria’s Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife.
Princip had reason to be angry at Austria-Hungary
which had been pursuing its own nationalistic interests by bullying the Balkan
Slavs. Princip’s desire to curtail Austria’s domination of the southern Slavs was
justified; his methods were not. Once he had committed his bloody deed, Austria
mobilized against Serbia, Russia against Austria, Germany against Russia and
then Britain and France against Germany. There you have it: nationalism in the
raw. Seventeen million deaths later, on November 11, 1918, an exhausted Germany
signed an armistice with the western allies bringing the carnage to an end.
The Hobbesian idea that we are programmed to
engage in a “war of all against all” is, I believe, a misleading simplification
of human nature. But it was one of the ideological foundations of European
nationalism in 1914. It was perhaps more characteristic of Europe’s leaders
than of its ordinary citizens. Kaiser Wilhelm may have resented the rising
power of Czar Nicholas’s Russia, and France’s President Poincaré may have feared Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany, but the attitudes
of the men who were drafted and sent to war were more complex than these nationalist
hostilities imply.
This was evident in December 1914 during the
Christmas truce. Peace emerged spontaneously on the western front during this truce as the men on
the front lines – who by then had been killing each other relentlessly for four
months – began to hear the familiar tunes of Christmas Carols being sung by
their “enemies” in neighboring trenches. Different units began to serenade each
other across no man’s land and before long, men were getting out of their trenches
and walking over to meet with their adversaries to chat and exchange
cigarettes and other trifling gifts. Eventually soccer matches were
organized and German, British, and French soldiers threw themselves into harmless
competitive scrimmages against each other. One has to wonder (at least I do)
if, during that Christmas week of 1914, the men at the front had been offered
the opportunity to vote on whether to continue the war or not, they might have overwhelmingly
voted to put away their weapons and go home. This was not to be, of course,
since the Kaisers, presidents, and prime ministers of the warring powers would
not have it.
What the spontaneous Christmas truce of 1914 says
to me is that philosopher Hobbes’ idea that a general war of all against all is
a primary driving force underlying our very beings is mistaken, or, at the very
least, an oversimplification. Violent confrontation can, at times, be
presented by national leaders as an appealing program of action, but more often
it is in our natures to interact in less destructive and more empathetic ways. So
why don’t we act on these more positive impulses all the time? Well, obviously,
one reason is that unscrupulous or ignorant political leaders succeed in
pumping up selfish hatreds in the form of nationalism.
British and German troops mingle and chat during the 1914 Christmas Truce (Photo from Wikipedia)
