If time went backwards from the day I was born in 1961, a week before Barack Obama, today (August 4th) would be the day when Britain declared war on Germany in World War One as the Germans marched in to Belgium.
'Tomorrow' (i.e. the day before) Germany declared war on France. By Wednesday, the Germans swept into Luxembourg. By Thursday, Germany declared war on Russia who mobilised in support of Serbia. By Friday, Marcus Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association.
Not bad for one week. So much for the silly season.
It's only a month away from Archduke Ferdinand's assasination and the growing realisation that Serb nationalists were heavily involved. There were anti-Serb riots in Sarajevo and Bosnia. There was unrest in Ulster with a fear of civil war.
Strange, isn't it, how some things are remarkably similar to today (Serbian nationalist riots last week, the capture of the Bosnian Serb nationalist leader, renewed fears of terrorism in Northern Ireland) and how other things are so completely different. Equal opportunities has come a long way since the the Universal Negro Improvement Association.
The news headlines today are: Olympics ticket scam; Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt show off their twins; Phil lashes out at Ben in Eastenders; hedonist lad mags slammed; Microsoft sees end of Windows era; England set to name new captain; SpaceX launch fails a third time; warning as HSBC profits fall 28%; 16 killed in China border clash; Solzhenitsyn Dies at 89 (who wrote a book called August 1914).
The headline on 4 August, 1914 in the (Manchester) Guardian was about as ominous as it is possible to be, warning of "the greatest calamity that anyone living has known". They were not wrong about that. But they also had a piece on the happy holidaying crowds at Brighton. The Daily Express headlined with 'England expects every man to do his duty', a phrase first used by Admiral Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar.
If I could get hold of the original papers for that day, there would no doubt be advertisements for baking powder, in-growing toenail ointment, new frock designs and smelling salts, possibly some magical potion for haemorrhoids. Advertising has changed a bit since then.
The Daily Mail, on that first day of the war, wrote a column on 'Housekeeping for Wartime'. Today we have 'How to Survive the Credit Crunch'.
Predicting where the world will be at the turn of the twenty second century is impossible - assuming we are still around. Soap opera plot lines would have been literally inconceivable to someone alive in 1914; so too would 'Microsoft Sees End of Windows Era'.
The Microsoft prediction today would be like someone in 1914 predicting the end of the gas lighting era in the home. But then there are the things that never seem to move on, like the Balkans or happy holiday makers in Brighton, financial crises and 'England Expects Every Man to do his Duty'.
Iraq and Afghanistan are playing out in more or less exactly the same way as they did one hundred years ago (tribal guerilla warfare against foreign occupiers who get hopelessly bogged down before withdrawing). The Ford car assembly line was introduced in 1914. Liverpool lost the FA Cup final to Burnley. Haemorrhoids are still amongst us, so that magical cream never did do what it promised. Not much change with any of that, then.
If time went backwards instead of forwards, by the age of 47, I would have lived through ten years of world war and probably been called up for several years. Unless, of course, I had been killed, which would have been a distinct possibility. In between the two wars, I would have lived through the Depression. Literally half my life would have been either a world war or the Depression. Only now, aged 47, would life be more settled.
None of this is quite as far-fetched as it seems, because two world wars and the Depression were precisely what my grandfathers' generation lived through. Anyone born between the early 1880s and the mid 1920s would have experienced at least one World War and the Depression, where living standards in 1918 only recovered in 1935. The stock market did not recover from the Wall Street Crash until the early 1950s.
For my grandfathers, born in the 1890s, their adult lives had a rude awakening in 1914, and apart from a brief spell of jollity in the 1920s, the world around them did not pick up until they were in their 50s.
© Andrew Hawkins 2008
No comments:
Post a Comment