{"id":54348,"date":"2014-08-05T07:02:21","date_gmt":"2014-08-05T11:02:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=54348"},"modified":"2014-08-04T20:01:53","modified_gmt":"2014-08-05T00:01:53","slug":"world-war-one-centenary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=54348","title":{"rendered":"World War One Centenary"},"content":{"rendered":"

A hundred years ago Sunday, there was celebration in the streets of Berlin and Paris at the announcement that war had been declared – it all went downhill from there. It had been 44 years since the two countries had battled, and Germany’s big surprise attack was to attack through the Ardennes forest – it wasn’t the first time nor would it be the last. The countries marked the anniversary yesterday according to the Agency Press France<\/a>;<\/p>\n

French President Francois Hollande recalled Germany’s invasion of neutral Belgium in early August 1914 that turned a Balkans war into a global conflagration, raising current day parallels.<\/p>\n

“How can we remain neutral today when a people not far from Europe is fighting for their rights?” Hollande said, clearly referring to the Ukraine crisis.<\/p>\n

“How can we remain neutral when a civilian airliner is brought down … when there is conflict in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza?”<\/p>\n

“We cannot remain neutral … Europe must live up to its responsibilities with the United Nations,” he told an audience that included Britain’s Prince William and his wife Catherine, heads of state and representatives of some 80 countries.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hindsight is 20\/20. If Europe had learned it’s lessons that brought us that great conflagration in 1914, maybe we wouldn’t have those conflicts today. It’s almost funny to me that Hollande talks about Europe’s responsibility at a ceremony and acts completely differently when faced with the realities of the world. I haven’t seen the Europeans do anything but sit on their hands. Even when things happen in their own backyards – Bosnia comes to mind.<\/p>\n

Where was France in Iraq? They were the first to withdraw from Afghanistan. When the world is engulfed in flames, they’ll wring their hands some more. Like they blew their opportunity to lead in Libya. Hollande can name the conflicts in our world today, but what, exactly, has France done to end those wars? Or anyone else in Europe for that matter?<\/p>\n

The Mons ceremony will focus on the small military cemetery of St Symphorien, where 229 Commonwealth and 284 German solders were buried together in a gesture of reconciliation even as the fighting raged.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Empty gestures of reconciliation are all the Europeans are good at – after the troops pay the price. Heaven forbid that they learn a lesson from their past mistakes. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A hundred years ago Sunday, there was celebration in the streets of Berlin and Paris at … World War One Centenary<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-historical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54348\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}