Resumo de The World War And It's Causes

Beginning with the summer of 1914, Europe and parts of Asia and Africa were torn and racked with the most tremendous war that the world has ever seen. Millions of homes were filled with grief. Millions of women were forced to do hard work which before the war had been considered beyond their power. Millions of children were left fatherless. What had been the richest and most productive farming land in Europe was made a barren waste. Thousands of villages and towns were utterly destroyed and their inhabitants were forced to flee, the aged, the sick, and the infants alike. Dreadful diseases, which cannot exist where people have the chance to bathe and keep themselves, clean, once more appeared, sweeping away hundreds of thousands of victims. What was the cause of all this? We can think that there may be hatred among people who know each other and may even take lives of one another. But here the situation was entirely different. Here people who never knew each other and had never seen each other, leave alone relationship, took lives of each other. In the end, then, we come back to the governments, and we wonder what has caused these nations to fly at each other's throats. The question arises as to what makes up a government or why a government has the right to rule its people. To understand all this we have to go back to history when there were no kingdoms and no separate countries. Men gathered together in little bands, each of which had its leader. This leader was generally chosen because of his bodily strength and courage. He was the best fighter of the tribe. The people did not have any lasting homes. They moved around from place to place, wherever they could find the best hunting and fishing. When two tribes wanted the same hunting grounds, they fought, and the weaker party had to give way.. The stronger tribe attacked the weaker, without any thought of whether or not its quarrel was just. Gradually civilization began in Europe and there were exchange of ideas. Also separation of lands and ownership of lands began. Slowly disputes sprang up.
Coming to the story, England for a long time had been suspicious of Russia, fearing that the northern power was aiming at control of India. Later it formed the triple entity with Russia and France. Meanwhile rushed her warship Panther to the Moorish port of Agadir. This was a threat against France, and the French appealed to England to know whether they could look to her for support. Russia was now in much better shape for war than she had been three years before, and notified France that she was ready to give her support Now Germany was unwilling to fight France, Russia, and England combined.

Germany's position in Europe was not favorable to her trade. As a result, the Germans had been looking toward Constantinople and southwestern Asia as the part of the world with which their commerce ought to grow. It was Germany's plan to control the Balkan countries.. The Bulgarians hated the Serbians, with whom they had fought a bloody war in 1885. The Serbians despised the Bulgarians. The Albanians had no love for either nation, while the Greeks looked down on all the others.
Russia noticed that Turkey had grown weak after Bulgaria left support and found a chance to invade her. She encouraged Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece to forget their old enmity and declare war on Turkey jointly. In eight months, Turkey was thoroughly beaten, and the allies were ready to put through their program of dividing up the spoils. Germany, Italy and Austria joined together and attacked Bulgaria defeating it. Bulgaria sought help of Russia but Russia refused to interfere. In this way a complex chain of enmities began to grow among the nations.
Coming to Europe the German navy had been growing by leaps and bounds. From being the sixth largest navy in the world, within ten years it had grown to second place. But, fast as the Germans built ships, the English built them more rapidly still. England built a motrous battleship called the Dreadnaught, which was twice as heavy as any other battleship afloat. Germany promptly replied by planning four ships of the dreadnaught class, and England came back with some still larger vessels which are known as super-dreadnaughts.
The year 1914 found England involved in serious difficulties. Her parliament had voted to give home rule to Ireland. There was to be an Irish parliament, which would govern Ireland as the Irish wanted it governed. Ulster, a province in the northeast of Ireland, however, was very unhappy over this arrangement. Its people were largely of English and Scotch descent, and they were Protestants, while the other inhabitants of Ireland were Celts and Catholics. The people of this province were so bitter against home rule that they actually imported rifles and drilled regiments, saying that they would start a civil war if England compelled them to be governed by an Irish parliament.
The actual war was triggered after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, nephew of the emperor and heir to the throne a man who was greatly hated by the Bosnians who was a military leader of Austria and later it was followed by a complex series wars leading to the first world war.

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