I am a simple woman: I love reading people argue about the causes of World War I, and I love reading the comments section on the Telegraph. When the two are combined, I become very happy.
Tags: comments sections, opinions, the internet, the telegraph, wwi
As a horseist and not an ahorseist, I also thought the horses were the most important part of the war.
Signed,
Not A Horse, I Swear.
No, YOU’RE A SHARK!
The Wikipedia article on Horses in World War I is a sobering read. The horses and the mules must indeed be remembered.
I love knowing horse things, but I don’t know if I can bring myself to read that. Plus I don’t want to cry at work while watching the World Cup.
The world cup isn’t making you cry yet? Our office is TENSE.
They were indeed. I read the factual stuff about the ‘real war horse’ and whatnot and my brain just superimposes my own horses on them and then I start crying.
(Also not a horse, nor Michael Morpurgo, but strongly pro-horse.)
Horses are the best, and we are lucky to know them.
War Horse was a terrrrrrible movie, but goddamn did I cry. I cried and cried and cried because I knew that everything (minus the ridiculous portrayal of the boy/horse relationship) was true – terrible conditions, extreme abuse, death everywhere, families torn apart, etc. All true. Ugh.
Heartbreak is this pic of Mongolian cavalry about to confront the Wehrmacht. (SFW/SFL; just contextually sad.)
BLLLLEEEERRRRRGGGG MY HEART CAN’T TAKE IT. This kinda thing just kicks me real hard in the gut. I guess if it doesn’t you’re a terrible robot male, but still…
Oh, this story I have I just remembered! A while ago, I met a woman whose husband (rather older than her, died before I met her) had fought for the Kaiser. One of his jobs was to conscript horses. But the Kaiser’s army took a note of where each conscripted horse had come from so, after the war was over, his job was to return the surviving horses to their respective owners, who were very happy to see their horses again.
WHAT
That is a tiny, tiny sliver of happiness in all of this horse-related sadness!
So shines a good deed in a naughty world.
You might be interested in Rosalind Belben’s novel about First WW horses – “Our Horses in Egypt”.
World War 1, Horse War 117
I am reading this with a Lancashire accent in my head, why? Too much Downton Abbey downstairs action for me.
In fact I recommend reading each of these as if a downstairs-y character from Downton Abbey was saying them.
Daisy totally gets the line about remembering the conscripted horses. Thomas gets the EU masters one.
It’s not dusty because they play it daily. And nightly. And intermittently through the duller part of the afternoon.
[this was in re the comment I made about the first commenter having a dusty Butterfly Effect dvd, I deleted that part accidentally… sorry!]
“I just love Ashton’s look of profound amazement… let’s watch it again.”
Gavrilo pulled the trigger, but God aimed the gun!
I agree so far as that, but I don’t follow Mr. Mark to his ultimate conclusion. The simplest and most compelling explanation is that God hated Franz Ferdinand. Possibly the Archduke owed Him money.
God knew what the consequences would be. He just hated Franz Ferdinand so much that He didn’t care.
there’s a crazy maurice conspiracy to be found here. at least one, probably three. horses?? mushrooms!
Sandwiches.
swagger stick!
IS THERE ANYTHING SPECIFICALLY BRITISH ABOUT WORLD WAR I OH MY GOD
Wars involving non-British combatants are not British enough. Acceptable wars include the English Civil War, the Wars of the Roses, the Jacobite Risings.
Thank you for knowing it is not the “English Revolution.” <3
NOPE CAN’T THINK OF ANYTHING
There is just SO MUCH specifically British about those comments though. It’s amazing.
“He hated kids and used to chase me down the street with his swagger stick. What a splendid fellow he was!”
what a beautiful world we live in
okay all of the Women of the Toast need Swagger Sticks and we need them now
Colonel Hudson, in the study, with the swagger stick!
That picture of Blackadder simultaneously makes me smile and gets me choked up.
The Telegraph comments are brillz.
“This is all very interesting, but is there anything specifically British about it?” is a magnificent all-purpose remark.
I’m going to reply to just about everything with this now. omg.
Yay! Please do. I think we all should.
omg you guys I CAN’T EVEN HANDLE THIS
I WANT TO CRY
and not in a good way
I’m stricken by a desire to go to limpopo89’s house and bring my charts and give an impromptu lecture on “The Origins of the First World War” while beating him about the head and neck with a pan.
Or with a swagger stick.
Please take video.
I´m stricken by desire to explain the concept of humour.
The first comment, tho: Archduke Franz Ferdinand = “an unknown man”
“MR. Ferdinand” – he got seriously downgraded from archduke!
“Some bro”
#NotAllBros
#AllArchdukes
AWWWWWW. I wish all comments were this adorable. ***hugs horse guy***
I somehow read “conscribed horses” as “constipated horses” which somehow made more sense.
Well, they probably would have been – I can’t imagine they were getting decent diets!
“BUT THIS IS NOT MY UNDERSTANDING” <3 <3
I stared at the first comment for ages, trying to work out if I had lost my mind completely or if it was just that the commenter really did think Archduke Franz Ferdinand was “some unknown chap”. (In my head: “Surely he was the Archduke! I can’t just have imagined that!”)
Someone should inform the 20s and 30s about this “1914-45 war” John Mark is on about. (Also, the world wars were part of a Grand Design to bring about the EU, oh my god.)
Actually, that guy is probably insane, but there is a school of thought and historical interpretation that the First and Second World Wars are part of the same larger geopolitical conflict (this stems from the belief that the Second would have been impossible without the First, and was basically a continuation of the same basic problems). So while the EU thing is clearly batshit, there are historians out there who do argue that the wars are more or less part of the same conflict. (This is the kind of thing that will probably become much clearer in coming years and centuries, because only 20-21 years between wars is the kind of thing that gets sort of elided with time–we probably wouldn’t blink an eye at wars between 1136 and 1154 being described as part of the same inherent conflict.)
I apologize for novel-writing!
No apologies needed! It’s interesting. And yes, the Second World War is very clearly something that followed on from the First rather than being completely separate; it just feels weird to ignore the 20ish years in between (though, as you say, it’s very easy to do so with things from longer ago). I am reminded of Linda in The Pursuit of Love talking about belonging to a forgotten generation: “I’m sure in history the two wars will count as one war and that we will be squashed out of it altogether, and people will forget that we ever existed. We might just as well never have lived at all, I do think it’s a shame”.
They are linked, but still clearly separate for most historians. It’s not like people were just twiddling their thumbs during those 20-ish years, waiting for the next global conflict to break out. There is an entire set of historical literature on “l’entre-deux-guerres” (I may or may not have taken a class on this topic. *cough*)
Unknown chaps getting shot in obscure Tyrolean villages is no basis for a system of armed conflict!
I see what you did there, and I like it.
hold on a minute someone write a novel about this colonel hudson
As a British Person:
*cries*
*reads the Guardian instead*
The only thing worse than Telegraph comments are Daily Mail comments.
Although sometimes even the comments on the Guardian website are awful.
oh i know that’s why i love the telegraph SO MUCH
like it’s too obvious to love the DM
I second the Britishness. I’d like to say ‘Oh no, this is all a horrible stereotype’, but I could easily picture a lot of people I know writing these comments.
IDK, The Telegraph’s commenters are a particular breed of Little England crazy. I picture them as retired colonels, proud small business owners, UKIP voters and winners of the annual Bury St Edmunds Hanging Baskets In Bloom competition.
It really fucked me up to realize that one of the conspirators in the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, Vaso Čubrilović, died in 1990. 1990!!!! That means a good chunk of the Toasties reading this were alive at the same time as someone who contributed to bringing about World War I.
He was released from prison in 1918, got a PhD, served as Minister of Forests and then of Agriculture in the Republic of Yugoslavia, and died in 1990 what the hell.
WHAT NO HOW
That was my reaction! I read it a few months ago in a Financial Times article and thought, No, that can’t possibly be right so I looked it up and MIND BLOWN.
For a couple of years, I coexisted on this planet with one of the brains behind the assassination that launched a world war. I CAN’T EVEN.
You really buried that “Minister of Forests” bit in there. Minister of Forests Is this not a magical title for a different magical world from our own
Upon reading shift between the two sentences “What a splendid fellow he was! When he died they torched the place” I refused to think such a British comment could occur naturally and suspected some artifice on Mallory’s part.
Everything else seems legit, though, so the universe must have outdone itself yet again and those two sentences were indeed typed by a Telegraph commenter.
and they've already got a big memorial to the animals who died in war in the middle of downtown london!
Thank you for knowing it is not the "English Revolution." <3
She is bees!
I have just wiki-ed Colonel Hudson and it turns out he was magnificent. He was terrible at school and then he became a tea planter in India and one time during the First World War he got the Victoria Cross for shouting at Germans until they surrendered, and he was super good at chess and liked to write plays. Would befriend.