Grishka:

Your first two paragraphs are just fluff, particularly the second. If there is one thing that we have learned since its creation the UN is incapable of doing anything "authoritatively" and I would just love to witness the bun fight that would surround deciding who would sit on this proposed Tribunal to determine what was "fair" in any dispute between nations. By the way where would this tribunal acquire the means with which to enforce its findings?

Governments did not create sport, sports teams, or events to "canalize" anything. Mankind's natural "tribalism" does that all on its own.

Left to the individual, in the UK, considering how things have been manipulated, within the next ten to twenty years the generations whose sacrifice we promised never to forget, will be completely forgotten and that is why, on the 11th day, of the 11th Month of each year at 11 o'clock for a period of 2 minutes everything should fall still and silent, and if our children ask us why we should tell them. Of course that can only happen if it is organised nationally.


"Of the details of diplomacy before 1911, the following seem important to me:

1: France and Britain considered Germany a threat on a worldwide scale, i.o.w. a rival for ruling the waves and colonies. Belgium was not an object of the war, it was important only as a pawn in the propaganda game. The scenarios were prepared long before 1914 and the war crimes of German troops in Belgium.

2: Politicians, monarchs, and newspaper editors publicly fueled outrage on the other side, respectively, depriving peace advocates of good arguments against their "hawks"."

Both I think are fair statements in general, but neither Great Britain or France went to war with Germany because they viewed her as a rival for either "ruling the waves" or with regard to Germany's ambitions regarding her lack of colonies. Germany declared war on France because of matters happening in the east and because of France's military alliance with Russia. Britain declared war on Germany because Germany invaded and intended the annexation of Belgium (The Security Council of UN today would call for similar action and did in recent times with respect to the Iraqi invasion and annexation of Kuwait in 1990).

By the way who in Great Britain in the period 1904 to 1914 would you describe as being "HAWKISH"? From my point of view it would appear that in Great Britain at that time you had only "isolationists" on one side and those who had the integrity to honour Great Britain's long standing Treaty obligations on the other - very different story in Germany.

Christmas:
The only person on this thread who has come out and repeatedly peddled lies and myth and attempted to present them as fact is yourself. Your latest:

"Kitchener was such an embarrassment to the British establishment that there where accusations flying around at the time, still given credence in some quarters that the ship the Orkneys in which he drowned, was deliberately sunk to put him out of harms way."

HMS Hampshire was sunk when she struck one of the mines laid by U-75 on the 28th May 1916. How very clever of the British establishment to contact the German navy and get them to oblige in such a fashion in the middle of such a bitter war between the countries. The wreck of HMS Hampshire I know very well along with the clear evidence of what caused her to sink and the evidence of at least three diving operations carried out on the wreck subsequent to her loss.