The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #133984   Message #3598788
Posted By: Teribus
06-Feb-14 - 08:27 AM
Thread Name: BS: Christmas Truce (1914)
Subject: RE: BS: Christmas Truce (1914)
Grishka, I do not believe that you have any idea of life in the times we are discussing. How would British or French views and assurances to the Germans be transmitted in a way that all those reasonably-minded Germans could then have used as an argument against their hawks?

Perhaps you think that they could all have listened to British or French news and current affairs programmes on the radio? (They couldn't as there were no such broadcasts at that time BBC started Broadcasting in October 1922).

Perhaps the British and the French could have broadcast their views in German newspapers? (Conveniently ignoring of course that what appeared in those newspapers was strictly under the control of the German Government)

The League of Nations was a joke because they failed to act in accordance with its founding principles - they were all too keen to avoid war at any price

The United Nations is generally regarded as a useless talking shop again because it fails to act in accordance with its founding principles. It is an organisation without a spine or even the vaguest inkling of moral integrity an organisation that has no authority whatsoever (Rwanda, Darfur, Iraq, etc, etc are all milestones that mark how useless it is)

The Haig Tribunal like the other organisations is only as good as the actions of those who have signed up for it and ratified it - they are damned few.

A literal World Police?? Not a hope in hell, any group of states who gather to act as such will suffer vilification from such as your community of peace thinkers if they happen to disagree with what the World Police have been empowered to do.

"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."

Unfortunately for those writers of yours who think that is what they did the statement in italics above remains in record as being the fact of the matter - your writers are merely expressing their own opinion and an opinion that is not supported by any of the correspondence between principals or any report written at the time. I can furnish many examples of Belgian Sovereignty being discussed between the British, the French and the Germans as representing a Casus Belli but not one relating to German Naval Power (Which in terms of building power Great Britain could always out pace Germany) or Germany's colonial ambitions which by 1904 had reached their zenith (the world had nowhere left for colonisation, German or otherwise).

In the case of Iraq and Kuwait your Tribunal would have intervened earlier to do what exactly?