Was it really so peaceful prior to 1914?

by ithinkisee 43 Replies latest jw friends

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  pepheuga

  : It could be that not having the instant access to news and the ability to easily travel to almost any part of the globe that we have today caused those people who lived in lands not engaged in war to think that things were generally pretty good.......or maybe I'm just dredging up remanants of Watchtower propaganda.

  i fear that's exactly what you're doing! those old wts verities just don't want to die do they lol.

  the bulgarian horrors, the armenian massacres, the macedonian (ho-hum) "question" (is that what you call it when crowds get butchered?), load of skurmishes and no shortage of full scale wars were endlessly and graphically reported on during the late nineteenth century and turn of the twentieth, in widely available publications all over the world. there could have been no excuse for not knowing about these things.

  pepheuga
  pepheuga's jehovah's witnesses
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  ithinkisee

  The Proud Tower: A Portrait Of The World Before 1914
  
  Barbara W. Tuchman
  ISBN: 0345405013

  (speaking of 1914)

  FOREWARD
  
  "Preconceptions dropped off one by one as I investigated. The period (just before 1914) was not a Golden Age or Belle Epoque except to a thin crust of the privileged class. It was not a time exclusively of confidence, innocence, comfort, stability, security and peace. All these qualities were certainly present. People were more confident of values and standards, more innocent in the sense of retaining more hope of mankind, than they are today, although they were not more peaceful nor, except for the upper few, more comfortable. Our misconception lies in assuming that doubt and fear, ferment, protest, violence and hate were not equally present. We have been misled by the people of the time themselves who, in looking back across the gulf of the War, see that earlier half of their lives misted over by a lovely sunset haze of peace and security. It did not seem so golden when they were in the midst of it. Their memories and their nostalgia have conditioned our view of the pre-war era but I can offer the reader a rule based on adequate research: all statements of how lovely it was in that era made by persons contemprary with it will be found to have been made after 1914."

  (another good quote from the forwared:)

  "A phenomenon of such extended malignance as the Great War does not come out of a Golden Age. Perhaps this should have been obvious to me when I began but it was not."

  Enjoy!

  -ithinkisee
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  Bangalore

  Bttt.

  Bangalore
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  designs

  No it was not so peaceful, followers of the Trinity/God of Hell Fire were slaughtering humans with the Cult ferver we know them to possess.