By Randy Dotinga
It would all be over, the British thought, in a jiffy. In, out, and done. Wars could be slogs, mind you, but many were quick affairs that inevitably led to victory and honor enough to go around. In fact, sending men into battle might be just what Britain needed to do to avoid going soft in the early years of the 20th century. “The severest war wreaks little practical injury,” declared a newspaper commentator who lacked the benefit of imagination or foresight. Others feared the worst. There was the woman who’d seen the horror of deprivation and mistreatment during a war in South Africa, and the labor and women’s suffrage activists who watched helplessly as their causes evaporated amid an epidemic of European war fever...[continued]
