- The First and Last(ing) Casualties of War
For those then who still retain images of the "evil, beastly" Hun shish kebabing Belgian babies with their bayonets amongst other alleged atrocities, many reality checks in HH and its on-line narrative are to be found. In this it is instructive to recall it was the Great War that gave provenance to another indelible truism pertaining to human conflict, that being: "Truth is the first casualty of war". To this day this 'edict' finds considerable favor with the 'Beltway Bedlamites', and is frequently evinced in the cris de coeur of sundry warmongers on either side of the Potomac, in NATO and elsewhere in the West, well before any war begins. At such 'perception management' techniques, the Secret Elite were 'old-school' grandmasters.
From at least 1904, Milner's clique left little to chance then in realizing their grand plan. An exemplar here was the dogged manner in which the 'Great Gamers' and their hand-picked minions coerced, cajoled and curried favor in these pre-war years with the various dominions and colonies, specifically amongst their respective media outlets, foreign policy officials, and leading politicians of the day. These countries included Australia, India, New Zealand, Canada, and America itself , still at this stage in many respects a "dominion" dancing to the tune of the Mother Country. All this was carried out to ensure that once war began, there'd be unswerving loyalty from all and sundry to the cause of empire.
Without doubt then, one of history's greatest public relations 'snow-jobs' effected in the cause of perpetuating and shoring up Pax Britannica's global dominance , all under the pretext of protecting democracy, promoting freedom, and fighting tyranny and oppression. A propaganda triumph to be sure, yet one that came at great cost for all nations involved, with little to show for it. In the service of fabricating sweeping, mass popular support of, and consent for, the covert ambitions of the power elites of the day, (an 'art-form' then still in its embryonic stages), it was of course an impressive achievement.
And as history tells it by early 1917 America herself eventually succumbed to the imperial siren-call, suitably abetted by stateside Anglophiles and assorted key members of the American political, foreign policy, corporate and financial establishment whose own motives for joining the fray however diverse, were less than altruistic. This was despite then U.S. president Woodrow Wilson being reelected in 1916 because 'he kept us out of the war'.
As indicated earlier, the sinking of the Lusitania the previous year by the Germans with 140 American passengers on board severely hardened broad public sentiment in the U.S. against Germany. This was despite them claiming the ship was carrying war materiel and [was] therefore a legitimate military target. Though this claim was fiercely rejected in Britain and America -- a denial the history books have upheld -- we now know the Germans were right.
In this we can say that one of the great conspiracy theories of the past century -- that the Lusitania was knowingly placed at risk by those on both sides of the Atlantic seeking America's involvement in the war -- turned out to be more than a theory after all. To attend a more contemporary, indeed portentous, relevance to the Lusitania's fate, those who still think it was Russia that was somehow responsible for the shooting down of MH-17 in 2014 -- an event Washington has leveraged to the max sans hard evidence to fuel ongoing antipathy towards Russia and arouse endless speculation of impending war with her former Cold War nemesis -- may want to keep all this in mind. The analogues of both tragedies, whilst not identical, are as abundant as they are inescapable.
As for the myth Britain tried to do everything to avoid this war, it is worthwhile noting, as First Lord of the Admiralty at the outbreak of war, of all the Cabinet ministers, Churchill was according to then Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, 'most eager for war...[he was] bellicose, and demanding immediate mobilization'. Indeed, so 'hot to trot' for war was Churchill -- whose legacy by any measure is deserving of its own revisionist narrative -- that even after Cabinet declined at one point in their pre-war deliberations to allow him to mobilize the Royal Fleet, he went ahead and did so anyway! A warmonger to be sure, and we might argue, well on the way to a deserved reputation as a war criminal par excellence. (Churchill also mused history would be kind to him, since he 'planned to write it'. "Audacity" anyone?)
Of course as history also records, Churchill went on to become Britain's leader during World War Two against Hitler's Nazi Germany. The Fuehrer himself was no less a creation of the Secret Elites and their political legatees, with WWII akin to a preordained sequel to the Great War, and the intervening years something of an extended truce. For all the accolades accorded him since 1945 for his wartime leadership, in this we might say all Churchill was doing was cleaning up the mess he and his ilk had so assiduously worked at to create from the off. To paraphrase the Old Blowhard himself, we might say, 'never has so much tribute been bestowed for so long by so many upon one person so ill deserving'.
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