"The War to End War"

The hubris of the times promoted World War I as "the war to end war." With the hindsight of a century, we know how ridiculous a claim that was. Indeed, the way human "solutions" always cause more problems, we now look back at World War I as the origin of many which followed, and the solution to none which were its causes.

With the benefit of retrospect, we recognize "the Great War" as prelude for a greater; for Hitler, who came to power on his promise to restore German pre-eminence after the "crime" of the Versailles peace-treaty. The Balkan internecine conflicts which sparked the war at Sarajevo continue to this day, and have increased. Likewise, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire gave rise to the modern Middle East, with heightened long-term tensions, and new ones.

In this centennial year, there is renewed attention to "the Great War." I've read several excellent histories recently on different aspects of the war: on Gallipoli, on the cascading diplomatic miscalculations in the weeks after Franz Ferdinand's assassination that inevitably led to war, on the flu epidemic, and on the Sarajevo assassin Gavrilo Princip. Currently I'm reading Philip Jenkins' "The Great and Holy War," on the war's religious and spiritual currents.

Most pointedly, all the western nations involved framed the war as a Christian crusade: none moreso than Germany. The coded diplomatic message that gave the go-head for the Kaiser's declaration of war was Isaiah's prophecy of Christ, "Unto us a son is born." German soldiers' standard-issue belt-buckle bore the slogan "Gott mit Uns" ("God is with us"), scripture's "Immanuel." But every other western nation also promoted the slaughter as God's Own purpose. Most European and American citizens of the time were quick, and PROUD, to buy into, and echo, their leaders' religious rhetoric: as did almost-all of the participant nations' church organizations.

There were many other resonant spiritual events, from sentimental fakelore (the purported "Angels of Mons," which morphed from an Arthur Machen short-story to an event people claimed to have witnessed) to the radical Christianity of warring soldiers' spontaneous "Christmas Truce" of 1914. More than a few people, and not just the unsophisticated, perceived the war as the Biblical "End of Days:" particularly after the outbreak of the flu epidemic completed Revelation's "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" archetype with "Plague."

But amidst the propaganda, co-opted churches, fakelore, and transitory public perceptions, there were events that seemed genuine spiritual milestones. Some I was familiar with, some not: probably because (like for most Americans) World War I was a largely-forgotten episode. For our parents, in whose perceptions my generation grew up, World War II was "The War" (and even "the Good War"), overshadowing all wars before or since. Added to that the fact that, even in their own time, military events in the east (especially for the uninvolved United States) were seen as a side-show to the great drama of the Western Front. Except for the horrors of Gallipoli and the adventures of Lawrence of Arabia, little attention was paid to what was happening beyond Europe.

Attention should be paid. The same way He changed history by sending His peasant Son in a far province of the Roman Empire, God seems to have worked His large purposes of World War I in the same distant place.

If nothing else, British General Allenby's capture of Jerusalem in December 1918 had incalculable symbolic significance. The city God claimed as His Own, after 700 years in Moslem possession, was in Christian hands again. British newspapers nationalistically hailed it as the fulfillment of Richard the Lion-Hearted's unfulfilled crusade. Catholic churches around the world were instructed to add a special "Te Deum" to their services in thanks for Jerusalem's liberation.

Approaching Jerusalem, Allenby had led Britain's troops to victory against the Turks at a village called Megiddo. In his dispatches, however, Allenby referred to the battle-site, probably with an eye to Christian audiences, as "the field of Armageddon," its Biblical name. The name captured the apocalyptic view of the war in western Christendom, and Allenby was thereafter often styled "Allenby of Armageddon."

I'd read, and been impressed, that on his entry to Jerusalem Allenby, a cavalryman, dismounted to enter the holy city on foot. Some adduce a Christian spirit of humility to the gesture, that he would not enter in military pomp the city Jesus had entered on a donkey. Jenkins presents Allenby as "quite secular," which may discount a personal Christian motivation for Allenby: but he was certainly quite aware of the symbolism of his gesture before the Christian war-audience. Jenkins points out that Allenby might also have intended a deliberate contrast to Kaiser Wilhelm's visit to Jerusalem some 20 years earlier, when the German ruler made a point of entering the city mounted in military array, as if in conquest.

Nor was Allenby unaware that Jerusalem was revered by all three great monotheistic faiths. His respectful gesture of entry could be expected to impress Moslems (both Britain's Arabian allies and Turkish enemies) and Jews, as well as Christians. Allenby's personal secretary and biographer, Raymond Savage, attempted to deny the many pious fables that had grown up around the General (for example, that he entered Jerusalem with a Bible in one hand, and a crucifix in the other). But he reports as true that Arab rulers considered Allenby's coming a signal event for Moslems, construing his name as "Allah Nabi," Arabic for "God the Prophet."

For Jews, Allenby's entry into Jerusalem on December 9th 1918 was even more heavily symbolic. The night of that very day marked the beginning of Hanukkah ("The Festival of Lights"), celebrating the Maccabean rededication of the Temple after liberating Jerusalem from the Seleucid (Syrian) Empire in 165 B.C. (Interestingly, Hannukkah is the only Jewish festival besides Passover mentioned in the Christian gospels, in John 10:22-23.) British and American Jews quickly drew the parallel between their historic liberator Judah Maccabee and General Allenby (Jenkins reproduces one such contemporary lithograph on his p. 164.)

But Allenby's campaign had more than symbolic value to Jews. So confident of victory over the Ottoman Turks was the British government that Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour in November 1918 issued to Baron Rothschild, a leader of British Jews, the famous official Declaration that "His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people..." Before it came to pass, the world would be racked by a second, greater, World War, and European Jewry would be all-but-wiped out in the Holocaust: but in the Balfour Declaration God began the restoration of Israel as a nation.

"The Great War," possibly the epitome of humankind's warring madness, was foundational to all that's happened in the world's last century. It could not be other than a spiritual sign-post: first as exemplar of man's complete inability to "solve" problems by his own wisdom and means. What impresses me most, however, is that even in that pointless slaughter, God created hope, restored His people, and advanced the appearing of His Kingdom.

Amen !