|
Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Controversial knowledge
"The Verdict of the VERSAILLES TREATY that Germany and her allies
were responsible for the War, in view of the evidence now
available, is historically unsound. It should therefore be
revised." These are the words of Sidney Bradshaw Fay, noted
revisionist historian, on the concluding page of his magisterial
Origins of the World War, published in 1928. We now know more about
the Great War than merely its origins. We now know that Great
Britain's first act of war on 4 August 1914 was to cut the two
trans-Atlantic cables that connected Berlin to New York City. We
now know that America's professed neutrality in the early years of
the conflict was a hoax. We now know that the Cunard passenger
liner RMS Lusitania doubled as a munitions ship, and purposefully
steamed into harm's way in May 1915. We now know that the alleged
atrocities by the German army in Belgium were all lies. We now know
that the British organized a massive, covert propaganda apparatus
with the goal of dragging America into the war on the side of the
Allies. And we now also know that America's involvement in 1917 as
a belligerent in Europe was a tragic misstep by anglophile Woodrow
Wilson, that had profound implications not only for the United
States but for Europe as well, ensuring an even more catastrophic
reprise in 1939. Wilson himself declared, "We all know that this
was a commercial war," in September 1919. In April 1937, on the
20th anniversary of America's entry into the war, a Gallup Poll
found that 70 percent of respondents thought "it was a mistake for
the United States to have entered the Great War." Dr. George Gallup
himself declared that "this conviction has been the great master
principle of the post-war period in the United States". The lesson
is forgotten, propaganda for war repeats, and history repeats. The
majorities supporting an invasion of Iraq in 2003 turned two years
later to 60 percent opposition to the war...a lesson learned too
late again.
|
|