Page 68 - Bulletin 11 2007

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The Great War – “the war to end all wars” - was over and the Short Twentieth Century
(1914 – 1989) had begun on ruined foundations. The respected military historian John

Keegan has written (2002: p. 404):

“………graveyards (which) are the Great War’s chief heritage. The chronicle
of its battles provides the dreariest literature in military history. The war’s
political outcome scarcely bears contemplation: Europe ruined as a centre of
world civilization, Christian kingdoms transformed into godless tyrannies, the
superficial difference between Bolshevik and Nazi ideologies counting not at all
in their common cruelty to decent folk. All that was worst in the century which
the First World War had opened, the starvation or exile of class enemies, the
extermination of racial outcasts, the persecution of incorrect thinkers and
artists, the extinction of small national sovereignties, the destruction of
parliaments and the elevation of commissars, gauleiters and warlords to power
over voiceless millions, had its origins in the chaos it left behind.”

References

Bishop, J. (1982) The Illustrated London News Social History of the First World War,
Angus and Robertson, London.

Bisset, W. M. (unpublished) Coast Artillery in Simon’s Town (1899 – 1955).

Brann, R. W. (1989) Wynberg Military Base and Officers’ Club, Militaria, 19/1.

Cape Town Peace Celebrations Committee (1919) The Celebration of the Peace August 2
to 5, 1919. Official Programme and Souvenir Booklet.

Census of the Union of South Africa 1911 Report (1913) The Government Printing and
Stationery Office, Pretoria.

st
Difford, I. D. (1920?) The Story of the 1 Battalion Cape Corps, 1915 – 1919, Hortors,
Cape Town.

Dommisse, B. and T. Westby-Nunn (2002) Simon’s Town – An Illustrated Historical
Perspective, Westby-Nunn Publishers CC, Cape Town.

Fowle, T. E. (1919) Notes on the Great War – The Daily Round, The Common Task. In
Castle Gup by “A”, Argus, Cape Town.