British fighter pilot in the Great War, Lieutenant E.M. Roberts, gave this account of the deadly game of "Boche-hunting above the clouds":
"I noticed he was going down a little, evidently for the purpose of shooting me from underneath. I was not quite sure as yet that such was really his intention; but the man was quick...he put five shots into my machine. But all of them missed me."
"I maneuvered into an offensive position as Quickly as I could, and I had my machine gun pelting him...The Hun began to spin earthward."
In this 1920 article the theologian George Burman Foster (1858 - 1918), examined the writings of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900) and surmised how that philosopher might have understood the First World War, with all of it's scientific and industrial power.
"War constitutes one of of those dangerous 'experiments' undertaken by the wise man to further the progress of life, to test the value of an idea, of life. Hence, war is beneficial, good in itself; and thus Nietzsche predicts without dismay or regret that Europe is not far from entering into a period of great wars when nations will fight with one another for the mastery of the world."
Click here to read about the Nazi interpretation of Nietzsche.
Two articles from 1917 heaped praise upon the laureled cranium of the British war correspondent Philip Gibbs (1877 - 1962). Having written diligently for the readers of the DAILY MAIL and DAILY CHRONICLE, who were also anticipating his book THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME (1917), Gibbs was "admitted" to the VANITY FAIR "Hall of Fame" (for whatever that was worth at the time):
"He has been able to bring the wide, modern, romantic outlook to bear in his survey and analysis of fighting and the conditions of fighting"...He is a war-correspondent of a 'new dispensation', giving 'not a realistic or a melodramatic vision of war, but a naturalistic vision'".
At the close of hostilities in 1918, Philip Gibbs was filled with disgust concerning his cooperation with the censors and would begin writing NOW IT CAN BE TOLD (1920), in which he angrily names the bunglers in command and admits that he wrote lies all through the war.
- from Amazon:
Written as a companion piece for "The Spirit of the War at Eton", the article gives an moving account as to how the war affected life on campus while Britain was taking such tremendous losses. Published during the closing months of the war, the following five page article is a beautifully written account, by an Old Etonian illustrating the strange atmosphere felt on the Eton campus as a result of the Great War with all it's sadness and uncertainty.
Click here if you would like to read a magazine article about World War I as it was experienced on the Harrow campus. "Yank and Aussie and Jock, Italian, Portuguese, Greek, Pole, Checko-Slovak, Tommy, Indian, all from the newly arrived Brazilians to the wizened and and weather-beaten poilus wearing the seven brisques denoting four years in the furnace, knew no nationality, no difference of tongues or even of uniform."
Click here to read another article about the 1918 Armistice.
- from Amazon:
The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914
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