Royal Irish Rifles in a trench in the Battle of the Somme during World War I. Credit: GoodFreePhotos.com
One hundred years ago the nation and the world were divided after World War I. The same divisions are evident now.
THE YEAR 1919 DAWNED AT a moment of great opportunity for world peace and stability, but it ended with the failure of international leadership in the West and a profound, escalating public disillusionment with the status quo. The parallels to today are increasingly clear.
One hundred years ago, the victors in World War I, which had cost 17 million lives, including 10 million soldiers and 7 million civilians, failed to create a new world order to insure a just and lasting peace.
Instead, the victorious leaders of France, Great Britain, Italy and the United States constructed a vengeful peace treaty in which Germany, the big loser in the war, was severely punished and temporarily brought to its knees economically and militarily. In addition, rather than being what its advocates called “the war to end all wars,” World War I did not lead to disarmament and instead paved the way for World War II in which even more people were killed and even more horrors resulted
He’s lashing out at aides and press and foreign leaders, and threatening to roll West Wing heads—but at least he didn’t get his hair wet at the Belleau Wood memorial.
s Donald Trump’s West Wing careens through one of the most turbulent weeks of his presidency, White House officials are struggling to understand the source of the fury fueling the president’s eruptions. “This is a level of insanity I’ve never seen before,” one former West Wing staffer told me. Current and former officials are debating different theories for Trump’s outbursts, ranging from his fears over his son Don Jr.’s legal exposure to the prospect that House Democrats will unleash investigations in January. “He’s under a tremendous amount of mental stress,” one prominent Republican close to him told me.
What’s surprising to some advisers about how bad the past week has been is that Trump initially seemed to take the midterm losses in stride. Last Tuesday, he was in high spirits as he watched election returns come in with about a hundred friends at the White House. Trump told people that his barnstorming rally schedule had mobilized his base and held Republican losses to historical lows, while increasing Republican gains in the Senate. “He really thought he won the midterms,” a prominent Republican who spoke with Trump said.
But by Wednesday, after hours of commentary about the suburbs’ distaste for him and with seat after undecided House seat slipping toward the Democrats, his mood slid, too, hitting bottom in a bizarre and combative press conference. “He was furious about the narrative. He said, ‘Look, I went to all these states and now people are saying Trump lost the election,’” the Republican who spoke with him recalled. Within hours, Trump forced out Attorney General Jeff Sessions and replaced him with Matt Whitaker, who’d been a frequent cable-news critic of the Robert Mueller investigation. Next, Trump directed his press office to revoke CNN reporter Jim Acosta’s press pass, something he’d wanted to do for months but had been talked out of by aides. “This is a matter of the president now being on his own without any countervailing force whatsoever,” a person close to Trump said. “It’s just 100 percent Donald Trump doing what Donald Trump wants.”
