It’s odd, but there seems to be little coverage of the fact that today is the anniversary of the start of World War 1. Just something about the way Euros think, perhaps? I mean, BBC doesn’t even mention it on their website. You would think that a war which was so terrible that it wiped out an entire generation practically would be talked more about, even in somber and reverent terms. Of the main protagonists involved in the Great War (and not counting the late involvement of the US), only 1 still has the same sort of regime (and that’s the UK, and look how far their empire has shrunk since). Perhaps they believe that if it is not talked about, then people will forget that it ever existed?
History doesn’t work that way, alas.
Jason Córdova 
Europeans have terrible memories. They play the “smug” game very well, but the same conditions that led to the Franco-Prussian War and the two world wars that followed still exist over there now. One major dynamic has changed (the reversal of the colonial flow), but the states of Europe remain, by and large, a vicious lot with little good in mind for their neighbors.
National Geographic last night showed a series of documentaries about WW1. It reminded me again of how terribly destructive that war actually was. I suspect people focus so much on WW2 they think the first one was just a skirmish.