Volume 27, Number 20 · December 18, 1980
Old, Old Story
By A.J.P. Taylor
No Man's Land: 1918, The Last Year of the Great War
by John Toland
Doubleday, 651 pp., $17.95
The End of Order: Versailles 1919
by Charles L. Mee Jr.
Dutton, 301 pp., $15.95
Great War and World War, or in more conventional terms, World War I and World War II. These two wars take a large place in the history of the twentieth century. More than any other events they stamp the century as an age of troubles. Yet at first glance they appear to have shrunk into the distance: Great War more than sixty years away, World War thirty-five. The veterans of the Great War are few, those of the World War are dwindling. Despite this the memories of both wars are still very much alive. Oddest of all, the memories of the Great War seem more alive than those of the World War. Aged men are still filing their recollections in public archives. Revelations are pursued and sometimes found. Controversies provoke more acrimony than any over the World War. Here is a topic worth some reflection. Why should the Great War live longer than the World War in folk memory?
Review, 2975 words
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