now, when one is drawn to a subject, however much their overarching political reasons and so on, there's always something personal as well. and in my case it's that an uncle of mine by marriage fought in the first world war. that's him there within the center of the picture. um, with his fighter squadron of the imperial russian air service. captain boris. if any of you read my first book, "half the way home," you will have met him in those pages. that cross around his neck is the cross of the order of st. george, um, which was the highest decoration of the russian empire, and it entitled the bearer to a private audience with the czar at any time of day or night, a privilege which was not much use after 1917. [laughter]

now, there's another reason why this period of the first world war, i think, has drawn me and so many other people to study it and to learn about it which was that 1914 marked, um, an era that came to an end, an era of emperors and 'em presses. there were no emperors after the war ended. this is kaiser wilhelm on the left and his six sons march anything if a parade. and somehow to me the the era is symbolized by the hats that they wore. i mean, just look at those hats. um, here is the kaiser's wife, the emreroess and her daughter. i can't claim that after 1914 nobody wore hats like that, but certainly the world that created

such hats died with the war of 1914-1918. now, another thing about this war like many wars that is so haunting is that it was a war of multiple illusions. the first illusion was that it would be over quickly and easily. these are berlin students marching off to enlist in 1914. here are german soldiers climbing into a railway car, and if you look closely what's written on the car is to paris. here are french troops marching off with equal enthusiasm, also getting into trains. and written on the side of their train is, "to berlin." and here are russian troops celebrating in the anticipation of an early and easy victory. and, of course, those early and

easy victories did not come. there's a second illusion about the war which i think the best way i can express it is the illusion that you could go to war and the enemy, the other side would not be shooting at you. [laughter] how, other side, can you explain -- otherwise, can you explain the fact that literally millions of french troops, the entire french infantry went into battle dressed like this? [laughter] you know, think of what targets that made for a sharpshooter whose bright red hats, bright red plants, bright blue jackets, and they died by the hundreds of thousands partly as a result of that illusion. and they were not the only soldiers dressed that way. the hungarian cavalry also was very fond of bright red and bright blue and, in fact, didn't

abandon those uniforms until two years into the war. yet another illusion, i think, was that something like the cavalry itself could play a role in this war. these are french cavalry here, all the armies had them. indian cavalry that the british brought all the way from india to the western front. the famous lancers from germany when -- maybe i could get a glass of water or bottle of water or something if there is up with. if there is one. when the germans invaded france in 1914, they did so with eight cavalry divisions, 40,000 horses. and you can just imagine, you know, how little chance a massive cavalry charge had with, you know, in the age of modern

weaponry. nonetheless, everybody practiced for the great cavalry charges like this british soldier who was drilling here. they anticipated a war that would almost be like knights in the armor, like a jousting competition. the idea of war -- thanks. the idea of war was very closely allied to images of sport like this. in fact, the first correspondent that the london daily mail sent to the front in 1914 was its sports editor. and, of course, when they tried to do these massive cavalry charges, they came up against barbed wire, not to mention the machine gun. and, of course, these ended the days of massive cavalry charges forever. and as a result of those two

weapons, the barbed wire as a defensive weapon and the machine gun, the western front where most of the bloodshed took place was, essentially, frozen in place along that line for more than three years. budging barely ever more than a few miles in each direction. in '19, the entire year 1915, for example, a year which saw the allies launch several massive assaults there were probably altogether more than a million casualties on the western front from both sides killed, wounded, missing. the allies gained exactly eight square miles. and instead of these glorious cavalry charges they'd imagined, they found themselves fighting in an absolutely devastated landscape. more than 700 million artillery shells and mortar rounds landed on the western front, france and

belgium, during the four-and-a-half years of the war, and they left the land looking like this. soldiers found themselves living below ground in trenches sharing space with corpses and with rats. they found themselves, they found themselves very often fighting knee deep in mud. and they found themselves facing all kinds of horrifying new weapons that nobody had anticipated like the flame thrower, for example. and, of course, when one side invented a new weapon like this, the other side very quickly copied it. same thing with poison gas. experienced for the first time as the germans used it against the russians in 1914 and against the western allies the following

year. and there were defenses improvised against it, hastily constructed and strangely-looking gas masks. but nonetheless, hundreds of thousands of people were injured by gas, some of them blinded like these british soldiers in this particular photo. enormous numbers of soldiers were wounded in if other ways as well -- in other ways as well. all you have to do is sort of imagine just one of these soldiers and then multiply that by 21 million which is the number of soldiers who were wounded in the war. the tremendous toll of the war in dead and wounded gave us a profoundly darker and more cynical view of the world that in many ways has stuck with us ever since. this cartoon appeared during the

war itself, and this attitude of sort of a greater cynicism about human nature in general, i think, continued ever since then. now, there's another thing about this war that was very different from the wars, for example, that we are engaged in today. these are officer cadets at eton, britain's most exclusive private school, drilling in 1915. now, one of the things that we have gotten accustomed to in this country in recent years -- vietnam, iraq, afghanistan -- is that they are fought mostly by the poor. there are very, very few among the dead and wounded in the those three wars who have been sons or daughters of ceos, senators, members of congress, anything like that.

it was the exact opposite in the first world war. the death toll actually fell proportionately higher on the upper classes. and the main reason for that was that it was customary for sons of the upper classes, sons of the air strock rah si to have military careers. and i think a major reason for this is that armies are not only there to fight wars against other countries, they're there to maintain order at home. the 19th century was a very tumultuous time in europe, so was the early 20th century. many of the european armies were used to break strikes or the british army, you know, put down tenant farmer rebellions in ireland. and so, therefore, officering the army was something that was generally reserved for people in the upper classes. this meant that when these countries went to war in 1914,

these upper classes suffered an enormous toll. for example, more than 30 graduates of eton were killed in a single day the first day of the battle of the sum in 1916. of men who graduated from oxford in if -- in 1913, 31% were killed by the end of the war. a few sort of specific examples, hatfield house -- long one of the great british palatial country estates, queen elizabeth i spent part of her childhood on this estate along the seat of an aristocratic family -- the pay ri ark was prime minister for some years at the turn of the century. he had ten grandsons. five of them were kill inside the war, and one of them,

george, is a character in this book. tremendous toll among the children of political and military leaders. prime minister herbert as withof england lost a son. so did his counterpart, chancellor of germany thee bold hold vision. the man in the middle in this picture, general lawrence who was chief of staff of the british army on the western front, lost two sons. his counterpart in the french army, general decat tell, lost three sons. so part of what i wanted to explore in this book was the mentality of such men. how could these generals, these prime ministers, these cabinet ministers year after year send their own sons into battle, their own sons charging out of

trenches into the face of machine gunfire? and into a hail of fire that lasted week after week, month after month, year after year for four-and-a-half years? >> so that was something that i really wanted to explore in the book. now, the very insanity of this war made me callly interested -- equally interested in another type of person. those people, and they existed on both sides in all of the warring countries, who recognized for the beginning that this war was madness, that it was not worth fighting. people like eugene v.debbs, for example, the great american socialist leader, spoke out loudly, repeatedly against the war, was spent to prison by woodrow wilson's administration and while still in prison, long after the war ended in 1920, he received nearly a million votes

for president on the socialist tick. ticket. another american dissenter was the social work pioneer jane adams. emma goldman, anarchist leader, also went to prison for her opposition to the war. more than 500 american conscientious objectors were jailed during the war like these two men at fort riley, arkansas. in the -- in germany rosa luxembourg went to prison for her opinions. in france a staunch opponent of the war which he saw coming and spoke out repeatedly as he saw it drawing closer was the socialist leader, um, who was assassinated by a right-wing nationalist three days before the war began. in england the country's leading philosopher, bertrand russell, was to my mind the most eloquent of all the war opponents.

and i think what i like about russell so much is that he was so honest about the conflict in his own feelings. let me read you something where he describes his state of mind as the war began. he describes himself very poignantly as being, quote, tortured by patriotism. i desire the defeat of germany as around tendly as any -- arkansas dentally as any retired colonel. love of england is nearly the strongest emotion i possess, and in appearing to set it aside at such a moment, i was making a very difficult renunciation. but as a lover of truth, the national propaganda of all the belligerent nations sickened me. as a lover of civilization, the return to bar barrism appalled me. as a man of thwarted parental feeling, the massacre of the young wrung my heart.

if you didn't fight. or perhaps you were you know a wimp, evading your responsibility. and, worse yet, if you refused to fight you were maybe a efeminant. so there was a real nasty edge to the patriotic fervor that was in the air. now, as i mentioned there were war resisters in all of the countries that were fighting but for various reasons the sharpest conflict between those who thought the war was a noble and necessary cause and those who thought it was absolute madness and not worth all these millions of lives took place in england. more than 20,000 men of

military age refused to go into the british army. some of them accepted service, alternative service as conscientious objectors which meant you could drive an ambulance in the front or work in a are with-related industry like these men who are working at a quarry in scotland. but many, as a matter of principle refused alternative service as well and were sent to prison. more than 6,000 young english men went to prison during the war. the largest number of people up to that point in time ever imprisoned for political reasons if a western democracy. they served their sentences in places like wansworth here in southwest london. the metal netting you see is to prevent people from committing suicide.

prison conditions were extremely harsh. prisoners lived under what was called a rule of silence where you were not allowed to talk to your fellow prisoners. they found ways around it. tapping on cell walls and whispering to people. to live several years under those conditions was tough. the diet was terrible. there was a shortage of coal. prisons were very cold. many people died in prison. so, i was fascinated by these war resistors. for the longest time i could not figure out how from a story-telling point of view i was doing to get the resistors and the generals into the same book. i didn't want to do just a series of portraits of one and series of portraits of the other. then a clue to me, a clue came to me one day when i was reading a very boringly-written scholarly

article about a well-known pacifist same charlotte trfahd. she was an ardent opponent of the war. wrote the single best-selling piece of antiwar literature published in britain during the war. traveled up and down the country. visiting conscientious objectors in prison speaking with their families. speaking out against the war. some rallies she spoke were shut down by the police. she was also involved in many, many other radical causes of the day. strong supporter of independence for ireland, for india. before the war she had been very active in the women's sufferage movement. had gone to prison four times n this article about her the writer just made one passing comment, one sentence where he said, naturally these activities of mrs. despard were deeply upsetting to her brother. it gave his name.

sir john french which i immediately recognized commander-in-chief on the western front. so i thought, that's going to be a relationship which will be interesting to write about. and indeed it was. because this brother and sister of diametrically opposite views were nonetheless personally quite close. she was eight years older than he was. he was her beloved little brother. she taught him the alphabet when he was small. they remained in touch throughout the war. saw etch either frequently. they stopped speaking to each other only when in 1918 the british government sent him to ireland to be viceroy of ireland in charge of suppressing the nationalist revolt against english rule. she went to ireland to work for the ira. they stopped speaking at that point. but, that gave me the idea

of talking about the war sort of portraying this conflict between those who believed in it and those who didn't through looking at divided families. and of course there are some echoes in our own time because in the vietnam era the question of the vietnam war was something that divided many, many families in this country. so i went looking for other divided families in the britain of that time and i found some. one was a family which i'm sure some of you know, the famous panghurst family of the women's sufferage movement. emily,. the more shown under arrest here prior to the war and her two daughters, were leaders of the most militant wing of the british women's sufferage movement. on the eve of the war emily pankhurst was arrested

literally throwing the a rock through the window of 10 downing street the prime minister's residence. at the time the first shots of the war was fired she was a fugitive from british justice living overseas. the moment the war began she activity, came back to england, put herself at the service of the british government which dispatched her on speaking tours throughout england and to the united states and in fact in early 1917 sent her to russia to rally russian women to the war effort. meanwhile her daughter silvia, who worked very closely with her mother before the war, became an ardent opponent of the war. published the leading antiwar periodical in britain through the the conflict. several of its issues were suppressed by the government. and was a very, very strong voice for peace, for ending the conflict.

silvia was also having a secret love affair with kier hard i did, the founder of the independent lable -- labour party and a predecessor of today's labour party and extremely strong opponent of war who was absolutely crushed when it began and died as much as, of grief over that of anything else in 1915. another divided family that i followed was the hobhouse family. one member of it, emily honhouse was a outspoken pacifist who did something quite remarkable. in 1916 she traveled without government permission, without proper passport and visa and so forth, traveled from britain through france and neutral switzerland to germany. went to see the german

foreign minister whom she had known before the war, talked about possible peace terms, asked him what might be terms of which germany ayee to peace. talked to other people in the german government. went back to england. talked to people in british government. tried to suggest peace terms to them. it was a impossible lone wolf mission of diplomacy that failed but over the course of 4 1/2 years the worst conflict the world had yet seen that left 20 million dead she was the only person in europe who literally traveled from one side to the other in search of peace. she had great influence on a young cousin of hers, steven hobhouse. in this picture he is much older but during the war he was of military age. refused to the draft and was sent to prison and in prison was thrown into solitary

confinement because he was leading a protest against this rule of silence. he said, i'm going to speak to my fellow human beings whether they're fellow prisoners or guards, whenever i feel like it. no one can stop me and they threw him in solitary. he had three brothers in uniform. two of them were at the front. one of those at the front was later killed but before he was killed he sent a message back to their parents telling them, tell steven not to lose heart. a very interesting relationship. just to make things more complicated, a very close friend of the family who had actually acted as a godfather at steven's baptism, a man named, alfred milner, was minister of war. now, there are various other characters in this book as well. some of them are people you know.

such as the writer rudd yard kipling. who was of course a tremendous drum beater for this war as he was for every war britain was ever engaged in. he cultivate ad love of things military in his son john kipling, about four years old in this picture with the rifle. john kipling with his father's encouragement set his sights early on a military career. had great trouble getting into first the navy and then the army. kept getting rejected because he had inherited his father's bad eyesight. when you see pictures of rudyard kipling always has thick grasses -- glass glass on. his father pulled strings. got john a commission as a army officer. and in 1915 john kipling went into action at the battle of luce and was never

seen again. his father of course was completely kev stated. -- devastated. some of characters in this book i think are people who will be less familiar. one of them was a man named fenner brockway editor of a socialist newspaper before the war. went to prison as a resist tore. in prison he continued to be a newspaper editor, putting out a clandestine newspaper for his fellow prisoners on toilet paper. it was published regularly twice a week for a year until the authorities discovered it and punished him by putting him on restricted diet and solitary confinement. incidentally, copies of some of these clandestine newspapers there were a number of them, survive. another character in the book, one of my favorites, a man named john clark. who was born into a circus family. grew up in the circus.

when he was 17 years old he went into the ring as at youngest lion tamer in great britain. subsequently he got involved in radical politics. when the war broke out he was tipped off by a friendly policeman that he was about to be arrested. he went underground and throughout the war was the editor and a writer for a socialist antiwar newspaper that the authorities kept trying to suppress but they could never find where it was being published. after the war he came back above-ground again. was a labour party member of parliament for a while. then spent many years on the glascow city council. when a circus came to town and went back into the ring and was the oldest lion tamer in great britain. the war that people like this resisted and protested against caused absolutely

unprecedented suffering. it left huge cities destroyed in a way that europe had never known before. these are the rue inches of a 15th century cathedral in belgium. there were so many soldiers killed that by the end of the war, england was drafting 17-year-olds and germany was taking soldiers into the army who were still younger. and, still the carnage went on. and on and on for 4 1/2 years. by the time it was finally over there were more than nine million military dead and an estimated 12 to 13 million civilian dead. and of course the war not only left scars from this but because of the way it ended and because of the

terms of the peace treaty that followed it, it set the course of future events in which of course the man on the far right in this picture with his world war i german army unit play ad crucial role and 20 years later he would lead the world into even more destructive war and the holocaust to boot. so my hope in writing this book when we think back on the first world war we'll remember not just the politicians and not just the generals but some of those who tried to stop the bloodshed even though they were in vain. including some of the people in this book. now, i'm going to end by

playing you some music and let me explain where it comes from. it's a song that some of you may know, the greenfields of france, composed by the scottish songwriter, eric bogle. and he was inspired to write it when he visited one of the vast, vast military graveyards. and there are hundreds upon hundreds of them that spread across the area of the old western front in northern france and belgium. he noticed the name of an irish soldier, mcbride, on one of these tombstones and the song is addressed to him sung her by john mcdermott. while the song is playing i'm going to show you some old vintage news real footage from the first world war but i want you to listen to the words of the song. so, can you start the music?

♪ well how do you do young mcbride, do you mind if i sit here and rest for a while bee need the warm summer warmth. i've been walking all day and i'm nearly done. ♪. ♪ i see by your grave stone you were only 19, when you joined the great in 1916 ♪. ♪ i hope you died well and i hope you died clean for young william mcbride, was it slow and unclean? did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the five slowly? did they play the death

march as they lowered you down? did the band play the last chorus? did the pipes play the flowers song? ♪. ♪ did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind? did some faithful aunt has your memory enshrined. although you died back in 1916 can that faithful heart are you forever 19. but are you a stranger without even a name, enclosed in forever behind the glass frame ♪. ♪ in an old photograph torn,

battered and stained and faded to yellow in a brown leather frame ♪. ♪ did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the five slowly, did they sound the death march as they lowered you down? ♪. ♪ did the band play the last post and chorus, did the pipes lay the flowers on the note. ♪ . ♪ the sun now it shines on the greenfields of france, there's a warm summer breeze, makes the red poppies dance, and look how the sun shines from under the clouds, there's no gas, no barbed-wire, there's no guns

firing now ♪. ♪ but here in this graveyard there is still no-man's land, stand in the sand ♪. ♪ to man's blind indifference to his fellow man, to a whole generation that were butchered and damned ♪. ♪ did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the five slowly, did they sound the death march as they lowered you down ♪. ♪ did the band play the last chorus ♪. ♪ did the pipes play the flowers on the air ♪. ♪ i am willie mcbride. i can't help wonder why did

those that lie here know why that they died, and did they believe when they answered the call, did they really believe that this war would end wars ♪. ♪ for the sorrow, the suffering the glory the pain, the killing and the diying, was all done in vain ♪. ♪ for young willie mcbride it all happened again, and again and again and again and again ♪. ♪ did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the five slowly, did they sound the death march as they lowered you down, ♪. ♪ did the band play the last chorus, did the pipes play

the flowers on the far away land ♪. ♪ did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the five lowly, did he they sound the death march, as they lowered you down ♪. ♪ did the band play the last chorus, did the place the lay the flowers on the ground ♪. ♪ . >> so that's it. if you've got comments or questions, i would be glad to hear them. [applause]

barbara? >> [inaudible]. >> oh, sorry. >> you, aside from these articulate and brave and well-connected individuals who opposed the war, there were also before it, large parties that claimed that they would, they would reject this in the name of international solidarity with worth working people. were they just quickly swept away in the patriotic enthusiasm? or did they require a lot of suppression of the kind you described? >> well all of the left-wing parties were divided, really in all of their, britain, germany, other countries there were real divisions in

the socialist parties there. you know, in britain the bulk of the independent labour party which was the most important of these parties, stuck with its leader, hardy, and his stand against the war but many other members of the labour coalition in parliament went over to the government's side. in germany the social democratic party there which was by far the largest and most powerful socialist party in europe, they had something like 30, 35% of the vote in germany. powerful newspaper, other institutions. they divided and there were a small number, i think about a dozen of the 120 or 130 socialist deputies who voted against extendedding war credits which the kaiser had asked for on the eve of the war. the tragedy that one feels,

looking at this period, is that i think all of these people, you know, initially, before the war, they had the right ideals. they felt that it was much more important to feel solidarity with your fellow human beings, with your fellow human beings on the left who were struggling for a great social changes than it was to feel a liegeance to the nation-state but once the war began, that allure of tribalism, that powerful, people seem to have within them, and that we all have somewhere within us, proved to be more powerful. amazingly there was a demonstration against the coming war of 100,000 people in berlin just, i think four days before the first shots were actually fired but, after the first shots were fired, even the german peace

society issued a statement in favor of the war as did huge number of intellectuals, even those on the evident left, gorky in russia signed a pro-war statement. only way i can explain it, that allure of tribalism is a very, very powerful thing and it is still very much with us. i mean roll the clock back, you know, a week or two, we were all, you know, probably glad to see the end of osama bin laden but i must say it made be very creepy out in the front of the white house shouting usa, usa, usa. >> [inaudible]. >> there were some. wait for the microphone. i think they got to bring the plooik around here. -- mic. >> i'd like to talk and i --

[inaudible] >> speak up please. >> like this? i mean like in the sense that, as listening to you, i liked, i liked your presentation. i like, i like your emphasis on the obsession that drives one to write a book. at the same time i was thinking as you're presenting, several things coming to mind. one was the, the which become as book, like mayer who writes about the persistence of the regime. that kind of resonates with you with kind of resonates with who argue that is the aristocrats that rule the roost also went away 1914.

fair enough. all that is fine but against that i would say that one has to situate the mass participation of the people in the first world war to the triumph of nationalism and nationalism itself. that he was one thing. another that the very triumph of nationalism, may be positions against the failure, or the frustration of international socialism which was the other alternative in the late 19th century, early 20th century. maybe it is one reason also i would argue that, that the production of the 1917 russian revolution did not really succeed in its internationalist form. and revolution was also internationalist revolution, the bolsheviks. that did not triumph was in large reason because there was no, no support from the

rest of us in europe and other places with social democratic parties and others actually opted for the war. opting for the war in terms of strength of nationalism. nationalism more than tribalism or anything else? >> well, certainly the story of the first world war and of so many other wars before and since is one of the triumph of nationalism over reason, over human solidarity and over much else. you're right to mention the russian revolution which in many ways was a direct result of the first world war. by the time of the revolution russia had suffered some six million casualties, dead, wounded prisoners and missing and during the year 191 it's estimated more than a million russian soldiers simply left the front and walked home, which is, you know, what we would wish people to do in all wars at all times i think. the russian revolution, even

though i think fairly quickly it went awry in some horrible ways, nonetheless when it happenedded in in 1917 it was greeted with tremendous enthusiasm by the antiwar leftists in the other countries. and it's very moving to read the accounts, for example, of these british war resistors who were in prison as they got the news from russia. they all were convinced and hopeful that this was the beginning and it would be revolution that would spread to other countries. but it did not and the war went on. want to bring the microphone or you've got the microphone, i will go with whoever has the microphone. >> i will be brief. i regret i didn't hear everything you said but considering the libraries full of books about the first world war that now exist, plus access to so many documents that we did not have access to at the time of the war or right

after, do you, with the lens of historical hindsight, do you think that the war was inevitable? or could it have somehow been prevented? the inevitability thesis obviously is in other words, i'm asking you if you think that in the end lenin and trotsky and luxembourg were right that, the war was the logical culmination of imperialist rivalries and so on. but, considering how calamitous it was, the images that you have shown us are almost beyond comprehension, a whole generation swept away and those cemeteries in belgium and so on and so on that, one nourishings hope somewhere that such a thing could have been prevented but i wanted to know your take on that? >> it's a good question. i actually think the war was not inevitable.

this is one of these things historians argue over endlessly of course. i think it wasn't inevitable, true there were some tensions in europe. there was a naval arms race between britain and germany for example, but we had, you know, 40 or 50 years of an arms race between the u.s. and soviet union without the two countries going to war. there were, as of june, mid-june, 1914 there were no outstanding boundary disputes in europe. no country claimed part of another's territory. there was some imperial rivalry but we have a lot of impearl rivalry in the world right now between the united states and china, and the, all sorts of other ways that it appears as well. there was imperial rivalry in africa but the european countries had fairly effectively divided up africa among themselves some

years previously. once the war began, then of course all the imperial rivalries came to the surface and in africa, britain and france on one side and germany on the other were very nakedly fighting to seize control of each others colonies knowing to the victor would go the spoils but despite the tensions that were in the air i do not think the war was inevitable. >> you didn't talk very much, you didn't talk more than a little bit american antiwar resistance on the left. what about that? i know that american left was split, particularly those who were less radical though lenin in russia dropped out of the war as soon as the russian revolution succeeded, that i know that some people like carl sandberg, for example, resigned from the the party because it wouldn't support

the war. some people felt on the left felt patriotically would should be on the same side. some felt felt we weren't under attack. at least germany sank some boats and some people believed in some justification that i think it was a war against the monarchy, at least the european monarchy. would you speak somewhat about american anti-war feeling. particularly about americans, left-wing americans about the war? >> you know, i don't know as much about the antiwar movement in america as i should because in this book i focused entirely on england. i just wanted to tell the story within one country it was there was the most active antiwar movement but there certainly were many americans like the ones i mentioned who felt the same way as these folks in england. people like debs, goldman and many others and there were many on the left, i think you mentioned carl sandberg leaving the socialist party who felt

that, yes, it was a war against democracy and who believed woodrow wilson when he said, we were fighting for democracy. the antiwar folks who i sympathize with much more said, it's a mockery to say this was a war against democracy when britain, france and the united states were allied with russia. and russia at least up until the february revolution was the last absolute monarchy in europe. i think, you know, that just brings out how countries on, when they go to war always claim to be fighting for the most noble of ideals. they never say, they're fighting for their economic self-interest. they only claim noble ideas and it behooves all of us who live in a time of war as we do right now, to question that rhetoric very, very closely.

>> you mentioned two phenomena that seemed to be closely related. i don't know how. one is tribalism and i'd like you to explain what you mean. and the other is, you know, amnesia. you didn't mention it but this is the war to end all wars. so were all the others and that the, you know, part of the power and the shock of these images is, they aren't part of our history, even though they are. they're not part of children's history books or the history books in high school. how does, you know, what is tribalism and how does it combine with repression of war to create an appetite for more? >> good question. and i'm not sure i know the answer to it. i just know that it is a

very, very powerful force in history. the tendency to want to identify with the, with a group that you can feel a part of and, one sees it again and again. i think there is something of tribalism in the fanatical way people sometimes root for sports teams. we are looking for something to identify with that says, that's us, that's me. i'm part of this group. but why do we not feel it as much when we're identified, larger numbers as people feel it when we're identifying with the peace movement or socialist movement or something like this? i don't know the answer to that. it is something i puzzled over for a long time and i think until we can figure out the answer to that, we're not going to get very

far. and you know, i do think that there are, i'm interested by developments that seem to begin to supersede tribalism in some areas. now i think, you know, for many people on the left the european union has a bad name because you know, it represents the rich countries of the world and rich countries of europe who are acting in their own interest, imposing bad trade terms on the poorer countries and so forth. nonetheless, i think one can't but help but feel something when you go to europe, are able to cross borders with, you know, no customs officials, see that people have passports that are the same except the name of the country appears only in smaller letters. that's a start towards something. but i'm still waiting for the world passport and we're

not there yet. >> adam, thanks for your presentation. i was wondering if you could touch a little more on the presentation, some of the slides touched on it, world war i is kind of the birth of the public relations industry. a lot has been made of kind of shift between world war ii to the vietnam war here at home in terms of the way that american soldiers had to be hammered into their heads that killing was not necessarily wrong, especially killing of unarmed soldier, enemy soldiers. but of course, looking at world war i, this is really the birth of all of that. i'm wondering if you could touch a bit upon what is now of course a multibillion-dollar industry. >> i'm glad you asked that next. this is big subject of my book. one of the things that interested me very deeply was that in addition to being the first war to have, you know, destructiveness of this technological level, the first world war was really the first propaganda

war. why? because up to that point in time in europe, in the preceding several decades all the wars had been fairly small-scale colonial conflicts where small volunteer armies, you know, of germans, french men, english men, went out and put down colonial rebellions in africa or asia or conquered new colonies in africa or whatever. it didn't require a propaganda effort. certain writers like rudyard kipling could be counted on to supply the proper kind of story telling and poetry when needed but there wasn't anything organized by the government. but, right from the beginning they seemed to realize that this war was going to require a massive propaganda effort. this was especially true in england and it was another reason that led me to concentrate on england in this book because alone of

the major powers in europe britain did not have con very much shun. -- conscription. they had first year of the war an all-volunteer army. to whip up necessary enthusiasm they had to whip up enthusiasm in order to get millions of men to enlist. in fact they did get 2 1/2 million men to enlist before they imposed conscription. how did they do it? they began very early where a cabinet minister, only about six weeks into the war, assembled to begin with, assembledded more than 50 of the country's leading writers. very familiar names. sir arthur coin nan doyle. h.g. wells. all prominent british writers with exceptions n a meeting in a insurance company office in london and said, we want you to write for the war effort.

and whatever you write, we will see that it's published. and for the next four-plus years there was a huge barrage of fiction, nonfiction, pamphlets, books, magazines, almost all of it ostensibly coming from commercial publishers but in fact the british government had agreed in advance to buy, 50,000 copies of this and 100,000 copies of that. they produced posterses, some of which i showed you. they produced postcards. they produced a german atrocity calendar with a different atrocity for every month of the year. it was a huge operation. they sent people on lecture tours and they set up front organizations of all kinds. every, part of this propaganda operation in england was geared at the united states because they were very eager to have the united states come in on the

allied side which eventually the u.s. did in mid 1917. up to that point in time there was a lot of propaganda directed towards the united states. every catholic priest in america, for example, received a regular letter from a patriotic association of catholic priests in britain. it had all been set up and orchestrated by the government. all kinds of things of that sort. in fact, they even pioneered what today, we would call astroturf. where there is sort of fake citizens organization that's, that's set up to, you know, further somebody else's purpose. for example, although most of the labour movement did end up supporting the government war effort people in the government were still distressed that there was a significant percentage of

union members, hard to say how many, 15, 20%, maybe, who really did not think well of the war, didn't rush to enlist. suddenly, mysteriously in 1916 there appeared an organization called the british national workers league which began organizing rallies all over the country. they organized 100 rallies in the course of a year. they published a very handsome-looking weekly news magazine. they were hailed by "the london times" as the authentic voice of the working class. they declared themselves sort of vaguely in favor of, you know, better wages and benefits but most important we have to win the war first. and it was all engineered behind the scenes by the guy whose picture i showed you at one point, alfred milner, who later became minister of

war, a very interesting and sinister figure who lined up financing for this organization, set up a secret bank account. got waldorf astor of the astor family to finance it. hired an experienced journalist to edit the newspaper. it was a magnificent job of astroturfing. they sort of pioneered all these things we are very familiar with today. i should add one more thing that they pioneered although versions of it went on earlier. one of my best sources for material about the antiwar dissidents i was writing about, was the government surveillance reports because the british government watched these people like hawks. they infiltrated people into their organizations. they sometimes sent in agent provocateurs to get them to do things they could be arrested for. any time there was a small anti-war meeting there was a

scotland yard shorthand writer writing down everything that was said and transcribing it. and all this material is in the national archives, some of it only become available in the last decade or so. and as somebody who finally under the u.s. freedom of information act managed to get my own fbi files i found it fascinating to look at how scotland yard watched these dissidents of that time. >> [inaudible]. >> got to wait for the mic. >> i have two questions. the first was, why was barbed-wire such an important innovation? and the second one, in the footage that you showed at the end when they're dragging the bodies i assume that footage wasn't shot contemporaneously? that was shot later right? >> the answer about barbed-wire, barbed-wire actually had been invented by a an american cattle farmer in the late 1800s's.

it was a tremendously important innovation because it was the greatest defensive weapon of all time. you string a big tangle of barbed-wire and it takes people, you know, hours to cut their way through. it was virtually impregnable to any kind explosive device because the explosion passed through it and wire was still there. made cavalry charges impossible and finally led to the development of the tank which was the only thing that could go over the wire. the footage of the bodies being buried i would be virtually positive, it was not shown at the time. i think you're right. i don't know that for certain because the place where i got this film footage from has very sketchy sourcing and one doesn't know exactly where the footage is from. you have to be very careful anytime you look at documentaries, using old

footage. some of it is staged because the british government and the german government went to great lengths to make propaganda films that allegedly showed combat and they are a mixture of real footage and, i think all of what i showed you was real and then sometimes in these scenes you see things which are obviously staged, where there are men charging over the top of a trench and there is a bagpiper strolling back and forth who would obviously have been shot down if it had been the real thing. >> in terms of the current situation, one of the lessons of vietnam for political leadership in this country was that the draft was a great obstacle to the independence of political leadership to wage war when it chose to do so. as a result of this, we do not have drafts.

the draft really encouraged, once the draft was extended during vietnam, it encouraged mothers and others of america to say no, no, we won't go and it brought the war to a quicker conclusion. in the current situation however, post-1974 i think it is when we eliminated the draft in this country, we now have given greater independence to the political leadership, democrat or republican, to pursue in the although a limited sense, not in the mass war sense, but in the more limited sense, pursue limited wars without a draft, which really has made the limited war more possible as a tool of american policy, freed from political pressures against. and i was, in a certain way, we moved beyond your notion of war is the great voluntary enthusiasm of 1914 and we've arrived at a more

limited and more refined method where we can run one or two small wars and most of us don't know, don't care because our own children don't go and will not be affected whereas your argument is when all their children were affected in 1914, they still let it go on. however we don't face that same problem. we purefied a bit. >> i think you're right. you said it very eloquently and certainly the existence of the draft really did help bring the anti-vietnam war movement into being here and, you know, was a major thing that led to the u.s. withdrawal. obviously the biggest thing of all was the resistence of the vietnamese. certainly the antiwar movement here was a big part of it. george bundy at one point in 1968 i think he left the government at one point he said we have to find a way out of this because the price at home is too high.

and, that was because of the antiwar movement. now, we no longer have the draft. i fear we also have something else which is that the government has, you know, believed that it can wage war in these very high-tech ways with drones and so on where there are no american soldiers at risk and that also i think is something that even if we still had the draft, might slow an antiwar movement from coming into being. but how to bring that antiwar movement into being in these changed circumstances is the big question facing us, which we have not solved in any way. >> adam, at the beginning of your talk you mentioned the illusions that helped create the war but you didn't mention the title of your book which i think is probably the greatest illusion. could you say a little bit about why you called the book that and what the thinking was behind that

notion? >> well the phrase, this is the war to end all wars, is attributed to woodrow wilson although actually a couple of recent wilson biographers said he never actually uttered those words. but that was the thought he put to the american people. he was elected to the office in 1916 on the platform of keeping the united states out of war but the following year the u.s. did go to war. you know, because the war was so large and so terrible, people had to be told you know this was going to be the last one, this was going to be the war to end all wars. of course it wasn't, particularly the way the war came to an end and the way the peace settlement was made, alfred milner a bad guy in my book who i was talking about, nonetheless was smart enough to see as were many in the european elite at the time this peace settlement and onerous terms it imposed on germany, as he

called it the peace to end all peace and indeed that's what it turned out to be. >> yeah, i was wondering if all this planning for the war, the propaganda effort and all that, how, if you can make an estimate how many people actually, in the room, how many people actually made the decision to go to war for everyone else? how many deciders were? >> that's a complicated question because of course there were different deciders in different countries. and historians have spent a lot of time studying those six weeks between the assassinations at sarajevo and the outbreak of the war. i think there were some key people. i think if kaiser wilhelm ii and emperor of auts tria hungary were not so

bellicose the war might have been averted. but part of the problem with the way things were the set up in europe at that time there were two things that made this downward slide into immense conflict inevitable. once it began. one was system of rival alliances where there are countries committed to come to each other's aid if one country was drawn into the conflict. france and russia were allied. germany and austria hungary were allied. the other thing, in 1914 all these countries had fairly small standing armies but enormous armies of reservists. people who were trained but had to be mobilized. and it took several weeks to fully mobilize your army, get all the reservist off their farms and out of their factories and into uniforms and you know, reunited with their rifles and off to the front. if you could start mobilizing your army before the other guy, you had an

advantage. similarly, if you could attack first, that meant the war would be on the other nation's territory and that's what germany and austria-hungary did. and, these were things that sort of accelerated that spread. but if we were able to rewrite history at will, so that things could unfold in a way that i said a moment ago, that, i, you know, i think the war was not inevitable i would have, you know, changed the actions of kaiser wilhelm and emperor france jeff seven of austri austria-hungary. i think then the war might not have happened. not that there wouldn't have been other wars, you know, in europe later on but i don't like think it would have happened in quite the same way. a few more people have questions but i'm wondering whether maybe we ought to, how about one last question. i'll be glad to keep on

talking with people who want to stay for a little while afterwards. >> i mean you are a very nice guy. i like you a lot. >> but -- >> but i think you're wrong, you're wrong in two senses. i think, one is the sense in which nationalism was a very 19th century and without it the failure of socialist internationalism can not really be understood properly. the other is in context of propaganda. propaganda and conscription. conscription and propaganda are not novel to the first world war at all. conscription came during the napoleonic wars and conscription of what? conscription next change for citizenship. nationalism, conscription, citizenship and propaganda.

liberty, quality, fraternity. what better propaganda could napoleon produce to overthrow all the monarchies in continental europe than liberty, property fraternity. propaganda and con very much shun are not a new phenomenon. the of war that really began in late 1880s is very crucial to, not detract in any case from the nature of your presentation and substance of your text which i'm grateful and thankful. >> no, i certainly didn't mean it imply conscription was something new. it had existed before. in the american civil war for example, here, the british navy although, never the british army, had conscripted people, the famous press gangs which went around rounding up young men at the ports right up through the end of the

napoleonic wars. that was not new nor was propaganda new. but i feel the propaganda reached a level of sophistication, a multiplicity of media that had not been known before. some of these media of course were not known before. film, radio, and so on. but, you know the, the termination, the widespreadness, the orchestration by the government, the bringing in, you know, for example, of all of the countries leading writers and enlisting them, nothing quite, like that had been done before although of course there had been propaganda before. >> one more question? >> one small question and that's it. >> yeah. i just wanted, this hit me like a lightning bolt. i was wondering i really appreciate your presentation. i really appreciate your books by the way. my question is about the heroic end of the war. something you said about the calvary and the charging.

seems to me that world war i initiated the end of the heroic in the war. from that point on, the war became much more distant. so then in world war ii, aerial bombardment. vietnam war now we're talking about like iraq invasion, looks like a videogame. wondering in terms of literary or even like a static level, with literary writers as well would you consider world war i to be the end of that personalization of war in terms of the way which people fight? >> i think in many ways it was. there was sort of a gradual progress towards that. obviously if you go back to the days of knights in armor and when people fought only with swords. if you were a better swords man than the other guy you prevailed. think this is one of the romantic images also

associated with combat. as soon as the rifle and especially the, you know, long range repeating rifle came into being, that reduced girnty if you were a better sword man or marksman or something from the other guy you would prevail because somebody could kill you from a great distance. but, in the first world war that, inability, of one's own ability as a soldier to have anything to do with whether you survived or not was so extreme in a way never known before because most people actually who were killed it and injured were not killed by machine gun fire but by artillery shells which, you know, burst into shrapnel which scattered hundreds of pieces of hot steel in all directions. and these were fired from several miles away. so it didn't matter how heroic or unheroic you looked or were charging

across the battlefield, you were killed by something that was fired by somebody that you couldn't even see and in that sense this war was very modern and that is with us even more today. so, thank you very much. [applause] >> is there a nonfiction author or book you like to see featured on "booktv"? send us an e-mail at "booktv"@c-span.org. >> your book is called eye of the hurricane. my path from darkness to freedom. with a forward by nelson mandela. >> yes. >> and your coauthor is ken klonsky. >> that's correct. >> my main purpose in writing this book to share with you that i have

discovered the truth. >> to be the truth. >> well it says, yeah, the love of truth is the spirit of man. given where i was, and for how long i was there, this is incredible, i have no business at all being here now. >> that is absolutely correct. >> now, you say that you were in jail 40 something years. what do you mean by that? >> well, i was in jail 40 something years. the fact that, that we are born into a prison actually, when we're born, we're born as perfect beings. perfect means complete with all of our possibilities intact. but we're also born into a world of sleeping people. the level of unconscious human insanity where hate and wars and death and destruction and inequality reigns supreme. so we're actually born into a prison. so i was in that prison for

the first 40 years of my life until i was able to wake up and get out of that prison and realize who i really am. >> let's come to who you really are in a second but let's for the viewers sake say that you were actually incarcerated, in prison for about 20 years, 1964 or 5? >> 1966. >> 66. >> to 85. >> '66 to '85. >> that's correct. >> the charge was having murdered three people and wounded one in a bar. >> yes. it is just not, just not having murdered somebody. i mean, to be accused of murder is bad enough. but to be accused of being a racist murderer is doubly bad. that is what i was accused of being. a triple racist murderer. >> racist? why racist? >> because all white people were killed. >> and was the charge that you had somehow targeted them because of their race. >> because of their race. because a black bartender had been killed by a white

man in another part of town that night. they thought that this was a racially motive. but you also have to realize those times, at that time, 1966, either early '60s when, when the country was still segregated, when black folks weren't allowed to eat in restaurants or go to school or ride on certain parts of buses or drink out of a water fountain or even have equal voting rights at the time. that was what was going on in this country at that time. which was a terrible thing. and so, that is what i was accused of being a triple racist murderer. >> and in the book you write about growing up in a household that really was violent and difficult. facing your father across the living room with shotguns. >> my, my family life was

not violent. the violence was outside of the family life. but you got to realize that in may, this may i will be 74 years old. >> right. >> so my mother and father come from a generation where they thought that if you, if a child put his hand on his parents or even threatened their parents, since they brought you into this world, they will take you out of this world as well. that was the type of, of society that i grew up in. >> but describe to the people who are watching, who might want to read the book, why you would be facing your father with a shotgun and he with a shotgun facing you. >> well, because i was a very angry young man at the time. very angry. and i confronted my brother, my brother james, who was a highly successful academic. he was going to harvard. he was one of the youngest to graduate from harvard university with a ph.d.

he late every became the superintendent of schools of boston, you know and, i was in and out of reformtory schools during my youth, you know. so, my father had to sort of choose between which one he was going to support. i confronted my brother because when i came home from the military in 1956 i heard that my brother was hanging out with homosexuals. that he had known when we were child, children, growing up. when we were children all of these folks used to dress up on halloween like women. and they looked better than the women on the streets, you know. and but now he was home on vacation from harvard university and they were doing the same thing. so i confronted my brother about that. and we started to fight and of course, i beat him up. and that is when my father

got, that is when my father got involved in this. and my father jumped me because of that. and i pushed my father away and told him don't put his hand on me. i would allow no one to put their hands on me in anger anymore. so my father ran and got his shotgun and i ran and got my shotgun. this is the same thing that happened to marvin ghei and his father and that's why marvin marvin gaye's father shot him and killed him. had not been for my mother, my father would have killed me as well. >> your mother intervened and said you should go out of here? >> absolutely. get away. >> what is interesting here you just described yourself technically having been in jail for 20 years, '66 to '85. >> uh-huh. >> but the violence and the whole world of hatred that you describe you say that has been really a jail for you for 40 plus years until you discovered yourself. >> oh, yes.

>> let me read again from your book. this is an interesting moment because you say you're going to be 74 years old. >> yes. >> you've been in jail. but you also write here, i was a prizefighter at one point. i was a soldier at one point. i was a convict at one point. i was a jailhouse lawyer at one point. says here you were executive director of a group that was called association in defense of the wrongly-convicted at one point. today you're ceo of the innocence international group. >> yes. >> and, it says, but if i had to choose an ephithet to be carved on my tombstone, remember this is reuben hurricane carter speaking, it would simply read, he was just enough. >> just enough. >> now this came because somebody in a high school audience, you were speaking to these students asked you what you want for your ephithet. you're a man bob dylan wrote a song about you. nelson mandela has written a forward to this book and spoken about you, nelson mandela loves boxing

talking to me how he loves boxing. >> he was a boxer himself. >> talks about someone like him who was in jail and has come out of it. so here's, nelson mandela, bob dylan, even, tony bennett, you say, big supporter. muhammad ali. >> muhammad ali. these people have known you. now it comes time to speak about yourself and your ephithet should be just enough to have courage to stand up for his convictions no matter what problems his actions may have caused him. just enough to perform a miracle to wake up to the escape the unreversal prison of sleep to escape humanity in living hell. he was just enough, just enough. >> just enough. >> so when people hear this just enough, i'm sure they're going to be thinking to themselves, well, just enough to get off or just enough to get escape or survive? why not to making is bolder? >> universally we are all

just enough. that's what that means. we're all universally just enough. we are born with everything that we need to wake up and to become conscious. that is just enough. >> you can watch this and other programs online at "booktv".org. we asked what are you reading this summer. here is what you had to say.

>> send us a tweet at "booktv" using hashtag, summer reading. e-mail us at@book tv.org. >> up this is just under an hour. >> good morning. it is my honor and privilege this morning to introduce our distinguished authors. the american indian resource center and the county libraries done a fantastic job bringing this panel to us today. i know everyone here is looking to here what they have to say. i like to start with a question, deriving from our

first distinguished guest's book you how america is miss american. for susan super gnaw, this question wasn't part of trivial pursuit in any way shape or fashion. growing up in a home deeply affected by poverty, alcoholism and domestic violence, she sought refuge in school, dance and native-american church. she was a cheerleader with a straight-a average. became a presidential scholar. was awarded internship with the little giant, house majority leader carl albert, also from oklahoma as many know. she won a national merit scholarship to college and crowned miss oklahoma in 1971. i have a spoiler alert here. for those of you who haven't finished reading the book, she didn't win the title of miss america that year. but her performance in the competition called very prominent attention to the lives of native people living the paradox being marginalized by history and politics as strangers in

their homelands. this alienation of native people in american society has been due in large part due to the legal decisions rendered by our american courts and our next distinguished author, walter echo hawk is author of in the courts of conearlier. he analyzes ten cases that embody or expose the roots of injustice and describes the effects of nefarious legal doctrines upon the legal, political and, property and cultural rights of indigenous peoples. while the judiciary may have rendered the legal destruction of native-american identity and culture, okay, in many americans eyes his survey of these legal travesties offers more than a simple history. it presents a very compelling case for reform in american jurisprudence. taken together, you might think that the themes of these two books are too tragic for consideration but in the courts of the conner qer and