A Liebig bullion card from the series "Colonies of the European Powers" — The German colonies of Togo, Cameroon, and German East Africa, c1910.
Colonies des Puissances Européennes — AllemagneVillage au Cameroun.Lomé (Togo).Indegene du Cameroun.Femme de l'Est Africain.Véritable Extrait de Viande Liebig.Voir L’Explication au verso.Colonies of the European powersGermanyVillage in Cameroon.Lome (Togo).Indegene Cameroon.Woman in East Africa.Genuine Liebig Meat Extract.See the explanation on the back.Reverse:Capital 27,000,000 Francs.Établissements à Fray-Bentos (Uruguay) et Colon (Rép. Argentine).Le véritable Extrait de viande Liebig transforme les sauces les plus fades, les rests de viande, en choses succulentes qui flattent délicieusement le palais.Colonies des Puissances EuropéennesAllemagne - Les premiers essais colonisateurs de l'Allemagne datent de l'époque du Grand Electeur. Ils furent infructeux. Ce n'est qu'en 1884 qu'elle entra dans la voie de ses devancières en fait de colonization. Angre Pequena, dans le Sud-ouest africain, fut sa première colonie; suiverent successivement le Togo, le Cameroun, la partie orientale de la Nouvelle-Guinée, l'archipel de Bismarck. En 1885, elle agrandit ses possessions africaines par l'adjonction de territoires dans l'Est du continent noir et annexa les Iles Marshall et Samoa, dans l'Océanie; elle prit à bail pour 99 ans la baie et la ville de Kiao-tchéou, en Chine. Les viguettes du recto de cette carte donnent des vues des principales possessions allemandes en Afrique. La population des colonies allemandes s'élève à plus de 12 millions, répartis sur une surface total de 2 millions et demi de kilomètres carrés.Capital 27 million francs.Institutions Fray Bentos (Uruguay) and Colon (Rep. Argentina).The real meat extract Liebig transforms the most bland sauces, meat leftovers, into deliciously succulent things that flatter the palate.Colonies of the European powersGermany — The first German attempts at colonization date from the time of the Gre
Black and white postcard with an embossed floral border, and a calendar for 1914. Two girls play at a water trough fashioned from a log, ribbons in their hair, and toy boats floating. On the trough, a poem:"This little card I send, and prayThat round about your path each dayThe light of love may shine alway."E. Hutchinson806J Copyright. Beagles' Postcards © Beagles' Postcards
Calendar from the French magazine Le Petit Journal with scenes including (clockwise from top left) the capture of a German battle flag by Zouaves and Chasseurs à pied, a French artillery crew manning a 75mm. field gun, a dragoon moving into position, a heavier gun firing, entrenched troops, and marines advancing. The calendar includes Roman Catholic holy days, saints days, fête nationale (Bastille Day), and the time of sunrise and sunset. Illustration by L. Bomblec (?).
Children dressed as Allied soldiers run to bring the New Year, 1916. France carries the 1, the United Kingdom (in a kilt) and Belgium — his national roundel on his hat — the 9, Serbia and Russia the 1 of the decade, and Italy the 6. Japan, bearing a flag, hurries to catch up. A folding calendar card for 1916 by G. Bertrand.Reverse: the calendar for 1916Inside:With best wishes for a happy Christmas with love from Wallis
1917 Wedgwood Calendar Tile with the United States Navy Yard in Boston on the face, and the 1917 calendar on the reverse.
1918 YMCA folding calendar card of two child French and American soldiers dancing beneath a ball of mistletoe and the words "With much Love", by Ray or R.A.Y.
"Belgium trusts that the war will not be extended to Central Africa. The Governor of the Belgian Congo has received instructions to maintain a strictly defensive attitude. Please ask the French Government [British Government] whether they intend to proclaim the neutrality of the French Congo [British colonies in the conventional basin of the Congo], in accordance with article 11 of the General Act of Berlin. A telegram from Boma reports that hostilities are probable between the French and Germans in the Ubangi." *
"Heavy fighting has been going on since yesterday in the Dardanelles. The situation is obviously critical. Should the Dardanelles fall, the World War has been decided against us." *
"The end of July and the first fortnight of August [1916] were a quiet and comparatively pleasant time for us. There were no attacks, and without attacks life in the trenches, however hard it may be, is nothing really to complain of. The whole drama of war lies in the moment of attack. In itself death is a normal happening and soldiers die without fear. But the thought of death, the certainty of its imminence, make the hours that precede it tragic. Why was it that two men of the 10th battalion had killed themselves? In ordinary trench life no one expects death or thinks it inevitable; and when it comes, it comes in kindly fashion, unheralded and unexpectedly." *
"It was a dull morning. We packed our belongings, wrote letters and mended some of our torn clothing. Our head doctor arrived, and told us that plans had been altered and that our flying detachment was to go south into Roumania. We were delighted! Roumania was our ally and Russian troops had already joined forces with the Roumanian Army and were carrying on a slow but successful campaign. So once again, we were buoyed up with high hopes, knowing that a new period of work was about to begin for us. But we did not overlook the stern fact that the Germans had driven the Russian Armies out of Galicia and beaten them back over the Russian frontier. It was the truth — a terrible tragic truth, and had to be faced. All day long we heard distant firing, despite the fact that the Russian retreat had reached an end." *
"I stood watching the progress of the troops on the Longueau—Villers-Bretonneux road, the prolonged clatter of cavalry horses reminding me of earlier days. They were marching slowly to keep within their time. I overtook infantry and tanks moving along in weird masses in the dark, following troops all the way to the Gentelles Plateau. There the ground was taped and pegged; boards indicated the way each unit was to take as far as the approach to the line, to avoid any mix-up or delay. The whole area might have been the scene of a gymkhana. Aeroplanes were droning loudly overhead so as to drown the noise of the approaching tanks. Every object looming in the darkness hid something — the woods sheltered hundreds of silent guns awaiting their signal." *
* Quotation contexts and sources
During the four and half years of the Great War from the summer of 1914 to November 11, 1918, over eight million combatants and six million civilians died. In battle, they were killed by new and increasingly powerful weapons, 70% by artillery fire, and in higher percentages than in Europe's wars of the previous century. Civilians died from starvation, from being shelled and bombed, and from genocidal operations against ethnic minorities.
In the war and its aftermath, the empires of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, and Turkey were destroyed, and new nations were born and reborn.
New technologies were invented and young ones advanced rapidly - the airplane, poison gas, the machine gun, the tank, flame-throwers, submarines. Industrial production of the technologies, of shells, of bullets, of barbed wire, grew to unprecedented levels.
Societies changed. Women entered the wage labor market to free men up for combat and to meet the production demands of the war. Passports, identity cards, and increased border controls became increasingly common.
When the war itself ended, related wars continued: in Russia, Civil War between the new Bolshevik government and its enemies, both foreign and domestic; in Turkey, war by Greece to seize islands in the Aegean Sea and parts of the mainland of Turkey itself; in Ireland, war for independence from Great Britain.
On Sunday, June 28, 1914, in the city of Sarajevo, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a province of Austria-Hungary, a team of seven conspirators with grenades, pistols and cyanide capsules/tablets, joined the crowds that had turned out to see Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, and his wife Sophie von Hohenberg. A failed assassination attempt - a grenade that slightly wounded spectators and two in the royal couple's entourage - altered some plans and led to other events. A planned visit to City Hall went ahead, but a decision to visit the victims in hospital necessitating a changed route, a failure to inform the drivers of the change, the lead driver's attempt to back to correct the mistake - put the Archduke's stopped car in front of the most determined of the assassins, the Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip. He stepped forward, averted his eyes, and fired twice, shooting the Archduke through the throat and his wife through the groin. The couple was dead within an hour. The gun, the bombs, the cyanide Princip took, and some of the conspirators would be traced to Serbia.
The Archduke was not popular in Austria-Hungary, and the reaction to his death was muted. But Austria-Hungary was a multi-ethnic, polyglot nation with populations that wanted to leave the empire. Princip had acted to advance his vision of a union of South Slavs that included Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. In Vienna, the capital, government officials feared the rise of Serbia, which had been victorious and doubled its size in the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913.
Initial concerns in other European capitals of an Austro-Hungarian response to the assassination lessened as July passed. In Petersburg, the Russian capital, government officials felt they must support Serbia if Austria-Hungary acted. The French and Russian governments communicated their support of their alliance and mutual commitment to aid the other in the event of war. The government of Great Britain, the third member of the Triple Entente with Russia and France, heard little that alarmed it. In Berlin, capital of the German Empire, which was allied with Austria-Hungary and Italy in the Triple Alliance, there was support for a quick and limited military action by Austria-Hungary.
Defeated by Japan in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, and humiliated in 1908 when it failed its Balkan ally Serbia, and did not prevent Austria-Hungary's incorporation of Slavic Bosnia-Herzegovina, many government officials in Russia felt the country must act in the next crisis when it inevitably arose. Many in the French government wanted to restore the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine it had lost to Germany in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71, but feared a Germany that had a population half again as large as that of France, and worked to strengthen its ties with Russia, in part by financing its ally's rapid recovery from the 1905 war. Having seen the creation and rise of the Balkan states of Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Montenegro, Albania, and Greece, that had all wrested land and nationhood from the Ottoman Empire, and had come close to eliminating Turkey in Europe, Austria-Hungary feared losing its peoples and territories to these nations and to nations that did not yet exist. Great Britain, with the most powerful fleet in the world, and rule over one quarter of the world's population, but with a small army that was not structured for a European land war, was troubled by Germany's expansion and strengthening of its fleet. Many in the German military thought that war with Russia was inevitable, and that, with the recovery of Russia from the war and revolution of 1915, it should come sooner rather than when Russia had become even stronger. The military also feared a two-front war, facing France to the west, and Russia to the east. The military plan to address this, the Schlieffen Plan, aimed for a rapid defeat of France so that troops could be transported by rail across Germany to face the slowly-mobilizing Russians.
When Austria-Hungary's response to evidence that Serbia had played a role in the assassination came, there was little time for governments to react. Austria-Hungary submitted demands of Serbia that included unconditional acceptance within 24 hours. As European governments learned of the response, and hurried to react, Serbia accepted all by one of Austria-Hungary's demands, that which most impinged upon its sovereignty. The ambassador receiving the response left immediately for Vienna. On July 28, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and on the next day bombarded Belgrade, its capital.
Russia mobilized its army in support of Serbia, but with a mobilization plan that activated troops facing not only Austria-Hungary but also Germany. On August 1, Germany declared war on Russia and invaded Luxemburg to begin its assault on France. France ordered general mobilization effective August 2, and began executing its plan to attack Germany along their border, through Alsace and Lorraine. On August 3, Germany declared war on France, and requested passage of its troops through Belgium to attack France along its northern border. Belgium, defending the neutrality that France, Germany, and Great Britain had pledged to support, refused. On August 4, Germany invaded Belgium. In Great Britain, where there was significant opposition to the war, the invasion of Belgium shifted the opinion of the public and the government. Britain declared war on Germany.
Across Europe, millions of men were in motion, on trains, horseback, and on foot. France and Britain were bringing troops and laborers from its colonies and the British Commonwealth, France from Algeria, Senegal, and Dahomey, Britain from Egypt and India. Generals had not assembled armies this large before, and had not put them into motion, nor led them into battle. Most generals, most soldiers, most civilians thought the war would end in months, that their their army would be in Berlin, in Paris, in Petersburg, by Christmas, before 1915. Only a few saw this war would be different, and would not end for years.
