Reflecting on the heroes and the horrors of war
According to the 1891 census, 37 million people lived in the United Kingdom. It’s a sobering thought, but by 1918 the same amount of folks had perished in World War One. Now, 100 years to the day after Britain declared war on Germany, the BBC have pulled out all the stops to reflect on a time few can remember, but nobody should forget. In the first of two programmes, Londonbased Huw Edwards and Sophie Raworth in Belgium introduce live coverage of WorldWar One Remembered from the Battlefield, BBC2, 6.30pm, marking the centenary of the outbreak. At the St Symphorien military cemetery near Mons, Belgium, where British, Commonwealth and German soldiers are buried side by side, Dan Snow reports on the day’s events. There are expected to be touching scenes as Gareth Malone leads a children's choir singing their own specially written song. Actor Eddie Redmayne reads poems and testimonies, along with serving British and German soldiers. And one performance bound to pluck the heartstrings is a recording of a collaboration between the London Symphony Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Simon Rattle. They will be performing the last movement of Brahms's German Requiem and Butterworth's A Shropshire Lad. For many of us who learned about the dawn of the conflict years ago at school, it’s easy to remember the basics, but for those who aren’t war academics, the rest is a grey area. The seed of the conflict was planted On June 28, 1914, when Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were assassinated in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip, part of a secret Serbian military society called Black Hand. That led to the July Crisis, a month-long series of heated political manoeuvring between Austria- Hungary, Germany, Russia, France, and Britain. Officials in Austria-Hungary correctly believed Black Hand were responsible for the assassination. Wanting to end Serbian interference in Bosnia, they issued Serbia with the July Ultimatum – 10 demands designed to provoke a war with Serbia. They agreed to eight of the 10 demands, so on July 28, 1914, Austria-Hungary declared war. As other nations were dragged into the conflict, on August 4, Belgium refused to permit German troops to cross its borders into France, so Germany declared war on them, having already attacked Luxembourg and declared war on France.