... She concentrated attention upon the principle of self-determination and the reign of law based upon the consent of the governed. ‘Shall,’ asked President Wilson, ‘the military power of any small nation, or group of nations, be suffered to determine the fortunes of peoples over whom they have no right to rule except the right of force?’ But the most flagrant instance of violation of this principle did not seem to strike the imagination of President Wilson, and he led the American nation – peopled so largely by Irish men and women who had fled from British oppression – into the battle and to the side of the nation that for hundreds of years had determined the fortunes of the Irish people against their wish, and had ruled them, and was still ruling them, by no other right than the right of force. Michael Collins
War. Everywhere people on the streets. And within me the feeling we have endured long enough the pressure, the embrace of the enemy. Now we are attacked and must defend ourselves. Great War Diaries I, Kathe Kollwitz 6th August 1914, BBC 2014
To think of home and all that meant made one feel absolutely hopeless. Great War Diaries II, Victor Denham of Australia
So many men everywhere. It has never been easier to get boyfriends. Even when you are only a fifteen year old schoolgirl. ibid. Elfriede Kuhr, war diary
Miles and miles of front begin to dance with smoke and twinkling and shimmering flashes. You cannot conceive the completeness of destruction. ibid. C E Montague 21st July 1916
It was the first time I put on the uniform of the newly formed Women's Police. And I thought I looked very smart. Great War Diaries III
War is the greatest crime there is! ibid. mad asylum inmate
There were people using 3-D cameras throughout World War I. Tony Robinson’s World War I, Discovery 2014
Britain wasn’t just low on numbers; unlike the French and Germans it also lacked a big artillery, motorised transport and the heavy equipment needed for modern warfare. ibid.
Germany was brutal in its ambitions. ibid.
What did battles like this achieve? Tony Robinson’s World War I s1e2
Living here must have been terrifying with hellfire raining down around you. ibid.
Ever more powerful killing machines: creating unprecedented technological innovations in an attempt to break the stalemate of the Western Front. Tony Robinson’s World War I s1e3
Tank: This was a wonder-weapon which would give hope and pride to the British people in the absence of success in the field. ibid.
French medics trained this little dog to look for casualties on the battlefield. ibid.
Like the Battle of the Somme, Passendale has remained a source of controversy. ibid.
Was it a triumph or an unspeakable horror? ... It’s been a cultural battlefield for every generation that followed it. Tony Robinson’s World War I s1e4
That age of innocence was dead. ibid.
The first shot fired by a soldier of the British army was fired by an African here in Africa, three days after war declared … From the moment [Alhaji] Grunshi fired that first shot, the Great War became the World’s War. More than four million non-European, non-white soldiers and auxiliaries were sucked into the World’s War: one and half million from British India, more than two million from the French colonies in Africa and Indo-China, four hundred thousand African Americans, one hundred thousand Chinese labourers. They came as professional soldiers, conscripts, volunteers and mercenaries. But all had to grapple not just with a new and terrible warfare but with the fears and prejudices that swirled around the questions of race in the 20th century. David Olusoga, The World’s War: Forgotten Soldiers of Empire I: Martial Races, BBC 2014
To imagine the level of disorientation they must have felt: these were men from villages in rural India; they’d never left their homeland before and many of them will have known very very little about the outside world. To make matters much worse, when they’d left India, they hadn’t even been told where they were going. It was only in the last days of their journey they were told the truth. ibid.
Alongside units from the regular army, it was made up of men from a dozen different ethnic groups led by white British officers who had made their careers in British India … The authority of the India Corps’ British officers drew much of its self-confidence from a racial theory that was rooted in the imperial experience in British India. ibid.
‘Many of the men show a tendency to break into poetry which I am inclined to regard as a rather ominous sign of mental disquietude’. ibid. Captain Howell’s letter of perceived ethnic traits
Mangin would get the chance to take his arguments a stage further at Verdun in 1916. Of all the human meat-grinders of the First World War, the Battle of Verdun was surely the most pitiless. ibid.
Some of the men forced into the French army were in effect slaves. ibid.
In early November 1913 in Istanbul, the capital of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, a new web was unveiled: it would spread the First World War far beyond the borders of Europe … This was how the Ottoman empire would enter the First World War, not just with a declaration of war but with a declaration of jihad: Holy War. David Olusoga, The World’s War: Forgotten Soldiers of Empire II: Martial Races
As the War spread it would draw in millions of diverse people of every race, every colour and every religion from all over the world. They fought alongside their European comrades and they died in terrible numbers. ibid.
Lettow-Vorbeck and his Askari troops set off on a thousand-mile journey. Armies from South Africa, and the British, Belgium and Portuguese colonies all set off in pursuit, and he drew them deeper and deeper into East and Central Africa … leaving behind them a trail of famine, disease and death. ibid.
The biggest man-made structure on Earth … That’s what the Western Front was: a vast twentieth-century military city of encampments and trenches and dug-outs and barbed-wire. With its complex infrastructure of roads, railways, ammunition dumps, factories, hospitals, brothels and morgs, the Western Front was a linear city extending 450 miles from the Swiss Frontier to the English Channel, and with a population to match. By 1917 this was the most culturally and ethnically diverse place in Earth. ibid.
Recruitment of the Chinese Labour Corps began in 2016, a desperate attempts to fill the void in British manpower left by the Battle of the Somme. Impoverished Chinese peasants were recruited in their thousands from the country’s north-eastern provinces. They spent months on a journey that took them across oceans and continents, and arrived in Europe exhausted and disorientated. And they were assigned the War’s dirty jobs: digging trenches, lugging ammo, burying bodies. But as the War continued, many saw themselves propelled into new unexpected roles as skilled mechanics … Many stayed on afterwards to clear up the mess … and many succumbed to the Spanish Flu epidemic … Probably the most Forgotten of the Forgotten. ibid.
Something of a love affair developed between France and black America … The American military viewed this love affair with mounting horror … The music had to stop. ibid.
93,806. Modern warfare is brutal. 100 years ago it was unimaginable. Only those who were there knew what it was like. This series is based on what they told us. Our World War I: The First Day, caption, BBC 2014
Estimated German casualties in the first two minutes: 500. ibid.
On the western-front itself the scale and pace of industrialised warfare would intensify. Our World’s War II: Foreign Legions
That’s what the Western Front was: a vast twentieth-century military city of encampments and trenches and dug-outs and barbed wire. ibid.