The First World War

...Fields of Battle visits the North American battlefields, from Bunker Hill to Little Big Horn, and includes, to my pleasant surprise, a succinct profile of my father, who commanded a Marine Corps rifle company during the Pacific island campaigns...

...answered Captain Lloyd Williams, "Hell, we just got here...

...From a book jacket photograph, we recognized him in the arrival hall crowd, and brought him home to begin a family friendship that, with only a handful of meetings, has lasted nearly 20 years...

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...Lawrence's revolt in the desert, 67 million soldiers were enlist-ed in the cause...

...Israeli Arabs Enjoy Full Equality in Law and in Fact...

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...Different religions, cultures, and social traditions coexist...

...But in reading Keegan, one cannot help but fear that today's war for Kosovo could turn out to be yesterday's landing at Gallipoli—a military adventure in remote harsh terrain, planned by politicians...

...The world is much focused on the developments in Judea/Samaria (the "West Bank") and the Gaza Strip, in which, for the most part, Israel has relinquished sovereignty and authority to the Palestinian Authority (P.A...

...title to Texas...

...The Arabs of Israel" Are they a "persecuted minority...

...The system of alliances that called each power to war is no longer present...

...Israel's Arabic press is the most vibrant and independent of any country in the region...

...Keegan describes the Australian troops in the first waves: "The ANZACs, clinging lost and leaderless to the hillsides, began, as the hot afternoon gave way to grey drizzle, to experience their martyrdom...

...Just be sure to allow six weeks for your change to take effect...

...But, as Keegan writes, "In 1914, by contrast, war came, out of a cloudless sky, to populations which knew almost nothing of it and had been raised to doubt that it could ever again trouble their continent...

...Israel is an open, pluralistic, and egalitarian society...

...Keegan writes in The Face ofBattle that "most wars are begun for reasons which have nothing to do with justice, have results quite different from those proclaimed as their objects, if indeed they have any clear-cut result at all, and visit during their course a great deal of casual suffering on the innocent...

...Over the years I have noticed how much of my own reading has followed his syllabus...

...In summary, they enjoy the highest standards of living and liberty of any Arabs in the Middle East...

...We might ask the same question today of Messrs...

...forces within the Yugoslav republic...

...Russia, a great Slav brother, had tender feelings towards the Serbs but feelings are different from vital interests and certainly no motive for war," Keegan writes, in explaining that Europe descended into barbarism through miscalculation and the entanglements of its alliances, not from strong feelings for or against the nationalist passions of the Bosnian Serbs...

...While he admires those who practice the profession of arms, at least in the cause of peace, he is not a battle enthusiast, believing "if we hope to see war driven towards its end, we must not shrink from seeing its causes addressed...

...CI Renew my subscription for one year (twelve issues—$34.95) 1 Payment enclosed CI Bill me later O At various times TAS rents its subscriber lists to other organizations...

...That's all there is to it...

...But the invasion never got off the beaches of the rocky coastline and eventually cost the lives of 265,000 Allied soldiers...

...Jews have been living in Arab countries for almost 2,000 years...

...About 5,000 Arab students attend such schools...

...Both Arabs and Druze hold seats in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament...

...It has thus vastly changed the status of women, to far above that of any country in the region...

...There were about 900,000 Jews in Arab countries in 1946 now there are fewer than 25,000...

...On the morning of July 1st, 17 British and Canadian divisions attacked across farmland that today evokes the broad tranquillity of the Nebraska plains...

...Germany's support for Austria's Balkan adventure pushed the wooden wheels of the Russian army toward the Hapsburg frontier...

...But many believe that Arabs in Israel itself are a "persecuted minority...

...In the offensives of 1918, American divisions joined British and French troops, defeating a war-weary German army...

...In a similar vein today, who could have predicted that the administration of President Bill Clinton would take up the Hapsburgs' burden...

...Each community has its own religious councils and courts, and has full jurisdiction over religious affairs, including matters of personal status, such as marriage and divorce...

...Germany also lost 2 million soldiers of whom 23 percent were officers...

...Keegan did not write his history of the First World War as a cautionary tale, although it reads as such—given that much of the war was fought over the landscapewhere NATO's cheerleaders now wish to "introduce ground forces...

...70 the magazine before the essay was published, but when he traveled to America a few months later, I went with my father to pick him up at Kennedy airport in New York...

...The holy sites of all religions are administered by their own authorities and protected by the government...

...The American Spectator • July 1999...

...Wesley Clark), the World War I commanders saw artillery as the key to any breakthrough—although, in the attack on the Somme river in 1916, one million British shells failed to cut the barb wire, let alone destroy German positions...

...All religious communities in Israel enjoy the full protection of the State...

...72 July 1999 • The American Spectator You deserve a factual look at...

...In the words of a German defender: "If only they had run, they would have overwhelmed us," but they walked, defiantly, a few kicking footballs...

...Among the many strengths of The First World War is how Keegan splices into the historicalr MOVING...

...Arabs are exempted from military duty and are not required to perform any compensating civilian service...

...Tall, with dark swept-back hair, and a voice that mixes warmth with authority, Keegan, an Oxford graduate, brings to the writing of history an undergraduate's enthusiasm for his subjects...

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...His conclusion about the Dardanelles also speaks volumes about the current strategy in Kosovo: "Nothing was more improvised than the plan...

...When I was a magazine editor, I commissioned him to write an essay on—of all things —the future of NATO (he didn't think it had one...

...During the world war that followed, which included African skirmishes and Colonel T.E...

...Of the ioo,000 men in the first waves, 20,000 were killed and 40,000 wounded, and today all that breaks the sweep of farmland are the hollow squares of the war cemeteries, their headstones as symmetrical as the distant wheat and corn...

...11, 33 p. 83 p. 17 p. 15 To learn more about the benefits of advertising in The American Spectator, contact: John Funk, Associate Publisher—Advertising...

...By 1917, 4 million Russian soldiers were prisoners of war and 1.3 million were dead...

...About 20% of the population (over one million people) are non-Jews, most of them Arabs, and some Druze...

...Ninety-eight percent of the Arabs in these territories live now under the rule of the P.A...

...France lost 2 million men, and ended the war with 650,000 war widows...

...Israeli universities are renowned centers of learning in the history and literature of the Arab Middle East...

...Of Passchendaele (in Flanders) he writes: "There is one of the dreariest landscapes in western Europe, a sodden plain of wide, unfenced fields, pasture and plough intermixed, overlying a water table that floods on excavation more than a few spadefuls deep," an observation that explains his later conclusion: "On the Somme he [General Sir Douglas Haig] had sent the flower of British youth to death or mutilation...

...In 196o, Keegan became a lecturer at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, the West Point of the British Army, in which young officers study not just tactics but Tacitus...

...All transactions in the Knesset are simultaneously translated into Arabic, and Arab members may address the Knesset in Arabic...

...On family vacations or during business trips, without it being an obsession, I have toured the forts at Verdun, climbed Vimy Ridge, bicycled through the Polish lakes at Tannenberg, and seen Gallipoli at sunrise from the rail of a steamship...

...recounted from the perspective of the front lines or, to use one of his eloquent phrases, "the personal angle of vision...

...There are close to 1,000 Arab educational institutions in Israel, with about 300,000 students—just about 25 times as many as in 1948, when the State of Israel was created, Ninety percent of Arab children attend school, probably the highest ratio of anyArab population anywhere...

...at Passchendaele he had tipped the survivors into the slough of despond...

...Education and literacy of the Arab population in Israel is as high as and probably higher than in any Arab country...

...There are daily TV and radio programs in Arabic...

...In 1914, the tottering Hapsburg monarchy—the same kind of tangle of overlapping nationalism that NATO is today—decided to teach the Serbs a lesson for Belgrade's alleged involvement in the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, who, ironically, was the one voice of restraint in an otherwise belligerent Vienna...

...The Somme," Keegan writes, as many have before, "marked the end of an age of vital optimism in British life that has never been recovered...

...Last December, remembering his praise for Milo-van Djilas's Wartime, I carried a copy to Belgrade, where I appreciated its recollection of earlier Yugoslav civil wars, if not the author's ruthless partisan convictions...

...Much today as we cling to a faith in air power (cf...

...Austria mobilized 3.5 million men under arms, and one-third of them never came home...

...In World War I, for example, rather than surrender to ultimatum when attacked on all sides, Serbia retreated over the mountains to (of all alleged non-Serb places) Kosovo and then the Adriatic, a maneuver that cost 6o,000 causalities—food for thought for those who think taking out Belgrade's power stations will break the nation...

...Contrary to propaganda and to what many believe, the Arabs in Israel are full-fledged citizens, enjoy every civil right, and have the same status in law as Jewish Israelis...

...The literacy rate among Israeli Arabs is 95%, virtually the same as for Israeli Jews...

...Israeli and Druze men are required to do three years of military service and then serve one month every year until they are 50...

...In the introduction to Six Armies of Normandy, a history of each army that fought along the invasion beaches, he describes the summer of 1944...

...Israeli universities and technical institutions are freely available to the Arabs...

...There is some question whether or not they are better off than before...

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...It is instructive and sobering to compare the condition of the approximately one million Arabs in Israel with that of the pitiful remnants of Jewry in Arab countries...

...Name: (Please Print) Address: City: State: Zip: Date of change: L VCAFRMJ The American Spectator • July 1999 71 text his own travel descriptions: "[T]he smallness of the Gallipoli battlegrounds is the most striking impression left on the visitor...

...If there is a theme that runs through John Keegan's histories, it is that wars are best understood listening to those who were there, a point he emphasized in his first and most influential book, The Face of Battle, in which the encounters at Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme are44 Who could have predicted that Clinton would pick up the Hapsburgs' burden...

...Under Arab dominance, they were always third-class citizens and subject to harassment and persecution...

...Heft 0 `c,` Down an all too well-trodden path...

...of all of the lessons of the First N World War apply today in Kosovo...

...My own conversations with Keegan usually touch on the reading and writing of military history...

...Contrary to propaganda...the Arabs in Israel enjoy every civil right and have the same status under law as Jewish Israelis...

...I first met John Keegan in the early 1980's...

...Clinton and Blair, in rallying the attack against the Serbs, like to cite Munich as the precedent that is under fire in the Balkans...

...What are the facts...

...Arabic is an official language in Israel, together with Hebrew...

...Perhaps the transition from the old world to the new took place at Belleau Wood, when retreating French officers told U.S...

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...One-fifth of the Serbian population died in the war...

...The Mask of Command is a study of generalship, including a long chapter on Hitler's failings as a commander, which he describes as a "charade of false heroics...

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...Neither a retired officer nor a university don, his conversations are laced more with questions than long answers...

...In August 194 the mobilization schedules of continental armies provided the great powers the momentum toward war, lest any of the European armies were literally to find themselves left at the station...

...At the side of his father, a school superintendent who had survived the horror of the trenches, Keegan saw the night summer sky fill with American Dakotas, heading toward their Normandy encounters—an image he associates with both military accomplishment and his personal affection for America...

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...The Hapsburg foreign office presented the Serbs with an ultimatum that included the acceptance of Austrian police within Serbia — similar to the NATO demand for its occupation MATTHEW STEVENSON (matthewstevenson@compuserve.com) is a frequent contributor to TAS and lives in Switzerland...

...In 1986, Keegan left Sandhurst to serve as defense correspondent for the London Daily Telegraph, and to continue writing books, many of which draw on his extensive readings from the two world wars, especially their memoirs...

...20-21 p. 6 p. 2 p. 27 p. 41 P. 9 P. 3 p. 31 p. 75 pp...

...Every Knesset, since the founding of the State in 1948, has had Arab and Druze members...

...Like all other Israeli citizens, they have full rights to vote and to hold elective office...

...The British war cabinet, urged on by Winston Churchill, thought to attack Europe's underbelly from Turkey, thus relieving pressure on the western front...

...In the war for Kosovo, it is easy to get the impression that NATO generals run their campaigns from AWACs or at press conferences in Brussels...

...Israeli Arabs—Moslems, as well as many Christian denominations—are free to exercise their faiths, to observe their own weekly day of rest and holidays, and to administer their own internal affairs...

...Nor, when "introduced," did Allied ground troops have an easy time in the Balkans...

...In 1917, attacking north from Salonika, British, French, and Serbian forces bogged down in the mud of Macedonia, which one German commander called "the greatest internment camp in the world...

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...But the author of The Face of Battle and other histories of warfare asks of the earlier conflict in the Balkans: "Why did a prosperous continent, at the height of its success as a source and agent of global wealth and power and at one of the peaks of its intellectual and cultural achievement, choose to risk all it had won for itself and all it offered to the world in the lottery of a vicious and local internecine conflict...

...Clinton and Blair...

...on the Chinese embassy in Belgrade...

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...Arabic is taught in Jewish secondary schools...

...In Vietnam, many officers rode in helicopters...

...Keegan writes critically of the lack of communication between the general staffs and the line officers who led the assaults...

...Like Keegan, I also find myself drawn to World War I battlefields...

...But the Wilsonian peace sowed the seeds of World War II, just as President Clinton, with a sketchy view of European history, struggles now to impose the doctrines of self-determination in regions where rival nationalist claims are often more legitimate than the U.S...

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...It is official policy of the Israeli government to foster the language, culture, and traditions of the Arab minority, in the educational system and in daily life...

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...Robert Graves, Good-bye to All That ohn Keegan, the British military j historian, finished his history of World War I before NATO's attack on Serbia was even a gleam in the president's photo opportunities...

...As Keegan writes of then and now: "Anyone of the characteristically world-weary officials of Hapsburg imperialism, if reincarnated today, might well ask what had changed...

...There are more than 20 Arabic periodicals...

...One in six were killed, and of these, 4 million died along the trenches of the western front...

...One World War I legacy lingering today, especially within the administration, is the idea that only American military intervention can save Europe from its periodic ritual suicides...

...Israel is a Democratic Country...

...But I consider Keegan's The Battle for History, a World War II annotated bibliography, as part of my life reading list...

...Israeli law grants women equal rights, induding the right to vote and to be elected to public office, prohibits polygamy, child marriage, and the barbarity of female sexual mutilation...

...They publish what they please, subject only to the same military censorship as Jewish publications...

...These figures alone would seem to prove that things can't be all that bad for Arabs in Israel...

...The Price of Admiralty is a sea companion to The Face of Battle, using Trafalgar, Jutland, and Midway to understand what drove sailors in these cruel seas...

...But there are now over one million Arabs in Israel, as against 150,000 in 1948 an almost seven-fold increase...

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...Born in 1934, Keegan was too young for World War II, except to see it through a child's eye...

...the military doctrines of Gen...

...Since the surrounding Arab states, with the exceptions of Egypt and recently of Jordan, are the avowed enemies of Israel and are dedicated to its destruction, this exemption is granted by the Israeli government to its Arab citizens, so as to spare them conflicts of loyalty and conscience...

...In contrast to the non-Israeli Arab world, Arab women in Israel enjoy the same status as men...

...Marines that they, too, might like to pull back: "Retreat...

...But the inability of politicians and generals to control events in war is a theme that runs from the trenches of World War Ito NATO's attack Advertiser Index By patronizing the companies and products posted in this issue, your positive response rewards them for advertising in one of the gems of American publishing, The American Spectator...

...There is, however, one difference between the "rights" of Arabs and Jews in Israel...

...Israeli health standards are by far the highest in the Middle East Israeli health institutions are freely open to all Arabs, on the same basis as they are to Jews...

...Protection of such diversity is embedded in Israel's traditions and confirmed by the government...

...Even the Russians are considering abandoning the Serbs for Western financial succor, and the NATO coalition includes many former enemies that, at least for now, agree on the further partition of the former Yugoslavia...

...Only five divisions made it across no-man's land, to find the uncut wire...

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...BOOKS REVI Hello Again to All That The First World War John Keegan Alfred A. Knopf / 453 pages / $35 REVIEWED BY Matthew Stevenson Patriotism, in the trenches, was too remote a sentiment, and at once rejected as fit only for civilians, or prisoners...

...He contrasts Wellington, riding the front lines at Waterloo, to World War I generals, at the rear in well-fortified bunkers: "The iron curtain of war had descended between all commanders, low and high alike, and their men, cutting them off from each other as if they had been on different continents...

...Of the r million British soldiers killed, 500,000 were never found...