World War I Today

British Foreign Secretary Edward Grey as both Medusa and Dorian Gray. Pointed ears and a quill pen behind his left.

Image text: Das Bildniss des Edward Grey

Nach dem Originalgemälde des Münchner Malers Jos. Felix Falkenbach.

After the original painting by the Munich painter Jos. Felix Falkenbach.

Reverse:

Kriegs Postkarte; Kriegspostkarte Nr. 67.

Logo:

CA & Co. (m.)

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Postcard of a German soldier guarding French POWs, most of them colonial troops, the colorful uniforms of a Zouave, Spahi, Senegalese, and metropolitan French soldier contrasting with the field gray German uniform. A 1915 postcard by Emil Huber.

Image text: Emil Huber 1915

Reverse:

Unsere Feldgrauen

Serie II

? preussischer Infanterie-Soldat

Prussian Infantry Soldier

Logo: K.E.B.

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A Swiss postcard of 'The European War' in 1914. The Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary face enemies to the east, west, and south. Germany is fighting the war it tried to avoid, battling Russia to the east and France to the west. Germany had also hoped to avoid fighting England which came to the aid of neutral (and prostrate) Belgium, and straddles the Channel. Austria-Hungary also fights on two fronts, against Russia to the east and Serbia and Montenegro to the south. Italy, the third member of the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary, declared neutrality, and looks on. Other neutral nations include Spain, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania. Japan enters from the east to battle Germany. The German Fleet stays close to port in the North and Baltic Seas while a German Zeppelin targets England. The Austro-Hungarian Fleet keeps watch in the Adriatic. Turkey is not represented, and entered the war at the end of October, 1914; Italy in late May, 1915.

Image text: Der Europäische Krieg

The European War

Reverse:

Kriegskarte No. 61. Verlag K. Essig, Basel

Kunstanstalt (Art Institute) Frobenius A.G. Basel

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A German Fokker Eindecker flying over the front in the Meuse/Verdun sector.

Image text: No. 104. Westlichen Kriegschauplatz: Schwere Niederlage der Franzosen auif den Maashöhen bei Combres.

Western theater of war: Heavy French defeat on the heights of the Meuse at Combres.

Serie 63/4

Towns include: Les Éparges, St. Remy, and Combres.

Reverse:

Kriegshilfe München N.-W. 11.

Zum Gloria-Viktoria Album

Sammel. u. Nachschlagewerk des Völkerkrieges

War Fund Munich 11, N. W. 11

For Gloria Viktoria Album

Collection. and reference work of international war

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The Royal Palace in Bucharest, Romania. A postcard altered to show the German flag flying over the palace.

Image text: Bucuresti. Palatul Regal, Königliches Schloss

Bucharest. Royal Palace

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A poem beneath a United States flag calls on American boys to show the Kaiser.

Image text: Show the Kaiser

Show the Kaiser plainly

When you meet him over there,

That from now on and forever

He must treat us on the square,

Just go and make him settle

For the cursed submarine,

Or prove that you're the toughest boys

A Kaiser's ever seen.

2212

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Thursday, July 9, 1914

"[Grey] could only repeat to me that secret agreements between Great Britain on the one hand and France and Russia on the other, which would entail obligations on Great Britain in case of a European war, did not exist. England wished to preserve an absolutely free hand, in order to be able to act according to her own judgement in the event of continental complications. The Government had to a certain extent obligated itself to Parliament not to commit itself to any secret liabilities. . . .

But as he did not wish to put me on the wrong track — 'as I did not want to mislead you' — he at once added that his relations to the Powers referred to had none the less lost nothing of their earlier intimacy. So that even if there existed no agreements which imposed any obligations, he did not wish to deny that from time to time 'conversations' had taken place between the naval or military authorities on both sides . . ." ((1), more)

Friday, July 9, 1915

"The rounding up of the straggling bands of Germans throughout the colony occupied the Union forces during the next two months. Finally, on July 9th [1915], at a place called Kilometre 500, the Germans surrendered German Southwest Africa, with 5,000 prisoners of war, to the British. The conquest of this empire cost the Allies 1612 men in killed and wounded, while the Germans and rebel Boers lost 800." ((2), more)

Friday, July 9, 1915

"Our Church Spires

To Maurice Barrès

Sharp bell-spires, you alone have power to give

Its intonation to our countryside

Attuned to life.

Through gradual centuries by hedge and grove,

Blue sky and river and the careful pride

Of human love.

If you were once destroyed — the flame gone cold! —

Then it would be for forest, ford, and field

Death of the soul.

Jean-Marc Bernard, translated by Graham Dunstan Martin" ((3), more)

Sunday, July 9, 1916

"In spite of the growing numbers and quality of their Allied opposition, July 9 was one of the Eindeckerflieger's best days. Leutnant Gustav Leffers of Abwehrkommando Nord shot down an F.E.2b of No. 11 Squadron that had just bombed a target southwest of Bapaume. . . .

Elsewhere, Parschau demonstrated that balloon busting did more than just provide a spectacle for pyromaniacs. The French gasbag he destroyed north of Grévillers, killing Adjutant M. Mallet of the 55e Compagnie d'Aérostiers, had been directing artillery on the German trenches for some time. As he returned over the lines, Parschau was greeted by cheers from the soldiers and, since this was his eighth victory, he got two more tangible rewards: the Orden Pour le Mérite and command of Abwehrkommando-Nord. Walz of Kasta 2 scored his fourth victory on the 9th, while Leutnant Hans-Karl Müller of KEK Avillers got another balloon. Two other British planes were claimed by the Germans that day, although one Fokker E.III was brought down near Mariakerke aerodrome by Roderic Dallas, back in a Nieuport, for his fifth victory." ((4), more)

Monday, July 9, 1917

"At the end of the first decade of July 1917, the troops belonging to the Romanian Second Army (the 1st, 3rd, 6th, and 8th Infantry Divisions and the 2nd Cavalry Brigade) deployed on the hills west of the locality of Mărăşti, in contact with large units belonging to General Gerock Group, were awaiting for the attack order. The Second Army under command of General Alexandru Averescu was entrusted the mission of piercing the Austro-Hungarian and German lines and of advancing beyond the valley of the Putna river; it was from there that later on, together with the Romanian First Army and the neighbour Russian troops, the decisive strike was to be delivered on the enemy forces in the Focşani zone.

The ratio of forces was, in the main, in favour of the Romanians . . ." ((5), more)

Tuesday, July 9, 1918

"Throughout June and into the first days of July, the Americans were part of the nail-biting waiting game—waiting for the German assault. Nightly shelling harassed the New Yorkers. Influenza struck, too, afflicting 40 percent of the men in the regiment. Nerves frayed. Sgt. Noble Sissle felt an 'air of tenseness that seemed to show that trouble brooded of a greater magnitude than we had witnessed in our section of the front.'" ((6), more)

Quotation contexts and source information

Thursday, July 9, 1914

(1) Excerpt from a report from German Ambassador Prince Lichnowsky in London to German Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg on July 9, 1914. British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey had asked the Ambassador to call on him. Grey told the Ambassador that he would endeavor to persuade the Russian Government to take a conciliatory attitude towards Austria.

The 'conversations' between the naval and military authorities that Grey refers to would surprise many in Parliament when Britain went to war a few weeks after this meeting. The deployment of the French fleet to the Mediterranean and of the British fleet to protect France's Atlantic coast, and the deployment of British land forces on the continent on the left wing of the French Army had been subjects of these conversations.

Friday, July 9, 1915

(2) The 'Union forces' were those of the Union of South Africa under the command of Prime Minister Louis Botha. Despite the opposition of many Boers who supported Germany in the World War, and subsequently fought for it, Botha supported Great Britain, and acted on its request to seize Germany's colony of Southwest Africa. The Germans surrendered Windhoek, the colony's capital, on May 12, but continued to fight for the following two months.

Friday, July 9, 1915

(3) 'Our Church Spires' by French writer Jean-Marc Bernard. He was killed by a shell on July 9, 1915 while carrying rations to the front line at Souchez.

The Lost Voices of World War I, An International Anthology of Writers, Poets and Playwrights by Tim Cross, page 245, copyright © 1989 by The University of Iowa, publisher: University of Iowa Press, publication date: 1989

Sunday, July 9, 1916

(4) The introduction of the Fokker Eindekker (monoplane) — the first airplane to fire through the rotation of its propeller — allowed the Germans to dominate the battlefront sky. That dominance was broken by the French Nieuport and later the British D.H.2 pusher plane. Observation balloons observed ground troops and directed artillery, and were well-defended by anti-aircraft guns and fighter planes.

Monday, July 9, 1917

(5) Romania entered the war on August 27, 1916, and was overrun by Central Power forces by the end of the year, driven out of Wallachia and Dobruja and back to Moldavia where the Russians held the Allied line. Typhus, typhoid, dysentery, jaundice, and influenza sickened and killed a large part of the Romanian army, but after peaking in February and March, 1917, with the return of warmer weather, and with the help of a French military mission under General Henri Berthelot, the Romanians were able to rebuild. In July, 1917 they planned an offensive against German and Austro-Hungerian forces under Friedrich von Gerock.

Tuesday, July 9, 1918

(6) By July Germany had already mounted four offensives on the Western Front in 1918, the last ending on June 14. Through the following month The Allies expected the fifth offensive at any time. The 'New Yorkers' were Black soldiers in America's segregated army. The country's and the army's racism forbade Black and White soldiers serving together, and kept the former from combat. Our author, Stephen Harris, elsewhere writes (page 175), 'The men of the Fifteenth New York had been moved out of St. Nazaire as common laborers and into the French Fourth Army as combat infantrymen. On 12 March the regiment had been placed at the disposal of the French Sixteenth Division "for service as a combat unit." French Black and other colonial soldiers were an integral part of the French army. The influenza would return in the autumn in a more deadly form.