The Human Story

by James C. Davis

  Panama held steamy forests, mountain ranges, and tumbling rivers. These were guarded by tarantulas, crocodiles, deadly snakes, and mosquitoes bearing yellow fever and malaria. The Americans began by warring on mosquitoes, and nearly wiped out both diseases. Then U.S. Army engineers began to build the giant, complicated system. Among other things, they had to move a hundred million cubic yards of earth.

  The canal, when finished, worked like this. Ships could enter from (let’s say) the eastern side, rise in giant locks (sections that pumps could fill with water) to eighty-five feet above sea level, steam across a man-made lake, navigate a channel and a “cut” chopped through the mountains, descend a lock, cross another lake, and drop down two more locks to the Pacific. Roosevelt, never underspoken, would call the Panama Canal “the biggest thing that’s ever been done.”

  With railroads, steamships, and canals, humans had discovered ways to move around the earth much faster than they ever had before. Jules Verne, a Frenchman, wrote a novel that conveys the sense of wonder at this feat. He named the book Around the World in Eighty Days, and around the world it had a huge success. Its hero is a wealthy Englishman named Phileas Fogg, who bets the other members of his London club that he can travel around the earth in eighty days. He sets out with his French valet, and journeys on a yacht, an ocean liner, coaches, sleighs, railroads, and an elephant. En route, in India he saves a pretty widow who would otherwise have been burned alive atop her husband’s funeral pyre, survives two shipwrecks, and narrowly escapes from North American Indians. Does he win his bet? Read the book.

  A young reporter for the New York World set out to beat Fogg’s fictional eighty-day record. Starting near New York, Nellie Bly sailed to France, paid a call on Verne, and sped by train to Italy. (Every day she kept excited readers of the World informed.) From Italy she sailed (that is, steamed) to Suez, glided through the desert on the canal, and journeyed onward to Japan. At times she rode on donkeys, sampans, and rickshaws. After she had sailed across the Pacific to San Francisco, she had only three thousand miles of the United States to go. She raced across the country on a special train (as other trains were made to pull aside and let hers through), and she was met at major stops by fireworks, politicians, crowds, and bands. At Chicago, Bly switched to another train and traveled east until at last she reached her starting point. The trip had taken eight days less than Phileas Fogg’s, but of course her editor demanded what had taken her so long.

  WHILE MANY THOUSAND workers dug the Panama Canal, two brothers in America were working by themselves on a machine that would do more than trains, canals, and ships to shrink the world.

  Wilbur and Orville Wright were a midwestern parson’s sons. Early on they showed a gift for things mechanical, and when they reached their twenties they made bicycles and printing presses. Wilbur, though, began to dream of something grander when he read about a German who had flown in gliders, drifting on the rising flows of air. (This pioneer, Otto Lilienthal, had perished in a crash in 1896.)

  Wilbur pondered how to build a craft that flew with power of its own. A major problem was controlling flight, that is, making a machine that could simultaneously tilt, climb, and steer to right or left. He and Orville noticed that a vulture shapes its movements while in flight by twisting both its wings. So the Wrights made gliders that had wings and rudders that the pilot could mechanically twist.

  A week before Christmas, 1903, the brothers’ first machine with power of its own was ready for its trial. They had already tested it at home, in Ohio, in a wind tunnel. Now they planned to really fly it, over sand dunes on a peninsula called Kitty Hawk, on the coast of North Carolina. With Orville at the plane’s controls and Wilbur running by the side to stabilize the wing, “Flyer I” arose and flew twelve seconds. Orville telegraphed their father: “SUCCESS FOUR FLIGHTS THURSDAY MORNING…STARTED FROM LEVEL WITH ENGINE POWER ALONE AVERAGE SPEED THROUGH AIR THIRTY ONE MILES LONGEST 57 SECONDS INFORM PRESS HOME CHRISTMAS.”

  Soon the Wrights made more and better planes. In 1905 they turned out “Flyer V,” which they could fly in figure eights and keep in motion more than half an hour. Wilbur later flew a plane in France two hours and twenty minutes. They went into production, selling planes in Europe and the America, but competitors in Europe drove them out of business. French inventors then improved the airplane. Many terms they used, such as aileron (a wing flap) and fuse-lage, are still in use, evidence of France’s contribution.

  By a generation after flight began, planes were crossing continents. This was risky work. Once a pilot tried to scout a route across the Andes, but he was forced to land his airplane on a two-mile-high plateau. For two days he and his mechanic hunted for a place from which to fly away, but the brinks of the cliffs were perilously close. Finally they climbed back in the plane, started up, raced it to the edge of a cliff, and plunged into space. At first the airplane dropped, but then it picked up speed and the pilot coaxed it past another mountain. Then the motor quit, but now they were above the plains. They crashed while landing, but survived.

  In 1927, an American, Charles Lindbergh, took off from near New York in a single-engine airplane loaded down with gasoline. Never in his job as air mail pilot had he flown where land was not in sight, but he was bound for France. He hoped to win a prize of $25,000 for being first to fly alone, nonstop, across the ocean. For a day and a half he flew the plane and fought to stay awake, singing, bouncing up and down, and stamping on the floor. At last he crossed the British Isles, and soon he drew near Paris. Just at dusk, he glimpsed the small French airport, dimly lit. He landed at one end and taxied to the center, thinking there was no one there. Amazed, he found a cheering crowd of thousands.

  In 1931 two pilots flew around the world in nine days. In 1932 a woman flew alone across the Atlantic; she would vanish five years later on a flight across the Pacific. And in 1938 a pilot crossed the Atlantic by mistake, or so he claimed. Starting from New York he flew without permission in an ancient single-engine plane, and he landed one day later in Ireland. He claimed that he had aimed for California but made a navigational mistake. Reporters nicknamed him “Wrong Way” Corrigan.

  Chapter 17

  We wage a war to end war.

  IT LASTED MORE than four horrendous years, from 1914 to 1918, and the world had never seen its like. Those who lived it knew it as the Great War, or the World War. Now, alas, we call it World War I.

  To understand the war, one needs to be acquainted with the four major European “powers” of the early 1900s, the nations that were strong enough to shape events. The four of them stretched in an arc across northern Eurasia, from the British Isles to the Bering Strait. They were: Britain, which ruled the oceans and many far-flung colonies; France, which Germany had crushed in 1870, but had a proud military tradition; Germany, rich and capable; and Russia, poor and backward but so populous that it could field huge armies. Two lesser powers were Italy, which was better known for music than for military medals, and Austria-Hungary, which was a huge but disunited empire.

  In the early 1900s, tensions between these powers were the rule. They quarreled over colonies in Africa and Asia and over the complicated struggles of the mostly Slavic peoples in the Balkan Peninsula. In the spirit of the times, they longed to prove their greatness in a war. Along their common border Germany and France erected lines of forts, and Germany raced to build a bigger navy than Britain’s. Russia tried to build the railroads it would need to move its armies in the event of war. Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy, which together filled the center of Europe, had formed a “Triple Alliance” aimed at France and Russia. But fear of Germany resulted in a “Triple Entente” (or understanding) between France and Britain, to the Germans’ west, and Russia to their east. Feeling encircled, Germany had drawn up a secret plan to knock out France and Russia, should a general war break out.

  World War I

  Assassination in Bosnia, Austria-Hungary (1); heavy Fighting in France (2), Russia (3), Italy (4), and Turkey (5).

 
; A general war was possible, and yet it seemed unlikely. Despite their quarrels, Europe’s “powers” were usually friendly to each other. Several of the kings were cousins, and these lofty men were mostly on good terms. Smartly uniformed as generals and admirals they went to one another’s weddings and funerals. When Victoria, queen of Britain, died a few days after the beginning of the twentieth century, two emperors, three other rulers, nine crown princes and heirs apparent, and forty princes and grand dukes attended the funeral and walked behind her coffin in procession. The German kaiser and his cousin-by-marriage, the Russian tsar, whose troops would soon be slaughtering each other, had for decades carried on a friendly correspondence. They wrote in English, calling each other Willie and Nicky.

  THE IGNITION END of the fuse that led to war lay inside Austria-Hungary. This huge empire was like a wobbly Dagwood sandwich, made with layers of different peoples. Its army regulations recognized all of these languages: German, Hungarian, Czech, Slovakian, Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian, Ukrainian, Italian, Polish, and Romanian. Nation-fever had infected many of the groups who spoke these tongues. They wanted to leave the empire and live as independent nations.

  On a sunny day in June 1914, a young man bitten by this separation fever sparked the First World War. He did this deed in Bosnia, a Balkan province in the southern tip of Austria-Hungary. An Austro-Hungarian archduke, the heir to the empire’s throne, had just arrived in Bosnia’s capital, Sarajevo. Terrorists were waiting for him. When his open car came to a stop, the chauffeur having made a wrong turn, nineteen-year-old Gavrilo Princip jumped on the running board. With a shot from his pistol he killed the archduke, and with a second he killed the archduke’s wife.

  Princip and his friends were members of a secret group, the Black Hand. They aimed to rescue Bosnia from Austria-Hungary and join it to Serbia, a new nation east of Bosnia. They viewed Serbia as Bosnia’s rightful home, since Bosnians and Serbians spoke the same Slavic language. The terrorists had trained in Serbia and got their weapons there.

  Although the Austro-Hungarians had no proof, they were sure that Serbia had planned the murders. (They were right. The head of a semi-official Serbian secret society called Union or Death had plotted the assassination.) The Austro-Hungarians also feared that not just Bosnians but also other Slavic-language groups, the Croats and the Slovenes, wished to leave the empire and perhaps join with Serbia. So Austria-Hungary decided it must punish Serbia, and use it to teach all separatists (or nationalists) a lesson.

  The danger of war was great. If a parliament of nations had existed then, it might have intervened and kept the peace. But no such league existed, and in a matter of days the fuse that Princip lit in Bosnia would burn through country after country toward the dynamite. Generations of historians have traced the fuse’s sparking path and tried to fix the blame for what turned out to be a widespread war.

  The Austro-Hungarians, as was said above, were allied with the Germans, their neighbors to the north and west. So now they checked to see if rich, dynamic Germany would support them. That help could be decisive.

  The Germans’ choice — to back their friend or not — was largely up to Kaiser William II. William had utter confidence, utterly unjustified, in his ability to make foreign policy. He dreamed of military glory, and he loved to dress in the uniform of an admiral or a guards officer, with a helmet crested by a waving plume and a golden eagle. So it was not surprising when he chose to stand behind the Austro-Hungarians if they went to war. Perhaps he hoped for war and glory, or he may have simply felt obliged to back his ally. Germany gave Austria-Hungary what has been called a “blank check,” promising German backing if the greatest power of Eastern Europe, Russia, threatened to help Serbia fight Austria-Hungary. When the German envoy in Vienna telegraphed that Austria-Hungary might only mildly punish Serbia, William wrote in the margin of the telegram, “I hope not.”

  Sure of German backing, Austria-Hungary sent the Serbs an ultimatum. It made demands intended to provoke a war. Little Serbia, faced with doom, agreed to all demands but one (which dealt with trying the plotters). That one refusal was enough; it gave Austria-Hungary the pretext it wanted. The empire declared war on Serbia and began to bombard Belgrade, the country’s capital.

  Now what would Russia do? The Russians liked to play a leading role among the little Balkan states, including Serbia. Since they claimed, as Slavs, to be protectors of their little Slavic brothers, they couldn’t simply watch as Austria-Hungary crushed the Serbs. And they had a bigger reason for concern: they feared that Austria-Hungary and Germany might subjugate the eastern Balkan peninsula. In that case, those powers might block Russia’s water route to the Mediterranean, choking Russian foreign trade.

  Russian officials saw that they must quickly act — or bluff. They had to get the jump on Austria-Hungary because, in their huge country with its horse-and-wagon roads, it took so long to raise an army and to move it to the front. So they began a limited mobilization. This was enough to alarm the Germans because, if it came to war, the Germans, like the Russians, wanted to be ready first. They knew that if the Russians should be first to put an army on the German eastern border, they would have an advantage if they immediately attacked.

  Germany demanded that the Russians stop assembling forces. Now the Russians could no longer bluff, if indeed they had been bluffing, for the Germans were in earnest. Since Germany might fight beside Austria-Hungary, the Russians had to act quickly against Germany as well. So they made the big decision to fully mobilize not only on their Austro-Hungarian frontier but on their German one as well. (In his diary that evening the none-too-brilliant tsar summed up his more important doings on this momentous day: “I went for a walk by myself. The weather was hot…had a delightful bathe in the sea.”)

  Germany now felt it had no choice, so in the Russian capital the German ambassador handed the Russian foreign minister a declaration of war. “What you are doing is criminal,” the Russian told him. “The curses of the nations will be on you.” “We are defending our honor,” replied the ambassador. “Your honor was not involved,” said the foreign minister. “You could have prevented the war by one word [to Austria-Hungary]. You didn’t want to.” The German burst into tears.

  Germany also had to decide what to do about France, its neighbor to the west. The Germans were convinced that France would join the war on Russia’s side. So Germany declared war on France as well as Russia, claiming that French armed forces had crossed the German border.

  Germany had long ago foreseen the chance of war on two frontiers and had therefore made a master plan. Since France’s German border was so strongly fortified, German forces first would dash straight west through little Belgium, which officially was neutral. Then they would wheel to the south, enter France, spread out, and encircle France’s armies. In the meantime, German generals assumed, Russia would only slowly mobilize its armies, hampered by its meager roads and railroads. After crushing France, Germany would turn its troops around, shuttle them across the homeland on its first-rate trains, and crush the Russians at their leisure.

  Now they put this plan in motion, but as they did they drew another power into war. When the Germans had declared war on France and Russia, they counted on Britain’s staying out. This proved to be a big miscalculation. It’s true that Britain was not bound by the terms of the Entente to go to war alongside France, but it was likely that, in the end, it would. Since many Britons wanted to stay out, their government needed an excuse to stand with France.

  Germany, preparing its attack on France, demanded that the Belgians permit its armies to march across their land. Britain, when it learned of this, insisted that Germany not violate Belgian neutrality. Despite the British warning German troops invaded Belgium. Here was the pretext Britain needed. It promptly declared war on Germany and started sending troops across the Channel.

  It was only five days since Austria-Hungary had declared war on Serbia.

  Other countries soon declared war, and the opposing lineups were
clear. On one side were the “Allies,” chiefly Russia, France, and Britain. They would soon be joined by Italy (even though it had been a member of the Triple Alliance) and much later by America, and they would also have the help of French and British colonies throughout the world. On the other side were Germany and Austria-Hungary, soon joined by Turkey, which was then a large but rickety empire. Smaller countries joined the war on one side or the other.

  NEARLY EVERYONE WAS sure the war would last only for weeks. The German emperor told departing troops in early August, “You will be home before the leaves have fallen from the trees.” All through Europe young men rushed to join the armies, cheered by teachers, priests, politicos, and girlfriends. Recruits marched smiling down the flower-strewn city streets, and women darted out of cheering crowds to kiss them. This personal ad appeared in the Times of London: “PAULINE — Alas, it cannot be. But I will dash into the great venture with all that pride and spirit an ancient race has given me.”

  At first the German battle plan — shatter France, then conquer Russia at leisure — worked well. The Germans crashed through Belgium, wheeled south, and in big battles they pushed the French back almost all the way to Paris. But then they learned that the Russians had prepared for war much faster than expected; Russian armies had crossed the German eastern border. The Germans therefore had to pull two army corps from France and send them east, thus cutting down their strength in France.