World War I, Part I

It is interesting to study World War I from a European standpoint after mainly learning about American involvement. If you think about it, we joined three years into the war!
I think the War could have been avoided if it had not been for the alliances--they certainly proved to be "entangling". Germany, then France and Britain might not have gotten involved.
In "A 20th Century Retrospective: The Shot Still Reverberating Around the World" by Melvin Rhodes, I learned that World War I is one of the causes of existing tensions in the Middle East. After the war, since the Turks had sided with the Central Powers, regions of the Middle East became subject to European influence and control. For example, Iraq was set up under British protection at Versailles, and the British appointed the King. This monarchy was overthrown in 1958 and following conflicts led to the rise of Saddam Hussein.
Before class today, I had never learned of the atrocities committed against the Armenians during WWI. It is absolutely horrifying--I'm not sure if there's much more I can say. Everything seems so trite and meaningless. Perhaps that most disturbing aspect is that today was the first time--that the Turkish government has kept this so "hush-hush" and refuses to admit that it was genocide. This happened before the Holocaust and Stalin's Purges!
When we talked about the trenches and the "slaughter". When we think about the war and the battles, individuals become numbers on the order of hundreds or thousands, numbers we won't necessarily remember. The truth, however, is that in the slaughter extraordinary leaders, innovators, and artists were lost or damaged. I thought of Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs. Dalloway. It is set in post-war London. One of the characters, Septimus Warren Smith suffers from shell-shock; he is haunted by memories of war to the extent that he essentially goes crazy. He cannot even interact normally with his wife. Sadly. doctors did not understand him, and kept dismissing his confessions, and could not adequately treat him. He ultimately commits suicide.