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Our author has quite the tightrope to balance here, pitting the futility of war against the righteousness of the sacrifice. So far he seems to be just about holding steady in his position.
Look. We went for a night out with the lads. Had a couple too many. Next morning, I wake up, and apparently we've acquired a subcontinent. Could have happened to anyone, really.
Good to know Searle-Wilson hasn't dropped off the rope. Reviewing the chapter - for the first time in a month or so - as I posted it, I was struck by how forcefully I'd ended up having him make the argument for war, and worried I'd over-egged it.
Giving in to tyranny is always cheaper in the short run. But if you maintain liberalism and freedom of action on sufferance, you will not have them for long.
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
Funnily enough, it still works - perhaps even better - in the original context (
from NPR):
WITTES: He was writing about a tax dispute between the Pennsylvania General Assembly and the family of the Penns, the proprietary family of the Pennsylvania colony who ruled it from afar. And the legislature was trying to tax the Penn family lands to pay for frontier defense during the French and Indian War. And the Penn family kept instructing the governor to veto. Franklin felt that this was a great affront to the ability of the legislature to govern. And so he actually meant purchase a little temporary safety very literally. The Penn family was trying to give a lump sum of money in exchange for the General Assembly's acknowledging that it did not have the authority to tax it.
SIEGEL: So far from being a pro-privacy quotation, if anything, it's a pro-taxation and pro-defense spending quotation.
WITTES: It is a quotation that defends the authority of a legislature to govern in the interests of collective security. It means, in context, not quite the opposite of what it's almost always quoted as saying but much closer to the opposite than to the thing that people think it means.
Wilhelmite Germany was incredibly tacky and tasteless wasn't it? It's not quite as bad as his entry into Jerusalem in 1898, but it's up there.
All the evidence does point at the former, so I'd go with that.
Not in the scope of this work I know, but had it been any other power than Prussia that unified Germany I do think things would have turned out differently.
We're not entirely innocent when it comes to parades on the Sovereign's birthday (which I do love), but generally speaking, yes.
Agreed.
Lederhosen and Beer instead of Jackboots and, well, still Beer.
I actually have notes on a Bavaria>Germany Vicky save tucked away for a rainy day. I know far too little about the location and the period to do it proper justice as my knowledge stands, but I am of a mind to do at least something with it one day.
Would love for someone to do a Germany and Britain figure out a way to split the world and Europe AAR at some point, as it is indeed constantly teased by history and alt-historians.
I too must confess to one day want to explore a Germany/British late-19th/early 20th century alliance.
I mean, not for the "challenge" you understand, but for the fun.
The main obstacle is that, if you play Germany, you need to be careful with Britain. Too careful for it to be a real power-sharing arrangement.
As the UK, it takes superhuman strength of will not to give in to the temptation to knock Germany down a peg.
If the cost of the conflict might outweigh a German Europe then I dread to think what it might be.
By setting fire to the globe and digging millions of graves.
I wonder how far after the war the author is writing and if in TTL the Great War is merely a bloody prologue to something worse.
It is possible to f**k for virginity. It's just conceptually convoluted.
Searle-Wilson is writing in 2017. I haven't yet decided on whether we'll have a WWII. Certainly the insistence with which I have referred to this one as The Great War (and the thrust of the introduction) means that, as IOTL, a Second World War will have to be less psychologically devastating than this one for Britain at least, if not the other participants.
Almost certainly. The entente is far, far too powerful to lose, and everyone is going to end up hating them eventually. International relations will be Germany's to lose, basically. Decolonisation, whatever the federation manages to incorporate, is going to hit all three hard if not handled properly. If the axis revenge are patient and wait until the middle of the crisis (in Africa and Asian colonies especially), then a lot of damage could be done, and nukes may be used liberally.
The Entente, particularly Britain, will also be ending up with more settlement to patrol than IOTL, thanks to the Spanish and Italians being on the other side ITTL (and also a pretty major Asian development later in the war).
The challenge for any AAR that reaches the Atomic Age is how to avoid inadvertently getting to a point where the only logical conclusion is Nuclear Winter.