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A Left’s Encounter with the Great War

A lively honey bee buzzes around a white English daisy on a hot summer morning. Satisfied by the plentiful nectar, she dances joyfully, from one flower to the next. A few yards away, William Renwick hauls in heavy buckets of crystal-clear water for his neatly-kept English-style garden. He wears a pair of worn-out trousers, a simple, sweaty and dirt-stained shirt, and an apron around his waist. Slightly tanned by the embraceable sunshine, Mr. Renwick wipes the sweat off of his wrinkled forehead, straightens his sore, aged back, and heads back into his simple countryside residence.

Being an avid reader of The Manchester Guardian, Mr. Renwick shares similar left-wing views with the editorials, and supported the paper’s unpopular opposition of the Second Boar War in 1899. At 60 years of age, Mr. Renwick has witnessed a number of pointless wars in his lifetime. He has seen the destructive results of them all. It is now July of 1914, almost three weeks after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. Being an avid newspaper reader who keeps up-to-date with international current events, Mr. Renwick clearly realizes another potential threat of a catastrophic war. The entire world holds its breath while an Ultimatum is to be issued. Mr. Renwick is sick of seeing the growth in nationalism, militarism, colonialism, and alliances world wide.

Mr. Renwick picks up a copy of the day’s newspaper, and searches through the contents impatiently. He folds away the paper and sighs after finding out no more about Austria-Hungary’s response of the assassination than he did the day before. Mr. Renwick sighs once more. He gets up and stands next to the small window in the kitchen. He sees skies of blue, clouds of white. This is the beginning of another beautiful summer’s day.

The doorbell rings…