Answer me, dammit!

I’m listening on audiobook to “The Guns of August”, Barbara Tuchman’s classic account of the opening month of The Great War. This is also known as World War I, but I have always thought that name was a bit odd, since people then had no way of knowing that there would be another World War. So how could they know the one they were fighting was Number One?

Anyway, what strikes me about the proceedings leading up to the disastrous month of August 1914 (the month my maternal grandparents were born, by the way, one day apart) is the amount of diplomatic inquiries and ultimatums that go unanswered. I often gripe about how people don’t respond to my e-mails and think this is a modern phenomenon, but not even 100 years ago could people be bothered to answer letters and questions of extreme importance to the order of the world.

Isn’t it weird?