My Journey Into Richmond

-- And What I Found There

Part II

“I have thought it wise to live for the future and not the dead past. While cherishing honorable memory of its glories, I have thought that we should look to the future for life, power and prosperity…”

William Mahone, Readjuster and ornery cuss, 1882

Just a different set of problems…

Come now, and walk alongside an obstreperous travel writer who is researching an extensive feature about Richmond – a different version than the one with which you are familiar.

He—like you—has never been to the Richmond described here-- but he’s applied himself to studying the story, and he receives able guidance by indulgent, patient and hospitable residents.

In this Richmond, people are no less venal and slothful, nor more gracious and industrious, as they are in the city around you now.

They just have a different set of problems.

The subjects of conversations in its boisterous bars and busy cafés are textured by a history quite altered from the one recorded in Virginius Dabney’s book.

Nobody could blame you, though, if you’d like to move there.

The story thus far: Philip Gotz. a well-known travel writer for print and online media, is taking one of his five-day "What I Found There" excursions to Richmond, Va. He was met upon his arrival at the Admiral Richard E. Byrd International Airport by Tia Chulangong. a representative of the city's tourism office.



***********************************************************************


2. To Main Street Station…

Their queue was short and Tia followed by Gotz slid their cards into a chirruping reader, then boarded the crowded train. A few electric chimes bing-bonged and a pleasant woman’s voice said, “This is the Byrd Airport Express to Main Street Station and Richmond center.”

Gotz noted that among the moving, LED advert placards advertising jobs and attractions that Ken Burnsian pictures depicted one mustached, bespectacled Julian Sprague, and images of streetcars from the past decades. Scrolling words-and-pictures screens placed at the ceiling showed the time, temperature (a pleasant 72 degrees), minutes to Main Street (10 and counting…), but also announced the “Richmond Metropolitan Authority: 120 Years And Still Rollin’.”

Tia urged him not to sit yet but follow her to the observation level. Gotz pushed in his baggage handle to carry it up the 10 tread spiral stair. At its foot, Tia thought better of ascending first, and said, “After you.”

Gotz chortled. “You’re just not going to cut me any slack are you?”

“So, tell me about that elevator in Seattle?”

The writer set his mouth in a line, said nothing, and went up the stairs though midway up he stopped to inform her, “You know, that story is at least six years old by now, and I was a different man, then.”

Tia, holding the silver stair rail said, “How so?”

He raised his brows for comic effect. “Well. I was six years younger with better knees.”

A few passengers at the bottom of the stairs gazed toward them expecting movement. Gotz waved at them and continued. As he came to the clear canopy observation deck the train bolted out of the airport’s tunnel into the bright day that shined through the bubble top. The train’s chock-itty-duh-duh-duh as it rushed forward provided a sense of exhilaration. Passengers pointed and took pictures of the countryside streaking past.

Tia said by way of preface, “ I hope you won’t mind, but I can talk your ear off about Richmond.”

“What I’m here for,” he said as he twisted his backpack around, unzipped it, and pulled out Jessamine Venable’s lauded history, The Girl in The Picture, about the civil upheaval in Richmond and Virginia surrounding the 1888 state constitutional convention. A bookmark indicated he was halfway in, and dog-eared pages gave the appearance of study.

“You’re scheduled to meet Dr. Venable on Monday --?” she frowned at her own palm-held device. “Yes, Monday at 2 p.m.”

“And to meet your low expectations of me, I’m going to ask you some rude and personal questions.”

“Oh, rude and personal. My favorites.”

“How is it that you’re in Richmond?”

“I’m native. Born and raised.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“I wouldn’t have thought.”

“Why is that?”

“You’re baiting me,” Gotz said, half-smiling.

“These are your rude and personal questions.”

“OK. Fine. You’re not from Anglo-Saxon stock.”

“Not directly, no. My father,” she touched her clavicle, and a necklace pendant inscribed with symbols, “ was studying international policy at Ginter University, he’s from Thailand, and my mother, she’s African American, was a dance major.”

“How long ago was this?”

“Mr. Gotz.”

“Phil. I’m trying not to ask how old you are.”

“Good, because a Southern woman wouldn’t say.”

“I was trying not to be rude or personal. But -- You’re all of, what, 19?”

She laughed. “A bit more than that, Mr. Gotz. And that’s as far as you’re getting – Not something, I’m guessing, you’re used to.”

“Ouch,” he touched his ribs and squinted as if lanced. “But I probably have socks older than you. I think I’m even wearing them,” and he pulled up his trouser legs in a well-practiced move.

“Thought so.”

Tia twisted her mouth into a reluctant and indulgent smile and shook her head.
He resembled a rather befuddled professor, in his tweedy jacket, khakis, and tassel loafers.

The writer said, “Speaking of statements, these pictures and the screen down there, the 120 years. What’s that about?”

“Ah, well, 2008 is he 120th year of electric-powered transit in Richmond, which has the oldest in the world, Julian Sprague — he’s right there,” she motioned to a bespectacled man, his combed over white hair and drooping mustaches, “flipped the switch for the first time on a trolley car train in 1888.”

“Hold up. You said trolley car. Isn’t a streetcar and a trolley the same?”

“Um, there’s a technical difference. Richmond had horse-drawn streetcars. He invented the troller that hooked the car to an overhead wire.”

“Ah — so trolley.”

“Happened right here, on Church Hill. We’ll see the spot. The city owned the service and didn’t sell to outsiders, so we’ve maintained the system -- But I need to tell you about this,” she raised a hand to indicate the outside. “We’re passing through some, uh, controversy right now.”

Gotz glanced to either side.

“Trees?”

“We call this The Woods.”

“How Lord of the Rings.”

“It’s a part of a circle of forest, fields and farms that goes around Richmond, actually, most of Virginia’s major cities and many smaller towns have a version of this, but ours is the oldest and biggest.”

“Trees.”

“Forests, fields and streams. The Greater Richmond Commission, what it was called back then, set it up about 1890. Basically designed as a buffer to prevent what we’d now call sprawl.”

Gotz nodded and the passing woodlands shimmered on his glasses.

“Humph. So that’s smart and years ahead of everybody. Richmond was Green before there was the political color,” he raised the book. “So elsewhere, Dr. Venable talks about how Teddy Roosevelt came here and admired what was happening.”

“’Their love of nature in her many parts,’’’ yes. But it’s a big topic right now in Richmond, which is has now more than three million people in the metro. One of the issues is that due to very strict zoning, high rise buildings can’t go up in the old central city.”

“And how did that happen?"

"Well, around 1890, Richmond adopted the nation's first historic preservation and historic district creation regulations. And one of the zoning laws was that no building within six blocks of Capitol Hill could rise taller than the building, or hide it from view."

"Thomas Jefferson's Temple of Democracy," Gotz said, then peered over his glasses, adding, "Even though Virginia was built upon a slave economy."

Tia raised a brow. "We never said we were perfect."

Gotz laughed. "Virginians are always saying they did it first, better and prettier."

"Most times, we have."

"And thus, no high rises."

“Not downtown, anyway, or the older and historic neighborhoods. Like I say, we call the parklands around the city The Woods but few years ago a developer got famous by describing them as “a noose of weeds and vines.”

“Poetic.”

“Everybody has an opinion. You’ll hear them. Buh-lieve me.”

“What’s your opinion?”

Tia eyed his recorder, then laughed, forming the dimples. “We should find a solution through discussion.”

Gotz grunted. “You oughtta go into politics.”

“Maybe,” she raised a brow. “One day.”

The train rolled free of the forest into open sky and the city spread over undulant hills. The cars curved toward the Beaux Arts tower of Main Street Station. Tia explained the view.

“To the left is Richmond’s cradle, the Shockoe Valley,” and upon Richmond’s eastern hills clustered a proliferation of brick and wood frame houses and buildings of considerable vintage.

“Above it is Church Hill, there at St. John’s Patrick Henry gave his “Give me liberty or death,” speech."

A span crossing above the tracks and bridging the hills loomed large on iron legs with cross-hatched struts. "Ahead of us is the Marshall Street Viaduct that goes between the hills. It's 2800 feet long and 95 feet high and spans 17 railroad tracks. To the right, Court End and downtown."

Gotz observed another tight agglomeration of varied buildings, some quite contemporary, and one massive ziggurat rising above it all. He asked Tia about it.

“That’s MCV, the Medical College of Viriginia, it’s —“

A black shadow flew across the passengers as the train slid between the viaduct's iron legs and an amplified non-automated and jovial voice interrupted her.

“Oh, this is Captain Trice,” and she raised a hushing finger to her lips.

“G’evenin’ ladies and gentleman, from around the world and from around here, this is your engineer Cap’n Trice speaking. We arr-ruh on our final approach to the grand and wonderful Main Street Station, where you can connect to every other train, tram, streetcar, bus, taxi you need, ever’ thing but the boat, and that’s just three blocks away.

From Main Street Station you can catch the Medical College of Vuh- gin-ya East Campus Express a-a-a-nd the Ginter University South Express, the Downtown Access train, the Richmond Circle and the Manchester and Glen Allen locals. This train proceeds to Broad Street Station.

If you’re visitin’ with us here in Richmond today, we have a welcome center and traveler’s hostel in the old Railroad YMCA next door, and if you’re waitin’ on Amtrak, there’s restaurants and lounges in the station. Cap’n Trice thanks you for taking the Richmond Metropolitan System today, because it’s been 120 years, and we’re still rollin’, --

Tia mouthed along with him: “—and I know, ‘cuz I’ve been here for every single one of’em.”

The tourists chuckled even as he began repeating some of his narration in serviceable Spanish. The soft exhalation of the slowing train began and the station’s shed eclipsed the car’s dome. The train slid along the outside track. From here it would roll out and yaw west.

Cap’n Trice announced, “ Maaaayn Street Station, Richmond, Vuh-gin-ya, North America, Western Hemisphere, Earth. You have arrived. Please, exit to the left. And please, mind the gap.”

They stood and Gotz said, “I want to meet this guy. Anybody who enjoys his job that much I need to speak to.”

“If you’re serious I can arrange it,” she said, at the spiral stair, and this time going first.

“I am-- I am serious. Maybe, what? Squeeze him in before I go—“

“I’ll work it out,” Tia said.

“I know you will.”


Note on the images: I happened upon this photograph on the Hattie and Bruce Travel blog. This is the Oslo, Norway, airport train to the city. Richmond could run an airport train from Richmond International to Main Street Station; the track is there, and various plans have called for one. But, still, it hasn't manifested into our reality. The Marshall Street Viaduct straddling Shockoe Valley is an early 20th century post card from the Virginia Commonwealth University Library Special Collections & Archive online exhibit "Rarely Seen Richmond." The MCV West Hospital wasn't yet built, but the massive roofs of the Main Street Station train shed is visible at left.

My Journey Into Richmond

-- And What I Found There

Part I

“I have thought it wise to live for the future and not the dead past. While cherishing honorable memory of its glories, I have thought that we should look to the future for life, power and prosperity…”

William Mahone, Readjuster and ornery cuss, 1882

Just a different set of problems…

Come now, and walk alongside an obstreperous travel writer who is researching an extensive feature about Richmond – a different version than the one with which you are familiar.

He—like you—has never been to the Richmond described here-- but he’s applied himself to studying the story, and he receives able guidance by indulgent, patient and hospitable residents.

In this Richmond, people are no less venal and slothful, nor more gracious and industrious, as they are in the city around you now.

They just have a different set of problems.

The subjects of conversations in its boisterous bars and busy cafés are textured by a history quite altered from the one recorded in Virginius Dabney’s book.

Nobody could blame you, though, if you’d like to move there.

* * * *

Arrival: Admiral Richard E. Byrd International Airport

“The Byrd statue at the airport named for him seems strange, both Hollywood and Italian Futurist,” he said into the mini disc recorder when the guide called his name.

“Mr. Gotz?”

The stack of grey hair and strong-jawed face was unmistakable from the meet-the-writer pages of travel and leisure magazines. His metal-rimmed glasses flashed in the light as Gotz turned, assessed and approved.

She said, smiling, “I’m Tia Chulangong,” and extended a firm hand. “Welcome to Richmond.”

Tia, an Eurasian stunner in heels, looked him straight in the eye through rectangular glasses and her efficiency crackled like static electricity. Richmond’s ambassador to the travel press wore chic urban black, a tailored Edwardian- cut jacket, and carried a hospitality bag in the crook of one arm.

Gotz said, “Well, the Convention and Visitors Bureau has impressed me already.”

She noted his wheeled travel luggage, another bag strapped to it, and his backpack.

“Good flight down, Mr. Gotz?”

“Short, like I like them. And, please. Call me Phil.”

Tia crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow.

“I was warned about you.”

“Oh?”

“I have a friend who works in Austin; at their tourism bureau.”

“Ah.”

“How did you get your car out of Sandra Bullock’s pool?”

Gotz shifted his backpack, nodded and chuckled at the familiar story.

“First thing: it wasn’t my car.”

“If we’re lucky, while in Richmond, you won’t have to drive, at all; but,” she raised her Blackberry, “if you need a car during your stay, the Jefferson is providing one. You have guest permission to drive downtown.”

“A Jeffersonian automotive dispensation! I feel honored.”

“You should be,” and she laughed, causing angel-bite dimples. He wanted to make her laugh often. “Listen, I want to ask you: what do you think of this sculpture?”

Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd stood bold and in bronze, one foot stepping up to jutting icy ledge. He was bundled in his fur collared parka, flight helmet and goggles shoved on his head, and gloved hands raising binoculars toward eyes peering into a distant horizon. Byrd’s exploits were incised on a panel circling the piece, including the Admiral’s declaration of Antarctica as THE CONTINENT OF PEACE.

Tia folded her hands in front of her and examined the statue as though seeing it afresh.

“I think, from pictures I’ve seen, that it’s a good likeness.”

“Don’t take up art criticism.”

“I’m in public relations. Which reminds me.”

Tia in a brisk motion flipped open her phone to the office of Gotz's arrival, safe, and sound, in a matter of speaking. He watched her brows form an exclamation point in the center of her forehead as something was told to her, but her expression didn’t betray what it might’ve been. She nodded, and directed him to follow.

Their brisk pace across the sleek concourse took them past the late afternoon light streaming in through the slanted glass walls of the swooping, cantilevered terminal.

A shoosh and hoofing ahead announced the arrival of the downtown express. A scrum of baggage burdened tourists surged toward the platform, some with burbling kids, a few foreign students whose glottal vowels sounded middle European and several business types busy arranging their predestinations with their handheld devices.

The guide asked, “So you’ve never visited us before?”

Gotz shook his big grey head. “Never. Passed around on that crazy hooked interstate you got, but duty otherwise never called.”

“Well, we’re very glad that you’re here; I have some office envy because we follow your writing, especially on GlomarExplorer.com.”

“So you’re the ones.”

“Hah. Not the only ones,” and he’d lagged behind her and for a few moments Tia was talking to air. Then she stopped, her heels squealing on the floor like a car braking at a sudden red light.

Tia executed a sharp whirl and again, with the imperious eye brow, following a slight tch tch against her teeth, declared:

“Mr. Gotz.”

“It’s Phil. And what? We’re walking and talking and missing our train.”

Tia inclined her head. “I think you were taking in the view.”

“Ab-so-lutely,” he raised a hand toward truth, then lowered to her, “I am but a man, fashioned of weak flesh.”

“Maybe,” she replied in mixture of enthusiasm and sarcasm, “but that isn’t the subject of your article, unless the theme has changed, and if so,” she tapped the stylus against her Blackberry, “we’ll need to alter your itinerary.”

Gotz scratched his temple. He said, “My, my, the CVB chose well; chose very well. Did they also give you a cow prod, or cuffs and a whip?”

“No cuffs or whips, because, my director knows you, too.”

“Touché, touché.”

“Here’s your Richmond packet,” she handed him the CVB grab bag, chunked full of information sheets, DVDs, helpful distillations of history and culture to fill in gaps for visiting travel journos when notes and the disc player or camera fail, or the weather is bad, or you’re unable to stir from your hotel room because you imbibed too much of the native hospitality the night before.

“And this,” she pulled from her jacket pocket a plastic strip card. “We call this the Frequent Traveler Token. It’s good for all trains, trams and buses, for a period of 10 days, in case you love Richmond so much that your five days here haven’t been enough.”

“I’m in love already and I haven’t left the airport.”

“We’re ahead of the game, then, aren’t we? Now, you’ll notice here,” she pointed to a corner of the card with a red strip and four numbers. “This is your PIN. You take this off, attach it to something you’re less likely to walk off and forget, or, if you have a PDA you can punch it so you can remember, then if you lose the card, you go to a kiosk, type in the numbers, and the system knows that card, and how much money is left on it, and you’ll get another one.”

“That’ll come in handy for me, I’m sure.”

“I’ve used it. Plenty of times.”

Note on the image: The top photograph is the Eero Saarinen-designed TWA Terminal at John F. Kenndy airport in New York City, via nyc-architecture.com. In this Richmond, architect Haigh Jamgochian is an acclaimed and revered figure and he designed Byrd's terminals among numerous other public buildings. He becomes our postmodern Mackintosh, Richmond's Frank Lloyd Wright. This is close as I can approximate. Byrd Airport, and the evolved Richmond International, is not nearly so swooping or as dramatic, and lacks much in the way of public art. If there'd been a physical representation of Byrd, maybe we'd still have the name of a person attached to the airport.

A German prisoner helps British wounded make their way to a dressing station near Bernafay Wood following fighting on Bazentin Ridge, 19 July 1916, during the Battle of the Somme. Via Wikipedia.

We Interrupt This Regularly Scheduled Blogpost
To Prevent World War I.

Again.

On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month some 89 winters ago; distant from us across a scorched earth of memory and events; known because of black and white photographs and some herky-jerky moving images and yellowing newspapers -- back then, the most horrendous enterprise ever undertaken by humanity concluded. World War One came to an exhausted finale.

The war settled little and returned in a new and improved guise 21 years later.

Some 10 million people died during 1914-1918, though this was but the warm-up for the Big One, which swallowed around 65 million. If we throw in that science now guesstimates that the Great Influenza of 1918 may have had its incubation in the trenches of northern France--and that that pandemic may have killed between 20 million to 100 million from August 1918 to March 1919--we can pile those incomprehensible figures on top of everything else. So we're talking ballpark about 172 million people dying as a direct result, or through disease, from both conflicts.

This is a bit like dropping a rock down a well and never hearing a splash. We cannot now contemplate such horrendous, unspeakable amounts of death.

I've spent far too much time and effort contemplating a separate reality where World War I as it is known to us didn't occur. If you go here, and scroll down, you can see. If we undertake a study of the causes of that cataclysm, they were hydra-headed. Gavrilo Prinzip lit a fuse when he bumbled into assassinating the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie. You can go to Strange Interludes Part the Second to read more.

I asserted then that our history would be better off if the Wilhelmine Germans and the so-called Central Powers had triumphed in the fall and winter of 1914. But I've reassessed. Consider how during the first four months of the war, on the Western front alone, the combined casualties of Britain, Belgium and France were 570,000. Germany suffered about 200,000.

That's too many. Too many wives to have lost husbands, too many children to be deprived of fathers, too many first blushes of young love extinguished. These numbers are an affront and insult to life itself. Yes, Heraclitus the Cynic observed that struggle is the father of all things; but bettter that be accomplished through challenging poses of the Kama Sutra than across the churned up moonscape of Flanders.

And so I take a step into mist-shrouded fantasy. I ask for your indulgence, and to consider this: how at almost each turn, the assassination by Serbian state-allowed terrorists of Austria-Hungary's heir apparent could've been prevented. Even to the last. If Gavrilo Prinzip had just eaten his lunch at another deli, the Archduke's discombobulated motorcade would've ridden off into the Sarajevan dust. The random quality of this single occurrence just causes one to shake the head in disbelief. It's almost like Prinzip was being guided on a wire.

World War I--as it occurred in our history--was avoidable, or it could've been mitigated into a Balkan region conflict such as were flickering and disturbing the peace as they'd been since 1912.

Boundaries on the Balkans after the First and the Second Balkan War, 1912-1913.

Consider how Austrian chief of the general staff and primary war planner, Baron Franz Conrad von Hotzendorf wavered on July 29, 1914, about going to war with Russia. He thought he could settle the score with Serbia first. He figured he'd have two weeks before Russian intervention.

Further, Hotzendorf's German equivalent, Helmuth von Moltke believed on the morning of July 30 that Russian mobilization didn't mean Germany needed to mobilize in support of Austria-Hungary. By the afternoon, Moltke's mind was changed--maybe because he'd learned that Hotzendorf's preoccupation with Serbia would leave Germany's ass in the wind. Moltke was counting on supporting Austro-Hungarian movement in Galicia. But the two generals, supposed allies, didn't really talk much prior to the war. When it all came down, these two be-medaled boobs were swept up and tossed aside.

Matters were further muddied by official German diplomatic messages urging Austro-Hungarian restraint regarding Russia, while Moltke urged otherwise, confusing the easy-to-confuse Hotzendorf who said flat out he didn't want to be blamed for igniting a general European war.


One August 1, 1914, Europe teetered on the edge of international war. As historian Harry F. Young summarized in his recounting of that fateful day: "Austria had opened fire on Serbia; Russia had begun to mobilize the troops; Berlin’s ultimatum to St. Petersburg would expire at noon; France was prepared to support her tsarist ally; and so far England’s efforts to mediate had failed.”

Kaiser Wilhelm signed the order to commence German war preparations. A short while later, Wilhelm was given a dispatch from a German diplomat in London that indicated the British foreign minister Sir Edward Grey had promised, "England would remain neutral and would guarantee France's neutrality" if Germany didn't attack France. Wilhelm convened a meeting of his top brass and popped champagne to celebrate.

The specter of a two-front war was dissipated. Germany could go on the offensive in the East and remain on the defensive in the West. Von Moltke, summoned to the meeting by a harried messenger, was flabbergasted. He and the "All Highest" argued as the general insisted the Schlieffen Plan had a schedule to keep. The single-front mobilization plan was, he said, out of date. The trains couldn't be called back. If they were, the troops sent east would arrive in a higgedly-piggeldly pile of bodies and equipment, far too unorganized to present effective force. The Schlieffen Plan was to Moltke holy writ -- for the most part because he didn't have an alternative he believed would work. The concept of a quick knock out of France in one campaign was his motivating idea. Nothing else mattered.

The Kaiser bellowed at Moltke, "Your uncle would've given me a different answer!" This was a sharp cut; he was referring to "Moltke the Great" who, with Bismarck, unified Germany into an empire.

The younger Moltke must've known that plans to send the armies to the East were worked on through 1913, and with typical German efficiency could've been yanked out of their files and put into play. German railroad officers received as rigorous training as soldiers. A staff officer who'd worked on these plans would later prove, on paper at least, that with almost the flip of a switch, the Germans could've transferred up to four armies to the east within days. But the German Railway Office wasn't consulted: just two neurotics getting red-faced in Berlin, both of whom, were they in civilian life, would've been more suitable for running a grocery store.

Moltke quite simply didn't want to deviate from the schedule. He seems just to have wanted to get it over with. War was inevitable; let it come. This meant violating the neutrality of Belgium, and tripping the wire to get Britain involved.

But the Kaiser didn't want to hear a refutation of good news. If conflict with France could be prevented, Germany needed to make the effort. A messenger was sent flying to the forward units edging toward Luxembourg: stop in your tracks. Don't transgress the border.

As happened, though, the whole thing was an an apparent confusion by the Anglophillic and fluent English speaker Prince Karl Max Lichnowsky, the German envoy in London -- "The Misunderstanding of August 1." Lichnowsky loved England's ways, but his homeland, too, and a telephone conversation with the obtuse British foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, left him with the impression that a ruinous conflagaration engulfing both of his favorite nations could be avoided. He'd cabled the Kaiser: Wait, hold up--we can turn this thing around. There's been debates about this so-called misunderstanding ever since.

Prince Lichnowsky seems to have misinterpreted Grey's circituitous phrases--what the foreign secretary had actually said was that he could guarantee Germany against attack by France if Germany would promise to attack neither France nor Russia.

There was no way, of course, that Britain could assure French docility. The incident, however, points out Moltke's over-reliance on a plan that really wasn't much better than a table-top exercise that rolled over neutral Belgium and guaranteed British mobilization, and didn't solve the Problem of How To Take Paris. In fact, within a few months of the extent of the horrendous miscalculation becoming quite visible in both the exhausted soldiery and massive body counts, Moltke would remark that the choice to invade France--which hadn't fired so much as a popgun at Germany after Sarajevo--was a terrible mistake.

It is doubtful France would've remained idle if Germany had turned the brunt of its power against Russia. The nation could now revenge the humiliation of Sedan and 1870. Or, would some how a diplomatic angle get worked; that of making a Alsace-Lorriane an autonomous division of Germany? Better diplomacy than mad policy -- except nationalism in Europe was in the air like a dog whistle, calling the nations forward, lerching them into collision like zombies driving in a demolition derby.

Consider the Titanic, built by this same Anglo-Teutonic Civilization, one that believed in such a thing as a ship that couldn't sink. Her Captain Edward J. Smith was at the helm of a vessel that in size and scope surpassed his experience. She had the latest technological innovations, but not enough lifeboats due to concern both about concern and appearances. No boat drills were held. After the iceberg was struck, no general announcement was given, word spread like gossip, although steerage passengers, engineers and those luckless post office clerks knew the ship was in dire trouble.

And later, when the "Spanish Influenza" began claiming thousands of lives at a rate not known since the bubonic pandemic of the 14th century, the civil and religious authorities of 1917-1919 at first thought that such a thing was impossible in their advanced technological age. These were the people who considered the 1914-1918 cataclysm "The War To End All Wars."

Von Moltke was hung up on his pre-conceived plans and wouldn't deviate from them. But they were faulty, and relied on a knock out one-two punch by armies too large to actually encircle and destroy, much less move at inhuman speeds to undertake such endeavors. He had to learn that himself, in time, and by then, it was too late for him and Europe.

So my solution? I send this out to any who would be able to conceive of such.

On May 9, 1911, 10 men meet in Belgrade to form a secret organization Ujedinjenje ili Smrt (Union or Death), which becomes known as The Black Hand. This is the most radical branch of another secret organization brought together on Oct. 8, 1908, Norodna Odbrama, "National Defense."

A number of members were Serb army officers. Their stated goal was to realize a Greater Serbia by any means necessary, which meant political assassinations. This meant the destabilization of Austria-Hungary. None of them on May 9 understand what their shenanigans will end up causing.

By 1914 the group blossoms into some 2500 members organized in grassroot cells of 3-to-5 members. Cell members didn't know much about what was going on outside their sub-groups.

The Black Hand obscures the boundary between it and National Defense, and supplants the older group. The cells were directed by two levels of committees, the top being a 10-member committee chaired by Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijevic, known also as Apis, The Bee. His personal courage was undisputed, but his zealotry and ruthlessness knew no bounds. Even the Serbian prime minister feared Dimitrijevic--for he could just as well lead a coup against the present Serb government if it stood in the way of his plans.

My solution: through bio-electro-chemical means, zap the 10-member "Black Hand" May 9, 1911 gathering with a shot of "Road to Damascus." Maybe it's triggered by something in their drinks, food, even an airborne agency. The 10 are afflicted by physiological seizures. Their brains spark and pop as synaptic firings alter. They scream, laugh, weep. They transform into Scrooge on Christmas Day.

A few go starkers. Drooling, naked crazy. A couple may kill themselves on the spot in a fit of ecstatic realization. The Bee could be one of these, or, he understands now he must work for a diplomatic solution. That'll end up getting him killed by the haters he's helped stir up (in fact, Dimitrijevic got shot in 1917 for treason).

This mind-altering experience of a few key players won't stop war, but delay the conception, and perhaps prevent the grinding death machine of the Western Front trenches and the horror of Galipoli. Likewise not to occur as in our history, would be the nonsensical drawing of Mesoptamian maps by the British and French. Their meddling-- and the world's ravenous need for petroleum-- is one of the reasons our reality today is threatened by constant conflict from that region.

No World War I, no World War II, no Holocaust, no Soviet pogroms, no Rape of Nanking, no "Great Depression," no radical Islam as it is understood today, a different development of nations both in Mesopotamia and Africa -- and no Hogan's Heroes.

This changed reality still leaves Britain and Germany in a naval arms race, a truncated Russia with German satellites--through economic support or otherwise--in the Ukraine, along the Baltic and with the Kingdom of Poland, providing buffers between the German Empire and nationalist Russians. There is a revanchist France, perhaps in the altered worldline, more like Franco's Spain. Another spate of conflict is inevitable. Anybody who has ever played the elementary strategy game of Risk, and squabbled over Europe, can tell you that.

Perhaps Russia moves to reclaim Belarus, a chafing German client state, and at the same time, France launches across the border again to get its licks in, sometime around 1920-ish. The U.S.--a different one than what we know because there wasn't a World War I for it to stretch its superpower eagle's wings--would sit and read of the distant events at the family breakfast table.

Germany and Britain come to blows over colonies and control of Mesopotamian oil interests. Maybe a version of Jutland occurs, but under different circumstances, and another result. And, because there's no repression of Jews, all those European scientists and intellectuals and artists stay home. Abstract Expressionism isn't exported to New York. The laurels of European culture is wrested from Paris, where it was sliding anyway, to Berlin.

In this altered world, perhaps it is the Germans who split the atom, and the Germans who perfect rocketry, among other technolgical innovations. A "Cold War" might exist between whatever Germany evolves into and the whatever Russia becomes, but it's anybody's guess whether in this altered world if the nuclear standoff would've led to a Space Race like the one that caused John F. Kennedy to make the bold statement of sending a man to the moon and returning him to Earth. The Maltese Cross banner might've gotten shoved into the lunar dust, not Old Glory. "Das ist ein kleiner Schritt für einen Mann, ein riesiger Sprung für Menschheit."

The inhabitants of such a world wouldn't be any less venal or more gracious than the world we are condemned to inhabit. Those residents just have a different set of problems to complain about, and keep them up nights on blogs that few if anybody ever reads.

The sad part is, that even if this "zap the Black Hand" option could be played, I wouldn't enjoy any of the benefits. Not in this "worldline" where I dwell. Some other Harry Kollatz Jr., sitting in his version of a cluttered Colonial Ave. Richmond, Va., office, would be pondering another batch of "what-ifs." Or, at least, that's one theory.

Whatever the case, get working on this problem of World War I, you future historic circumstance-altering humanity-loving scientists, on this 11th day of the 11th month. Make the past an alternate future for somebody today!

A rare World War I aerial photo, taken at a height of 150 meters by a French photographer, shows French troops on the Somme Front launching an attack on the Germans. (Photo credit: U.S. National Archives) Via History Place.