Barbarism of a Bygone Era

Earlier this month I visited the National World War I Museum (www.libertymemorialmuseum.org) in Kansas City, Mo. It’s a fascinating place. I had been there before, but it’s just as eye-opening a second time.

The museum does a good job of explaining a period in history that is often neglected and why the impact of the war affects this globe today. Just look at a pre-World War I map of Europe compared to the number of countries today to see how the Great War changed the geography, politics and culture of the continent. The war changed Europe from a predominantly monarch-led region to one of democracies.

The museum skillfully explains how the United States emerged as a global industrial, military and political power because of the conflict.

The conditions of war change from era to era, but not the cruelty of it. In World War I, unsuspected soldiers would march through a field and fall into camouflaged pits in which they would be impaled by giant spikes. Mustard gas made its first widespread appearance during the war. So did tanks, to get through barbed wire, another recent innovation adapted for wartime use. And airplanes, dropping bombs for the first time.

The museum contains an amazing 55,000 artifacts, including weapons, uniforms and vehicles. There are a variety of photographs, movie clips and maps from the period, as well as interactive exhibits. A month-by-month timeline gives explicit details of the war years.

Much of the war was fought in trenches, where the squalor of disease claimed as many victims as weaponry. These tactics of a bygone era — during which both of my parents were born — occurred less than 100 years ago. What barbarism will warfare involve by the end of this century, if the earth is still around that long?