 This is Sandy Baird and this is commentary. At the eleventh hour on the eleventh day and the eleventh month of 1918, the guns of World War I fell silent. Behind the armistice lay the horror of the First World War, trench warfare, battles like the Somme and Verdun, where that trench warfare resulted in a brutal stalemate in which thousands died for a few inches of territory, gained one moment, lost in the next, and then reclaimed. Men had died for the fallen empires of Germany, Austria, Hungary, Russia, and the Ottoman empires. They died for the more developed nation states of England, France, and the United States, making its first foray into the morass of European politics and wars which our founding fathers had carefully warned us to avoid. Men had died hideous deaths in gunfire, machine guns, and the new biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction, mustard, nerve, and poison gas. They died infected with the diseases of their trenches and in the wasted fields of Flanders. At the war to end all wars to secure the world for democracy, as asserted by the United States President, Woodrow Wilson, Johnny came marching home. Ahead was the uncertain world of the 20th century. What would that new order be? Would there be any order? Germany, sullen and defeated, smoldered. In the unconditional surrender imposed by the Allies, Britain, France, and the United States, Germany was stripped of her industrial might and her colonial possessions in order to pay to the victors huge reparations. Worse, Germany had to accept total guilt for the war. On the German street, talk of being stabbed in the back and for revenge fueled a virulent nationalism and eventually an anti-Jewish hatred which gave birth to the Nazis and its odious leader, Adolf Hitler. To the east, the Soviet Union, which replaced Tsarist Russia in the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, was building a utopian communist society, pledged to reverse centuries of ignorance, poverty and exploitation of workers and peasants. The Communist Party of Vladimir Lenin spoke of the world and permanent revolution and the destruction of capitalism, the economic system of the Western democracies. Civil war broke out in the Soviet Union with the Western democracies supporting the opponents of communism. The world wondered, what place would the new superpower of the Soviet Union vehemently angry at the industrial west have the now unbalanced balance of power between the superpowers? How would the new strongman and anti-communist new kid on the block the United States deal with the new regime? The Versailles peace treaty signed in Paris in 1919 at the Hall of Mirrors and imposed on the losers of the war, the Germans, the Austro-Hungarians and the Ottoman empires contains the seeds of the destruction of any lasting peace. Rather than the war to end all wars, the treaty was the peace to end all peace, as noted by the historian David Frumpkin. New borders were drawn, new real estate transfers which were accomplished with the world to benefit the winners with no thought given to the consequences for the losers. In the Balkans, Yugoslavia was established with often hostile peoples thrown together. Cheek to Jowl in a new kingdom. Germany lost territory to France. Russia and its unilateral peace with Germany in the Brest-Litov's treaty surrendered a huge swath of land to the Germans, which the Soviets hunkered to get back. In the emerging chaos of the Middle East in secret agreements, the British and the French carved up the former Ottoman Empire of the Turks, giving to themselves mandates over oil-rich territory. At the same time, the Balfour Agreement of the English promised to the Jewish people a Jewish homeland in the same territory as were claimed by the Arabs or Palestine. The result of this duplicity and secrecy to both people, to the Jewish people and to the Arab people is a vexation problem of two peoples competing over the same land from which the world still suffers. As the 1920s gave way to the great depression of the 30s with the concurrent rise of expansionist regimes, totalitarian regimes in Europe, the fascists in Italy, the Nazis in Germany, and the Communists in Russia, the futility of the First World War and its flawed peace became clear. The world had been safe made only for the elites who had stayed out of harm's way. As women and men on both sides of the divide of World War I watched in horror, the world prepared for a second match, much like the first. The lines were drawn with the Germans and their allies once again at war with their old enemies, the English, the French, the Russians, and the late comers, the Yanks. As the 30s morphed into depression, the broken promises, the harsh truths, the boiling nationalisms all led once again to a new arms race, bristling alliances, localized aggressions, nuclear arms, and the age-old philosophy of getting even and revenge. As the United States now continues to war across the globe in the Middle East, in Latin America, and the Caribbean, remember World War I. Remember the pointless battles, the Somme, the Verdun, Gallipoli, and Flanders. Think too about the second round of World War II and the millions lost in Stalingrad, Hamburg, Dresden, Iwo Jima, in the concentration camps of the Nazi Holocaust and the Polish deaths caused by the incomprehensible competition for empire between Hitler and Stalin in the new horrific weapon against, for the first time, the future population and the earth, the atomic bomb, dropped by the United States in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Remember the wars of the Cold War, Iran, Cuba, Vietnam, Afghanistan. Think finally of the wars of our time, Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan, Colombia, Palestine, the drug wars in Mexico and the streets of our cities of the United States. Honor the dead, the forgotten heroes of forgotten wars, but ask, do these wars any more than the first World War benefit humans and the living organisms of the planet? Do future wars make less likely any of these conflicts, or do they benefit only the few who get comfortably rich and stay home as young men and women, civilians and the planets, die? This is Sandy Baird and this is commentary.