There’s a part of me that thinks OK, we’ve heard enough now, one year on from the beginning of the centenary commemorations, about the first world war. Do we really need any more programmes (on radio or television) about Ypres, Gallipoli, Akaba, Versailles, and the Western Front? Or are we wallowing in history’s horror stories rather than trying to learn from them?
There’s a danger that anniversary fatigue will set in and stop us pausing to think, to really contemplate, the reality of that terrible, catastrophic war and whether there is any way it can be prevented from happening again. But then events, as ever, take over, such as the violence last week in Tunisia, a random, though by no means isolated attack on innocent civilians, provoking many hours of fruitless, reacting-to-the-moment comment. Unanswered questions scurry through the brain, demanding attention. Does the attack on western tourists have any connection with recent foreign policy in America and the West, or are the reasons more deep-seated? Where does such nihilistic hatred come from? Do we need to delve further back into the treaties that were made at the end of 1914–18 to understand the Arab Spring, or rather the region’s subsequent descent into nihilistic chaos?
At such times the World Service is the only resource worth listening to, because it gives us different voices, new experts, insider knowledge from reporters and commentators living inside the countries where these events are taking place, even if we need to bear in mind that what they say is filtered through the watchful eyes of the Corporation.
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