Considerings

My siblings and I agreed about the following:

When others played pirates....we were the Royal Navy chasing down the pirates.

When others played cowboys and Indians...we were the Northwest Mounted Police bringing law & order.

When others played Anglo-Saxons...we were the Normans with William the Conqueror.

When others played Americans in the Revolutionary War...we were the Loyalists.

When others played Americans in the War of 1812...we were Lt. Fitzgibbon's British men in his Green Tigers.

When others played Roundheads in the English Civil War...we were the Cavaliers, defenders of the Crown & Monarchy.

When others played Napoleon...we were with the Duke of Wellington defeating the French at Waterloo.

When others played characters in Ancient Israel and area...we were the Roman soldiers.

As you can see, we had a very normal childhood.

Secondly, the question arose after dinner tonight about when and where we would go back in time, if we could. Aside from the obvious answer, I decided that I would go back to before the Agadir crisis, and stop it, as it was one of the events which set off the First World War. After some discussion about the causes of the First World War, we ascertained and agreed that even if we caused both the Agadir crisis not to occur and also stopped the assassination of the Archduke, that would not necessarily stop the Great War, even though it would change its shape somewhat. Alas, stopping the Agadir crisis and the assassination would only be treating the symptoms, and not, to a large extent, the underlying reasons for the Great War.

But, as Sir Robert Ensor, in his excellent book on Britain from 1870 to 1914, said about the War, all this is a matter for speculation....