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ONE: Background to War
- Wilfrid Laurier University Press
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ONE Background to War The consequences of a particular historical event thread their way down through the ages, multiplying organically, until in the fullness of time they issue in other events that appear to have little in common with the "first cause." In Switzerland in 1525, Conrad Grebel had a bitter falling out with Huldrych Zwingli over a matter of profound religious importance to both men. As a result of this dispute, about 400 years later a small Ontario town tore itself apart on the apparently insignificant question of whether or not it should change its name. The earlier argument was the more ferocious of the two because it involved matters of high principle; it led to martyrdoms , persecutions, and hardships, and it stands as a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. It is a history that people wish to remember. The later argument was an undignified affair; it may have caused no deaths, but it also created no faiths because no great principles were involved. It is the sort of history people try to forget. This is an account of what actually happened in Berlin, Ontario, between November 1, 1915, and January 1, 1917. It is the story of how a city of solid, hard-working people became nationally known as a place where law and order had broken down, where it was dangerous to walk the main streets in daylight , where clubs and shops were wrecked by mobs, a clergyman and his family were assaulted in their own home, and a mayor-elect was advised by the military authorities to "go to some friend's house ... and there keep quiet and let no one know [your] whereabouts." The framework to these events is a world at war; the picture is that of a city at war. All this was 75 years ago, and the city has long since reassumed its mask of sober, middle-class respectability, but for a 5 6 TheBattlefor Berlin long time the unfortunate events of 1915 and 1916 were treated as a family secret that it was best not to talk about, especially when outsiders were present. Mabel Dunham, for example, in Grand River (1945) talks of "whisperings, silly prejudices, bitter racial hatred and faults on both sides," but prefers to draw a decent veil over the details. She wishes that "those terrible days might be blotted out of the great book of remembrance," but doesn't tell us what it is that we don't want to remember. A little earlier, W.V. Uttley, in A History of Kitchener, Ontario (1937), befogged the issue even more effectively. For the majority of citizens, war-time was a period of trial, yet stamped with exemplary conduct.... In 1916, reports of the criticisms levelled at Sir Adam Beck on account of his German parentage reached the city. Fearing that Berlin might be next, two hundred businessmen petitioned the council to change the name of the city. That was finally done.... Of the break, nativeborn citizens said in effect, we deplore the change but must accept it. That does not, one might say, quite tell the whole story. More recently, three excellent studies have included sections that describe, without pulling any punches, the sequence of events of 1916 in Berlin. These are Kitchener: An Illustrated History (1983) by John English and Kenneth Mclaughlin, TheKaiser 's Bust (1991) by Patricia McKegney, and Ontario and the First World War (1977) by Barbara Wilson. What this book hopes to do is add some further details to the story, to supply some shading to the bare outlines, and perhaps above all to try to bring back to life to some extent the men and women who had their exits and their entrances in this little scene of history. If these people begin to take on the roles of heroes and villains, of clowns and wise counsellors, well, perhaps that is only natural in a story as dramatic as this one. It is difficult to say whether looking at the skeletons in our closets is a useful exercise or not. Sometimes what we learn translates into a wisdom that helps to shape present and future events. Sometimes it translates into a superiority of the "It couldn't possibly happen today" variety—a superiority that has a habit of collapsing when it happens today. But history is its own justification. It survives, to misquote Auden, in the valley of its doing, and all we can do is try to find out...