Tackling the epidemic

My good friend Fabio is Milanese. As a native of the great city of Rome, I tend to think of Milan as South Austrian. You know, things happen on time, the streets are clean, and where there is bustle there is also a sense of purpose. None of these charges can be levelled against Rome.

Rome to me is the essence of Italy. Milan is northern Europe.

Still, I suppose technically Fabio is, nonetheless, Italian. And as a resident of the region of Lombardy, he was already subject to the coronavirus lockdown even before the Italian government extended it to the entire country. The “situation,” he wrote to me, “is surreal. Unimaginable.”

Top left: deserted arcade in Milan. Bottom left: Fallas crowd in Valencia
Right: two women fighting over toilet rolls in an Australian supermarket

Certainly, if Milan maintains its sense of purpose – as I’m sure it does – the bustle is gone. Places usually thonged by crowds of both locals and tourists are now deserted. The atmosphere must be eerie, to say the least.

Most recently, Fabio has gone still further, calling for the deployment of the army. Why? People have been breaking curfew rules, kids have been getting together out of doors to have drunken parties, the lockdown isn’t being respected.

I have to say that this doesn’t entirely surprise me, and it may strengthen the sense that the Milanese are, after all, truly Italians. One of my college lecturers was Catholic and she told me of a conversation she once had with an Italian bishop.

“Why,” she asked him, “does the Pope issue instructions that are so strict it’s almost impossible for English Catholics to follow them?”

“Ah,” he replied, “The Pope is Italian.”

This was the time before we started to get Popes from other parts of the world.

“The problem with England,” the bishop went on, “is that its culture is Puritan. This even affects the Catholic community. They try to follow Papal instructions to the letter. But the Pope’s Italian, and he knows Italians will ignore 90% of what he says. So he deliberately makes his decrees particularly strict. I can see how this makes for problems in England.”

As with spiritual instructions, so it seems with government ones: total compliance isn’t the first reaction of all Italians.

Still, it seems Fabio’s plea didn’t fall on deaf ears. He tells me the army is indeed being deployed. Maybe, with bad grace, and under the baleful stare of men with guns, more Italians will now begin to take the lockdown seriously.

Meanwhile, where we’re living, near Valencia in Spain, we’re in the runup to the great fiesta of the Fallas. Celebrations are already under way, with thousands of people thronging the streets. Rather like the marches for International Women’s Day at the weekend. It’s hard not to admire such a tenacious attachment to traditions, particularly to joyous ones. On the other hand, we’re now up to 1600 infections across the country, 10% of the total in Europe. That’s still far behind Italy, with over 9000, but we’re catching up…

Some are beginning to question just how responsible our devil-may-care attitude may be.

Interestingly, it was announced only today that the Fallas would, even at this late stage, be cancelled. Or at least postponed. I haven’t asked Fabio, but I suspect I know what his reaction would be… For my own part, I wasn’t going to be going to any of the major events.

It strikes me that we need to take the epidemic seriously. Which isn’t the same as panicking about it. The women fighting over toilet rolls in an Australian supermarket strikes me as at best an over-reaction. At worst, it’s a reversion to the worst instincts of man.

But claiming that nothing much is happening, as Donald Trump has? Or not cancelling major public events? Or simply not keeping contact between people to the minimum absolutely necessary? That doesn’t strike me as healthy either.

The Italian government’s action may, as Fabio says, create a surreal atmosphere. But I really can’t see how else you limit the spread of a virus.

The saddest aspect of all this? It’s the lack of an internationally coordinated response. In a time of nationalism, individual countries seem to have decided that they must simply do their own thing.

That’s a pity. Although I was encouraged to see a suggestion that the virus itself might provide a solution to the problem. Will Hutton, in the Observer, the sister paper of the British Guardian, argued that the infection might drive us to improve what globalisation means.

Meanwhile, Fabio, hang on in there! This won’t go on for ever. And, unimaginable though the short term results are, the actions of the Italian government may well turn out to be the most effective response to the problem.

I certainly hope so.

Countdown to War, day 15. 12 July: the Archduke's assassination – another death; and Hansi's great escape

One hundred years ago today, on Sunday 12 July 1914, Martin the Mancunian railwayman might have picked up the Observer when his Minister had finished with it, and read a curious story about another celebrity death associated with that ugly business between Serbia and Austria-Hungary.

Belgrade, Saturday.

M. de Hartwig, the Russian Minister, called on the Austro-Hungarian Legation at nine o’clock last evening and was received by the Austro-Hungarian Minister in his study. [...] During the conversation, which was of a friendly nature, the Russian Minister suddenly placed his hand over his heart. His head dropped and he fell to the floor. Although restoratives were applied and medical assistance was prompt, M. Hartwig succumbed to heart failure.

Quoting the Serbian journal Politika, the Observer revealed that this sad event was not entirely unrelated to the murder of the Austrian Archduke two weeks earlier:

...certain rumours are current to the effect that Baron Giesl [the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador] was informed while in Vienna that the Russian Legation did not hoist its flag half-mast high for the Archduke Ferdinand’s death. M. de Hartwig, who heard these rumours, dismissed the matter with Baron Giesl. During the conversation M. de Hartwig became excited and collapsed.

Despite this hint at tension between Austria-Hungary and Russia, it seemed that the heartwarming unanimity of reaction to the assassination across Europe, as reported in the Manchester Guardian the day before, was still being maintained. Russia, France and Britain, the first two allies, the second two linked by the Entente Cordiale, saw things very much as Austria-Hungary did:

The “Neues Wiener Tagblatt” leans from a well-informed source that the report that the Powers of the Triple Entente, through their Ministers in Belgrade, would make friendly representations to the Servian Government, calling its attention to the necessity of taking suitable steps against anarchist elements, is correct. The newspaper adds that this step is imminent.

By speaking with one voice in this way, Europe should be able to bring Serbia into line and contain, perhaps even cool, the bad blood between Belgrade and Vienna.

If only a solution were as simple in Ulster.

There is a feeling of crisis in the air throughout the province. The grim sincerity of the Ulstermen was never shown more clearly than at the remarkable parade of armed and well-trained men which was held yesterday at Larne and inspected by Sir Edward Carson.

He shook his head in disbelief. A similar parade by armed men demanding independence for Ireland might have been met by force. Clearly, not all rebellions were equal: if your aim was to maintain British power, your action, however illegal it might be, could be winked at.

The unfortunate caricaturist condemned to prison by the German authorities for promoting French interests in his native Alsace would not, it seems, be serving his sentence after all.

Hansi: "A big Boche soldier and two little Alsatians from Saverne."
Did the German authorities feel he was getting at them in Alsace?

Herr “Hansi” Waltz, the Alsatian artist who was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment for publishing two books which the Courts considered insulting to the authorities, was permitted to postpone the beginning of his sentence until next Tuesday in order that he might first visit his father. He is now suspected of having taken to flight.

He turned up later in Belfort, just across the border into France proper.

Meanwhile, Eton had beaten Harrow in their yearly cricket match. It seems it had been a “splendid game”. He stared at the story, his mouth open. How was this national news? And what was he supposed to feel? Two schools for the sons of the inconceivably rich – why on Earth would he care which one beat the other?

He shook his head. His Labour Party had its work cut out if it was ever to shake the grip of privilege on British society. Just the sheer fascination with the doings of its children revealed the scale of the task.

Countdown to War. Day 1, 28 June: no news from Bosnia

The descent into hell is easy, Virgil tells us in the Aeneid; the difficulty is to turn and climb back up. 

Sometimes, on that road, it isn’t immediately obvious where it’s heading. Even when the great gates are gaping in front of us (Virgil tells us they stand open night and day), we may feel that just one more effort will stop the slide. But we can’t always call a halt and avoid the fate we dread.

These days, my preferred newspapers are the Guardian during the week and the Observer on Sundays.

I like to think that had I been, say, 20 back then in 1914, living in Manchester and working on the railways, perhaps as a tracklayer, I might also have read what was then the Manchester Guardian – maybe the crew I worked with would club together to get a copy we’d pass between us, or read aloud to the ones who were less sure of their literacy – because it was, after all, our local paper and gave plenty of news about the city and the North West. 

Also, it had detailed reports on the only sports that mattered, football in the winter, cricket in the summer, though for reasons unfathomable to us, it also talked about ridiculous toffs’ games like croquet.

Besides, the Manchester Guardian was a bit left of centre. Did I say that the railwayman – let’s call him Martin – rather liked the Liberal government and especially Lloyd George, who’d brought in National Insurance, so he might actually expect a pension when too old to work? Even a bit of protection if he got sick or unemployed during his career?

Tracklayers in 1914
Not Martin's gang though, unless he spent some time in Sweden
Which, take it from me, he didn't. I should know

Rather liked the Liberals, but not too much. He’d joined the brand new National Union of Railwaymen and, had he had a vote at all, would only have voted Liberal if there wasn’t a candidate standing from the youngest party on the scene, Labour, growing strongly but not yet in a position to challenge for power. Because he wanted things to move on: more education, better hospitals free to everyone, that sort of thing. And the Guardian tended to go along with such thinking; it backed the Liberals and Labour too.

Martin would go to the Methodist chapel most Sundays, along with his family and most of his neighbours. And the Minister liked to think of himself as a bit of a radical. He was a likeable chap so Martin didn’t disabuse him, though none of his friends thought he’d come down on the truly radical side if they did anything that challenged anyone, like strike. But, hey, he’d always been friendly, and he he’d pass Martin the Observer on Sundays after he’d finished with it.

Martin was young, in good health, and had done well at school till he had to leave at the earliest possible age, 14, to start earning a living. His wit would open some doors for him, perhaps in the railways, perhaps in the union. And if it were the union, that could even lead into politics some day. There were working men getting into Parliament now, through the Labour Party. Why shouldn’t that be him in a few years?

So that’s Martin. 

And what would he have read in the Observer one hundred years ago today, on Sunday 28 June 1914? Nothing would have told him that he and his country, indeed the Continent to which it belonged, had just taken the first step on the road to hell. Indeed, what’s most striking about what he would have read, day by day on that downward journey, was how little was said about where they were going in the first weeks. Indeed, later, when the flames beckoned, even then, there seemed to be a chance of avoiding them. But by then they were unavoidable.

And that’s what we’re going to follow over the next 39 days. The path that took Martin and millions more Martins and Marthas, from innocence to somewhere far worse.

As I said, there was no sign of it in the paper of 28 June.

First, there was the good news. Lancashire, our team, didn’t just beat Gloucestershire in the county Championship but crushed them, by an innings and 11 runs. Massive. Just what we needed. Especially as things weren’t going well for the side that season.

Lancashire County Cricket Club at Old Trafford
in the period before World War One

But not all was well in the world. There was trouble brewing. The Liberal government was trying to bring in legislation for Home Rule in Ireland, but Protestants in the North had formed the Ulster Volunteers, busily arming themselves to resist any attempt to loosen the bonds with Britain. The Nationalist Volunteers had been launched in response, and the Observer reported, “the whole of Ireland is talking rifles; nobody at all is talking politics.” There is now “absolute deadlock between Unionist Ulster and Nationalist Ireland.”

The Nationalists were appealing to the United States, in particular to Irish Americans, to fund their cause, and using the money to buy enough guns to arm 50,000 volunteers. According to the paper, the British government was powerless to do more than “save face” and had only “held up one or two very small cargoes”, but was generally “winking at” the breaches of the law on both sides.

The correspondent went on, “I hear on good authority that the National Volunteers who have faithfully followed the pattern of the Ulster Volunteers, now propose to imitate the great gun-running coup.”

Bad news. That was the kind of thing that could degenerate into all-out war. And after more than forty years of peace in Europe, no one wanted war again.

It’s just possible that Martin might have read, with a wry smile at the fuss being made over anything so trivial, a minor news item about the Austro-Hungarian Emperor Francis Joseph. Having recovered from a recent illness he was setting off for his summer holidays, and crowds in Vienna had gathered to wish him well and wave him on his way.

Honestly. One of Europe’s authoritarian rulers. In power by birth and without merit. It was laughable how seriously so many people still took royalty.

What he didn't read, because it wouldn't be covered till the following day, was that the Emperor's holiday had been spoiled before it had even begun. In a town Martin had never heard of, Sarajevo, in the Austro-Hungarian province of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the heir to the throne had been assassinated with his wife. 

On the day it happened, Martin knew nothing of it. So it would close without his learning how fateful 28 June had already become.