Free For Sale —American Paradise by Willie Drye Page A

die, along with nearly seven million civilians.
    Although the murder of Franz Ferdinand and his wife was a brutal act, it did not have to ignite the greatest conflagration that the world had ever seen. The war happened because the assassination activated an entanglement of alliances and treaty obligations that quickly divided Europe into two opposing armed camps. In a sense, the conflict that came to be called the Great War happened because honor demanded it. And the weapons the belligerents wielded were frighteningly efficient, modern killing machines—rapid-fire machine guns, powerful artillery, airplanes, battleships, and submarines. It was the first time such deadly weapons had been deployed on so large a scale.
    â€œAll this madness, all this rage, all this flaming death of our civilization and our hopes has been brought about because a set of official gentlemen, living luxurious lives, mostly stupid, and all without imagination or heart, have chosen that it should occur rather than that any one of them should suffer some infinitesimal rebuff to his country’s pride,” British philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote in August 1914.
    The story of the faraway assassination received prominent play on the front page of the Miami Daily Metropolis of June 29, 1914, although the killer was referred to as a “Servian” student. In fact, the newspaper’s editors misspelled “Serb” and “Serbian” throughout the story as “Serv” and “Servian.”
    On the day that Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were gunned down, the world still moved at a relaxed, nineteenth- century pace. Four-legged horsepower still was a primary means of transportation. Steam powered the locomotives that pulled trains and powered ships at sea, but there were plenty of sleek schooners that used the ancient propulsion of the wind.
    Still, the technology that would change the world in a few years had appeared. Airplanes, primitive though they were, had been around for a decade, and would play a role in the war that was about to erupt in Europe. Automobiles powered by gasoline- fueled internal combustion engines were becoming common, although for long trips Americans still used the steam-powered passenger train.
    The United States had ratified the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1913, allowing voters in each state to choose the two senators who would represent them in the US Senate. Before the amendment, US senators had been chosen by individual state legislatures.
    But the voters who went to the polls to choose those senators were males only, just like the jury in West Palm Beach that had been unable to come to a decision about whether John Ashley was guilty of murder. Women could not vote, nor could they serve on juries.
    The outbreak of war in Europe in 1914 proved to be the undoing of William Jennings Bryan as secretary of state. Bryan was a firm believer that civilization was steadily moving humanity to a utopian destiny, when hunger, poverty, and wars would be eliminated. He was horrified as Europe stumbled inexorably toward a massive armed conflict. As Germany and the Central Powers squared off against the Allies—primarily Great Britain and France—Bryan insisted on a policy of strict neutrality toward the belligerent nations.
    That was in line with President Woodrow Wilson’s stated policy—at least, technically. But while Bryan had volunteered for military service during the Spanish-American War, he abhorred war and wanted to stop the fighting in any way possible, even if it left Britain and France at a disadvantage. And his concept of neutrality was so strict and narrow that he even refused to publicly condemn Germany when a German submarine torpedoed the British passenger liner Lusitania in May 1915. The sinking killed 1,198 civilians, including 128 Americans.
    Germany claimed that the ship had been carrying war munitions for the Allies and therefore was a legitimate