• Time’s arrow

We are, therefore, not so much prisoners of the past as eternally pierced by time’s arrow, of which there is – in this universe at least – only one and which is always moving in the same direction and at the same speed. In a way, this preoccupation makes sense, as we tend to be confronted first with the event, then seek to explain it. What else might have happened is just speculation.

In the best fictional speculative examples, such as Robert Harris’ Fatherland, the parallel world is played out so well that the big plot point, when it comes, almost leaves you gasping. However, that was occupied with just one version of time’s arrow. There were no alternatives, as there were in The Matrix, Groundhog Day, Sliding Doors or About Time, for the characters to exploit or become ensnared by.

However, to look at history just through the rear-view mirror only tells part of the story. Something that didn’t happen can be as important as something that did. Harold, for instance, didn’t wait for reinforcements at Hastings; Boniface of Montferrat’s envoy didn’t correctly estimate the number of soldiers who’d be arriving at Venice before the Fourth Crusade; the chemist Constantin Fahlberg didn’t wash his hands for dinner after working in his lab and so noticed that his food tasted sweet, leading to the discovery of saccharin.

We can argue the toss about which of these omissions had the more dramatic and long-lasting result. The fact is, though, that something happened as a result of something else not happening. Actions and non-actions can be equally influential. Sherlock Holmes certainly realised this: in Silver Blaze, Holmes drew Inspector Gregory’s attention to the curious incident of the dog in the night-time. But that dog did nothing, Gregory protested. “That,” Holmes elliptically explained, “was the curious incident.”

• Catastrophe

Few events in human history are both as important and as pregnant with possibilities of just these kind of speculations as those that led up to the outbreak of the First World War. If the matter is on my mind at present, I can explain this by saying that, while we were exhibiting at the Wash Common Community Festival a couple of weeks ago, I wandered over to a second-hand book stall run by the Wash Common Library and bought a copy of Max Hastings’ Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War.

I’ve never had the slightest interest in military history. Descriptions of battles leave me cold, with a mixture of confusion and – if they’re well-written – shock; and – if they’re not – boredom. I don’t know whether a battalion is larger than a division, nor whether a Colonel is senior to a Major. Of far more interest is why a conflict happened and what its results were. The car crash in the middle I can gloss over (even if the participants could not).

For both origins and consequences, WW1 provides an almost infinite supply of material, with more constantly coming to light. I’m only up to late July in Max Hastings’ work and am in any case far from being an expert. However, what he does very well in the 100 or so pages to date is to lay out the events, as experienced by people from emperors to factory workers, with a level of clarity and detail that almost makes me forget that I know what happened next.

• A black hole

There’s also the sense – which is, of course, intensified by the fact that I, of course, do know was about to happen – that too many events were being crammed into too little time and were in danger of becoming, like a black hole, fatal to anyone who strayed too close. At the pivotal moment late in the magnificent Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Le Carré observed that “there are moments which are made up of too much stuff for them to be lived at the time they occur.” This is exactly what was happening in the late summer of 1914.

Many contemporaries appeared to share this perception. Hastings’ selection of quotes were obviously chosen to maximise the sense of impending doom; however, it seems many people from all nations and countries were aware that something terrible was about to happen, often expressing these apprehensions in remarkably prescient terms.

For what it’s worth, I think that, given where Europe was politically, diplomatically and militarily in 1914, if Franz Ferdinand hadn’t been assassinated then some other event would have provided both a necessary and sufficient cause for a conflict. Perhaps this is one of those moments where the Whig theory might even be partly correct: events were increasingly running at such a pace towards entropy that alternative outcomes seemed increasingly out of the participants’ reach.

Another point I get from what I’ve read so far is that each of the main combatants appeared to have over-estimated their own military strength and under-estimated that of everyone else’s. There was also the sense of a ticking clock, and that in a year or so this perceived favourable situation might be reversed. Two such thought processes working in tandem in several different places are never likely to produce good results, and they didn’t.

• Here and now

Catastrophic events in the past inevitably make one think of similar ones in our own time. We have two massive conflicts at the moment, in the Ukraine and the Middle East. How much might either of these have been subject to same forces as prevailed in 1914?

Of the two, the Arab/Israeli one (with all its sideshows) seems the more comparable, for the simple reason that its causes have been in place for a very long time. A couple of weeks ago, I put the blame squarely on God for this, for having promised the area around Jerusalem to three different faiths that had enough in common to make conflicts between them to be of the ferocity that only three estranged cousins fighting over a disputed will could hope to match. I’ve not had any reason to modify this opinion.

Religion wasn’t a particularly complicating factor in 1914; not that, were it to have been, matters could have worked out any worse (though they might have lasted longer). However, the fact that it is in the Middle East puts the whole thing into an even more difficult and intractable box.

And so, finally, I return my original point about options that exist at the time. Leaving the God problem to one side (though not to belittle its fundamental importance), with regard to the Middle East we find ourselves looking at the various machinations of Britain, France, the USA and others in the early 20th century.

There are familiar themes here, including imperial posturing, ancient rivalries, economic ambitions and a strong dose of traditional human greed and incompetence writ large on a stage where actions had very big consequences.

WW1, of course, was over in four years. The latest phase of the Middle East crisis has been going on for about 75 and the fire is not dying down. For all the importance of the problems or perceptions of Slav nationalism, Germanic encirclement and the other issues, WW1 was essentially a utilitarian conflict, launched for fairly clearly defined and theoretically achievable objectives.

The Middle East conflict doesn’t seem to have anything but a millenarian tang to it, with total and divinely approved victory being the only possible result – which no participant can achieve, given the way things are.

Perhaps the illogical lesson from this is that the more the participants believe in something, the less likely it is that a war will produce the victory all sides crave. Few things create such belief as much as does organised religion. Many people, including Voltaire – who knew a thing or two about human frailty – expressed sentiments to the effect that God is on the side of the big battalions. It seems rather that he’s on the side of the battalions, full stop.

• And then there were two

On 9 October, Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch were confirmed as the final candidates in the Conservative leadership contest. The BBC described the elimination of James Cleverly as a “shock”. Matters now go the party members to decide between two right-wing candidates.

As I mentioned last week, “Badenoch seems in a number of ways actively dangerous [including being a climate sceptic], while Jenrick has, as the Westferry planning issue showed, problems with issues of conflict of interest.” There are also issues about his political donations that have surfaced on p5 of the most recent (1634) Private Eye.

Also this week, there was the spectacle of a former Conservative PM, whose name slips my mind, indulging in a fierce redefinition of his reputation and legacy on live radio as a result of an apologia pro vita sua – as he might express it – he has recently written.

We’re often told that we should judge politicians, particularly national ones, by a higher standard than we would apply to the rest of us. Those who legislate should, the logic runs, be moulded from a finer clay than those who are legislated upon.

The reality is that the reverse seems to be true. In order to get things done, politicians need to be in many ways worse than us, in the same way that we expect the likes of private investigators, rodent exterminators, libel lawyers and undertakers to be free of some of the moral or physical scruples we feel are essentials of civilised life in order to do deeds on our behalf that we couldn’t cope with.

These thoughts are not specifically the result of these recent events, but of a mounting unease about the disconnect between what we hope for and what we get. On a local level, the problem is far less acute: the power is less and therefore so are both the temptations and the methods to which they need to resort to get things done. I’d like to put on record that almost all of the local councillors I’ve dealt with have been honourable and dedicated (cheques to the usual address, please), even though I may disagree with their views.

Nationally, however, we’re in a different place. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, as Lord Acton observed. Although politicians at Westminster mercifully have a lot less than absolute power (compare to, say, Putin), these things are relative. Perhaps it would be as well for us to remember this maxim and, whilst hoping for the best every time we cast our vote, also prepare for the worst.

 • And finally…

• Florida is being lashed by what President Biden has called “the storm of the century”, only two weeks after it suffered what would normally be the worst kind of deluge the state might be expected to endure in a year or more. I wonder if Trump, or Badenoch, have any theories as to why this might be. Both might suggest malign human intervention, as others have done.

• Reuters reports that Baker, Hassabis and Jumper – the name of a firm of estate agents, you might think – have in fact won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for their work on the structure and creation of proteins. Hassabis and Jumper “utilised artificial intelligence to predict the structure of almost all known proteins”. So, it does have good uses as well: I presume this is good news?

• A remarkable test match is being played out between Pakistan and England which – fortunately – I can’t watch live otherwise nothing else would be happening. If England can pick up the last four wickets for less than 115 runs it will comfortably set an unwelcome (for Pakistan) new world record for the highest first-innings score (556) which nevertheless resulted in an innings defeat. If you don’t follow cricket then this will seem like gibberish. Never mind, here comes something on another sport:

• I don’t follow tennis at all but my eye was caught by the news that Wimbledon will be axing line judges from 2025, AI seemingly being the solution here, as it was for the above-mentioned Nobel winners. I’m not sure if it’s fair to accuse the All England Club of being excessively wedded to its past. If you feel that way, however, this would seem to dispel that idea.

• I know even less about Bitcoins than I do about tennis, but I do now know that Canadian crypto expert Peter Todd has, Banksy-like, recently denied that he invented them. “I am not Satoshi Nakamoto,” he told the BBC on having the accusation laid before him; a phrase which could have been written in Japanese for all the sense it makes to me. Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? On reflection, perhaps I’m not the best person to be writing on this subject…