August balls

By Artan Lame

Since on the last day of July the balls were silent in Albania, let's deal with the first day of August with the balls of Europe.

Wherever you are, reader, click on Google "nine kings" and then press "search". You will see dozens of versions of this photo from 1910. The photo entered history only for one fact. It is the first and last time in history that so many kings, nine in all, pose together.

A few years later, Europe would be engulfed in the folly of the World War, folly which is still being analyzed today and it cannot be understood why and how it happened. Europe, at the height of its powers, with colonial empires across the globe; with her victorious civilization already radiating unprecedented prosperity; in the rhythm of an era of comprehensive economic, social and arts development, which entered history with the term "belle epoque"; ruled by enlightened liberal monarchs who, unlike the others, were almost all cousins ??to each other.

And then..., then suddenly a Serbian shepherd empties a cow that he doesn't even know how to hold properly and the whole continent enters a vortex of collective stupidity that would stop only four years later, not because mints arrived, but because they ran out the powers. Despite the fact that the Serbian cobra exploded in Sarajevo in June, the first cannons were fired on August 1, to go down in history with the term "August cannons".

In the end, when the cannons fell silent, the four hundred-year-old Empires no longer existed. German Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, Russian Empire and Ottoman Empire. From their ruins arose a multitude of nations, as always happens when giants fall.

Just like what happened to the Dinosaurs 66 million years ago. Only after their disappearance from the Meteorite Catastrophe, the mammals began to emerge from the underground, appeared frightened, and then million after million came to us. If it hadn't been for the Dinosaur Catastrophe, homo sapiens wouldn't have been created, I wouldn't be here today writing and neither would you be reading me.

If it had not been the Catastrophe of Empires, WW2 would not have happened either, society would have followed the path of gradual evolutionary changes, without the ideological madness of the 20th century. Most likely, the grandson of William II would be on the throne of Germany today. On the throne of Austria would be the son of that Otto who died a few years ago content only with the seat of the deputy of the European Parliament. On the throne of Russia would be the great-grandson of Nicholas II; while on the throne of Padishah, the grandson of Mehmed-Reshat VI, who would probably visit Kosovo again, welcomed like his great-grandfather in 1909.

Without the Catastrophe of Empires, Wilson would not have had the opportunity to experiment with his messianic fantasies of 14 points that, through the "self-effacement of nations" were supposed to bring peace to the world, but in fact brought anything but peace. The self-determination of nations would have remained a good idea, but it would have been implemented with much more care, without inventing nations where there were only tribes.

Serious researchers today accept some facts, and then, when they explain them to the statesmen, they also give them the right, but only in a low voice, that they want to remain politically concrete. The chatter that falls, just like that on the table, between them and without microphones nearby, admits that the collapse of the Ottoman Empire left endless gaps in the spaces of Arabia, which then were occupied by the titles of "state" and "nation", desert tribe who had lived very well together under the turban of the Ottomans, but after it fell, they have been fighting, hating and killing each other ever since. Iraqis, Syrians, Lebanese, Palestinians, Jordanians, and many others.

Or, since we are still with the Ottomans, the disappearance of the Ottoman Caliphate by Qemal Ataturk (to calm his fears of the revival of the Empire); deprived the Islamic world of a universally accepted spiritual leadership as the shepherd of the Islamic flock, a role that in the Christian world the Pope played. The disappearance of the Caliph resulted in every group of Islamic fanatics taking the Koran and reading it according to their own mind - and even worse, interpreting it according to the midda - with the result that we still see today all day: The East immersed in the chaos of dual, national and religious.

Or that if the German Imperial Giant had survived, that man with a small mustache who painted in the streets of Linz, would have remained there forever and would not have been able to plunge the world into the catastrophe of the next World War, the Second World War and the Holocaust.

Or that if the Hapsburg Empire had survived, maybe it would have managed to turn into a kind of coexistence federation without the need to create 10 states, some with 200 or 300 thousand citizens inside. As Churchill said with despair, when the idea of ??becoming a state was on everyone's mind: "There can be no nation under 10 million people!".

Needless to say, with the Romanovs in Russia - who, in the 100 years 1814-1914, had given about 1,000 death sentences for political reasons - he, the other mustache that 1,000 shot had a daily ration, would not have come into effect.

Or that, if the Catastrophe of Empires had not happened, even here in this corner of ours, Vidi would have succeeded in getting rid of Haxhi-Qamilism and would have introduced us from then on to the path of Europe where it had its own kind - kings and princes - and we would not have lost in this century that we are continuing to lose to find Europe.

There are many others like that that scholars and historians cry about, as those few enlightened politicians cry about, but they are increasingly rare. Most of them are afraid of this lost perspective, because they would not have had the opportunity to go out and become who they became.

The August cannons set in motion unstoppable and uncontrollable processes that brought the world to what it is today, perhaps better than it was in 1914; but at the same time, perhaps even much worse than it would have been if 1914 had not happened at all.