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The Pity of War. Explaining World War IBy Niall Ferguson. Basic Books, 1999. 563 Pages. $30.00. Reviewed by Colonel Christopher B. Timmers, U.S. Army, Retired.
Imagine a country which, as a result of the First World War, effectively lost 22 per cent of its national territory; incurred debts equivalent to 136 per cent of gross national product, a fifth of it owed to foreign powers; saw inflation and then unemployment rise to levels not seen for more than a century; and experienced an equally unprecedented wave of labor unrest .... a country whose newly democratic political system produced a system of coalition government in which party deals behind closed doors... determined who governed the country .. a country in which the poverty of returning soldiers and their families contrasted grotesquely with the conspicuous...