THE Phillpott File (Evening News, November 13) compared the regrettable attitudes of many of today's young people with those of the youth of 1939 and 1914, who were far less fortunate, to put it mildly.
I do not always agree with the Phillpott File, but basically, I did on this occasion.
However, reference was made to "an obscure foreign royal being bumped off in Sarajevo". This is clearly a reference to the assassination of the Austria-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir and nephew of Hapsburg emperor Franz Joseph, which set in motion the events leading to the First World War and indirectly to the Second World War as well.
In fact, the Archduke was far from being an "obscure royal". Austria-Hungary was the largest in area and had the second largest population of all the truly European states. Strictly speaking, Russia and Turkey were, and still are, Eurasian countries.
In many ways the Hapsburg realm was the political expression of the Roman Catholic Church. At the end of the First World War it was broken up on the insistence of Clemenceau, so-called Tiger of France, who was an arch anti-cleric.
If the Archduke had been only "an obscure royal", the two world wars may never have happened.
D E MARGRETT,
May Avenue,
Worcester.
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