‘The choicest of their kind’
This is the first in a series of occasional articles marking the centennial of World War I. On Thursday, June 18, a century ago, Harvard College graduated its Class of 1914. “We close old records,” one senior wrote in the class album that year, and “open new.” The world itself was closing old records and opening new ones — most of them vast and violent. Ten days after Harvard’s graduation, a dour European royal with a curlicue mustache and a helmet of green feathers was gunned down with his wife in Sarajevo. Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s death by a single pistol shot set the stage for the official start of World War I just a month later, on July 28, 1914. The four-year conflict killed 16 million people, and stripped England, Germany, and France of a generation of young men. With its swarming armies and globe-spanning troop movements, World War I also accelerated the...