Veterans Memorial Museum Director Chip Duncan gives his "Causes of World War I" presentation on Thursday evening in the Toledo Community Library.
This year marks the centennial of the armistice ending World War I and Toledo Historical Society is celebrating accordingly.
The society organized a World War I exhibit at the Toledo Community Library with the names of Toledo and Winlock men who served in the war as well as a Thursday evening presentation with featured guest Chip Duncan.
Duncan, who is the director of the Veterans Memorial Museum in Chehalis, gave a presentation titled, “Causes of World War I.”
“That was global interaction really for the first time on such a scale,” said Toledo Historical Society member Johanna Jones, as she introduced Duncan.
Duncan’s presentation took an in-depth look at some of the major factors that caused the war. Before discussing the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, which began World War I, Duncan took the audience further back in history — to the Industrial Revolution.
“This was a monumental change for how we saw the world,” Duncan said.
Duncan noted that as society grew, and had to feed its population, warfare changed. He said that in the agricultural age, men who could run a plow were much more valuable to society. If one of those men died, that society didn’t just lose that man. It lost all the food he could produce and then had to take care of the family he left.
After the Industrial Revolution, individuals became less important for the survival of a society.
“Really, that’s why I kind of say World War I was the sunrise of the Industrial Revolution,” Duncan said after the presentation. “It was when we realized everything and what this meant for human society. I think it’s so interesting because for most of American history we were agricultural and we’re still trying to figure out what the Industrial Revolution is, the nuclear revolution, these sorts of things that are happening in society.”
The Toledo Historical Society also displayed the names of Toledo and Winlock men who served in World War I. Jones collected their names for the exhibit.
“I actually really lucked out because the Lewis County (Historical) Museum was doing a thing on World War I as well,” Jones said. “They actually had a book called (In the Service — The Great World War Honor Roll Southwest Washington). So anyone that wants to know if they had somebody (in the war) can go to the museum and actually look in that book and see if they have anybody that they knew, relatives or otherwise.”
The names and various photos of Toledo and Winlock men who served in World War I as well as posters with information on the war are on display in the History Room of the library.
A few of the 20 or so audience members lingered after the presentation to look at various World War I-era artifacts. The Toledo Historical Society brought uniforms and Duncan brought helmets from the U.S., the Ottoman Empire and Germany.
“I wanted people to understand that, one, history is not boring,” Duncan said of his presentation. “No. 2, there are so many facets to understanding why World War I was fought. A lot of it is just ‘well the assassination of Franz Ferdinand led to World War I.’ No — you have the Industrial Revolution, which even going back to Magna Carta, really are elements that started to happen in our society which led up to the American Revolution, the American Civil War, the Revolution of 1848 and then culminating into World War I.”
