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Part One Hundred One: War and Peace

First Moves of Great War: The beginning of the Great War saw the test of the European naval arms race that had been building up for the past two decades, as much of the combat between the Alliance Carolingien[1] and the New Coalition took place at sea. While the British had naval forces scattered all across the globe, the French and German fleets were concentrated in the North Sea, English Channel, and the Mediterranean. In the North Sea, the Royal Navy sought to prevent the German fleet in the North Sea from joining the French in the Channel with a combine attack. The first naval action of the Great War was the Battle of Cotentin off the coast of Normandy. The Manche Fleet had been sailing west from Le Havre and was intercepted by the British north of the Cotentin Peninsula on April 10, 1906. The French ships defeated the smaller British fleet, sinking two destroyers and damaging four other ships in the British fleet. Later in April, the Manche Fleet set up a blockade around the Channel Islands, which fell in the next two months. The German navy launched a similar invasion of Heligoland in June after chasing away the small fleet based on the island.

On land, the fighting was for the most part stalled due to most of the fronts being mountainous. Only a few breakthroughs were made in Europe during the first months of the war. Before the French could set up sufficient defenses, Italy made a successful push across the Var River and capture Canges-sur-Mer, Antibes, Carros, and Vence. The French stalled the Italian advance after a few days, and set up defensive positions in the hills east of Cannes and north of Vence. The French had more success against Italy in Savoy and on the African front. French forces defeated Italy at the battle of Choisy in late April and shelled Annecy for a week before taking the city on May 8, 1906. Chambery was surrounded on the north and west by mid-May, but the difficult terrain in those directions prevented French troops from capturing both major cities in Savoy. In Africa, the French advance began weeks after the fighting in Europe as word of the conflict reached the isolated towns. Henri de Gaulle[2], general of the French army in Algeria, sent the army east from Bone and reached Jendouba by the end of May. The French Algerian fleet shelled Bizerte and launched an attack on Tabarka, but refrained from attacking Tunis. A French expedition from Ghadames was sent north through the desert at the beginning of May to make a surprise attack on Tripoli, but the hundred mile trek through the desert exhausted the men by the time they reached Nalut.


The Olympic Truce: The outbreak of the Great War in Europe had some impact in the United States prior to the American entry into the war. Three years before the war, the International Olympic Committee had selected New York to be the first city in the United States and the first city outside Europe to host the Olympics[3]. When the Great War started though, the Olympics Committee considered cancelling the 1906 games because they did not want the games to occur during a time of war and the committee was unsure of whether the United States would take a side on the war before the games. However, a letter by President Roosevelt to the committee convinced the members that the games should go on as planned. In Theodore Roosevelt's words, "these games represent the ideal of peace even in a time of war. To let the games lapse now would be to let the spirit of the ancient games lapse. Are we not civilized nations? Can we not carry forward the ekecheima of the ancient games into the modern and revive the Olympics truce in earnest? I beseech this committee that as civilized peoples, we shall continue to hold these games in the spirit of peace."[4] The committee, convinced by Roosevelt's words and the practical consideration that many of the athletes had already made the long journey to New York, the games went ahead in June.

At the opening ceremony, the committee honored Roosevelt's suggestion to revive the Olympic truce, and the ceremony began with President Roosevelt himself making what is now the traditional Olympic oath to "take part in the Olympic Games in a spirit of chivalry, for the honour of our country, and for the glory of sport."[5] The Olympic committee went so far as to allow Roosevelt to compete in the rowing and boxing events. The President did well in both events. Roosevelt even received a bronze medal in heavyweight boxing, defeating one opponent in the first round[6]. Other highlights of the 1906 Olympics were in the swimming events. Native Hawaiian Don Kahanamoku won California's only Olympic medals after getting gold in the 100 metre freestyle and bronze in the 400 metre freestyle[7]. In football, there were a record eight teams competing. The Danish team defeated Acadia in the quarterfinal and Hungary in the semifinal to advance to the final match against England. The Danes, with the Bohr brothers playing goalkeeper and forward[8], won the match 3 to 1. Most of the events took place in Central Park, with the football matches taking place at the southwest end near Merchants Gate. The stadium built there for the 1906 Olympics would later host the football club New York Athletic.

[1] The name Alliance Carolignien is a call back to Charlemagne as a common ancestry of both France and Germany.
[2] Henri is Charles de Gaulle's father. In OTL Henri served in the Franco-Prussian War, TTL he served in the Second Napoleonic War.
[3] New York beat out other cities in North America including Halifx, Havana, Chicago, and Yerba Buena. The previous Olympic hosts were Paris in 1894, Rome in 1898, and Madrid in 1902.
[4] This is original. The ekecheima is the ancient Greek term for the Olympic truce.
[5] This is taken from the OTL first version of the Olympic Oath at the 1920 games.
[6] Roosevelt would be 48, the same age as George Foreman when he retired and three years older than when Foreman became the oldest heavyweight champion. I figure with Roosevelt keeping as active as he did (boxing regularly even while president in OTL), and with few enough competitors in the early olympics, it's plausible Roosevelt could get bronze.
[7] OTL Duke Kahanamoku, a Hawaiian swimmer and medal-winning Olympian.
[8]The Bohr brothers being Niels and Harald. Harald played for the Danish national team at the 1908 Olympics in OTL and both played at their university club.