Of Cars, Dreadnoughts, and Foreign Diplomacy

By Michael Shay

When I moved back to Colorado in 1978, my first car was a 1964 Chevy Bel-Air. The 60s-era Chevies were not the shapely, finned collectibles that the automotive giant made in the 1950s. Mine was a huge blocky four-door with a big gas-guzzling engine. Its body had been sand-blasted by years of use by a visiting nurse service in the San Luis Valley. So, what once was a forest green was now a mottled battleship gray. Maybe that's why I dubbed it "Dreadnought" after the long line of British battleships of the same name.

The term "dreadnought" just sounds ominous. The first H.M.S. Dreadnought was launched in 1573 and fought against the Spanish Armada. Queen Elizabeth I chose the name "to infuse her own dauntless spirit into the hearts of her subjects and to show...Europe...how little she dreaded, and how little such people could dread, the mightiest armaments of her enemies." When named a peer in 1909, First Sea Lord Jacky Fisher, who supervised the construction of the first all-big-gun Dreadnought, chose an appropriate motto for his coat of arms: "Fear God and Dread Nought" and noted that the phrase "dread nought" is used more than 80 times in the Bible.

When I was in my twenties, I feared neither God nor my own dreadnought. Others drivers, especially those behind the wheels of Toyotas and other sub-compacts, did seem to steer clear of my massive machine. But I was courteous enough to restrict my accidents to other large American cars and trucks. Dreadnought once broke down on a winter night in Cherry Hills, one of Denver's ritziest enclaves, and a Cherry Hills cop cruiser instantly came to my rescue. Actually, he first shined his flashlight all over the car and checked me out pretty good. I knew what he was thinking: "What is this fellow doing in this neighborhood in this wreck of a car? Answer: No good. He eventually asked if I needed a hand. I thought: should I tell him I'm a cat burglar and I have a trunk full of cats? Instead, I asked for a ride to the nearest phone where I would call my girlfriend who would come to rescue me in her ‘73 Gremlin, which looked equally suspicious.

I recently was perusing the stacks at the local library with my son, trying to find info about World War I for his social studies report. My son settled on a coffee table book called "The Great War" which was a PBS documentary a few years ago. I picked up a huge volume called "Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War" by Robert Massie. I have a warm spot in my heart for any dreadnought, auto or warship. And Massie is one of my favorite historians. I read his books on Peter the Great and the Romanovs and haven't enjoyed Russian history so much since "War and Peace."

In "Dreadnought," Massie goes back to the latter half of the 19th century to find the causes of the arms buildup that caused World War I. He explores the personal and public lives of Queen Victoria, Otto von Bismarck, Lord Salisbury, Kaiser William II, Arthur Balfour, and a host of unforgettable characters. What Massie makes clear are the strange machinations of foreign policy, no matter which countries are involved. If WWI hadn't been such a horrible, bloody mess, its seminal events would make splendid comedy. How else to describe the Kaiser's fascination with ships that is akin to a boy's fondness for toy boats? The intrigues of Europe's royalty sounds a lot like the intrigues of suburban high school cliques. I really liked the reclusive Holstein who controlled the workings of Germany's government from a dank cubicle on the Wilhelmstrasse. Massie's blow-by-blow account of the Kaiser's 1904 visit to Morocco sounds like something written by Mel Brooks.

Yet, the monster in the closet is always the wretched war that awaits Europe. And, as I read the massive "Dreadnought," the U.S./China "crisis" continued to be hot news. Chinese officials were coming up with various ways to save face over the death of its pilot. U.S. officials were figuring out a way to say "sorry" without actually saying it. The U.S. showed a video of the Chinese fighter pilot flipping the bird at the U.S. pilots. China produced its own photos, as grainy as alleged shots of the Loch Ness Monster, that shows the U.S. spy plane swerving to hit the Chinese plane. All very comic and stupid. But I began to wonder about the hundreds of behind-the-scenes machinations that make up international diplomacy. And that's what makes Massie's book so good. The difference between peace and warfare can depend on a document's phrasing, the mood of the diplomats, the phases of the moon. Scary, really, especially in the nuclear age. It's a wonder how The Big One never was launched during 40 years of the Cold War.

Read this book if you are in the least bit curious about foreign policy and, in the end, how little has changed during the past 100 years.

I now drive a minivan, just like every other suburban parent. However, my second car is a 1976 Pontiac Ventura with one of those strange plastic tops that looks like grandpa's flaking scalp. Various names have been bandied about for this classic machine. My daughter proposed "Ace" Ventura after the famous Jim Carrey film character. Not bad, considering Carrey drove a dreadnought monster truck in the second Ace Ventura movie. Still, it's not quite what I'm looking for. I think "Dreadnought Two" or "Son of Dreadnought" might be appropriate.