Although filled with hope and promise, New Year’s Day a hundred years ago more than suggests that the world is no better off today than it was in 1919.
Today we have unsettled politics, American troops fighting in faraway places, controversial drug laws, medical care issues, and immigration conflicts while — well, just like they did back then.
In 1919, on what is normally the cheeriest day of the year, the dust was barely settling from Armistice Day, a month and a half earlier. Soldiers from Utah were trickling home, scarred and broken from a global conflict that, according to some sources, claimed an estimated 16 million lives.