A taste...

Excerpt from "The Time of the Five World Wars"

Pittsburgh Presses, Neo-Windsor, 2111 AD

May 21st, 1883

The streets of New Amsterdam thronged with masses of cheering people, and great unending streamers of ticker tape fell from the eight story skyscrapers lining Central avenue in downtown Manhattan. Ceaseless columns of soldiers paraded down the avenue, their polished boots stomping the pavement in unison as brass bands played triumphant national songs vigorously and the crowd roared with approval at the passing of each immaculate regiment.

It was a mixed throng of spectators, a hundred thousand and more common laborers and mill managers, shopkeeps and news boys, maids and wives, stock brokers and bankers, curious orientals pausing from their afternoon chores and blacks in from the wharves ; all of New Amsterdam was assembled, and the spirits of all New Dutch soared with them. For the heady thrill of War was in the air. ...

...In Europe, the mother Dutch and their French patrons were mobilizing for War in The Germanies, following a decade of insults and Prusso-British aggression. The assassination of the Dutch-speaking King of Holster and the subsequent Prussian invasion had been the final straw. The French could simply not ignore the provocation as the balance of power in The Germanies threatened to swing in favor of the British-Prussian alliance. As one power after another began to mobilize during the month of May the tightly sprung system of international alliances began to unwind - the countdown to war was like an unstoppable train, fueled by the confident eagerness of willing populations.

Nowhere was the nationalist fervor more passionate than among the New Dutch of Dutchland and Pennsylvania. After most of a century of humiliation at the hands of the British and New Englanders, the opportunity to restore the New Netherlands was an intoxicating dream, one stirred by the newspapers and New Dutch politicians without fail...

...across the Hudson, British artillery sat ready amidst fortifications in the Brooklyn heights. Tense crews sat awaiting the orders that could mark the outbreak of war and send high explosive shells arcing towards New Amsterdam, the largest city in North America. The British had no shortage of modern rifled artillery, and they had been lavish with the guns when outfitting Long Island's defenses.

Readily visible to the British artillerymen, the Entente Tower dominated New Amsterdam's skyline, the soaring French-designed iron monstrosity completed just a few years before to mark the twentieth anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Liege that formalized the Entente between France, the Netherlands, and the new Dutch nations of Dutchland and Pennsylvania. A huge Dutchland flag rippled in the steady wind at the top of the tower...

...both sides had observation balloons high above the Hudson river, the balloons of the opposing armies intermingling so closely that the British artillerymen took bets on how long it would take for a couple of them to become entangled...

...Later historians would lament at the madness of these times; that across the globe people willingly, eagerly, marched into the death and darkness of the subsequent eighty years. After decades of buildup, the Time of the Five World Wars was at hand....

TO BE CONTINUED...