DON SURBER: Let’s not have World War Three.

On June 28, 2015, Serbian film director Emir Kusturica unveiled and kissed a new statue to Gavrilo Princip in Belgrade. It was the 101st anniversary of Princip, 19, triggering the Great War, the war to end all wars. We now call it World War One because it did not end all wars, it merely expanded the arsenal of war to include tanks and aircraft. Princip was the young man who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the throne of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. Europe had a hodge-podge of mutual defense agreements that instead of deterring war fueled it.

The Dual Alliance, Triple Alliance, German–Ottoman alliance, Ottoman–Bulgarian alliance and Bulgaria–Germany treaty created the Central Powers (the German Empire, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria). They took on the Allies, who were led by France, the British Empire and the Russian Empire. They were intertwined by treaties as well. The war dragged in a score of other countries on the Allies side including Brazil, China, Japan and of course, the United States. The war destroyed four empires and birthed the Soviet Union, which would devolve into an evil empire far worse than any of the others.

31% of the population of Serbia perished in the war, and yet Gavrilo Princip, who died in prison before the war’s end, is a hero in Serbia. Madness. That he brought devastation to the land matters not. His statue reminds me of the statues of Robert E. Lee, who led the South to its ruin. The statue of Princip is proof that one man’s terrorist is another man’s patriot.

It is with this in mind that I view Volodymyr Zelensky.

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