We are sure to be besieged by commemorations of all kinds in this centennial year of the First World War. Thus, in homage to the vogue of "history from below," we will know all about how people lived-and especially died-in the trenches, how the troop posts were organized, what soldiers wrote to home or about their food. And of course it will be useful and appropriate to know and remember all this.

There is a danger, however, that in the end, paradoxically, the truly crucial aspect of that event remains ignored and unknown: namely, the war as such.

How and why did the greatest organized carnage of all time begin? What were the aims of the states that unleashed it? Could it have been prevented? Why did it last so to long? And why, for the first time, did armies instead of facing each other in pitched battle bury themselves for four years in the earth, never to getting out? Again: why in the end did victory arisen to one side and not the other? And what does that war tell us about the societies that fought it? What were the long-lasting geo-political consequences for Italy, Europe and the world?

These are some of the questions the Spoleto Festival -- looking forward to bringing to life next year to an artistically more challenging event on the theme of the Great War -- will try to answer this year. It will do so in the most traditional of ways: with a lecture and with a professor, Ernesto Galli della Loggia, duly equipped with maps and an ordinance baton. Although for the occasion to asking the questions will not be him but an accomplished journalist like Massimo Bernardini, whom so many TV viewers have learned from time to to know and appreciate.