The British won their World War I battles, so goes the aphorism, on the polo fields of Eton and Harrow (elite boarding schools for boys). As poetic as that may sound, those battles were actually won — some lost — in the farmlands of Devon and factories of Manchester and Liverpool.

But one thing is true: Throughout history, sports and games have served as preparation for war. Think of pankration, the bloody Greek martial art routinely practiced by Spartan boys, and the English medieval game Prisoner's Base in which the team that captured the most prisoners won.

And where were the U.S. military forces that bombarded and invaded Panama, Bosnia, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq trained? I propose it happened, to some extent, in video game arcades at Chuck E. Cheese and suburban homes, where teenage boys played air combat and first-person shooter video games.

What some historians consider the earliest video game, "Spacewar!", was created in 1962 by Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer scientists funded by the Pentagon. Since then, the U.S. military has employed war video games not only for training but also for pre-training and as recruitment tools. The names of some popular war video games are suggestive, like "Tactical Iraqi" and "Afghanistan '11."

TikTok GIs

But where will America win or lose its battles in future, some believe looming, wars? I fear it is happening in front of smartphones, surfing — if that is the right verb — endless successions of TikTok videos.

I am not a TikTok user (and don't plan to become one either), but this is what I learned while researching the app. It was developed by a Chinese company in 2016 and transmitted — I use the verb deliberately — to the rest of the world in 2017. It consists of millions of short video clips, most of which last 15 seconds, some of lip syncing, others of people doing viral dances, even some participating in dangerous challenges like filing their teeth. No, this is not a typo — filing with one "i," as in sharpening them with a file.

In 2021, TikTok surpassed Google as the most visited webpage; its app has been downloaded more than three billion times. TikTok is particularly appealing to members of Generation Z (roughly those born between the mid-to-late 1990s and the early 2010s). Nearly half of all males and 70% of females between the ages of 13 and 19 use the app daily for an average time of almost 70 minutes.

Mental health professionals and scientists around the world have recognized and warned the public about the addictive nature of TikTok, which some have dubbed a "viral form of societal poison," "mass social media-induced illness" and "digital crack cocaine." Watching TikTok videos releases doses of dopamine, which can lead to addiction. Side effects include shortened attention spans, anxiety, depression and tics (without a "k" — you have to go outside to get those).

It would be difficult to argue that the app is good preparation for war, like pankration for Spartan warriors, Prisoner's Base for medieval English crusaders and the video game "Doom" for American ground troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But this two-part column is not about TikTok, which I see as a symbol not just for Gen Zers but for American society in general. It is about the potential for a major conflagration in the near future and how well a divided, self-indulgent, out-of-shape and increasingly emotionally unstable citizenry is prepared for the challenges of war, on the battlefields and the homefront.

Wars and Rumors of Wars

In the book of Matthew, Jesus prophesized "wars and rumors of wars," and numerous catastrophes in the end times: famines, earthquakes, increased wickedness and false prophets. And then come the four horsemen of the apocalypse: pestilence, war, famine and death. 2022 has begun with increasingly loud rumors of war and we see the four horsemen galloping roughshod across the world.

Government officials, serious students of geopolitics and international relations, and the mainstream media (those who call apples, apples) have been, for some time, sounding the alarm of Chinese and Russian aggressive expansionism — threatening air missions on Taiwanese airspace; over 100,000 Russian troops across the border from Ukraine. And then we have Iran, reportedly only weeks away from producing the amount of fuel needed to launch a nuclear bomb, and North Korea, with its recurrent, if erratic, missile tests.

To be continued next week.

A woodcut by Albrecht Durer depicts the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Luis Martinez-Fernandez is author of "Revolutionary Cuba: A History" and "Key to the New World: A History of Early Colonial Cuba." Readers can reach him at LMF_Column@yahoo.com. To find out more about Luis Martinez-Fernandez and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www. creators.com.

A woodcut by Albrecht Durer depicts the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.