“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there”

L.P. Hartley's 'The Go-Between' is perhaps one of the most poignant novels of the last century. The story of a small boy’s brutal loss of innocence at the end of a long, hot summer perfectly parallels the tragedy that engulfed Europe in August 1914 and the privileged inhabitants of Brandham Hall brilliantly evoke all the swagger, optimism and confidence of Edwardian Britain in the run-up to the Great War.

Europe at that time was enjoying the fruits of one hundred years of peace and unprecedented advances in living standards and technology. The Industrial Revolution had spread from Britain across the continent and the motor car, the aeroplane and the telephone had recently been invented. For the first time in human history ordinary people had access to disposable incomes, leisure time, labour rights and political enfranchisement. In popular myth the summer of 1914 was long, hot and glorious; in that final summer of peace it would have been easy to imagine that the twentieth century was destined to be synonymous with peace and goodwill on earth.

In my home town there is a street of Victorian and Edwardian townhouses, grand and imposing they epitomise the confidence and wealth of the era. The last houses on the street bear the date ‘1914’ and it is hard not to feel a slight sense of melancholy when one thinks of how that world of optimism and innocence was suddenly and brutally destroyed.

When asked what the impact of the French Revolution had been, Zhou Enlai famously replied that it was “Too early to tell”, and so it is with the Great War. The immediate effects of the war are obvious and have been covered extensively. The carnage of the Great War easily eclipsed all of humanity’s other wars. An entire generation of young men was lost; Great Britain lost 750,000 citizens. France and Germany each lost more than two million, with catastrophic results for their societies. That Adolf Hitler managed to survive both the entire war and the subsequent influenza epidemic is one reason I doubt the existence of a benevolent God. In all perhaps ten million lost their lives in those four years. The British Empire was fatally weakened and four other empires disappeared completely. Just as poignantly the innocence and optimism of the pre-war era was lost forever.

The trauma and brutality of the war led many to pursue new philosophies and ideas. Some people became nihilistic others looked to the scientific theories of Communism to obtain happiness for humanity. Understandably many, especially those who had fought in the war, became committed pacifists determined that conflict should be the ‘War to end all wars’. Perhaps the bravest and most far-sighted approach to the aftermath was the Wilsonian Doctrine of international co-operation and the creation of the League of Nations, the protype for the UN. But the Treaty of Versailles achieved peace for a mere twenty years and even today the limits to the effectiveness of the UN are obvious. In fact many of the problems that the world is struggling with today are direct consequences of the Great War. Most wars create trauma and upheaval that lead to subsequent and related wars. The Great War had been the most terrible war in history so it should be no surprise that its consequences were just as terrible and far-reaching.

The first devastating impact of the Great War was that it created the breeding ground for the second even more destructive world war. Indeed World War Two was simply an extension of World War One and Hitler’s aggressive nationalism was the direct heir to the Kaiser’s militarism. World War Two was staggeringly destructive, perhaps seventy million died, the Jewish race in Central and Eastern Europe was totally wiped out and much of Europe’s priceless architectural heritage was destroyed forever. Without World War One the Nazis would not have risen to power and Europe would not have been dragged into that second terrible conflict.

If there had been no Great War then the Russian Communists would never have been able to claim power in 1917. As a result we would never have had the Cold War and the world would not have spent the last fifty years divided into two competing ideologies.

Without the Cold War we would not have had the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and as a result Osama bin Laden may have remained a feckless and anonymous Saudi millionaire. Islamism may have still become a powerful force, but I doubt that we would have had 9/11 and the subsequent ‘War on Terror’.

Many of the nation states created by the war have not survived the century. Some, like Czechoslovakia dissolved peacefully, others, notably Yugoslavia where the war began, collapsed in an orgy of destruction. The nation states of the Middle East, over which so much blood has been spilt, simply did not exist before 1918. Would Israel have been created if the two world wars had not occurred? It is debatable. Iraq, another post-1918 creation, has survived one century; it may be lucky to survive another.

The European colonies could not have lasted forever but would their dissolution have been as swift without the two world wars? Perhaps a more gradual emergence of political freedom in what is now the Third World would have enabled the new nation states to avoid the curse of dictatorships, civil wars and basket case economies.

Violence begets violence and many of the wars of the twentieth century, the bloodiest century in human history, were direct consequences of the events of 1914. Indeed as we struggle to cope with the problems in Iraq and Afghanistan today, we are dealing with the results of that mad rush to war ninety four years ago.

The Great War is often seen as a war that was fought for no obvious reason, as Captain Blackadder put it, “It was simply too much effort not to have a war”. In recent years, however, revisionist historians have written about the necessity of the war and the tactical brilliance of military leaders such as Field Marshal Haig, theories which I remain to be convinced about. Dr Gary Sheffield argues that the conditions for war were deliberately initiated by the aggressive military powers, Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He points out that Britain, France and the USA fought a war defending (admittedly imperfect) liberal democracies against the extreme nationalism of the Kaiser. The argument that the consequences of allowing Imperial Germany to prevail would have been far worse than fighting the war, is something I certainly agree with. Indeed one could argue that the war was the prototype for liberal interventionism; after all Britain entered the war to save Belgian sovereignty and advocated self-determination for oppressed peoples throughout the duration of the conflict. Once the war had started Britain had no choice but to stop German imperialism by military means.

However I do believe that the war could have been avoided without having to cave into the Kaiser's meglomania; in my view the failure to prevent the conflagration must rank as Britain’s greatest foreign policy failure. It may have been possible to keep the Kaiser contained without having to fight a war, but the British Government seems to have relished the opportunity to defeat Imperial Germany in open combat. The Government seemed disinclined to look for a peaceful solution to the Kaiser's militarism and the policy of making pacts with France and Russia against Germany simply made war inevitable. For his part King George V was too obsessed with his own life of luxury to bother making any overtures to his cousin, Kaiser Wilhelm. Hubris pervaded Georgian/Edwardian society and Britain was certainly guilty of militaristic posturing towards Germany, as Blackadder also said, “We can hardly be absolved from blame on the imperialistic front”. Crucially neither France nor Britain realised that a European war had the potential to utterly destroy European civillisation. The Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Gray, must be blamed for failing to make it clear to the Kaiser that Britain would enter the war against Germany; although he did have the prescience to remark to a friend on the eve of war, "The lights are going out all over Europe; and we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime". If the USA had publicly guaranteed France’s sovereignty then war might been avoided, but at that stage America was reluctant to recognise its de-facto position as the world’s policeman.

Whether or not the war was avoidable or morally justified, the fact is that it happened and many people around the world are living with the consequences. At a time when many are calling for an end to interventionism and as new superpowers vie for power in Asia, our leaders must be careful not to repeat the mistakes of 1914; if only for the sake of our descendants.