...The “tremendous event” which was prowling about in search of something to destroy had already set it sights on the pomposity which was Western rationalism. The end was inevitable, only the moment of judgment remained unclear.

That moment came with the advent of what was ironically called “The Great War.” Europe had experienced a rare century of near peace, excepting a few minor wars between France and Germany, and Britain and Russia. Certainly nothing to equal the Napoleonic wars of the early 19th century. The irrepressible optimism which clouded over Europe at the outset of the 20th century managed to carry even into the first days of the Great War. Englishman H.G. Wells wrote a little volume titled The War That Will End War. It would seem that the reality of millions mired in the trenches, choking on blood and mustard gas would eliminate the last drop of hope from Europe. But, initially at least, Mr. Wells was not alone in believing that the Great War would serve as a purgation of Europe’s remaining evil. Namely (for the Anglo-American alliance), the Kaiser and his Germanic serfs—a distasteful reminder of medieval feudalism. President Woodrow Wilson emphasized in his declaration of war that the free peoples of the West were not declaring war on a “free” people, but on an oppressive empire. The Anglo-American mission was suitably modern: “Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power.”

The violence of the war, however, did manage to penetrate deeper than the idealists at first admitted. An extended wartime note from Winston Churchill details the horrific, unimaginable nature of the new kind of war:

All the horrors of all the ages were brought together, and not only armies but whole populations were thrust into the midst of them. The mighty educated States involved conceived – not without reason – that their very existence was at stake. Neither peoples nor rulers drew the line at any deed which they thought could help them to win. Germany, having let hell loose, kept well in the van of terror; but she was followed step by step by the desperate and ultimately avenging nations she had assailed…. Cities and monuments were smashed by artillery. Bombs from the air were cast down indiscriminately. Poison gas in many forms stifled or seared the soldiers. Liquid fire was projected upon their bodies. Men fell from the air in flames, or were smothered often slowly in the dark recesses of the sea…. When it was all over, Torture and Cannibalism were the only two expedients that the civilized, scientific, Christian States had been able to deny themselves: and they were of doubtful utility.

The old guard still proclaimed that the Great War had served its prophetic purpose: the dead had fallen in the trenches to make straight the way for democracy. But the younger generation that survived the war began to develop a different view of things. It was not lost upon the younger generation that “there had been an unimaginable unprecedented moral degeneration.” In fact, they seemed to embrace the moral freefall into which Europe had been thrown.