Everything would get better and better. This was the world I was born in. . . . Suddenly, unexpectedly, one morning in 1914 the whole thing came to an end. Harold Macmillan
Year1914 (MCMXIV) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) in the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Wednesday in the Julian calendar. It was the year that saw the beginning of what became known asWorld War I.
Thoughts and pictures come to my mind, . . .thoughts from before the year 1914 when there was realpeace, quiet andsecurity on thisearth—a time when we didn’t know fear. . . . Security and quiet have disappeared from the lives of men since 1914.
Konrad Adenauer,Cleveland West Parker, January 20, 1966, p. 1. Quoted in the articleHow We Know We Live in the “Last Days”, inThe Watchtower magazine, April 1, 1967.
The First World War changed everything. In the summer of 1914 theworld economy was thriving in ways that look distinctly familiar. The mobility ofcommodities,capital andlabour reached levels comparable with those we know today; thesea lanes andtelegraphs across theAtlantic were never busier, as capital and migrants went west and raw materials andmanufactures went east. The war sankglobalization - literally. Nearly thirteen million tons of shipping went to the bottom of the sea as a result of German naval action, most of it by U-boats. International trade, investment andemigration all collapsed. In the war's aftermath, revolutionary regimes arose that were fundamentally hostile to international economic integration.Plans replaced themarket;autarky andprotection took the place offree trade. Flows of goods diminished; flows of people and capital all but dried up. TheEuropeanempires' grip on the world - which had been the political undergirding of globalization - was dealt a profound, if not quite fatal, blow. The reverberations of Princip's shots truly shook the world.
Niall Ferguson,The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West (2006), pp. 73
The succession of events since 1914 has swept away so manyillusions that even a summary inspection of the heap ofideological ruins would demand the compilation of a veritableencyclopaedia. Thesummer of 1914 witnessed the collapse of all those hopes which had been built on a peaceful evolution of thecapitalist world, and it also witnessed the breakdown ofSocialist internationalism.
Everything would get better and better. This was the world I was born in. . . . Suddenly, unexpectedly, one morning in 1914 the whole thing came to an end.
Harold Macmillan, Stated in 1980 former British prime minister. Quoted in the articleThe Kingdom and “a Holy Place”, in theThe Watchtower magazine, September 15, 1982.
Since 1914 the world has had a new character: a character of internationalanarchy.
H. R. Trevor-Roper, British historian said in 1954. Quoted in the articleWhen Will God’s Will Be Done on Earth?, in theThe Watchtower magazine, February 1, 1971.
