14-18 (English)

On 4 August 1914, a little over a month since the assassination of the heir to the throne, Archduke of Austria Franz Ferdinand, in Sarajevo, the British minister of foreign affairs, Sir Edward Grey, predicted, ‘The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time.’ The eclipse was to last four long years, thrusting humanity into a brand-new era.

‘Half a century has gone by and the trauma of the Great War has still not been erased from the body and the soul of all nations, ours first and foremost. […] After, nothing was ever the same as before. […] In short, the immense political, economic and social events that have since disrupted the world […] are the direct consequences of the colossal revolution spawn by weapons, and where the human race has come to lose a balance it has never since recovered.’

(Charles de Gaulle, speech given on 11 November 1968)

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