History Quotes / WorldWarI

->''The fifteen years or so from 1899 to 1914 were a Belle Époque not only because they were prosperous and life was exceedingly attractive for those who had money and golden for those who were rich, but also because the rulers of most western countries were perhaps worried about the future, [[HeadInTheSandManagement but not really frightened about the present]]...Yet there were [[GlobalIgnorance considerable areas of the world]] in which this clearly was not the case. In these areas the years 1880 to 1914 were an era of constantly possible, of impending or even of actual revolution. Though some of these countries were to be plunged into world war, even in these 1914 is not the apparently sudden break...In some -- e.g. the Ottoman Empire -- the world war itself was merely one episode in a series of military conflicts which had already begun some years earlier. In others -- possibly Russia and certainly the Habsburg Empire -- the world war was itself largely the product of the insolubility of the problems of domestic politics...In short, for the vast area of the globe...the idea that somehow or other, [[ForWantOfANail but for the unforeseen and avoidable intervention of catastrophe in 1914]], stability, prosperity and liberal progress [[HopeSpot would have continued]], has not [[ThisIsReality even the most superficial plausibility]].''

-->-- '''Kaiser Wilhelm II''', watching German troops marching off to war in summer 1914. (As usual, [[HomeByChristmas not quite accurate.]])

->'''SherlockHolmes:''' There's an east wind coming, Watson.\\

->''Basically, Somebody shot somebody, and Europe burned down for a while''

-->--''Tex of the Black Pants Legion''

! Non-Fiction

->''"You will be home before the leaves have fallen from the trees"''

-->-- '''Eric Hobsbawm''', ''The Age of Empire'', Page 276-277/

->''Humanity is mad! It must be mad to do what it is doing. What a massacre! What scenes of horror and carnage! I cannot find words to translate my impressions. Hell cannot be so terrible. Men are mad!''

! Fiction

-->-- '''Stephen King''', ''Literature/TheDeadZone''

->In June 1914, an Archduke of Austria was shot by a Serbian, and this then led, through nations having treaties with nations, like a line of dominoes falling, to some boys from England walking together in France on a terrible day.