“Their World Came to an End”

For Scriptural reasons Jehovah’s Witnesses are convinced that we have been living in the “last days” since the climactic year 1914. (2 Timothy 3:1-5; Matthew 24:3-14)a But many historians and analysts have also declared that 1914 was a turning point in human history. For instance, writing on “The Great War,” columnist Joe Chapman said in The Spectator of Hamilton, Ontario:

“How innocent, how mercifully ignorant, was the world of August, 1914!

“And yet, in many ways, the First World War, in a macabre sense at least, may well deserve the title ‘great’.

“It was the first war which could, with justification, be called a world conflict, involving nearly every important nation, with campaigns fought on many fronts, from Arctic wastes to steaming jungles.

“It was the first ‘total’ war, in which the whole nation became deeply involved, with the entire apparatus of civilian life becoming an integral part of the war effort.

“It was the first war in which technology played such an important part. No other war saw the introduction of so many new weapons used on a large scale: The machine-gun, the tank, the airplane, the submarine, poison gas, motor transport, telephones and other items, and artillery used on a truly grand scale. In short, it was the first of our modern wars.”

Columnist Chapman also remarked that “the war was a turning point in more than a military and technological sense. It was a social and cultural revolution and the old way of life was shattered utterly.” After reflecting on “the pre-1914 world” and the changes since then, he said regarding the impact of World War I on society:

“Not even the Second World War, to which the Nazis added new dimensions of brutality, and the atomic bomb slaughter seems to have had such an effect upon us as did the First World War.

“Somehow, we had become conditioned to the idea of total war and numbed by history, and not even Hiroshima or Dresden had the same impact as the awful carnage of the Western Front.

“Perhaps that is why the veterans of the earlier struggle seemed men set apart, much less able to adjust to the new world than those from 1945. Nothing in their lives had prepared them for the reality of the trenches and nothing since has equalled their experiences.”

Then, describing the innocence of those who went off to the war in 1914, Chapman commented:

“It was all a kind of a lark but the awakening would come soon enough and they and their world would never be the same again. Indeed, in more than one sense, their world came to an end sixty-five years ago; it took the rest of us a little longer to begin to understand.”

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