Warnings of disaster had been frequent—but disaster had always been averted, and fair words had prevailed. For years we had been living on the verge of national ruin through strikes of railway-men, transport-workers, miners, or the spinners and weavers of Lancashire, but at the last moment conciliation always won; there was always room for compromise. Though civil war in Ireland seemed imminent, it was comforting to reflect how much common sense there was in the world. Besides, had it not been proved to every one’s satisfaction that under modern conditions war between great nations could not possibly last for more than a month or two, as in that short period victor and vanquished would alike be reduced to bankruptcy and impotence? Knowing this no Great Power would be likely to commit suicide. We were living in the twentieth century, and a great European war was an abstract conception, not something that could actually occur. In the closing days of July 1914 this complacency was giving way to a very real dread. War might mean suicide even for the victor, might be “unthinkable,” but it was in sight—plain, stark, menacing. War such as other nations had known; not a war in which those who had a taste for soldiering might take part while the rest of us could read about it in the papers, feel proud of a success and depressed by a disaster, and wonder whether sixpence would be added to the income tax. The fantastic image that had thrilled us not altogether unpleasantly—as children experience ecstatic shudders when listening to tales of ogres and hobgoblins—was taking on an appearance of grim reality. Could it after all be a grisly spectre and not a mere bogey of turnip and white sheet? England began to regret that the warnings of her greatest soldier had passed unheeded.