THE END OF AN AGE!
War 1914-18 would have proved a sufficiently salutary lesson and that war on such a scale would never be possible again. Indeed many thought that this was so and the setting up of the league of nations expressed the conviction of many that war was far from being the best solution of quarrels among nations.The league was an attempt to provide a means by wich war could be in future avoided.
And through which national quarrels couldbe settled in what was really a great international law court.
The High hopes which many people placed in the league were not,however,fulfilled. Not Only did it prove incapable of preventing any strong power which felt it would gain by so doing from going to war;it also failed as an instrument for removing those frictions and inequalities among nations which lead to war. This failure was partly due to faults in the league's machinery, partly to the fact that even the destruction and misery which the war if 1914-18 had brought about had not succeded in altring the nature of men and in presuading them to conduct their international and economic relations in less selfish and more co-opertive ways.
As the years passed the internationl situation became worse and worse.Driven on by suspicion and fear by disire for national power and expansion, by the difficulties born of the failure to adjust the world's economic
machinery to the new conditions brought about by the vast changes in production manufacture and transport
the nations piled up armament on armament and like angry dogs growled at each other across their frontiers.
The desire of the vast majority of the common men and women of all nations was for peace and security and decent livelihood their gorvenments faced each each other in armed rings either unwilling or unable to create that measure of co-operation and trust which would enable mankind to enter on a period of prosperity greather than the world had ever before seen.The Invasion by Germany of Poland in september 1939,ended a period of twenty Years uneasy peace.Another world war began.
This Second world war which lasted untill 1945 was even more terrible than the first one had been.And the disorganisation misery and distruction was even more widespread. Whole continents were involved.Vast territories were fought over.not only most of the european nations but also large parts of asia Australias Africa And America were drawn into the struggle.Deadly as were the weapons used in the first worldwar they were as nothing to those used in the war of 1939-45.Towns were raided by a thousand bombers at a time rockets bomb and pilotless aircraft were launched at tragets many miles away. Whole cities were destroyed so that hardly one stone stood upon another the casulaties among civilians were as or even greater that of the fighting forces.The conduct of the war was marked by a ruthlessness and contempt of humane vlaues not seen for hundreds of years. Such was "Toatal war" a sorry result for all the advances which western christain cicilistion had made through so many countries.
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