"An entire generation of young men have been sacrificed on the bloody altars of Plague, Nerve Gas, Trench Warfare, and most of all, Politics."

Even more than Politics, it seems, it was driven by Racism. I have been recently struck by just how much people writing before the First World War interpreted everything in light of "national characters", and the superior grit and virtue of the British Race over the greedy German Race, or the decadent French, or vice versa or what have you. When the war started, it seems like everybody was just spoiling for a fight.

It almost seems like it took the Great War to get people to stop looking at things that way.