No room for complacency, 100 years after Great War

There have been multiple events to mark the 100th anniversary of all the big landmarks of that disastrous conflict.

The war dragged on until almost the end of 1918. Looking back at the newspaper reports from that time, it is clear the extent to which the news was censored so as not to convey a detailed sense of the calamity or of the advances of the enemy.

But it is equally clear that the public was fully aware of the scale of the emerging catastrophe, despite the spin.

They could not have been spared that truth, given that hundreds of thousands of British and Irish young men died on the frontline and almost every person back home would have known someone who died in combat.

The sacrifices on this island were made by soldiers drawn from across the religious divide, and from the north, south, east and west of Ireland, and everywhere in between. That they were volunteers makes their fate all the more poignant.

Two Armagh archbishops, Archbishop Richard Clarke of the Church of Ireland and Archbishop Eamon Martin of the Catholic Church, are currently leading a delegation of 36 people to sites including the Island of Ireland Peace Park at Messines and the Menin Gate in Ypres.

They are calling it a “pilgrimage of hope” because, as Archbishop Clarke says, “amid all the awfulness people found hope and strength in each other”.

There is another reason to be hopeful: since the two world wars, the world has gradually become more peaceful than ever before in terms of deaths in conflict, according to the American science writer Steven Pinker.

If that is correct, let us hope it stays that way. But there is no room for complacency. In the early summer of 1914, the world seemed affluent and exciting with technology advancing at a rapid rate. And even when the war began, people thought it would be over by Christmas.