A century ago the world changed forever when Austria-Hungary declared war against Serbia on 28 July 1914. The ensuing conflict tore apart the fabric of European society and resulted in the death of more than fifteen million soldiers and civilians. The war also led directly to the rise of totalitarian regimes in Germany and Russia, setting the stage for a second war which would claim an additional 60 million lives.
Pope Benedict XV, elected in September 1914, called unsuccessfully for peace amongst Christian nations and later referred to the war as “the vast conflict, the suicide of civilised Europe”.
Paul Kengor writes:
The moral calamity was obvious to all. Quite apart from the bishop of Rome, the acclaimed atheist-leftist intellectual Sidney Hook might have best summed up the catastrophe when he referred to World War I not as the “Great War,” or “War to End All Wars,” or the “Kaiser’s War,” or, in President Woodrow Wilson’s famous line, the war to “make the world safe for democracy,” but as something considerably less inspiring: World War I was, said Hook mordantly, “the second fall of man.”
And so it was.
Religious metaphor best captures the gravity of this giant fall from grace. Historian Michael Hull evokes the image of O Cristo das Trincheiras, “The Christ of the Trenches.” This life-size statue of Jesus Christ hung with arms outstretched on a tall wooden cross was erected on the Western Front. Soiled, bullet-scarred, and, most of all, crucified, the French presented it to the government of Portugal after the war to memorialize the thousands of Portuguese who sacrificed themselves at the Battle of Flanders. It’s an appropriate symbol for the millions who gave their lives for this colossal sin.The war also resulted in the death of Christendom in Europe. At the time almost all European citizens and national leaders notionally adhered to the Christian faith, however this counted for little or nothing in avoiding war.
Henceforth conflicts would grow even bloodier and would lose any remaining restraint. Today we are left with this legacy, a world fractured and remade in our own image.
