Murderous times but, overall, less violent than the Stone Age (Image: Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS)
“SINCE I have been at the Foreign Office I have not seen such calm waters,” Britain’s permanent under secretary for foreign affairs announced in May 1914.
He was wrong, of course. Just three months later, Europe launched into an orgy of killing. By 1945, close to 100 million people had been killed in conflict and a nuclear arms race had begun. As we stand at the centenary of the outbreak of the first world war, with civil war raging in Syria and Russian tanks massing on Ukraine’s…
