“reason died in 1914, November 1914 ... after that everybody began to rave ...”

“August 2, 1914: Germany has declared war on Russia. Went swimming in the afternoon.”

“with the centenary of 1914 rapidly approaching it is high time to stop regarding the first world war as current affairs and douglas haig as our contemporary”

“ARCHDUKE FRANZ FERDINAND. 1863-1914. LLIE LIGHTLY UPON HIM EARTH, THO' HE / LAID MANY A HEAVY BURDEN UPON THEE.”

“An event of great agony is bearable only in the belief that it will bring about a better world. When it does not, as in the aftermath of another vast calamity in 1914-18, disillusion is deep and moves on to self-doubt and self-disgust.”

“Sitting in this small pub with its cool flagged floor, listening to the murmuring voices of the haymakers and the click of dominoes falling, drinking beer here in the midle of summer in England in 1914, he suddenly felt a stillness creep up on him as if he were suffering from a form of mental palsy -- as if time had stopped and the world's turning, also. It was a strange sensation -- that he would be for ever stuck in this late June day in 1914 like a fly in amber -- the past as irrelevant to him as the future. A perfect statis; the most alluring inertia.”