Adam Hochschild, To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914–1918 (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), 480 pp., $28.00.
To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918
IT IS hard today, as Europe fusses ineffectually over what to do about the murderous Colonel Qaddafi, or a host of other problems—from the Greek financial collapse to the challenges of immigration—to remember that only a hundred years ago the Continent was the undoubted center of the world. European countries dominated much of the globe either through direct or indirect empires; European capital financed the world’s trade and development; European science and technology, Europe’s military capabilities—all were more powerful than any others known. And Europeans mostly felt that the world was as it should be, that they had the skills, the advanced civilization and indeed the moral right to rule it for their own benefit and, so it was assumed, for that of the lesser peoples.
