In recent years around this time I have posted a blog reviewing events of the past 12 months and looking forward to the next 12. This year I shall refrain; there are plenty of other people who will be writing such themes. I shall focus instead on what happened this time one hundred years ago.
A century ago saw the start of one of the largest and most violent episodes in human history. Known at the time as "the war to end all wars", the First World War was perhaps more tragic than we will ever truly realise. Sylvia Nasar in her immensely insightful Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius notes that
"World War I destroyed globalization, disrupted economic growth, severed physical, financial and trade links, bankrupted governments and businesses, and led weak or populist regimes to rely on desperate measures that were supposed to head off revolutions but just as often hastened them. When the war was over, the victors as well as the vanquished were crippled by colossal debts and subjected to vicious attacks of inflation and deflation. Poverty, hunger, and disease, those Malthusian scourges, once again seemed to have the upper hand."
Prior to World War I the world's major economies had been on an upward path, with economic growth and development at an unprecedented rate. Trade and financial links had been forged ever deeper and farther. Social and economic mobility were no longer regarded as being impossible, with increasing recognition that individuals could also take charge of their own destiny, rather than a person's station in life being an immutable 'gift' from God. World War I, based on political reasons, destroyed completely the economic gains of the second half of the Industrial Revolution to the extent that the world did not return to its upward path until after World War II some 30 years later. As well as the immense and tragic loss of life which any war brings, the loss of talent, the hysteresis which resulted made for a lost generation subject to poverty and disease which had been thought to have been eradicated.
When memorials are undertaken in 2014 to commemorate the dead and wounded of the 1914–1918 War we should also take time to think about the living who endured. Their suffering during the inter-War years, years of heightened nationalism, disease, poverty and malnutrition brought on during the Great Depression, often proved as fatal as a bullet on the battlefield. Their struggles in the face of insurmountable odds was the price of excessive nationalism and myopic politicians. We, who live in an age of plenty, an age of social media, an age of conspicuous consumption, an age in which poverty and starvation has been replaced by obesity in many high-income economies, should not only honour the memories of those who died, but exalt them for the sacrifices they made. We should give thanks that, despite conflicts which continue to rage in the world today, many of us are now safe from the threat of war and able to enjoy the best of what life has to offer, not endure it. However tough life gets for us in the 21st century, it has ceased to be "nasty, brutish and short" for more of us than ever before.
I wish you all a wonderful and fulfilling 2014. May you enjoy the fruits of your labours more than ever.
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