With almost the same startling suddenness the Great War broke upon Europe. The thunderbolt fell upon us from a sky of blue; the peace of the world was broken on a smiling day. Five of the Great Powers[2] of Europe blew their war trumpets, and millions of armed men stood ready to carry death and destruction into countless homes in many lands. The Great War had begun.
In the Summer Holidays.
A scene on the Thames at Henley Regatta, held every year in the month of July.
(From a photograph by the Sport and General Press Agency.)
Do you remember the 24th of July 1914? I think you do, for it was just about the beginning of that time which most boys and girls consider the very happiest of all the year. Your school had just broken up, the books were all put away, and you fondly hoped that you would see no more of them for a month or six weeks. You were all agog for the holidays. Your mind was full of that jolly seaside place to which you were going to-morrow or the next day. You were dreaming of boats and bathing, of games on the sands, of bicycle spins in the country lanes, and picnics in the woods. And in the midst of all these happy dreams, perhaps you heard your father say, as he turned his newspaper at breakfast time,—
"Yesterday Austria sent a very harsh Note[3] to Servia. Looks like more war in the East."
I daresay you paid no attention to this remark. To you it meant nothing at all. You would have been far more interested if your father had told you how Middlesex was getting on with Kent, and whether Woolley or Hearne or P. F. Warner had made another century or not. But your father's remark was really far more important than all the cricket matches that were ever played, or that ever will be played. It was the first appearance of the bolt from the blue. Few, even the wisest of us, realized that it was the beginning of the greatest war that the world has ever known; a war of such vastness and terror that men would speak of it as Armageddon[4]—that is, a war similar to that which is described in the Book of Revelation, when "the kings of the earth and of the whole world gather them to the battle of God Almighty."
