NEWS from one hundred years ago: THE LAST WAR—AND THE NEXT

Truth says today that the First World War was not, as Allied leaders claimed, a war ‘in defence of small nations.’ Nor was it a war ‘to make the world safe for democracy.’ Nor was it a trade war or a war for territory, ‘although, of course, considerations of trade and territory entered into the motives of the belligerents, and have since entered largely into the crushing terms of peace imposed on the vanquished nations.’ The war was essentially a ‘balance of power’ war of a very traditional sort, says Truth; it was a war in which one group of states banded together to stop another group of states becoming too strong. Almost all historians one hundred years later will agree with this analysis. Truth goes on to argue that the next big war will be fought for the same reasons.
​
New Zealand Truth, 25 September