1914—Tragedy of the West

The Meaning of the First World War by René Albrecht-Carrié. Prentice-Hall, $4.95 The theme of this meaty little book is summed up in its two concluding sentences: “The First World War was the great break with the past. That is its fundamental meaning.”

The past to which the author refers is the century between the Congress of Vienna and 1914—a century of comparative peace, or at least one which saw no world wars; the century of European world dominance, during which imperial Europe both shaped and ruled the international political order and the international economy, save within the “closed preserve” of the Americas. This Old Order, M. Albrecht-Carrié reminds us, was “irretrievably undermined” by World War I, which established the fact of American world power and the preconditions for the emancipation of the dependent peoples—though neither of these effects was widely realized until a Second World War had been fought to bring them into focus.

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George Fielding Eliot

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The Meaning of the First World War by René Albrecht-Carrié. Prentice-Hall, $4.95 The theme of this meaty little book is summed up in its two concluding sentences: “The First World War was the great break with the past. That is its fundamental meaning.”

The past to which the author refers is the century between the Congress of Vienna and 1914—a century of comparative peace, or at least one which saw no world wars; the century of European world dominance, during which imperial Europe both shaped and ruled the international political order and the international economy, save within the “closed preserve” of the Americas. This Old Order, M. Albrecht-Carrié reminds us, was “irretrievably undermined” by World War I, which established the fact of American world power and the preconditions for the emancipation of the dependent peoples—though neither of these effects was widely realized until a Second World War had been fought to bring them into focus.