On 10 August 1914, five days after war was declared, Henry James, in a letter to a friend, expressed his revulsion at the prospect of war, and articulated the illusion that had preceded it:

`Black and hideous to me is the tragedy that gathers, and I'm sick beyond cure to have lived on to see it. You and I, the ornaments of our generation, should have been spared the wreck of our beliefs that through the long years we had seen civilization grow and the worst become impossible.

Autor: Henry James