The Great War may seem like generations ago, something awful that is well in the past, but remembered annually on the 11th November. But its repercussions are with us to this day. Moreover, it is a clear watershed moment in modern history, one that utterly changed what had gone before.

The carnage and scale has already been well-documented - the industrial slaughter of soldiers, the reorganisation of whole economies and populations for the 'war effort', the trialling of new technologies, no matter how immoral.

But World War 1 was the catalyst for everything that has followed - World War 2, the reigniting of ethnic conflicts, the atomic bomb, the search for more and more lethal means to kill. In as much as people argue that humanity is becoming more morally fair and sensitive, and there is evidence for that on a personal level, the relations between nations have not. At best there is a veneer of civility, one which could be abandoned to murderous conflict at any moment.

Do I sound overly pessimistic? I have been a life-long student of history and I find little to shake this view. Of course I hope and I pray for peace - the latter is especially powerful - but I fear that things will only get worse before they ever get better. And only God can make them so.