The war to end war

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" War to end the war " (sometimes called " War to end all wars ") is a term for the First World War of 1914-1918. Initially idealistic, it is now used mainly cynically.

Video The war to end war

Origin

During August 1914, soon after the outbreak of war, British writer and social commentator H. G. Wells published a number of articles in London newspapers which later appeared as a book entitled War on the End of War. Wells blamed the Central Bloc for the coming war and argued that only the defeat of German militarism could end the war. Wells uses a shorter sentence form, "war to end the war," in In the Fourth Year (1918), where he notes that the phrase has "begun to circulate" in the second half. 1914. In fact, it has become one of the most common slogans of the First World War.

In the following years, the term became associated with Woodrow Wilson, despite the fact that Wilson used the phrase only once. Along with the phrase "making the world safe for democracy", it embodies Wilson's belief that the entry of the US into war is necessary to maintain human freedom.

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Later use

Even during World War I, the phrase met with some degree of skepticism; the famous British politician David Lloyd George has said, "This war, like the next war, is a war to end the war." When it was clear that the war had not succeeded in ending the war, the phrase took a more cynical tone. British staff officer Archibald Wavell, a marshal and future viceroy of India, said desperately about the Paris Peace Conference, "After the 'war to end the war', they seem to be in Paris to make 'Peace to end Peace'." Wells himself using the phrase in an ironic way in The Bulpington of Blup (1932) novel. Walter Lippmann wrote in Newsweek in 1967, "Fantasy is that any war we fight for is a war to end the war," while US President Richard Nixon, in his "Silent Majority" speech, said, "I did not tell you that the war in Vietnam was a war to end the war".

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See also

• Mutual assures the destruction

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References

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External links

• H. G. Wells, The War That Will End the War on the Internet Archive

Source of the article : Wikipedia