The long shadows of the Great War

Mark Steyn writes about the importance of this day in history.

...Edward Grey was Britain's longest-serving Foreign Secretary, although, in contrast to contemporary foreign ministers, he had a modest appetite for foreigners: For his first eight years in the job, he never set foot abroad, and then only did so because he was obliged to accompany King George V on a State Visit to Paris in 1914. He served a prime minister, Asquith, who had little interest in foreign affairs and was unengaged by distant events in faraway places until late July of 1914 - by which time it was too late, and the great unraveling of world order had begun. Five years later, the German, Russian, Austrian and Turkish empires lay shattered, and in their ruins incubated Communism, Fascism and a hardcore post-Ottoman Islam. And in a more oblique sense the horrors of the trenches caused the ruling classes of the Great Powers to lose their civilizational confidence - and across a century they have never recovered it.

Read more here and watch a video Mark produced in April.