What was this cause? The cause was the nation itself. The crosses stand as validation of the greatness of each nation—for which soldiers had given their lives.

The cliché is that war represents the “breakdown” of civilization. Precisely the opposite: Warfare represents affirmation of civilization—a certain kind of civilization defined by the nation-state. During the First World War, each nation asserted the reality of its own sacred object. Each nation struggled to assert its superiority—demonstrate its depth of devotion by showing its willingness to gift young men.

There is a deeper level: the nature of the entity to which lives were sacrificed—didn’t matter. What was essential was that sacrifices continued to be performed. This was a world war. No nation wished to be left out. It was a family affair. Each nation wanted to partake of the ritual.

How proud human beings are of their world wars, which lie at the heart of the history of the 20th century. These wars did not happen by chance. It's not an accident that the two world wars lie at the heart of the history of the 20th century. Human beings created these wars to exhibit the depth of their spirituality: their contempt for mundane existence. By engaging in these monumental episodes of destruction or self-destruction, human beings demonstrated their devotion to those “sacred objects” that lay at the heart of their societies.