"It is good for the earth to be warmed with the red wine of the battlefield."

P. H. Pearse, founder of the Irish Revolutionary Movement

                       Richard A. Koenigsberg

While historians often view the First World War as an "accident" into which nations blundered, some important political figures were edified by the spectacle of mass slaughter as a sublime manifestation of patriotism. 

Here are words of P. H. Pearse, founder of the Irish revolutionary movement, upon observing the daily carnage in France:

The last sixteen months have been the most glorious in the history of Europe. Heroism has come back to the earth. It is good for the world that such things should be done. The old heart of the earth needed to be warmed with the red wine of the battlefield. Such august homage was never before offered to God as this, the homage of millions of lives given gladly for love of country.

Love of country and mass-slaughter: the history of the Twentieth Century.