Promises Must Be Kept: Pacta sunt servanda (11)

Three months if short. Half a year if long.

The war that all of Europe started with such light hearts had now entered its second year.

Looking at the arms race that continued long into the 20th century, everyone must have expected this great clash, but entering the war's second year, they all realized one thing.

'Preparation was insufficient.'

No one had imagined the truly inhuman battlefields that emerged - the endless maze of muddy trenches stretching across continents, the grinding wars of attrition where men were fed into the machinery of death like coal into a furnace. The generals still dreamed of glorious cavalry charges and decisive battles, blind to the coming reality of machine guns and artillery barrages.