“Even on the eve
of world war I, however, there was still considerable optimism that the peace would hold.
Europe had experienced several decades without a major war, and in the
meantime, industrialization and relatively free international trade had
produced rapidly rising standards of living. A war that would destroy the
fruits of this progress seemed irrational.
Many people believed, moreover, that the rising international solidarity of
the labor movement would undermine support for a war entered into by
imperialistic capitalist powers. Although financial markets were retrenching,
they gave no sign that a cataclysm lay ahead. The optimists were wrong.”
– Gary M. Walton and Hugh Rockoff, History of the
American Economy, Eleventh Edition, p. 380
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