"You will recall more clearly than I certain horrible, catastrophic, universal ruin passages in Revelation—monsters swallowing the Universe, blood and fire and clouds and an eternal crash, rotting ruin enveloping all things—will all come. There are perhaps ten million men dead of this war, and perhaps a hundred million persons to whom death would be a blessing. Add to these as many millions more whose views of life are so distorted that blank idiocy would be a better mental outlook, and you'll get a hint (and only a hint) of what this Continent has already become—a bankrupt slaughterhouse inhabited by unmated women. We have talked of 'problems' in our day. We never had a problem: for the worst task we ever saw was a mere blithe pastime compared with what these women and the few men that will remain here must face. The hills about Verdun are not blown to pieces worse than the whole social structure and intellectual and spiritual life of Europe. I wonder that anybody is sane."
Mr. Page, the American Ambassador in London
to Mr. Aldermen in Hampton, Virginia. 1916.
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