‘Entirely Contrary to Previous Trend’

In the volume Advance to Barbarism, F. J. P. Veale, an English lawyer, discusses how “the whole character of warfare and of international relations” has been completely transformed since 1914. “What is so remarkable about this development,” he writes, “is that it ran entirely contrary to the previous trend of events. Through the ages, down to 1914, with certain temporary fluctuations, manners generally had become steadily milder and in warfare, in particular, the methods of primitive savagery had become gradually modified by an increasing collection of restrictions and restraints. Compliance with these restrictions and restraints is commonly held to mark the distinction between savage and civilized warfare. . . . A code of conduct was gradually established which became formally recognized by all civilized countries. A history of warfare, written in 1913, would be a simple record of this slow and fluctuating, but on the whole steady, progress. . . . Such a sudden and complete reversal of the process of gradual ameliorating of warfare which had been going on for more than two thousand years surely calls for some explanation. Is not, for once, the overworked description of ‘epoch-making’ merited?”

The explanation for the epochal increase in woes and barbaric behavior since 1914 is, as this journal has often discussed in detail, that we are living in the “last days,” when “critical times hard to deal with will be here.”—2 Tim. 3:1-5.