"When the Great War broke out, it came to me not as a superlative tragedy, but as an interruption of the most exasperating kind to my personal plans. To explain the reason for this egotistical view of history’s greatest disaster, it is necessary to go back a little — to go back, though only for a moment, as far as the decadent ’nineties, in which I opened my eyes upon the none - too promising day. p. 17"