THAT
a break must be made in every life when August 1914 is reached seems
inevitable. But the fracture differs, according to what is broken, and Roger
Fry was a man who lived many lives, the active, the contemplative, the public
and the private. The war affected them all -- it was, he said, "like
living in a bad dream". And the first shock was terrible. He had come to
believe that a more civilised period in human life was beginning; now that hope
seemed ended. "I hoped never to live to see this mad destruction of all
that really counts in life. We were just beginning to be a little civilised and
now it's all to begin over again. . . . Oh if only France would keep out and
leave Slavs and Teutons to their infernal race hatreds! But we are all
entrapped in the net of a heartless bureaucracy -- such are two exclamations in
August 1914.
Roger Fry
World War I began August 4, 1914.
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