"We cannot escape from the specter, we cannot escape from its legacy.

"Culturally, the war dragged on, and has dragged on into the post-war period, in many respects. In what sense? Because the war changed the way that we think about war. We will never be able to think about war the way that people thought about it in 1914. And we carry the baggage of the First World War with this.

"We will probably never be able to achieve the kind of unalloyed patriotic feelings that people had in 1914, because we know all too well the extraordinary cost in human life and suffering that those sort of feelings can cost and can result in. So placed as we are, in the late 20th Century, preparing to move into the 21st Century, we are the creatures of the war whether we like it or not.

Robert Wohl

http://www.pbs.org/greatwar/historian/hist_wohl_07_escape.html