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The First World War, or the Great War as known at the time, was fought over a century ago. Its pursuit by the European powers in 1914 was utterly reckless and its ending was of great consequential misfortune for humanity. Despite its enormity and global reach, four generations later it is neglected today in the United States. That is not the case in Europe and the Commonwealth nations, which extensively commemorated its centennial between 2014 and 2018 with elaborate and moving ceremonies and memorials. The European response has understood how the First World War shaped the future, giving rise to new ideologies, technologies, and geo-political forces that fundamentally influenced the past century. Indeed, the First World War ended so badly that it spawned a more catastrophic global conflict in the Second World War just twenty years later and cemented the ideological rifts across the planet that haunt us today. The reckless decision to wage a global conflict in 1914 by our great-grandparent generation impacted our lives and ways of perceiving the world across the century, even though that perception is now a clouded one in the United States. That is ironic, since the twentieth century was indeed ""America's Century"" in large part because of the First World War. Our world remains illuminated and darkened by the consequences of the Great War. The global human family inherited a century crafted from the tragedy of global conflict from four generations ago. The present generation will be able to exercise more informed and impactful choices for the future only if it is aware of the world it inherited from the First World War and the misfortunes it bequeathed.
