ABSTRACT
The First World War was to be the war that ended all wars as it demonstrated the horrifying consequences of industrialised slaughter and foreshadowed the new vulnerability of civilian populations. That it had been unlike anything experienced before can be seen also in the way people approached the construction of the peace at war’s end. For Harold Nicolson the journey to the Peace Conference in Paris was not:
merely to liquidate the war, but to found a new order in Europe. We were preparing not peace only, but Eternal Peace. There was about us the halo of divine mission. We must be alert, stern, righteous and ascetic. For we were bent on doing great, permanent and noble things.1
