Vera Brittain, in her moving autobiography Testament of Youth, recalled that when the sounds of victory burst over London on 11 November 1918, men and women alike did not proclaim victory but simply said, with relief: “The war is over.” And yet, in so many ways, and for so many people, it would never be over. For the bereaved, like Brittain herself, pain would continue for the rest of their lives – while for the survivors of the battlefields there would be constant reminders, physically and mentally, of their terrible experiences.
Nor did conflict and war end for everyone in November 1918. This was, after all, not a war to end all war, as was so easily proclaimed in 1918. Nor did the peace settlement solve very much in the longer run. The collapse of empires in central and eastern Europe paved the way for a much more unstable political world with the advent of national and independence struggles and revolution, while the isolationism of the United States undermined the broader ambitions for a new international world order.
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