Leader: Take care we never have to relearn Great War lesson

In the long period of relative peace that preceded the First World War, an idea developed that there was little prospect of a cataclysmic conflict between the so-called “Great Powers”. The world was far too closely interconnected by the then modern communication systems of the telegraph and telephone, which had cut the time taken to deliver messages across continents from days and weeks to minutes, and by mutually enriching trade between nations.