On the commemorations of the War of 1812 one hundred years ago, and the outbreak of the First World War.
“At the outbreak of war in 1914, Britain and her allies lamented the end of 100 years of peace. Sir Edward Grey, watching the lamp-lighters from his Foreign Office window at sunset on Aug. 3, the day before war was declared, said “the lamps are going out all over Europe … ”
For a century, there had been no great power war implicating Britain, no menacing rival sea power. Indeed, prominent Canadians in 1914 had been planning to celebrate the centenary of the Treaty of Ghent, signed on Christmas Eve in 1814, the official end of the American invasions of the War of 1812, with coast-to-coast festivities. The theme of the Canadian National Exhibition in 1914 was “Peace Year.” […]”
By C.P. Champion in the National Post, dated 3 March, 2014.