chaos: security was gone

Chapter II – The First World War breaks out

"At 11p.m. on August 4th, English time, Britain declared war on Germany which was already invading those two countries. The present writer can remember how, after the following night’s work at a newspaper office, as he walked home in the small hours through Macquarie Street, Sydney, the clouds, dimly piled high in the four quarters of the dark sky above, seemed to him like the pillared structure of the world’s civilisation, of which some shock had broken the keystones. The wide gap overhead seemed to show where one great pillar after another had crashed as the mutual support had failed; and, as the sky peered through, the last masses seemed to sway above the abyss. The stable world of the nineteenth century was coming down in chaos: security was gone."