Winston Churchill's 'Mass Effects In Modern World'

Human kind have experienced many processes of changes throughout the history, and World War I was a new process that Winston Churchill talks about in his excellent article “Mass Effects in Modern World” written in 1925. He mentions that the new mode of life is different from previous because “collectivization” becomes more significant than individual independent, and he talks about the destructiveness of the WWI and its difference with previous wars. He also predicts some features of the future wars that would be seen in WWII. In modern world, the roles of individuals have been reduced by the impact of the mass production and corporation companies. This happens because of people’s attempt to work together in order to enhance the difficult

He claims that the WWI was “Armageddon” or the end of the world because it was the most destructive war ever witnessed by humanity. He also says that because it was a great war, the criminals and heroes cannot be found in such a war. However, these features are not what we saw in the past wars because in the old wars, there are heroes, such as Fredrick, Napoleon, Hannibal who physically lead their soldiers in the front lines of the army, but this cannot be seen in this war because of the decline of individual’s role in the new war that the process is a cooperative affair rather than individual. Moreover, this new feature is the reason of not having “loin-hearted warriors” because if the leader is away from his soldiers, then who will motivate them and lead them physically to do their job. As he mentions that it is not a stock market for the generals to do their job far away from the center, but it is war and they needs to be at the center of the battlefield and seriously direct their army. This have changes the peoples thinking of heroes that even if the generals do their job properly, still they would not be declared as hero but the manager of stock market because it is not the real hero is the one who is physically in the battlefield and lead his army like the past heroes. However, the aspect of heroism now is changed to who have these features, such as mass suffering, mass sacrifice, and mass victory. The general’s awards should not be given as the glory of hero, but they could be rewarded as a good citizen or good public