Abstract

… And war began, that is to say, an event contrary to human reason and to human nature took place. Millions of people committed against each other crimes so innumerable, deceptions, betrayals, theft, forgery and issuing of forged banknotes, looting, arson and murder, that for centuries, no courts in all the world could suffice to record, and which, at that time, the people committing them would not regard as a crime. ¹ 1

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, Volume III, Part I, Chapter I (my translation). The expression “the Age of Extremes” is from the well-known title of the book by Eric J. Hobsbawm.