How the FT welcomed 1914: “Now at last ill-luck should disappear…”

Although there were hints and omens, no one really knew what was ahead. Even Edward Grey, who had been British Foreign Secretary since 1905 and thus at the center of the diplomacy, did not make his "The lamps are going out all over Europe..." comment until August 3, the day Germany invaded Belgium and the day after France began mobilizing in defense of Russia.

For the average person there was no conception of how the horrors that began in 1914 would change everything.

From the Financial Times' Business blog, January 2014:

Thursday’s doomy Financial Times editorial pointing out that 1914 began with a remarkable lack of foresight about what was later dubbed the Great War sent me back to the FT of January 1, 1914. The lead editorial on that day was about fertiliser: “As regards the prospects of the Chilean nitrate industry … these appear fairly promising” (this was actually, if inadvertently, rather prescient, given the eventual wartime demand for nitrates as an ingredient of high explosives).

Germany, however, was mentioned only in passing, in a Reuters report about heavy snowfalls interrupting communication, and the paper welcomed in the new year with a little light verse. In mitigation, the FT of the time was essentially a thin newsletter for City of London investors, but given what later unfolded, this piece of doggerel – by a writer using the pseudonym “Optimist” – could go down as one of the worst bits of blithely business-centric forecasting ever perpetrated

SALUTATION!

1ST JANUARY, 1914

The passing-bell has tolled the knell

Of yet another year;

Thirteen has passed, so now at last

Ill-luck should disappear.

Of real regret we owe no debt

To days so dull and dismal;

So, with relief, we’ll banish grief

Upon this day baptismal.

Our farewell toast shall be at most

A nod to speed the parting,

With fervent prayer for better fare

Throughout the year that’s starting.

May we not bid the same good-rid

To days that now are coming,

But may we say next New Year’s Day

That business is humming.