Thanks, Teribus.

> the tragedy that befell all those families was real.

Indeed it was. And there would have been none of them had Germany and Austria (and later the Ottoman Empire) not chosen a policy of conquest knowing full well what they were unleashing on their own people as well as on the "enemy." (Italy and Japan later joined the Allies for crass territorial gain as well.)

And I've suggested that most of those family tragedies could have been avoided by international governmental resolve in the autumn of 1914.

But of course there was no such resolve for peace, because no nation wanted to lose or look like a loser.   

Even in 1916 (after the Somme and Verdun, to take the most familiar examples) President Wilson's call for peace talks (while America was still neutral) fell on deaf ears.