World War I ushered in the first appearance of a host of deadly phenomena. One of these was that war began targeting not only armies, but also civilians. The first bombardment aimed at civilian populations was a 1915 attack on Britain by a German zeppelin. The bombs hurled from these zeppelins took the lives of many innocents.

The German submarine U-boats began a campaign of firing on civilian ships crossing the Atlantic Ocean. On May 7, 1915, the world's biggest transatlantic ship, The Lusitania, was sunk just off the coast of Ireland by a U-boat attack. Out of The Lusitania's 2,000 passengers, a total of 1,195 people drowned or died in the attack.

Another disaster of the war was chemical weapons. Poison gas, a weapon first used by the French and later also by the Germans, led to the agonizing death of thousands of soldiers. Many soldiers were blinded by the gas, and armies had to resort to issuing gas masks as a protective measure. Civilians, too, were given gas masks to protect them from this often-deadly menace.

In 1918 World War I finally drew to a close, after four years of pointless attacks at the hands of the British, French and German armies. But this peace, declared at 11:00 a.m. on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, wasn't going to bring happiness to anyone. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers remained handicapped. Others proved unable to overcome the psychological impact of war after living in these trenches full of mud, dirt and dead bodies. The form of trauma known as "shell shock" was very common among war veterans, and it caused its sufferers to undergo fits of intense fear and shaking. The fear of being bombed, which they had lived with every day for four years on end, was engraved in their brains. Some patients felt compelled to go hide themselves at the mere mention of the word "bomb." Some veterans even felt terror grip them whenever they saw a uniform. Tens of thousands of soldiers also lost one or more limbs in this war. So legion were the ranks of soldiers whose eyes, chins or noses were disfigured during the bombings that special masks were invented in Europe to mask their scarred faces.

The great pain inflicted by World War I was also reflected in the fine arts. Works of postwar art depicted pain and insanity. These works reflected not only the psychologies of the artists, but also that of the entire generation. This generation which felt the impact of the war's misery so deeply was later dubbed "the Lost Generation."

As we have seen, war is a great agent of cruelty which has no benefit for people or society. It is a social catastrophe which brings forth great pain and inflicts deep wounds on people which are long in healing, if they can. God, on the other hand, has instructed people to steer clear of wars and to make peace prevail. God gives good news to those who commit good deeds:

That abode of the hereafter-We grant it to those who do not seek to exalt themselves in the earth or to cause corruption in it. The successful outcome is for those who do their duty. (Qur'an, 28: 83)

Would We make those who believe and do right actions the same as those who cause corruption on the earth? Would We make those who do their duty the same as the dissolute? (Qur'an, 38: 28)