The First World War represented the final moment in which the sword—understood here as material violence—dominated global conflict. This war demonstrated the catastrophic potential of industrial militarism which included but was not limited to mechanized slaughter, trench warfare, total mobilization and bureaucratized death.
The war's unprecedented devastation forced world leaders to confront the terrifying possibility that humanity had become too powerful to continue fighting wars using purely material means. If warfare continued on this trajectory, civilization itself would become unsustainable.
The solution proposed by the victors was radical. They would not eliminate conflict. What they would do instead was to translate it into language.