At 11 a.m. tomorrow, exactly 90 years will have passed since the guns fell silent on the western front of the First World War, signalling the end of the bloodiest conflict the world had experienced up until that time.

The First World War, and especially the conflict on the Western Front, remains burned on the world's consciousness largely because it was so utterly pointless. Millions of men lined up in trenches just yards from their enemy and periodically left those trenches to be slaughtered, often for the gain of just a few yards.

Indeed, casualty figures in modern wars such as the two Iraq wars, the Falklands, the various civil wars that have struck Africa and Vietnam, pale in comparison to the death tolls recorded at the Somme, Verdun and the other great battles of the 1914-1918 war.

The end of the war signalled a major change in the map of Europe, the collapse of three empires and a new commitment to democracy and self-determination. The Treaty of Versailles also planted the seeds for the Second World War and it is fair to say that that war represented unfinished business from the "War to End all Wars". Indeed, the 20th Century can largely be seen as one long conflict between ideologies, starting in 1914 and not truly ending until the early 1990s with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.

The world today is a very different place than it was in 1914 or in 1918. There is broad acceptance of democracy as the most representative and effective form of governance, free markets and free trade are still accepted as the best way of generating wealth for the largest number of people (although those ideas have wobbled in recent months) and the overall prospects for world peace are vastly better now than they were for most of the 20th Century.

That's not to say conditions are perfect. Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, the conflict between Israel and Palestine, instability in Pakistan all pose threats. But there is a broad sense that today every effort will be made to negotiate these problems before the guns start firing. The war in Iraq is a fine example in that context of what not to do.

That the world has reached this point is largely due to the soldiers who gave their lives in the two world conflicts, Bermudians among them.

Without their courage and sacrifice, the world today would be a vastly different and poorer place. Those who gave their lives should not be forgotten. It is hard to say whether these soldiers would have been aware of the changes their actions and sacrifice would ultimately bring about.

There are no Bermudians left who fought in the First World War and those people who were actually alive at the time are now in their 90s or older.

But it is a war that should not be forgotten. In all European capitals, the outbreak of war was met with an enthusiasm that seems unimaginable to us given the horrors that would ensue. So at the very least, this generation knows a revulsion towards war and an awareness it should only be engaged in as a last resort.

But we should also be aware that the First World War laid the seeds for a vastly expanded democratic world, for more humane and caring forms of government and for the great social advances that have occurred since.

That was what the Bermudians and others who never returned from the trenches of France or the other theatres of war died for, and it is why their successors in the Second World War gave their lives up for too. We must never forget them.