These words have continued to haunt me ever since I first heard Laurence Olivier utter them when I was 10 years old when watching Nicholas and Alexandra.  He speaks the words of Sergei Witte, sometime advisor to Nicholas II of Russia, when Europe was poised on the brink of war in 1914.  Witte's prophetic advice to the Tsar fell on deaf ears...

'None of you will be here when this war ends.
Everything we fought for will be lost.
Everything we have loved will be broken.
The victors will be as cursed as the defeated.
The world will grow old, and men will wander about, and go lost in the ruins, and go mad.
Tradition, virtue, and restraint, they all go...
I'm not mourning for myself, but for the people that will come after me.
They will live without hope, and all they will have will be guilt, revenge, and terror.
And the world with be full of fanatics and trivial fools.'

I have not managed to find out whether these are the words actually uttered by Witte, or whether the film took artistic licence in ascribing to Witte.