Literally on the eve of the German invasion of Belgium in August of 1914, Sir Edward Gray, the British Foreign Secretary said “The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time”.
Not only would they not be lit again in his life-time, they would not even be re-lit in his grandchildren’s grandchildren’s lifetime.
I will look him up. If the/your implication was that he foresaw the true horror of WWI, he was a rare one indeed. I doubt 1 in 100,000 imagined even 1/100th of what WWI would turn into.