During the First World War (1914 to 1918) politicians made lavish promises about reform which would follow the war, and of course many crofters lost their lives in the war itself. After the war the words of politicians did not translate into immediate action, but crofters returning from the war were in no mood to accept government inaction. Land raids began again. To set this Scottish Highland political radicalism in context, the 1916 Easter Rising was recent history in Ireland, as were the Liberal February Revolution and the Communist October Revolution in Russia, not to mention the socialist Kiel mutiny, which helped end the First World War and bring about the German Revolution. With these other events in mind, the Highland Land League, although radical, were positively gentle in their politics compared to radicals in other countries around the same time.