This is a special edition of GPS, the Global Public Square. Welcome to all of you in the United States and around the world.

I'm Farid Zakaria, coming to you live from Paris.

Today on the show, a global exclusive, an interview with the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, from his office in the Elysée Palace.

Macron has spent the week traversing parts of his nation to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of World War One.

This weekend, he's gathered spores of worm leaders, including President Donald Trump, to pay tribute with him.

I talked to Macron about his relationship with Trump.

About the Great War and whether today there is also a danger of discord, mistalculation, and thus tragedy.

About the rise of populism and how he is fighting it at home and abroad.

And about his old plan to make France great again.

But first, here's my take.

When confronting bad news these days, many of us tend to assume that it's just a bump on the road and things will work out.

President Obama was fond of invoking the famous quote, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends to our justice.

Yet could we be wrong in assuming that in spite of some backsliding here and an election there, progress is inexorable?

Well, today behind me, the Octatrium world leaders commemorated the end of the largest and bloodiest conflict the world had ever seen.

World War One marked a turning point in human history.

The end of four massive empires, the rise of Soviet communism, the entry of the United States into global power politics.

But perhaps its most significant intellectual legacy was the end of the idea of inevitable progress.

You see in 1914, before the war began, people had lived through a world much like ours, defined by heavy economic growth, technological revolutions, and increasing globalization.

It was widely believed then that ugly trend lines, when they appeared, were temporary to be overwhelmed by the onward march of progress.

In 1909, Norman Angel wrote a book explaining that war between the major powers was now so costly as to be unimaginable.

The Great Illusion became an international bestseller, and just a few years later, a generation of Europeans was destroyed in the carnage of World War One.

Could we be similarly complacent today?

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