When I read this chapter, particularly about the Great Battle, I keep thinking of what Bilbo said above, after finding out about the outcome of the Battle of the Five Armies.
In this world, there's also what the Duke of Wellington wrote about the aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo (1815), his great victory: '
My heart is broken by the terrible loss I have sustained in my old friends and companions and my poor soldiers. Believe me, nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won'.
This is without even mentioning Tolkien's own experience of the First World War, and how he and many of his contemporaries might have thought when it ended.
In one sense, it's even worse than the wars already mentioned; because while not only have so many been killed, maimed, mutilated, and suffered psychological scars (what Tolkien's contemporaries would have called 'shell shock'), Belariand itself has been destroyed. Belgium and Northern France at least survived what happened in 1914-1918, although they still show the scars.
We also have the victors fighting among themselves, the surviving sons of Fëanor killing again to take the surviving Silmarils, but finding that they couldn't keep them...
Do people feel that the Valar missed an opportunity, by failing to take Sauron prisoner as well as Morgoth?
