""Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (moderated)
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T - PM
Date: 11 Nov 13 - 08:14 AM

The BBC series on the subject identified four underlying causes of WW 1, as follows:

    ""Nationalism - the belief that your country is better than others. This made nations assertive and aggressive.
    Imperialism - the desire to conquer colonies, especially in Africa. This brought the powers into conflict - Germany wanted an empire. France and Britain already had empires.
    Militarism (Arms Race) - the attempt to build up a strong army and navy gave nations the means and will to make war.
    Alliances - in 1882, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy formed the Triple Alliance. This alarmed, France, Britain and Russia. By 1907, they had all joined the Triple Entente. Europe was divided into two armed camps, to help each other if there was a war.""

Then of course, the spark that set off the kindling, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, often mistakenly quoted as the reason.

As to whether those who died knew why, of course many of the better educated did, but there were hundreds of thousands of young men who joined up in an enthusiastic desire for adventure, travel and glory, whose knowledge of the reasons was minimal at best.

In an era when news travelled slowly, many men had never been more than a few miles from the place of their birth, and recruiters didn't care to inform, how was a young farm lad to know about international politics?

If asked why they were there, many would say simply "Somebody's got to give the Hun a bloody good kicking". It was what they were told! It was exactly the same on the other side too.

So Eric wasn't, I think, patronising too many people. If he had written the same about WW 2, that would have been patronising.

However, aware or not, they deserve our respect and they deserve our continuing remembrance. Whichever war they died in, they did it for us.

Don T.""

Keith calls that denigrating the soldiers!..It isn't!

It is facing the truth that Britain's motives in the lead up to WW2 were not pure as the driven snow, and the invasion of Belgium was the perfect opportunity to act to prevent Germany gaining an imperial foothold in Africa.

The senior officers, mostly public school educated, knew what was going on, but most of the cannon fodder, farm and factory workers, knew only what they were told by government propaganda and posters, and if you take the trouble to look at what was recorded of the comments of ordinary soldiers, they are larded with such remarks as I quoted about "The Hun".

Also, listen to the Music Hall songs of that time.

The point is that Keith's view of these events isn't just "My Country, right or wrong!", It is "My Country cannot be wrong.

I'm sorry but it can, it often has, and it most likely will in the future.

That is FACT! But it takes nothing away from the brave men who lay down their lives in defence of that country, which incidentally I love, but without the rose tinted viewpoint.

I love my country warts and all!

Those who died in all her wars and police actions deserve our utmost respect and admiration and should be remembered.

I firmly believe that the day we forget, we open the door for history to repeat itself.

As for Max Hastings, while he may be right in saying that Germany bears most blame, he cannot imagine the effect on Wilfred Owen or the other war poets of watching a constant stream of young men, many in their teens, arriving at the front to be sent "over the top" and slaughtered like cattle in an abbatoir. He wasn't there and has no right to judge those who were.

In his ranting about embracing German remembrance, he forgets that most of the Germans killed were no different than ours, "Husbands and Brothers, Fathers and Sons" (Whitsun Dance), and there were villages without men in both countries.

Hastings is a bitter bastard, who has forgotten that the soldiers don't start wars. He has also forgotten that one can forgive without forgetting.

Don T.