This was another war, like the present, chosen by leaders who could have sought peace and fought by men who would benefit little from its conclusion. All honor to those who died thinking they might achieve some good. Hell is too comfortable a place for those who chose these slaughters.

In some places in Western Europe, fields still percolate up unexploded munitions from 1916. I understand that there's still a huge, lost mine full of what may well be nitroglycerin somewhere beneath the fields of Paschendaele. What a legacy.