"the fact that this noble cause was so important to the people, after 18 months it collapsed and enforced conscription was introduced - if the cause was so noble - why did that happen - explain that."

After 18 months it collapsed? Where Jom? In Australia, in Ireland, In Canada, in New Zealand, in South Africa, in Newfoundland, in India? Are you trying to tell me that nobody from those countries volunteered after March 1916? Are you trying to tell me that there were no volunteers from Great Britain after 1916? If so then you would be wrong. Every other combatant nation had started out with conscripted citizen armies, Britain and the British Government were told on day one that they too would have to raise one and that Jom old son was exactly what they did - however they did not have to rely in any way on conscription until the war was nearly half way through.

"You have studiously avoided the immorality of the war, of the near wiping out of almost an entire generation"

The immorality of the war?? What started out as a minor dispute between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Serbia was manipulated and forced by German meddling and intransigence into the largest conflict the world had seen - Now then "Wolfie" I can see the immorality in that, especially as part and parcel of that German meddling was the goal of annexing Belgium and their colonies and robbing France of hers in order to then go on and attack the British. Tell me Jom, all those British workers beavering away and earning their daily crust producing and manufacturing all those widgets back then in 1914 before the war - where were they sold? Rhetorical question chump, they were sold to customers in the British Empire, her Dominions and her colonies. Now had the Germans managed to destroy the British Empire (As they tried to do by their support for the Boers in South Africa) who would all those workers in British factories be making stuff for? Or would they have found themselves out of work? And that "Wolfie" was a consequence that Niall Ferguson failed to grasp when he made his case for Great Britain staying out of what was known as the Great War.