Arguing about history can be interesting enough, but there's no answer to it. So far as the Great War goes, it led directly to the Second World War. Directly to Auschwitz and Hiroshima. The Russian Revolution, and the famine in the Ukraine. And so on and so forth. It was a pretty terrible century. That's what I meant by questioning the idea that it might have been worth it.

Pity and admiration yes. But should I feel differently towards those who were slaughtered on one side, say at Waterloo or the Somme, than I do towards those who died on the other side?

In both those wars I can't feel any confidence that history would have been worse if they had gone the other way. The Second World War was different in that respect. Great little poem there.

See you at Buntingford. (Buntingford Winter Sing, at the Crown, Buntingford, Hertfordshire Friday 16th until Sunday 18th November, indoor camping.) Should we start a thread about that maybe?