"They knew why they fought."
On what grounds do you claim this - all the literature and the interview we did with the Liverpool soldier claims the contrary, that they were tricked (or forced by conscription) into joining mand came home thoroughly disillusioned with the whole fucking mess?
The "brutal repression' of Belgium was, from the beginning, a red herring.
Belgium's genocidal policy in The Congo had been fully exposed by Mark Twain ten years before the War broke out in his King Leopold's Soliloquy' (also still available and very readable if you ever get round to reading)
The British behaviour throughout the colonies, particularly in India and Africa, has long been a matter of undisputed historical fact.
Turkey and Russia were notorious tyrants   
None of them were any better than the other.
If the First World War did anything, it exposed them all for what they were - rapacious monsters - it led to the end of imperialism.
You are the only one attempting to deal in "rights and wrongs" here in order to back your own favourite horse
If you read some of the things you cut and pasted, perhaps you might learn something - even if you never get round to reading a book.
Even Hastings, who is "less good on the causes" does not attempt to deny the Empire motive for the war.
Now - your evidence that the soldiers "knew why they were there....."
And the rest is silence.
Jim Carroll