I'm rather bemused by what the point at issue really is. Clearly most soldiers on both sides believed what they were doing was worth doing, more especially to begin with,and clearly the leaders believed that the choices they were making were the right choices.

And equally clearly the outcome at the time and ever since has been catastrophic. No one can say whether different choices would have been less catastrophic. Speculation about that kind of thing can be entertaining, and it might even be helpful in some ways, but it's not something where meaningful conclusions can be made. Basically it' s a form of fantasy fiction. No different really from arguing about the War of the Rings.

The real lesson to be learnt is perhaps that when you're in a hole stop digging, and don't think that loyalty to those who have gone before means you should carry on the same way they went - and that is a lesson that still has not been learnt, as shown in any number of conflicts in recent years. And in other settings as well.

The last verse of In Flanders fields is the one we should always remember, and always recognise as representing the fatal, and so enticing, chalice:

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.