Oh, I don't know. People forget that in 1936, the Oxford Union students' society voted never to take up arms; and that the Americans were not interested in fighting in another European War. My uncle was a British conscientious objector for the first 3 years of the war, and then he couldn't stand it any more. 18 year olds are as ignorant and anti-everything as they ever were. But they will sign up to fight, and act heroically and badly, depending. If you read the memoirs of officers in World War I, they are appalled by the new recruits; and then within months they find themselves bathing their mudsoaked feet to keep them from getting sores.
The problem is that those days are gone: what we lack is the courage to struggle to work towards the elimination of war (George W. Bush's missile shield is an act of despair). Peacemaking and peacekeeping are the new heroism -- it just doesn't look glamorous.

yours, Peter T.