The most striking outcome of the extensive programme of commemorations and historical analysis, including personal histories of ordinary men called to the colours or who volunteered, has been the final realisation that little good came out of what became the Great War. The scale of the sacrifice in no way measures up the meagre gains of the failed peace which followed. The mantra that they died so that we might live is no longer credible. For the first time the wider public knows that we would have lived anyway and if a wiser course had been chosen, so would they.
In a remarkably powerful Thought for the Day on BBC Radio 4, Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, linked WWI and WWII together, through the diarised memories of the distinguished soldier, Alan Brooke (later Field Marshall Lord Alanbrooke) and concluded that there was merit in the Christian teaching that the better way than fighting to eliminate enemies was to make them friends. Clearly there will be limitations; the Nazis and Pol Pot spring to mind at once.
In 1914 there were no such monsters in play. The nearest was the Tzar with his absolute rule and peasants in serfdom. Germany is painted as a repressive autocracy without merit and a threat to civilisation, but that is nonsense. Coming from an Anglo-German family split by the conflict, I know this be be so beyond any argument. Certainly the Kaiser was peculiar, even unbalanced, but he could have been managed without the slaughter of millions. Germany had been Britain’s traditional ally of long standing. Had the two countries stuck together, either the war would not have taken place or it would have been over by the first Christmas. Britain would probably not have even joined in. The Second World War would never have happened. Hitler would have been unheard of.
My father fought for the British as did my uncle. My father survived from the first day, when he volunteered, to the last. My uncle was killed at the Somme. He was just eighteen. I have no idea how many cousins fell on the other side. The biggest lesson to reflect upon this day one hundred years on is that most wars are unnecessary, all have consequences and few of those, in the end, turn out to be worthwhile. There are exceptions but the exceptions do not alter the rule.