The Futility of War

 Courier Column for 24 July

Dulce et Decorum Est ...

Sitting at the back of Westminster Hall, staring at the magnificent hammer-beam roof, I let the music wash over me.  It was Mendelssohn’s Lobgesang. The combined forces of the Parliament and Bundestag choirs were doing a magnificent job.

The concert was to commemorate the centenary of the start of the first world war and it seemed entirely appropriate that the two parliamentary choirs should be singing together.  There was a moving speech by the German Speaker, quietly acknowledging his country’s part in that and the subsequent war.

I shan’t be around for the activities in our village to mark the outbreak of war in August 1914.  There are thirty-two names on our war memorial - boys and young men, aristocrats and farm labourers – killed during the four years’ carnage.

I am sure that the commemoration in the parish church will be a somber and dignified affair.  But there is a nagging voice that says events like these, in villages like ours, up and down the country, are somehow lacking context.

Popular phrases “war to end all wars”, “just cause”, “bravery” and above all “sacrifice”, are likely to be much in evidence but seem somehow inapposite.  Alternatives such as “lambs to slaughter”, “lions led by donkeys”, “military disaster”, “human catastrophe” might be more pertinent.

An excellent group entitled “No Glory in War” sums up a lot of this thinking.  We are not “celebrating” the centenary, we are “commemorating” it.  And we should mark it with the realization that this was a competition among the contemporary super powers for global influence rather than any victory for democracy.

I believe that the War is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it.  Not my words, but those of Siegfried Sassoon. The idea ‘dulce et decorum est pro patria mori’ (sweet and fitting to die for your country) is an old lie.  Not my words but Wilfred Owen’s.

So on August 3^rd I’ll remember the 32 from my village.  But I’ll reflect that it was most probably pressure from peers and society, with the Kitchener posters and white feathers, that influenced their decision to join up. I doubt not their bravery, but could it have been the fear of the firing squad that dissuaded them from running?  I don’t think they voluntarily made the “ultimate sacrifice”.  I think they were cynically slaughtered by the powers that be.