November 11th, 90 Years On

Ninety years ago today the Great War was brought to an end. Since the summer of 1914 the armies of most of Europe had bled one another to death. While to day we look back in horror and blame those we regard as responsible we tend to forget that the majority of the combatants went willingly, or with remarkably little encouragement. Conscription in the UK did not begin until well into 1916 and by then over two and a half million men had volunteered! Patriotism was high at that time and all nations followed the 'spirit of the air' at that time. The generals are blamed for the conditions in which the men fought, and Haig in particular is blamed for the deaths of 750,000 UK citizens, plus 250,000 from the Empire. The reason for that is simple, the politicians, and Lloyd George in particular, blamed the generals to escape blame themselves! Haig in fact wrote in 1909 that the coming war with Germany would be a war of attrition. he demanded an army of nearly one million men, by 1914 the British forces were not even half that number. The Germans, with a large standing army and a vast conscripted reserve force,also possessed a huge number of guns. and guns were needed in this war. Britain did not develop a large artillery until 1916. Nothing ever changes.

Sure it was an awful war, sure those who served never forgot the sights around them, sure it should never have happened, but it was always going to happen. Human nature being what it is a major war was inevitable. Ambition, greed, pride and stupidity come together to produce carnage, and it is not always the leaders who suffer. However in this war all did. generals and MPs suffered and died, as did their sons, Prime Minister Asquith lost a son, Ludendorff the great German leader lost his stepson near the end, and this almost unhinged him! The world, they say, is a different place after September 11th, it was a very different place after November 11th 1918. We benefit from the social changes of that time, and the inevitable following war twenty years later. We ought to appreciate those that endured in those days.