I was thinking about Remembrance Day posts I have seen about today, and an article regarding teaching war history struck me as particularity relevant, but missing the point.

I used be a geriatric nurse.... I got all the first hand accounts of WWII and a couple even a couple experiences from "The War to End All Wars" (aka "The Great War", or "WWI"). Stories of Heroes, Cowards, Forced combatants and Draft dodgers, German / British / Russian / Japanese POWs, Canada's Internment Camps from residents and guards, Russian Gulags... I'm sure I missed a few

and that statement disturbs me.

War is appalling and horrific. It involves dehumanising people and accepting events as normal; events that should never be seen outside an Emergency Room.

And yet since the The War to End All Wars, Western nations have been engaged in (roughly) continuous warfare. It was meant to be just that: no more, never again, not ever. Men were granted the right to vote after WWI so that they could act as a back stop in preventing the next madness (see the "Representation of the People Act", 1917)

If sometimes I appear critical of people accepting government, if sometimes I appear critical of the mass hysteria that is acceptance of government policy, this is why.

Men were forced to fight and be mutilated in the name of Victory, and the Victory they achieved was a voice in preventing future wars.

We are still at war.