The reason for conflict

I READ V John’s letter (Don’t mark the war) with mixed feelings. On the point of it being a political stunt, I agree that it is a blue smoke screen and that the Remembrance Day service for the end of both wars is perfectly adequate. The point that they both were a a terrible tragedy and waste of life is also true, but the reason for the conflict was hardly as stated. My grandfather came from Southern Ireland to join the British Army and served in France in the Engineers. He and the rest of the Allies fought to drive the megalomanic Kaiser and his Pickelhaubed, jackbooted thugs, back to Germany, not for any Marxist dogma. He, as many of his countrymen, came because he realised that if Britain fell, Ireland’s neutrality wouldn’t have been worth a light. Unfortunately, governments following the First World War believed it to be ‘the war to end all wars’ and were totally unprepared for 1939 (nothing changes).