History

Reading history is fascinating in so much as it not only tells us in some detail the events of a point in time but also of our attitude and the changes in the way we think today.
I'v been reading a description of the Gallipoli campaign, or fiasco depending on how you view it.
As always there is the political aspect to the set of decisions which focus on the battle and the way it was fought. Then there are the personalities, the Generals and the Admirals who compete for the political ear. People just like us with the same failings we have but immeasurably more power.
In the cast of many, low down hardly worth a mention are the men who are to do the actual battling and, inevitably, the dying !
The political issues which cover the interrelationship between nations and the support and in many cases, the wastage of ones own men and munitions for a county which in all other circumstances would not be classed as friendly, seems a sad if not criminal way of spending your own citizens life blood. 
The plans based on out of date maps and a blinding lack of realism, some sort of "boys own" wish to join up the dots of other campaigns and more particularly perhaps to find a way out of the stalemate and the impasse of the trench warfare on the Western Front, led to gambles with men's lives.
With the hindsight of time one can see this as a Churchillian blunder ably abetted by the generals and admirals who were no match for his bluster. Only Kitchener and perhaps Fisher could stand up to him and Kitchener was far too preoccupied by a million dead on the fields of Flanders to reason him out of his political, rather than military objective.
One is struck by the word "only" when the numbers of dead and ships lost are mentioned as the Fleet initially tried to force its way through the Narrows in the Dardanelles. The perceptible truth that human life meant little to these men of 'vision and great enterprise', or perhaps I should rephrase that and say, they were a price worth paying for the attainment of "a win". 
Today with the eyes of the world fixed each morning, through the news bulletin, on the distress of human beings right across the globe we see human life with a different perspective. 
Could we fight those titanic battles today with there cast of millions, bleeding to death for a few hundred yards of ground or would public opinion take it out of the hands of those who would !!