Armistice day

Today we had the annual 2 minutes silence at 11 o'clock, a small token in remembrance of those who fought during the two world wars.
Listening to a program afterwards where relatives, sons, daughters, grandchildren proudly remembered their Dad, having died or having returned from being in the midst of such a calamitous event were reluctance to tell anyone their stories or in anyway boast of their achievement.
The event seems to have scarred them into silence and in this era of the cult of the 'selfie' where we are shameless in our self promotion it seems the people of that era were cut from a different cloth.

 When one sees the carnage. Bloated bodies sticking out from the mud, faces muted in that moment when the bullet hit, one moment and then gone. The bodies lie on both sides of the line. German lads look just like British or French lads in death. 

Young men called up to serve, willing to be conscripted for King/Kiser and Country but little knowing what was in store for them.
Into the "killing fields" they were despatched to match and counter match the death and destruction on the other side, entrenched in a hideous gavotte, a hundred yards this way, a hundred yards that, each hundred yards with a price tag of maybe 10.000 men no I'll raise you 20.000 in a single day. Can you believe it, the death of these young men merely a statistical game, like betting on Pall Mall trying to throw a six.
Today they use the awful term "collateral" damage to describe the "incidental" deaths which are caused to others who are not the intended target but clearly these intended targets, which eventually ran into millions "were human beings too". Human beings with families and lovers with parents to grieve when they didn't return. Their potential for life was taken away from them for a hundred yards of barren ground !!
When one reads of the posturing within the hierarchy, on all sides of European governance at that time especially on the German side, in its blatant pursuit of rearmament and build an army and navy which had no other purpose but pursue  its dare we say selfish interests.  
The French were no better and whilst the British with a small army were not intent on any continental adventure they were wholly reliant on the navy to provide a buffer from any hostile attack
Would these statesmen (and I use the term guardedly) in their grand offices who plotted and schemed to take what was not theres to take, we're they any better than the common criminal.
Were they worse, were they 'mass murderous' on an industrial scale, willing to commit and spill other people's blood whilst in the safety of the War Room as they stood around a map and plotted more carnage.