Perhaps it is a sign of me getting older, and because my grandfather has no grave in England, but I find I often spend time looking at the names on war memorials and speculating about the brothers you see there, the years and battles in which they died, the impact of their deaths on the families they left behind, and so on. My own grandfather left 3 children under 6, and the legacy of having no grandparents runs a long while.It is right and fitting that time and money should be invested into locating the war memorial in an appropriate place where passers by must see it and reflect.Being a little controversial, for those who argue otherwise, by the way, the First World War was not a futile waste of lives. Who would want a Europe in which the autocracy of the Kaiser lived on and the monarchies of central Europe survived? Of course Europe would have evolved but in what way? The war brought the USA briefly out of isolationism and accelerated the world economy. Though hard to see it now, the standard of living of many was greatly higher in the 1920s than it had been before 1914 and that was in part due to the kickstart the war gave to industrial production. Of course the slump was dreadful to say nothing of the fascism that arose from it, but these were in part due to the folly of Versailles rather than the war itself.
Dan Filson ● 6221d