... hardwired, I believe into Britain and the West; into Church and State; into both society and the individual psyche. Therefore, we have had for every single year for, at least the last one hundred years, the killing of foreigners and, in their own lands, too; and by us good, decent, heroic Brits, too!
The 20th century saw more killings by the West of our fellow human beings than in all the previous years of humanity added together. What sheer aggression, violence and pure evil in us upright and so, oh so democratic and freedom loving peoples!
The ever so Great Britain had the greatest empire the world had ever seen in 1914. Kitchener had led the more recent colonial wars. Therefore, it was the normal done thing to go to war. It was the obvious thing to do when an upstart European country was wanting to rival the Great Empire of Britain and to acquire some nations for itself. 33,000 enlisted on one day alone in September 1914 and over one million men had volunteered by Christmas. "They volunteered out of a sense of patriotic duty", Jeremy Paxman said on 'Britain's Great War'. "It was a massive rush to arms", before it was all over by Christmas.
The European Union came out of centuries of European nations fighting wars with each other and around the globe; wars ordered and taxed by their representatives of God on earth - the divinely appointed and approved royal monarchs. The grand climax of the West's World War in two parts, finally shook the war mongering Europeans into economic and some political union to have, at last, permanent peace with each other, at least.
The least you and I can do is to give to the British Red Cross and the Disasters Emergency Committee. And, of course, avoid employment in armaments and the armed forces.
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