A fatal formula

In Ann's Hill cemetery,

Gosport, there lies a compelling and poignant reminder of why, like Keith Roynon, (The News, April 1), we need to accept Europe is stronger together, and not divided as we were in war.

Within yards of each other are the last resting places of British and German servicemen who made the ultimate sacrifice and died for their country.

Yet, when French emperor Napoleon ruled the roost in Europe, just some 119 years earlier threatening to invade our shores, it was Blucher’s Germans who finally snatched victory out of defeat for Wellington when they rode to his rescue at the battle of Waterloo.

From the conflicts that presaged the First and Second World Wars, it was the folly of the very same national rivalries, contested borders, and economic volatility that led to the bloodiest conflicts in all human history.

Yet we shy away from explaining the violence and intensity of the centrifugal forces which separate us when thanks to the advances of science and economics most people are better off than ever before in a globalised world.

We live in an age of political volatility, an age of struggle between decaying old empires replaced by rival predatory new ‘empire’ states with the balance of power rapidly draining from west to east.

The very same forces that propelled us apart are once again at work and remain the fatal formula. Once again, we are reverting to type, sowing the seeds of mistrust by identifying and blaming this or that group and characterising them as aliens determined to get one over on us and do us down. The very same factors that led to the genocide of the 20th century are now apparent.

We remain our own worst enemies. We will only avoid another era of senseless nationalist conflict unless we are determined to work together to understand the forces that conjure up ethnic and imperial rivalry and in doing so deny our common humanity.

R Thomson Gosport