The folly of war

“As generals and politicians on both sides plotted the course of the war they gave little consideration to the millions of people being killed while they sat back... and could think of no way to stop the hideous carnage,” writes AA Bullions (Letters, 12 November).

A nation under direct attack must, of course, defend itself but perhaps the Great War did not need UK involvement in 1914, since consideration of the moral dimension of declaring an avoidable war – bringing inevitable strategic and political disasters – might have deterred that decision.

In addition to the huge material losses, the Cabinet may have underestimated the terrible consequential evils and human suffering in prospect.

In Britain’s case, it has been suggested that the declaration of war might have been avoided had one of the Cabinet’s members not been uncontactable on a weekend fishing trip.

Perhaps a tendency to vainglory in politicians helped prompt the fateful decision.

Not only was the First World War an unredeemed disaster but its settlement at Versailles, imposing excessively harsh terms on the defeated Imperial Germany, contributed to the development of the Second World War. Indeed Clemenceau, the French statesman at the treaty negotiations in 1919, predicted another war within 20 years.

May God preserve us from politicians’ errors.

(DR) CHARLES WARDROP Viewlands Road West, Perth