Playing Games.

Something caused me to ponder the First World War yesterday. It’s fading into history now, but it was still living history when I was a kid. I found myself becoming angry, and even emotional.

We’ve been told often enough that it was the most brutal war in history, with approximately eight million servicemen killed in the trenches, the minefields, the killing grounds of Gallipoli, and on the watery wastes of the grey North Sea. But don’t you have to ask yourself whether they were the lucky ones? What about the other countless millions of victims who had to live with it? What about the parents, the wives, the children? What about the men who came home missing arms, legs, eyes, and the ability to have a peaceful night’s sleep?

And I asked myself the obvious question: what did it achieve? More to the point, what was it ever meant to achieve? Nothing of any value. It was, as usual, just another case of politicians and potentates playing their petty power games with the pawns that are the rest of humanity.

And do you know what? They’re still doing it.