I feel it is appropriate for the first post on a personal site to be a personal one. Today is Remembrance Day, and the 100th anniversary of the end of the first world war. On my way about my business I passed by a large crowd of people gathered for a commemoration ceremony. It is difficult for me in times of conflict to reconcile the rightful honouring of the dead with the way that the nation in which I live (the UK) and others act to create new victims of war. The UK’s participation in unlawful war, advertisement of military service to youth, and sale of arms to totalitarian regimes unfortunately taint the remembrance of the millions who suffered immensely, and who for the largest part felt they had no choice but to participate – though some 16,000 conscientous objectors refused to take part. Edinburgh, as a large British city, contains a huge number of war memorials. We should also honour those who refused to participate in this senseless killing, as several local groups are seeking to do. I look forward to the day in which those whose morals compel them to take a stand are given the reverence and respect that they deserve.

World War I brings to mind a few great pieces of art produced in protest and marvel of the futility of that war, and of war in general. The first is by the great Eric Bogle, once a Scot, but now an adopted Australian; the song “No Man’s Land” (often referred to as “The Green Fields of France”) vividly describes the futility and loss that inevitably follows war.

The second is the poem Dulce et Decorum est by Wilfred Owen. This is one of most affecting pieces of literature I have ever read, and it rarely fails to strike me deeply. I will not reproduce the poem in its entirety here, but in the light of today’s commemoration ceremonies, and in light of the futility of the “great war” in bringing peace to Europe, the final lines are as pertinent as ever.

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.