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2 hours ago, ChelseaBoy said:

Don't think anything obliged Britain to get involved. We had signed the Triple Entente with France and Belgium but this did not explicitly compel us to go to war. 

Yes, the Entente, with France and Russia, was not an obligation.

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9 hours ago, Gonzo79 said:

Another interesting subject, that may be linked to age and circle(s) of friends/associates. 

 

People my age, who grew up in the 80s and 90s seems to be quite anti-war (generally), in my experience. 

Most people who grew up in the 1890's would become very anti-war and for very good reason.

 

To this day, the exploitation of patriotism over no or little good reason is very often the trump card played to overcome an anti-war feeling. I'd call it partly a survival instinct or just common sense when contemplating having folk put their life on the line for what ? How many wars have actually been unavoidable and 'worthy' ? Not many.

 

As for the general anti-war feeling of a generation close to you. It's hardly surprising and if it were based on learning lessons, then it's better late than never.

 

 

Edited by buster.
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10 minutes ago, Gonzo79 said:

I suspect the two world wars extinguished a lot of the patriotic sentiment that lead young men to fight for their country.

I think it's more to do with a growing and healthy scepticism, allied to a plain and warranted distrust of those who push for war and the lack of personal good reason to identify with it.

Edited by buster.
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9 hours ago, Gonzo79 said:

I suspect the two world wars extinguished a lot of the patriotic sentiment that lead young men to fight for their country.

The two world wars should never be considered as two sides of the same coin. They were fought for entirely different reasons and had entirely different consequences for Britain and its empire. 

 

Also, I've seen no evidence that patriotism was diminished by the first world war, except in some very limited sense among left-leaning elites. Nor am I convinced by the popular myth that Britons emerged from the second world war any less patriotic than before. More cynical towards the political elite perhaps but not less patriotic. Any decline in patriotism in this country grew out of post-war social and cultural changes, not as a direct response to fighting the war. WW2 was no Vietnam. Nor would I underestimate the deliberate undermining of patriotism that was and still is engineered by certain ideological movements. It wasn't defeating the Nazis that cause Churchill's statue to be defaced and boarded up.

Edited by Bill
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I was referring to the type of patriotic sentiment that would lead a man to want to go to war, for the love of his country - not general patriotism.

 

I referred to the two world wars together because of the sheer scale of the bloodshed, no other reason.

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