Quote Originally Posted by HoreTore View Post
Because.... It would be stupid?
Why stupid?

Encouraging everyone to take time and reflect on the terrible cost of war, however justifiable - to think of the faces and lives of those men and women lost to us in the flower of their youth - to imagine the real, painful, destructive cost of death on the battlefield, as if it were us lying beneath those serried ranks of uniform crosses, interred along with our own hopes and dreams - might be a reflection that helps more people appreciate how awful war is - an enterprise not to be undertaken lightly.

Particularly in regard to the Great War, so characterised by grainy film of young men grinning with joy as they march off to fight for country, flag and nonsense - stirred by false patriotism and driven by the views of their peers and leaders that suffocating to death in a blood-soaked mud-hole is somehow a glorious sacrifice - such an annual reflection might just stop the same fatuous patriotism and false demons being used to send more young people to die uselessly in foreign fields.

Two minutes a year when the cash tills, petty whingings and rat races suspend? I would argue it is stupid not to do so.