No choice: Harry had to go to war and it wasn't worth it

The Second International effectively collapsed with l'union sacrée in France and the Burgfrieden in Germany and the "reformist" socialist parties that were to emerge from the carnage were soon to be flattered into a submission that "allowed" them to be salon fähig.

Nevertheless, the "reformists" were not without their successes and in the aftermath of Atlee's landslide victory in 1945, Britain was to have its NHS, its Welfare State and some were even to have "homes fit for heroes", the Germans were to have their Soziale Marktwirtchaft and in France the working classes were soon to move into the habitation à loyer modéré.

There was a choice of sorts; a choice between left and right and then there was Thatcher and then we had Blair and today we have Gordon Brown. In France the Parti socialisti is not the SFIO and in Germany the Grosse Koalition realistically reflects the Federal Republic's mono political culture. Today, there is no real choice; not in France, not in the UK and not in Germany and, despite their being quite a bit of support for an alternative in Spain and Italy, not, realistically, in those two countries either.

"No choice" and there is the leader of a nominally socialist party, Gordon Brown, nominally paying tribute to Harry Patch, Britain's last survivor of the trenches of World War I,but in actual fact spouting out perifidous piffle in the form of an eulogy when saying that "the whole country would mourn "the passing of a great man. The noblest of all the generations has left us, but they will never be forgotten." Harry on the other hand thought that "it wasn't worth it". It wasn't Harry and the sad thing is that today the stooges in the various parliaments are just as willing to send today's youth to their deaths as the Assemblée Nationale, Westminster and the Reichstag were back in 1914 and the main reason for Mr Brown's eulogy Harry, well, I am sorry to say, there are troops to be movitated, there is an unwinnable war to be won even if, "it isn't worth it."

The picture shows the pall-bearers carrying the coffin of a man who refused to speak about his experiences of war for over eighty years. A picture which might, however, motivate one modern day Tommy to fight for the "Queens shilling". And what about Harry's, "it wasn't worth it"?