That time again

[smokingboot]

To those who sit today with their great Dead, hands in their hands
Eyes in their eyes
At one with Love, at one with Grief: blind to the scattered things
And changing skies.
- May 1915 by Charlotte Mary Mew

Without any rancour or unpleasantness at all, a friend's partner called me selfish when I said if I could go back in time and change something, I would stop WWI. 'We had treaties to fulfil,' he said. He's descended from a viscount or something, his ancestors part of the plot to put Mary Queen of Scots on the throne. 'I'd have been an officer,' he said, not boastfully but as a matter of fact, 'and I'd have lead from far behind the lines.'

Well then, rose the words to my mouth, easy to stand by a treaty if you're safe from its failure. The conversation flowed on, interesting and full of ideas.

I will never believe that the war was inevitable, that it was some kind of tragic flowering of gallantry or whatever. Personal heroism does not justify the inane waste, the intellectual and moral failure that is at the core of war.

But oh, let end what will, I hold you fast
By immortal love, which has no first or last.
- Now That You Too by Eleanor Farjeon