Faced, earlier in the century, with the possibilities of peace, the old men of Europe had decided that they would rather kill their children than change their policies.
There are plenty of words to describe the horrors of World War Two. But there were none, as far as I could discover, that captured the character of the First World War. So I constructed one from the Greek word ephebos, a young man of fighting age. Ephebicide is the wanton mass slaughter of the young by the old. But how did it happen, and why?
World War I shows human short-sightedness at its worst. Even the worst villains of World War II have long-term plans, no matter how odious. That there is a monument to 73,000 British and S. African soldiers who died *and* were not recovered at the Somme illustrates what a carnage it must have been.
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