REFLECTING on the commemoration of Passchendaele, James Gray (Gazette, August 3) says ‘what a tragedy that these young men had to die.’ But they did not have to.
They died because the politicians wanted that war fought to the finish and because of the generals’ inept tactics.
I am sure James Gray must know about ‘Lord Lansdowne’s Letter’ – published in the Daily Telegraph November 29, 1917, calling for a negotiated peace with Germany: “We are not going to lose this war, but its prolongation will spell ruin for the civilised world, and an infinite addition to the load of human suffering which already weighs upon it...We do not desire the annihilation of Germany as a great power ... We do not seek to impose upon her people any form of government other than that of their own choice... We have no desire to deny Germany her place among the great commercial communities of the world.”
Had our politicians been less arrogant and inflexible and had our generals been more imaginative and humane there need never have been anything like the 750,000 British soldiers’ deaths in the First World War. And had Britain managed to negotiate peace with Germany, there may not have been that sense of national humiliation that spawned Nazism and all that led to.
JOHN BOALER
Woodland Park
Calne
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