The First World War only makes sense in terms of nationalist triumphalism

Above:  article in today's Guardian by Richard Seymour sneering at the idea of commemorating the First World War (announced by the Prime Minister yesterday).  Richard Seymour tells us "2014 is being scheduled as another zenith of nationalist pride".  He adds "...the first world war can hardly be recalled as a glorious moment in the history of nationalism".

Above:  on Twitter microblogs there were also comments from lefties promulgating "the message" that the Left wants to impart to the anniversary - specifically that "the horror of WW1 is no cause for triumphalism, patriotism or nostalgia".

This is an anachronistic reading of history and wilfully ignores everything we know about the motives of the people who fought and died in the conflict - the experience of the United Kingdom in the First World War only makes sense in terms of nationalist triumphalism.

It is not for the living to usurp the motives of the dead and to project our liberal sentiments on past generations.  We can choose to ignore the anniversaries or we can choose to mark the occasions in expressions of nationalist triumphalism.  What we cannot do (because it would be bogus and dishonest) is to pretend that struggle and victory in that conflict was motivated by anything other than nationalism and imperialist aggrandisement (feelings that permeated even down to the lowest classes - including my own East End family that had nothing but still gave three men, aged 20 to 34, who all died in the same week in April 1918).

The numbers of protesters against British involvement in the war were tiny, so small that statistically they do not even register (despite a few individuals writing some fine poetry).

Above:  village memorial proclaiming "greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends".  Psychologists tell us that in the actual moment of battle soldiers tend to forget family and community (and certainly forget abstract ideas) and are motivated to fight by a sense of loyalty to the people immediately around them.  Later that feeling becomes rationalised into a very intense affinity with the group ideological view - which in the case of First World War combatants would be youthful aggression towards the enemy, a braggadocio attitude towards survival (actually neo-Darwinian in its acceptance of survival of the fittest), and a music hall nationalism that was both tawdry and sincere.

Above:  memorial in a village church in which the war dead are written into the reredos behind the high altar, so that every Sunday the community appears to be worshipping the ancestral dead of the First World War.  Venerating the dead must imply venerating the ideals they held.  When Labour activist Owen Jones says "I'm calling for the lives of millions to be mourned, just not for their murder to be glorified" he is attempting the impossible (unless one stoops to hypocrisy, and that would not be very edifying either for the living or the dead).

Above:  can storied urn or animated bust back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?  

In the grief that followed the Armistice mourning was mixed with majesty.  The British Empire reached its greatest zenith as a direct result of the conflict.  The Versailles Conference was marked by contemptuous domination of the defeated powers.

We might wish that things had been done differently, but that is how it was.

Victory meant victory in those days, and that is the only valid concept that can be commemorated (unless you propose to betray the dead). 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/12/first-world-war-centenary-britannia-fetish