War hasn't ended but it has changed

"THEY shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning,

We will remember them." So say the words of the famous ode to remembrance taken from Lawrence Binyon's poem For the Fallen.

One hundred years ago millions of young men, and women, faced the horrors of a war unprecedented in the history of mankind. A war where the grim technology of death turned the fields of Europe into blood soaked patches of mud where the poppy sprung up in defiance, standing strong as proof that life will rise from death and loss shall never been diminished. It is those Poppies which continue to stand as a memorial not only to those who died in the first Great War but to those who have died in every conflict since.

There are those who have argued that after a century we should stop marking armistice, those who  have claimed that calling it the "Great War" somehow glorifies it. It is not nationalism to remember the dead. It is not idealism that allows us to thank those who laid down their lives in a bitter and futile struggle. Great is a reflection of size not glory.  

More than this though is that Armistice day is not just for those who died in World War One. The war to end all wars failed singularly in that particular respect, as in so many others. Only twenty years later the world was once again pitched into a brutal struggle, this time a fight for its soul against the evil of Nazism rather than a battle for land and resources as World War One at its core was. Nor has war ended since. Indeed as technology grows so to does the threat of death, although there are those who have argued that it diminishes it. There are many who would agree that far from being an obsolete idea World War Three is only a matter of time, an inevitability where the only question is if it will occur within our lifetimes. War has not ended, although its face may have. The implementation of violence within and without national borders is no longer the sole mandate of the state. With the emergence of powerful militia and terrorist groups such as in Ukraine, Nigeria, Iraq and Syria and elsewhere war has become an act between polities not states and polities are no longer just the states which once were their representatives.

There is very little that can be done to avoid further conflicts. If the memory of those who deaths have stained the global soul for a century could not prevent it then very little anyone can say or do will now. 

In their memory though we must not forget. Great is not glorification it is a warning. A threat for what will happen again if we fail to remember that they died for our very future.