Sacrifice!

The stern hand of fate has scourged us to an elevation where we can see the great everlasting things which matter for a nation – the great peaks we had forgotten, of Honour, Duty, Patriotism, and clad in glittering white, the great pinnacle of Sacrifice pointing like a rugged finger to Heaven.

(David Lloyd George in his Queen’s Hall speech 19 September 1914)

“That was tripe, but the British, until recently, have been quite fond of tripe” writes Gerard DeGroot (‘Beware of history’s big ideas’, The Times 28 January 2017)