I have just watched the 2014 film, Testament of
Youth about the Great War experiences of later pacifist Vera Brittain: a superb
piece of cinematography. (Today she is also remembered as mother of Shirley Williams.)
I was familiar with her life having watched a documentary some time ago - but this film was exquisite. James Kent excelled as Director.
You had to really feel for this woman for her
appalling personal losses combined with the horrors that she saw nursing just
behind the front lines.
The problem is that using all her appalling experiences and thus concluding that nobody should ever go to war again is a very basic non
sequitur. All you have to do is to look at the depredations of
the Japanese in Manchuria during the 1930s and the pacifist argument is shown to
be utter nonsense. Further examples abound.
