We should be wary of politicians who profess to follow history while only noticing those signposts of history that point in the direction which they themselves already favour.
No military timetable should compel war when a successful outcome, namely a disarmed Iraq may be feasible without war, for example by allowing more time to the UN inspectors.
Margaret Thatcher, growing up in a bombed and battered Britain, derived a distrust which has grown with the years not just of Germany but of all continental Europe.
It depends on how it is done but what we are drifting into, which is that people grow up without any sense of a spiritual dimension to life, is just impoverishing.
I may be wrong in that, but not I think in putting the questions. In our modern democracy the government needs not a unanimous but a general support for war before it orders our forces to fight.
Despite this lamentable lack of balance in our education I do not believe that either children or adults in my country are permeated by a widespread hostility to Germany.
There is no consensus even today on the merits of Napoleon - and certainly no agreement on the rights and wrongs of the origins of the First World War.
Men like Hitler and Stalin and their immediate lieutenants cannot plead in defence of their actions that these were justified by the accepted values of that time.
