Seeing as this is the 105th anniversary of the Armistice that ended the Great War, and seeing as we are now already deep into World War III (or IV, if you believe – with, in my view, good reason – that the Cold War was the third one), it is worth remembering what the Great War did to European civilisation.

As I wrote on the 100th anniversary of the Armistice, the Great War resulted in the destruction of the greatest civilisation in human history. What followed was more advanced, certainly, in technological terms, and more comfortable, assuredly – those of us who live in the West today are surrounded by the creature comforts that came from the age that followed.

But I think one would be hard-pressed to argue, with a straight face, that the 20th Century was on the whole more civilised, more humane, and more decent than the 19th.

The century that passed by was one filled with horror and devastation, with wars on a scale beyond the worst nightmares of men, and with the wholesale slaughter of MILLIONS on an industrial scale, by their own governments.

The 20th Century was the century of democide. Over 100 MILLION people died in it.

All we can do – the best we can do – is work to ensure the outcome of this Great Civilisational War, will result in a saner, less concentrated distribution of power and authority, in which the elites and ruling classes more closely represent the peoples of nations intent on preserving their own posterity, rather than empires bent on reckless expansion and conquest.

Men of the West owe their forebears, who died in their millions to preserve an order that failed, no less.