How ironic that your article about honouring the few survivors of the First World War appeared beside a picture of the West Pier in its dying moments (The Argus, August 4).

As the setting for Oh! What A Lovely War, it provided the backdrop to a film which presented that conflict in its true colours - a futile, ill-run and bloody struggle for power.

You acknowledge the war as an atrocious period of carnage but you still sprinkle the piece with the usual words about glory and the willingness to give lives to preserve freedoms.

These are epithets appended by nervous leaders and shocked survivors in order to attach "meaning" or to impart "decency" to the preceding slaughter.

Most of us are proud of the individual and collective bravery shown by soldiers of that time and since. My own grandfather was gassed in the trenches and his generation were indeed haunted by what they experienced.

But glory and sacrifice? It was a shameful failure of humanity. Its conclusions directly paved the way for the next world war.

Towards the end of the Second World War, the United Nations was formed to prevent the recurrence of such conflicts.

But the UN itself was unable to stop the warmongering juggernaut driven by our own leaders not 17 months ago.

-Brian Snow, Brighton