I HOPE your readers, after one hundred years, do not only remember the useless slaughter of World War One but also the political leadership that was responsible.

Although it often seems to have been a sort of celebration rather than commemoration, if more people become aware of the political nature of history and its presentation then it is less worrying.

However, over the last period the press and TV keep referring to the terrible sacrifice as if most of the victims voluntarily went to die.

Even if they volunteered, they were sacrificed like sheep on some primitive altar on behalf of capitalist competition. It was not voluntary sacrifice, as too often suggested.

Norman Lockhart
Innerleithen

THE lives of the war dead were not given but taken.

James Robb
via email