For your tomorrow we gave our today

This epitaph, composed by J M Edmonds, appears on war memorials at Kohima and elsewhere. The battle of Imphal-Kohima in 1944 succeeded in preventing a Japanese invasion of what is now Bangladesh. In Britain, the 11th November is called Armistice Day and marks the moment when fighting ceased in 1918. The lines ‘At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we shall remember them’ are those usually associated with that war. ‘For your tomorrow we gave our today’ is the voice of later soldiers now long dead, calling to us. The chronologically earlier words, ‘we shall remember them’ should be our solemn promise, the only fitting response to that call.

An ethical opposition to fighting, and even simple denunciation of the horrors of war, are entirely human responses to it. Emotionally satisfying though they may be they ignore the reasons why these wars happened. Communists dogmatically dismiss the 1914-18 war as ‘imperialist’ and therefore anti-working class. In reality, and in 1914 as in 1939, the British government was very reluctant to declare war. The historical evidence is indisputable: in both cases its hand was forced. Britain had no choice but to defend itself – its entire population – against an existential threat from German government policy.

The cost of defence in terms of blood and treasure was enormous but the benefit in terms of political freedom was even greater. ‘Critical theorists’ and others who dismiss British history as a catalogue of oppression insult the dead of these two wars. ‘British’ is not just an abstract idea. It is the name of a people thousands of whom died so that theoreticians might be free to criticise. It is the duty of all of us alive today to speak for our dead who cannot say for themselves For your tomorrow we gave our today.