Cambridge University Library in late July made available free to all comers digitized copies of the journals of Siegfried Sassoon, decorated war hero, and critic of the callous behavior of warmongering political leaders. Cambridge is to be congratulated and thanked for its inspiring generosity in the true spirit of academic freedom.
Sassoon's work is worth reading today not merely for his descriptions and drawings of the agony of the battlefield trenches, but also for his "Soldiers' Declaration" protesting against the way that politicians had twisted and used and abused the war.
One hundred years ago, after the first shots were fired in World War I, supposedly the war to end all war, the biggest tragedy is that Americans, Australians, British, Chinese, Europeans, Indians, Japanese, Koreans and Russians still have leaders with the same narrow chauvinist mind-set as the callous politicians condemned by Sassoon.