Suppose they gave a war and nobody came

You flick through several channels and finally stop on a fuzzy image of a car speeding down a desert back road. The image is blurred but what can you expect from 30,000ft away? A target sits over the vehicle. A smoke trail drifting across the crosshairs and seconds later a puff of smoke and that’s one less bad guy to worry about.

A video game or the reality of modern day warfare? This is how we sanitise killing these days – we win our wars from behind a desk. Now step back in time 100 years this month, no YouTube, no social media to keep us up to the minute informed. The only images of war are patriotic posters demanding you serve.

Your country needs you.

And so, caught up in the moment, you followed your patriotic duty without a thought. The music hall songs demanded you pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile smile smile, and so they did just that in their millions. It was expected for king and country you served. But would we honestly go so freely and so fervently today? Would we march so proudly off to war? Would we defy our mothers, lie about our ages just so we could enlist in the local ‘lads’ regiments?

‘The revolution will not be televised’ sang Gil Scott Heron back in the 70′s, as we watched the Vietnam War on our televisions. You were lucky to make page 4 of the local newspaper back in 1914.

Today, Social Media would make it a worldwide trending topic until we got bored and switched to the latest celebrity hook up, football transfer rumour or anything else that grabs our goldfish attention spans.

The start of the Great War is being celebrated this month and all over the country the war that was said to end all wars is being remembered. In Liverpool we’ve dressed up the event and sanitised the loss by representing the war as a little girl and her grandmother searching for a dad or a son who has enlisted. It is finally given the reality it never had a century ago. Finally we appreciate the degree of loss. We are beginning to understand that the Great War was mainly fought over a few miles of muddy ground in Northern Europe. The up and over orders into no man’s land with no thought of loss or death only became apparent many years later. In these high-tech times, teenagers are raining mass destruction on nations every night via their PlayStations. Why would anyone want to leave their armchairs for the real thing? How many would answer the call if asked? Would we still treat those that chose not to go with the same contempt? The white feather (a symbol of cowardice) was the greatest insult you could have received. Today their protest would be celebrated. It was a different time – the naivety of the masses to the reality of war meant that working class poorly educated boys thought the war was a heroic adventure. In hindsight, the whole thing was futile.

So… if they called, would we answer? Probably not. There’d be far too much other stuff to do.