Your theory about WWI is hard to reconcile with the fraction of the upper classes in the relevant age brackets who were in the army and were casualties, especia

Your theory about WWI is hard to reconcile with the fraction of the upper classes in the relevant age brackets who were in the army and were casualties, especially on the western front. In WWI, a lot of the people making the decisions in fact ended up sacrificing their own children. Or to make this concrete, the prime minister of the UK in 1914 (and through 1916) was H. H. Asquith. Looking at the wikipedia articles about his sons: 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Asquith https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Asquith -- killed in action in 1916. 2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Asquith_(poet) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Asquith_(poet) -- served in the artillery in the British Army. 3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Asquith https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Asquith -- wounded four times, lost a leg. 4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyril_Asquith,_Baron_Asquith_of_Bishopstone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyril_Asquith,_Baron_Asquith_o... -- was in the army, but not on the Western Front. 5) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Asquith https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Asquith -- was 12 years old when the war started, 16 when it ended: too young to serve. I have a hard time seeing Asquith here as "sacrificing other people's children", or at least any more so than sacrificing his own. That said, I agree that there's way more war-making going on recently than there should be and that it's no longer in style for the upper class to actually put their own skins on the line. But WWI is just not a good example of that tendency.