I wouldn't have said the UK lacked it. Every year when I was a kid I would take part in the Remembrance Sunday parades as a Girl Guide, and there was definitely

I wouldn't have said the UK lacked it. Every year when I was a kid I would take part in the Remembrance Sunday parades as a Girl Guide, and there was definitely a massive feeling of respect and admiration for these brave men. I'd always get tears in my eyes when an octogenarian bent double under the weight of his medals recited Wilfred Owen. I guess less so with the current armed forces, since the threat was further away, and fewer of us were touched by it personally (most people I know have grandparents who were involved in one of the Great Wars; not everyone knows a modern-day serviceman). Plus the issue of the war itself; I believe anti-war sentiment about the recent wars is higher than it was for WWI and WWII, and what there was then is very much blurred by time, victory and countless readings of war poetry in high school. Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori.