On the opposing side are the historians who brilliantly – against the prevailing orthodoxy – argue that 1914 was a “just war” like 1939. The German war aims, as demonstrated by the German Historian Fritz Fischer, were every bit as expansionist as Hitler’s. Britain’s fight was just, since the Reich’s occupation of Belgium and Northern France was undoubtedly brutal. What is more it threatened fundamental British interests since a German Reich dominated Western European Customs Union threatened British commercial interests and a Channel coast with ports for the German Navy threatened militarily and strategically.

They further point out that in the big battles of the war right up to 1917, Britain was still on land the junior partner of France, driven to commit the BEF to support the French and to help keep them in the War – which was indeed the logic of Mons and First Ypres. The Somme was fought to relieve unbearable pressure on the French at Verdun, and Third Ypres or Passchaendale allowed the French to recover from the mutinies in 1917 following their failed Nivelle Offensive.

The final argument of this camp in the argument is that 1918 is the only time when the British Army has been the principal engine in defeating the main force of the enemy in a Continental war, and that we should be proud of the achievements of the “Tommies” of summer and autumn 1918. Haig and the BEF in 1918, they assert, achieved more than Montgomery in 1945, Wellington in 1814 and even Marlborough in 1709, all of whom were part of wider coalitions in which the British Army was an important – but not the primary – engine.