A very thoughtful comment from a reader, making a good point:

“Mr. Derbyshire—You note the comments of some historians that the cultural

changes which once were attributed to the death of so many during the war

are explainable also as a continuation of social trends that began before

the war. This is a truism that is common to all wars, and which would be

true even of a post-apocalyptic world. All present events are continuations

of some past trend. The observation does nothing to tell us which trends

were stifled by the effect of the war.

“It is not rational to infer that war has only slight adverse effects from

this phenomenon. The impact of millions of deaths can never be fully

appreciated because these lives that would have been were not lived, and

their effects were never felt. We cannot possibly know what social trends

were extinguished, nor can we know what novels were not written or what

inventions were never realized…

“Not only did we lose the entire life’s work of each of the soldiers who

died in the war, we lost the benefit of all of the children they never

fathered as well. If your own father or mine had died, you would not be here

and I would not be reading your thoughtful columns. We also lost the benefit

of the example that they would have set for their friends and neighbors.

Because most of the men who died were brave and altruistic, we probably live

in a world that is substantially more cowardly and selfish than it would

have been if the wars had not occurred.

“So the Great War and the Second World War, taken together, probably cost

civilization much more than we can ever calculate.”