Consider the following comments on war.
War is the continuation of politics by other means.
Carl von Clausewitz
Older men declare war, but it is the youth that must fight and die.
Herbert Hoover
In war, truth is the first casualty.
Anonymous
A nation that forgets how to fight may not survive long enough to regret its decency.
We honour the soldier so that we never have to look too closely at the cause.
Write a piece in response to one or more of these comments. Your essay will be assessed on the quality of your argument and the way you express it.
A way into this prompt
A defensible thesis is that war is neither glorious nor purely senseless, but a political instrument whose costs are paid by people who did not choose it. Open by granting the realist point that states cannot always avoid force and that some wars genuinely prevent worse outcomes. Then complicate it: the language of necessity is also how leaders launder ambition, so the same word covers self defence and conquest. A strong third move separates the justice of going to war from the justice of how it is waged, since a defensible cause does not excuse atrocity. Caution: resist both the romance that turns soldiers into symbols and the easy pacifism that assumes refusing to fight is always the moral choice.