Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. Really? It might have applied to Horace and to Romans, although even then I’m not entirely sure. But by the time Wilfred Owen wrote his immortal poem on the same subject there was no doubt that there was nothing sweet about dying for one’s country. In the shadow of the slaughter of the First World War, can anybody be surprised that the Oxford Union passed the equally immortal motion “This House will under no circumstances fight for its King and country”.