Armistice Day - 100 years on

It is very interesting to be in Britain with so many touching memorials taking place. The silhouettes and outlines of soldiers seen in many places was such a thoughtful way to remind us of their sacrifice, as were the pictures in the sand, washed away by the incoming tide.  We were in Accrington, working on the house, and apparently Accrington lost more young men (relative to its size) than any other town or city, thanks to the forming of a Pals Battalion and their subsequent slaughter in the first minutes of the Battle of the Somme. So Sunday was a solemn day even if we spent it working on clearing the house.
This picture is deliberately unclear, with me as photographer looking in from outside to the subject.
I always find it difficult to write about November 11th, because people feel deeply about the day and what it represents, but they feel deeply in different ways, and I have a perspective from the UK, where I grew up, but another from Sweden, where I have spent most of my adult life.  Sweden was last at war in 1814 (with Norway) so they have a different, more neutral, take on the WW1 armistice centenary.
Virtually all people in Britain recognise the sacrifice made by the soldiers from the UK and Commonwealth, and some look at the broader picture and all the people who died. In Sweden the sacrifices are also recognised but there most people see the sacrifices as coming from soldiers of all the nations involved. It’s hard to find figures for how many people died in that war, but in round figures 11 million soldiers died, and 20 million soldiers were wounded. Civilian deaths are even harder to count…
Personally I think the best way to honour all those who died would be avoiding new deaths. Nationalism is definitely on the rise and the extreme right are making their presence known in so many countries (America first! Alternative for Germany! Sweden Democrats, Brexit?) It seems unbelievable that we could be once again be heading towards conflict - economic? - military? -  but it also seemed like that in 1913 too. Even today it is very unclear exactly why WW1 happened at all, what the various nations hoped to achieve at the start of the war…