A serious contemplation of what it means to engage in major world conflicts, and the price we pay when we do. The First World War was Canada's baptism of fire. From 1914 to 1918, after a century of peace, Canadians were plunged back into the old world of great power rivalries and great wars. Canadians were volunteers. We didn't have to fight, but we chose to, out of loyalty to ideas and institutions that today many of us no longer believe in. And we have been doing the same thing ever since, although we haven't quite given up on the latest set of ideas and institutions yet. Gwynne Dyer moves back and forth between the seminal event, the First World War, and all the later conflicts that Canada chose to fight in. He draws parallels between these conflicts, with the same idealism among the young soldiers, and the same deeply conflicted emotions among the survivors, surfacing time and again in every war right down to Afghanistan ...