The Queen's Speech this year managed to plumb new depths of hypocrisy:
She was waffling on about 'reconciliation' and highlighted the Christmas Truce on the Western Front in 2014.
Well, hang about here. It was her extended family which started this war in the first place, the land-owning aristocracy in Germany, Russia and the UK all pitted their minions against each other (to distract them from radical ideas like Land Value Tax or Socialism). As it happens, the Russian aristocracy came off worst, being largely killed and/or dispossessed in the aftermath.
The German Junkers didn't do so badly, their Kaiser abdicated and the country became a republic, but apart from some Prussian landowners in the east whose land was transferred to Poland, the system of landownership remained largely intact (and exacerbated the effects of the Great Depression etc). British landowners got off more or less Scot free, although to be fair, they were the least-worst of the three groups.
The Christmas Truce itself was outright mutiny against the ruling classes, the poor sods in the trenches just said "we've had enough" and it didn't last long, the powers-that-be soon saw to that. The Queen's direct ancestors had plenty of mutinous minions pulled out of the front line and shot, no doubt the Germans and Russians did the same.
Debate Magazine
