Unsurprisingly, most of the major news stories of the last few days have focussed on the memorial services taking place throughout the land to mark yesterday’s Remembrance Sunday and tomorrow’s Armistice Day. The services are all the more poignant this year since, as we are all aware, 2014 is the centenary of the outbreak of World War 1.

In the midst of the tales of suffering, courage and death one particular newspaper article seemed to me to strike an important chord. It was an interview in the Sunday Times with Michael Morpurgo, the novelist and author of “War Horse” who said that every British school pupil should be given the opportunity to visit the cemeteries of the Western Front of Belgium and France with the cost being borne by the State if necessary.

His argument was that children, in many cases obsessed by computer war games, need “to understand the human tragedy of conflict”.

That has to be right. Though we must never forget, and should always honour, the memories of those who suffered and died in the terrible conflicts of the Twentieth century and beyond surely the best possible act of remembrance is to do all that we can to ensure that the mistakes of the past are never repeated by future generations.