The inscription on the Cenotaph in London's Whitehall says simply “The Glorious Dead”. There is no doubting Western civilization's readiness to go to war, and to bear appalling losses in its prosecution. Yet even at times of greatest need, and at times when life might be held more cheaply than it is now, to believe that a cause may be worth committing suicide for, rather than merely risking death or being killed for, was to believe in a way foreign to much of Western history. Many people today see the suicidal killing of others as more characteristic of Eastern fundamentalism. It sometimes seems that such fundamentalists regard the values that they respect, and from which they act, as absolute and demanding, whereas Western values are seen as somehow less demanding and so, perhaps, less worthy.

It may well be that, as a country becomes more democratic, it becomes less ready to accept death than once it was. In the West we value peace – perhaps more than ever, just because of the horrific worldwide conflicts of the first part of the twentieth century – and we have largely achieved peace in our own lands since those conflicts. Where conflict does arise, we frequently seek to resolve it through creating continuing processes of toleration. That is a distinctive approach, and by no means as politically neutral as it might appear: as an Argentine foreign minister once said, “the idea of agreeing to disagree is a very British idea”.