SIR - David Hornsby and Karl Dallas have both fallen into David Cameron’s trap by bringing politics into the commemoration of the Great War and in particular suggesting that ordinary people were deceived into supporting the war aims.

100 years on, it is impossible to understand the mindset of those involved and their sense of patriotic duty which persuaded millions to flock to the colours. All I can say is on October 27, 2015 it will be exactly sixty years since I was conscripted into the Royal East Kent Regiment.

Conscripts we may have been and training to fight unworthy colonial wars but a muttered ‘steady the buffs’ from onlookers in the streets of Canterbury would send us on our way feeling ten feet tall.

As to Mr Hornsby’s contention that the war was fought by ordinary people for the benefit of the rich and powerful, he should Google Cullen War Memorial.

There he will see among 60 men lost from a tiny Scottish fishing village the Earl of Seafield, otherwise Captain James Ogilvie Grant of the Cameron Highlanders. His family have been for generations, apart from the Queen, the largest and wealthiest land owners in Scotland.

Brian Holmans, Langley Road, Bingley