Today and on this coming Sunday, people in many parts of the world will gather and pay tribute to the countless millions of men, women and children who lost their lives during two World Wars and in subsequent conflicts.
Quite properly, Remembrance Day (and more recently, Remembrance Sunday) was set aside as a time for reflecting on the anguish and misery caused by war and for acknowledging the sacrifices of past generations.
But, behind the military pomp and ceremony, the recounting of the unimaginably heroic deeds of many, and recollections of the pain and loss suffered by many, many more, lies a stark, indisputable, but seldom acknowledged truth.
In the vast majority of instances - and certainly in respect of the first and second World Wars - all of the suffering and loss of life could and should have been avoided.
Most of us have nothing more than the haziest notion of how the two major wars of the last century were started or, worse still, have unquestioningly swallowed whole the same self-serving, jingoistic propaganda that led many thousands of young men on all sides to their deaths.
But despite what leaders and their governments claimed at the time, and their successors have claimed ever since, the truth is that the two wars need never have happened.
The origins of the first World War lay more in the conflicting colonial interests and expansionist tendencies of all of the major European powers of that time, than in anything even remotely related to a paternalistic concern for the welfare of small states such as Serbia and Belgium. Further, the manifestly unfair terms on which "the war to end all wars" was settled laid the foundations for a repeat performance of the wholesale bloodletting and slaughter some 21 years later.
Where Britain and the Commonwealth countries are concerned, the origins of the first World War can be traced to tensions that developed between Germany and Britain following the completion in 1911 of a direct rail link from Berlin that ran through Turkey to the Persian Gulf.
The railway not only gave Germany access to the oilfields of that region and a foothold in Turkey, but was considered, probably correctly, to be a serious threat to British interests in India, the jewel in the British colonial crown. Everything that followed on from then, and eventually led to Britain's declaration of war on Germany on August 4th, 1914, must be considered in the context of the tension and suspicion that had built up over a number of years between two major colonial powers.
The guns fell silent and the first World War finally came to an end at 11am on November 11th, 1918, when an armistice that had been agreed a few hours earlier between German government representatives and an allied military commander came into effect.
The following year, the peace agreement was made permanent with the signing of the Versailles Treaty.
The main terms included: an acceptance by Germany that it was guilty of causing the war; provisions for the trial of the former Kaiser and other war leaders; that Germany pay reparation costs to the tune of £6,600 million to the allies; the surrender of all German colonies to the League of Nations as mandates; the Rhineland to be completely demilitarised to form a buffer zone between Germany and surrounding countries; a ban on any union between Germany and Austria; the limitation of Germany's army to 100,000 men with bans on conscription, heavy artillery, tanks, aircraft and airships; and equally strict limitations placed on the German navy.
The Versailles Treaty, as it was designed to do, both economically bankrupted and humiliated Germany. It created a universal anger and bitterness in Germany that festered and simmered for years until, eventually, it was deftly exploited by the utopia-promising madman, Adolf Hitler, to the point where it propelled him and his henchmen to power.
After that, it was only a matter of time before the Nazis dragged Europe and, subsequently, most of the rest of the world back into war.
One is hard put to think of any war between countries (or even within them) in modern times that has not come about through some combination or variation of the same ingredients of greed, imperialism, fervent nationalism, lack of foresight and a thirst for revenge that sparked the first and second World Wars.
Yet, it's as though we can always remember the suffering that conflict brings, and even the heroism it sometimes inspires, but can never quite recall what the causes are.
Neither, as recent history clearly shows, have we yet fully realised that political leaders begin to speak of moral obligation and patriotic duty only when they are trying to conceal other motivations.
As well as recalling heroism and sacrifice on Remembrance Day, we should also spend time reflecting on the circumstances that led to so many lives being destroyed and begin to learn from the countless mistakes that were made in the past. Until we get round to doing that, then we - the potential cannon fodder - forever run the risk of being led into war again.