And others claimed it was a war between Germany's radical modernism and Britain's traditional conservatism. But if I had to assign blame, I'd go with the alliance system and the cultural belief that war was, in general, good for nations. War helped define who was them and who was us, and doing that strengthened the idea of us. And in World War I, war was perceived to be necessary and often even glorious. The trench warfare on the Western Front is most famous for its brutal futility. Great Britain and France on one side, Germany on the other, with no man's land in between. World War I was a writer's war, and there's a lot of metaphorical resonance in living men digging holes where they would in time die.