Every 11 November, the United Kingdom stands still. Bugles sound, heads bow, and for two minutes the nation remembers – not just the fallen, but the idea that peace was bought at an impossible price. Yet remembrance, if it is to mean anything, must also be a warning.

Europe is again unstable, deterrence is fragile, and Britain’s armed forces are once more the smallest they have been in generations. The difference is that, this time, it is not Germany that alarms us by arming – it is Germany that is doing what Britain will not.

In Berlin, the ghosts of British tanks and troopers still linger. Drive a couple of hundred miles west of the city and you can still see the outlines of training grounds once churned up by the tracks of the British Army of the Rhine. The pubs are gone, the barracks

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