Secrets of the Manor House – a.k.a some thing I found online on PBS – draws a connection between the violence of WWI and the breakdown of the rigid lines of English Social class that drew to their zenith in the Edwardian era.

A minute or two into the show one of the experts tells us the Aristocracy had, “begun as a warrior class and they are professional fighting men. They were the natural officers. They led the nation in war and they were supposed to have inherited courage.”

20,000 British soldiers die on a single day the narrator tells us, drawing broad strokes over images of complete carnage. …and then at (@ approx 50:50)

“The aristocratic officer class had lost their standing as leaders of men and the one-time dignity of a life in service to your lord was permanently tainted.”

huh.