The bunting that welcomed Our Boys home from the Second World War had scarcely come down when the poet Cecil Day Lewis turned his gaze to the future. He saw "peace guttering down to war, like a libertine to his grave''.

And here we are, on the verge of what is openly billed as a global war. Not merely the first new war of the 21st Century but, far more significantly, the first 21st-Century war. A new kind of war, in which the enemy's front line moves among us, unknown, even unarmed as we have always understood it, yet able to fell people and economies with devastating blows.

In the agonised wake of the World Trade Centre attack, events are rapidly taking on a terrible momentum. Precisely where they will lead, even the most far-seeing poet might find difficult to foretell. But for Britain, an immediate issue is: Who commits us to war?

Since Margaret Thatcher's day, Britain's Prime Ministers have become increasingly presidential. But they are still elected only as MPs. Until recently ranked no more than "first among equals" even in the Cabinet, the leader of the victorious party in a general election does not gain sweeping personal powers. But by his vow of "shoulder to shoulder" support for America, Tony Blair has already cast the die to British involvement in President George Bush's war against world terrorism.

As most would agree, a decision to go to war is the most serious step any government can ever take. Parliamentary democracy, our system, requires that such grave decisions should be taken by Parliament, representing the nation. But we now find ourselves in what George Bush admits could be a ten-year conflict, without any reference to Parliament.

The will of the British people might well be for war. But that will needs to find proper expression through Parliament, before we are plunged into a conflict - fought on our side, ironically, under the banner of freedom and democracy.

Foot-and-mouth. Under the world-wide pall of the New York and Washington attacks, this major preoccupation of the last few months suddenly seems a whole lot less serious. But the disease still has a stranglehold on most of the North-East - and the £4bn of public money spent fighting it, to say nothing of the collateral economic damage, looks a whole lot more serious on the verge of a world war.

Having veered towards vaccination a month or so ago when new outbreaks flared, the Government's chief scientific officer, Prof David King, has reverted to his stout defence of culling. "The policy has wiped out the disease in much of the country. About 77 per cent of the areas that have suffered infection have now been declared free of the disease,'' he says. Of course that leaves nearly 25 per cent still blighted.

In Holland, vets are urging the EU to readopt the vaccination policy abandoned at Britain's behest. On Radio 4 the other day, one of them said the Dutch public wouldn't stand for a repeat of Holland's recent cull.

There has to be something wrong with we Britons that the slaughter of almost six million animals, the vast majority healthy, has failed to provoke the public outrage that would long ago have brought a saner policy - saving not only animals but the livelihoods of thousands of people caught up in the crisis.

Published: Wednesday, September 26, 2001